HR Companies & HR Consultants in Madison, WI

Brooke Human Resource Solutions, LLC is an HR consultancy based in Fitchburg, on the south side of the Madison area. It works with small employers in Madison and the wider south central Wisconsin region. The firm is for organizations that need professional HR guidance but can't justify their own HR department. It helps them keep up with employment rules, records and benefits without hiring permanent staff.

Background and credentials

Ashlie B. Johnson founded the company. She has a bachelor's degree in human resources management from St. Cloud University in Minnesota and holds the PHR (Professional in Human Resources) credential. She belongs to SHRM, the American Payroll Association and GMASHRM.

She has more than twenty years of HR management experience across many sectors, including organizations with roughly 200 to 2,300 employees. The firm aims to bring the same discipline larger companies expect to businesses with far smaller teams. The president and CEO of Family Service Madison, a former client, wrote a letter of recommendation praising her HR and payroll work.

Services

Clients can buy single services or combine them into a fixed-fee arrangement. Main areas include:

• Talent management, including writing job descriptions and designing onboarding
• Employee relations: documenting corrective action, sitting in on disciplinary meetings, handling grievances and running investigations
• Pay reviews and wellness program design
• Internal and external communications such as intranet posts and newsletters
• Delivering training, setting up required training and keeping training records
• Payroll process audits, reviews of payroll software, and new or upgraded HRIS systems
• Benefits administration, renewal negotiations with brokers and 401(k) plan coordination
• Writing policies and handbooks, plus updates when employment laws change
• Compliance reviews of personnel files, offer letters, termination paperwork and severance agreements
• Help choosing vendors, and training staff on unemployment and workers' compensation paperwork

How they work with clients

Most engagements start with a written proposal. It reviews what the client has and needs, then lays out an implementation plan, a timeline and a compliance check. Urgent problems come first, followed by goals and benchmarks. The client sets the pace based on budget, need and how important each item is.

Support can be project work, on-call advice, general consulting or regular hours in the client's own office. The firm presents this local, in-person approach as an alternative to national or regional providers that mostly work remotely. It also notes that handing discipline and conflict cases to an outside party keeps those matters neutral.

Industry focus

Besides general small business work, Brooke HR has notable experience in agriculture, especially dairy. Johnson appeared in a Dairy Business video series on HR. Topics included FLSA overtime tests for farms, Department of Labor salary rules, documentation, recruiting with technology and social media, generational differences in the workforce, working with cooperative boards of directors, and preventing harassment on farms. That makes the firm a good fit for dairy producers and co-ops as well as other small Wisconsin employers.

Lake Effect HR & Law is a Madison, Wisconsin firm that combines employment law practice with full-service human resources support. It works only for employers, not individual employees. Its clients range from small businesses and nonprofits to established companies with in-house HR departments.

For buyers comparing HR consultants, the main thing that sets it apart is that licensed employment attorneys and certified HR professionals work side by side. Clients can get both strategic HR help and legal advice from one team.

Services

The firm covers most day-to-day and strategic people-management needs, and it treats legal requirements as part of how an organization actually runs. Its published offerings and client stories point to these areas:

• Legal counsel to employers on federal, state and local employment laws, including for staff working in other states
• Ongoing HR advisory support for organizations without a large internal HR function
• Employee relations guidance and help with difficult workplace situations
• Writing policies and reviewing employee handbooks
• Compliance support, including updates on new agency guidance and regulations
• Anti-harassment training and other workplace workshops
• Team development through the Everything DiSC assessment program
• Coaching for executives, managers and employees

How They Work With Clients

Lake Effect says it doesn't offer a standard package. The team learns each client's culture, mission and goals before recommending procedures or outcomes. Client feedback describes the firm as acting like part of the organization's own staff. Clients mention quick responses, practical business-focused advice and a willingness to disagree when needed.

The firm also aims to make sure legal requirements fit each workplace's own way of operating and long-term plans, rather than just ticking compliance boxes. Its facilitated workshops help teams understand each other better and are designed so that leaders can keep building on the lessons afterward.

Clients and Specialties

Nonprofits make up a large share of its published clients. Examples include a community foundation, an art museum, a historical foundation and a research and education network. Clients have described help with leadership changes, hiring key staff, building policies and supporting growth.

The firm also works with for-profit employers such as a local cafe and bakery, a creative services company, a health organization and a consumer products company. Several clients say they have worked with the team for many years, in one case more than a decade.

Background and Team

Founder Jane Clark, J.D., leads the firm as CEO and Managing Partner. She formed Lake Effect with the core team from the former Clark & Gotzler law firm. Other team members include partner Sheila Conroy, J.D., Senior Strategic HR Advisor Tricia Perkins, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, Strategic HR Advisor Leann Ploessl, SHRM-CP, and other attorneys and HR staff.

Together they bring legal, executive and HR experience, along with professional licenses. Lake Effect is a Wisconsin woman-owned business. It also publishes regular news and articles on HR and employment law developments for employers.