Ask Mickie, Strategic Fractional Human Resources

05/20/2026

What Ask Mickie Actually Does
Strategic HR is not payroll. It’s not benefits administration. It’s not the HRIS that stores your employee data and walks new hires through their W-4 and I-9.
Those things matter. But they are administration. Software handles administration well, and you should let it. What software does not do is lead.
What you cannot buy off the shelf is the seat at the leadership table. Someone whose job is to think about your workforce the way your CFO thinks about your cash and your COO thinks about your operations. Someone who holds the role — not someone you call after the fact.
That is what fractional HR leadership is. Not consulting. Not advisory. Leadership.
I sit in your leadership meetings. I make decisions. I own the function. I do it on a fraction of the hours, at a fraction of the cost of a full-time executive — because most privately held companies under four hundred employees don’t yet need a full-time CHRO, but they absolutely need someone at that level thinking strategically about their people.
Here is the work that actually has to happen.
Hiring is not posting jobs and tracking resumes. Your ATS does that. The decision about whether the role even belongs in your org chart, the interview process that tests for the right things, the hiring manager who needs to be coached out of falling for the polished candidate who will quit in six months — that is leadership work.
Onboarding is not a stack of forms. Software can collect a W-4, an I-9, a direct deposit authorization, and a handbook acknowledgment in twenty minutes. That is not onboarding. Onboarding is the ninety days that determine whether your new hire is still here at month four — the manager conversation that happens before day one so expectations are clear, the early signals of misfit caught while there is still time to correct course. No HRIS does that work.
Compensation is not a pay rate stored in your payroll system. It is the structure that holds up when your best machinist gets a counter-offer, when a long-tenured employee finds out the new hire makes more, when a manager asks for a raise you can’t afford to say no to and can’t afford to say yes to either. Decided one conversation at a time, by the person closest to the people involved, compensation creates inequity. Decided strategically, it becomes a retention tool.
Performance is not the review cycle the system reminds your managers to complete. It is the conversation your best manager is avoiding because no one has trained them to have it. It is the documentation that protects the company if termination becomes necessary. It is recognizing when the employee you think is a problem is actually being failed by their supervisor.
Professional development is not a stack of completed training modules in your LMS. It is identifying which of your supervisors has the capacity to grow into a department head, designing the path to get them there, and coaching the manager who is technically excellent but cannot give feedback. Promoting people without developing them is how you lose the very people you most want to keep.
Workforce planning is not a dashboard showing headcount and turnover. It is looking eighteen months down the road at the people side of your business strategy — knowing which of your supervisors is two years from retirement with no successor, where the single points of failure are in your org chart, what roles you will need to build before you need them. Most owners can tell you their five-year revenue target. Far fewer can tell you what their workforce has to look like to get there.
Compliance is not a handbook template downloaded from the internet. It is knowing which state law just changed and what it means for you, sitting across the table from an EEOC investigator, understanding the difference between a complaint that needs outside counsel and one you can handle in-house. Software flags a missing form. It does not defend a decision.
Right now, all of that work is landing somewhere. In most growing companies, it is landing on the owner, the founder, the president, the CFO — someone whose job is to run the business, not lead HR. And there are four reasons that arrangement does not work.
You do not have the time. Running the company is already a full-time job, and the people work expands to fill whatever you give it.
You do not have the headspace. The work that requires the most focus — the difficult conversation, the policy decision, the personnel investigation — is the work that gets pushed when revenue is on the line.
You are not trained for it. Owners build companies. Very few were trained to lead HR, and the cost of self-taught HR usually shows up later — in a wrongful termination claim, an EEOC complaint, or a turnover number no one can quite explain.
And in many of the most important moments, you are in a conflict of interest. The person whose name is on the building cannot be the one impartially investigating a complaint about how the building is run. The founder who hired their best friend cannot be the one objectively deciding whether that friend should still be in the role.
A consultant would tell you what to do about all of this and hand you a report. I am accountable for what gets done — for the turnover number next quarter, for the manager who is struggling, for the handbook holding up under scrutiny, for the leadership pipeline being ready when you need it.
I spent more than twenty years inside Fortune 500 operations — Amazon, Crocs, and most recently Prysmian Group, where I led HR for a manufacturing operation of nearly 700 people across multiple plants. Turnover dropped from 70% to 20%. We navigated lean years without a single layoff. The practices we built were adopted across all 26 of the company’s North American locations.
That is the level of HR leadership that now sits inside the businesses I serve through Ask Mickie — privately held companies, family-owned manufacturers, and founder-led organizations that need senior HR leadership without the full-time cost.
If the only HR conversation you have had lately is with your payroll vendor or your HRIS dashboard, you do not have an HR leader. You have administration.
What would change in your business if someone was actually in the seat?

