HR Companies & HR Consultants in Kingsport, TN

Edwards Ragan and Associates, LLC is a human resources consulting firm based in Kingsport, Tennessee. It works with employers across Northeast Tennessee, the Knoxville region and Southwest Virginia. The firm was founded in 2012, is veteran-owned, and offers outsourced HR advice, recruiting, outplacement and leadership development from a single provider. That makes it a practical choice for small and mid-sized organizations that have no large internal HR department, or that need extra help for a specific project.

Services

The firm's consulting service, called HR On-Call, gives client companies of any size direct access to experienced consultants. These consultants answer everyday personnel questions and help settle concerns quickly. Beyond this advisory support, the firm covers every stage of the employee lifecycle:

• HR compliance audits and writing employee handbooks
• Help with wage and hour matters, EEOC charges, Title VII, the ADA and FMLA
• Executive search and recruiting
• Career transition and outplacement support for departing employees
• Career assessment
• Executive and personal coaching
• Custom training and development programs, including training for supervisors and managers

Industries and Approach

Edwards Ragan focuses on small to mid-size employers. It lists experience in manufacturing, wholesale distribution, retail, healthcare, commercial banking and the nonprofit sector. Its leaders describe a philosophy that puts people first. Before work begins, the team offers prospective clients a first discovery conversation to clarify the problem, suggest possible solutions and agree on the results the engagement should deliver.

Global Network

One thing that sets the firm apart is its role as the East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia affiliate of Career Partners International. This talent management network has more than 300 offices in over 45 countries. Edwards Ragan also owns an equity stake in the organization, which focuses on outplacement, career management, leadership development and coaching for executives.

For employers in the region, this means working with a consultant who knows the local market but can also draw on the network's international resources.

Team and Recognition

The firm is named after its two principals. Partner Dan Ragan is a former U.S. Army officer who studied at East Tennessee State University and the University of Tennessee. He has more than three decades of HR experience in consulting, recruiting, training and career transition.

Wayne Edwards grew up in Georgia and was general manager at several General Shale Brick locations before he retired in 2009. The wider team includes John Autry, who writes and leads many of the custom training programs.

It also includes Calvin Schmid, who holds a doctorate in social psychology from Boston College and is certified in assessment tools such as Hogan, MBTI, Benchmarks and the Leadership Versatility Index. Dennis M. Russell, a longtime consultant with a master's degree in psychology, rounds out the team. His background covers personnel appraisal, outplacement and executive search.

Edwards Ragan has won regional recognition for its work. It received a Faith in the Future honor from the Johnson City chamber and CenturyLink for its career transition services. In 2016 it won a KOSBE honor for business excellence from Kingsport's chamber of commerce.

The Summit Companies is a group of affiliated consulting firms serving small and mid-sized businesses as well as nonprofit organizations across Northeast Tennessee. One of its member firms, Summit Human Resources Consultants, concentrates on people management, helping employers handle hiring, workforce policy, compliance and staff performance. Summit has offices in Kingsport, Bristol, Johnson City and Knoxville, so buyers in the Tri-Cities area can work with a nearby team.

HR consulting focus

The HR firm presents itself as a strategic advisor instead of a pure administrative vendor. Its message to clients is that payroll and compensation usually make up the largest share of an organization's spending, so poor hiring choices or weak performance oversight can be costly, and federal and state labor rules add another layer of risk for supervisors. Summit aims to reduce legal exposure while helping employers get more value from the people they employ. Core HR offerings include:

• Performance management strategies and processes to raise engagement
• Development of workplace policies that keep pace with changing regulations
• Recruiting support meant to lower hiring cost and risk
• Time and labor management systems that record hours and feed payroll
• Custom employee handbooks that reflect each employer's culture
• Tailored training for newly promoted supervisors

Broader business support

Because HR sits inside a larger family of firms, clients can combine it with related services. Summit's sister companies handle accounting and finance, employee benefits, marketing, technology, management consulting, risk management and insurance, and nonprofit services.

Summit also runs a fractional executive program in which a consultant can act as an outsourced Chief Human Resources Officer, COO, CFO, CIO or CMO, giving smaller organizations senior guidance without adding a full-time executive salary.

Other offerings include strategic and succession planning, leadership development, business coaching, a proprietary organizational assessment, Six Sigma and LEAN work, scalable advisory boards, and group or on-request training on human resources, management and communication topics.

Team and background

Summit was established in 2005. Since then it has relocated to bigger offices, opened additional locations and substantially enlarged its staff, and it now reports serving hundreds of clients. Its consultants come from varied industries.

Those listed for HR include Dick Brabham, who has more than 35 years of HR leadership in industry along with consulting experience in areas such as recruitment and retention, mediation, compensation, HR information systems, policy writing and legal compliance. John Sanslow brings over three decades in sales, management and business development, much of it at a large international corporation.

Eric Fields contributes accounting, finance, benefits and risk management expertise.

The firm's operating model is unusual: individual consultants choose the services they deliver, the clients they take on and the fees they charge, and Summit does not require non-compete agreements on their client books. The company says this structure helps it keep experienced, stable consultants, which in turn supports long-term client relationships.

For organizations comparing HR providers, Summit suits employers that want hands-on compliance and people-management advice alongside the option to draw on finance, benefits or executive-level support from the same group.

Based in Kingsport, Tennessee, VanDyke People Consultants offers recruiting along with advisory services on workforce matters. Its clients are mostly employers in Northeast Tennessee and the wider Tri-Cities region, Johnson City among them. According to the firm, its involvement can span an employee's entire time with an organization, starting at onboarding and continuing until that person retires.

That breadth makes it a fit for businesses that want to rely on a single external partner for both filling positions and managing staff over time, instead of hiring one vendor for recruiting and another for everything else.

Services Offered

Its work falls into two broad categories. On the recruiting side, it sources candidates for client businesses and fills permanent, direct-hire positions. On the advisory side, it helps shape the policies, programs and practices that govern how employees are managed once they join. Among the specialties it lists are:

• Sourcing talent and making direct-hire placements
• Programs that build employee skills
• Managing and evaluating performance
• Drafting and revising workplace policies
• Training for staff and for the organization as a whole
• Planning successors for critical positions
• Assessments of company culture
• Everyday support with personnel questions

Working Relationship

Rather than offering a fixed bundle, the firm says it shapes each engagement around what the client wants to achieve. Prospective clients can schedule services online through the company's website. An employer could use this to start a one-time assignment, such as reviewing its policies or assessing its culture.

It could also use it to launch an extended engagement that combines recruitment with continuing advice on personnel matters. Since hiring and development sit under the same roof, employees placed by the firm can later benefit from its training, performance reviews and succession work.

Experience and Reputation

Testimonials posted on the site refer to Monica, the practitioner who leads the firm. People who previously worked alongside her point to her experience across recruiting, leadership and the broader personnel field. They describe her as organized and detail-oriented, with strong problem-solving skills and the ability to make sound calls independently.

These reviewers also credit her with equipping staff to do well through training and engagement efforts, and with forming productive partnerships with operations leaders. Taken together, their comments indicate she is at ease dealing with frontline employees as well as executives.

What Buyers Should Know

Organizations weighing workforce service providers around Johnson City should be aware that the firm provides services only. It neither sells nor resells payroll tools, HR information systems or any other products. Its value lies in practical guidance, recruiting and training delivered by a seasoned professional. Small and mid-sized employers without a full internal personnel team are likely to benefit most.

So are those needing added capacity for hiring, policy drafting or building a leadership pipeline. Businesses that require a software platform or a professional employer organization arrangement will have to get those elsewhere, though they could still turn to this firm for recruiting and advisory support.