04/10/2026

When Ownership Changes Hands: The People Side of Transition Planning Nobody Talks About
By Mickie Murrell, MBA | Chief HR Strategist, Ask Mickie, LLC

Every business owner eventually transitions out of their business. That’s not a question of if—it’s a question of when and how.
Maybe you’re passing the business to a family member. Maybe you’re positioning for a sale in a few years. Maybe you haven’t started thinking about it yet, and that’s fine—but the business you’re building right now will eventually need to run without you, regardless of the circumstances.
Most owners who plan for transition bring in the right financial and legal advisors. They think about valuation, tax structure, deal terms, and estate planning. But there’s another side of the equation that almost never makes it into those conversations—and it’s the side that can quietly make or break the entire deal.
The people side.
It’s Not Just a Legal and Financial Event
When I talk to business owners about transition planning, the attorneys and CPAs are usually well engaged. And they should be—those are critical pieces. But when I ask about the people infrastructure, the conversation usually gets quiet.
That’s because most of the people-related decisions in a privately held company live in the owner’s head. How raises are determined. Why certain managers are in their roles. What was promised to a longtime employee. Who really keeps things running on the floor. How discipline gets handled. What the culture is and why it works.
None of that transfers automatically when ownership changes. And if it’s never been written down, documented, or formalized, it can be extremely difficult—and expensive—to reconstruct after the fact.
The Transition Spectrum
Transition isn’t one thing. It’s a spectrum, and each scenario comes with its own set of people considerations that most owners haven’t thought through.
Family succession raises questions about leadership readiness, employee loyalty, and how to honor the culture the founder built while giving the next generation room to lead.
A third-party sale means due diligence—and a buyer’s team will scrutinize every HR document, policy, and compliance record your company has. Or doesn’t have.
An ESOP or management buyout requires HR infrastructure and leadership development that takes years, not months, to build properly.
A merger or roll-up lives or dies on cultural integration. The financial model can be perfect, but if the people don’t come together, the deal underperforms.
An unplanned exit means the business has to keep running without you—sometimes without warning. What’s in place to make that possible?
In every one of these scenarios, the strength of your people systems directly impacts the value, the timeline, and the outcome.
Questions Worth Asking Now
You don’t have to be ready to sell tomorrow to benefit from thinking about these things today. But they are worth honest reflection, because the answers tell you a lot about how prepared your business really is.
If someone asked to see your complete personnel files tomorrow, what would they find? Are your job descriptions current and accurate, or do they describe roles that don’t exist anymore? Could your managers explain how compensation decisions are made, or is that knowledge sitting with one person?
How many of your key employees would stay through an ownership change—and how do you know? If you were suddenly unable to run the business for 90 days, who would step in and what documentation would guide them? Are there verbal commitments, informal agreements, or unwritten promises that a new owner would inherit without knowing?
These aren’t trick questions. They’re the same questions a buyer’s due diligence team will ask, a family successor will need answered, or your own team will face if plans change suddenly. The difference is whether you’re answering them on your terms, at your pace—or under pressure when the stakes are highest.
An Ounce of Prevention
The good news is that the people side of transition planning isn’t a massive, overwhelming project. It’s a series of practical steps that strengthen your business right now—whether you’re transitioning in two years, ten years, or not thinking about it yet.
Strong HR infrastructure doesn’t just prepare you for an exit. It reduces your risk today. It makes your managers more effective today. It protects you from costly compliance surprises today. And if and when the time comes to transition, it becomes one of your most valuable business assets.
The owners who get the best outcomes—the highest valuations, the smoothest family successions, the transitions that stick—are the ones who built that infrastructure long before they needed it. Not because they were planning their exit from day one, but because they understood that good people systems are good business, period.
The Bottom Line
Transition planning is a business conversation, not an end-of-career conversation. The people side of it is too often the last thing addressed and the first thing that creates problems.
Whether you’re actively planning a transition or simply want to make sure your business could weather one, the time to start is before you need to. Because when it comes to your people infrastructure, an ounce of prevention is always worth more than a pound of cure.

Wondering where your business stands?
Take the free HR Health Checkup at AskMickie.info for a quick look at where your people infrastructure is strong and where the gaps might be.
Ready for a deeper conversation? Reach out directly to schedule a free 30-minute consultation. I work with business owners on transition readiness through both project-based assessments and ongoing fractional HR partnerships—and we’ll figure out which makes sense for you.
Mickie Murrell, MBA is the founder of Ask Mickie, LLC and serves as Chief HR Strategist. With 20+ years of Fortune 500 experience at Amazon, Crocs, and Prysmian Group, she provides C-suite HR leadership to family-owned, founder-led, and mid-market companies navigating growth, transition, and everything in between.

03/11/2026

Making Lemonade: Why I Bet on Myself
Mickie Murrell, MBA

When I launched Ask Mickie and went fully fractional, the reactions were mixed. Some people got it immediately. Others wondered why someone with 20+ years of Fortune 500 HR experience would bet everything on building something from scratch.
But one conversation changed everything for me.
A close friend and colleague — someone I deeply respect, a seasoned operations executive who doesn’t hand out compliments lightly — said something I’ll never forget. He told me there are certain people in this world who will always find a way to be successful. The kind of person who could start with a lemonade stand and within six months turn it into several stands. Then a truck. Then a fleet of trucks and a storefront. Then franchises. And before you know it, that person is the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Lemonade International.
Then he looked at me and said: “You’re that person.”
I sat with that for a while. It was humbling. It was also one of the most empowering things anyone has ever said to me — not because it was flattery, but because it came from someone who has watched me operate. Someone who has seen me walk into chaos and build order. Someone who understands what it takes to scale something from nothing, because that’s what operations leaders do every day.
And here’s the thing: he wasn’t wrong about the pattern. I’ve spent my career doing exactly that — walking into broken systems, fragmented teams, and overwhelmed leadership, and building something that works. I took a manufacturing operation with 70% turnover and brought it down to 20%. I’ve managed thousands of employees across multi-state operations. I’ve navigated EEOC complaints, workforce reductions, and organizational crises that would have buried companies without the right strategy in place.
But I’ve also had hard losses. Lessons that didn’t come from a textbook or a leadership seminar — they came from getting it wrong and sitting with the weight of that. Those are the lessons that stay with you. I’ve watched others succeed and fail, and I paid attention to both. I’ve built relationships that have lasted a lifetime and others that made an impact for a season. I’ve left organizations knowing they were in a better place because of my work, even when the road getting there wasn’t smooth. I’ve grown from the ground up — not just professionally, but as a person.
Through all of it — the wins, the losses, the late nights, and the leap into building something of my own — my husband has been my biggest supporter, my loudest cheerleader, and my touchstone. He keeps me grounded when I need steadying and pushes me to stretch when I’m playing it safe. I would not be able to do this work without his love and support, and I don’t take that for granted.
The difference now is that I’m doing it for us. I’m building my lemonade stand.
Ask Mickie isn’t a consulting firm where I drop in with recommendations and disappear. It’s a fractional HR practice — meaning I become part of the leadership strategy for multiple organizations at the same time. Every lesson, every late-night crisis call, every system I built, every leader I developed, and every hard conversation I had the courage to lead over 20+ years — I bring all of that to the table. Not as an outsider looking in, but as a strategic partner embedded in the work. Fortune 500-level HR leadership for the companies that need it most but could never afford it full-time.
Family-owned businesses navigating growth. Founder-led companies preparing for their next chapter. Organizations in transition who need someone who’s been in the room when it mattered.
Am I building a lemonade stand? Absolutely. And I plan to make a lot of lemonade.
Because the truth is, building something of your own isn’t really a leap when you’ve spent your entire career solving problems, building from the ground up, and proving that the right people strategy drives real business results. It’s just the next chapter.
To everyone out there thinking about betting on yourself — whether it’s launching a business, making a career change, or stepping into a role that scares you: find the people who see your potential clearly, even when you can’t. And then go prove them right.
And to the leaders out there building something of their own — whether you’re scaling up, navigating a transition, or just trying to get your arms around the people side of your business — I’m not here to compete with what you’ve already built. I’m here to complement it. To partner with you and build together.
That’s what fractional leadership is. Not an outsider telling you what’s wrong. A partner rolling up their sleeves and helping you make it better.
I’m making lemonade. And I’m looking for leaders who want to make some with me.

Call now to connect with business.

03/01/2026

Consulting vs. Fractional HR: What’s the Difference, and Why It Matters for Your Business
By Mickie Murrell, MBA | Chief HR Strategist, Ask Mickie, LLC

One of the most common questions I hear from business owners is some version of: “I need HR help—should I hire a consultant?”
It sounds like a simple question. It’s not.
Because “HR help” can mean a lot of things. And the difference between hiring an HR consultant and hiring a fractional HR leader isn’t just semantics—it’s the difference between getting a recommendation and getting a result.
If you’re trying to figure out which one you actually need, let me break it down.
And let me address something upfront: most people assume fractional HR is just another word for consulting. It’s not. I hear it all the time—“So you’re a consultant?”—and I get why the lines feel blurry. Both are external. Both are hired for expertise you don’t have in-house. But the way they work, the depth of their involvement, and the outcomes they deliver are fundamentally different. Lumping them together is like saying a general contractor and an architect do the same thing because they both show up to your job site.
What Is HR Consulting?
An HR consultant is typically brought in for a defined project or problem. They assess a situation, deliver a report or set of recommendations, and then they leave. Think of it like calling a mechanic for a diagnostic. They’ll tell you what’s wrong with the engine, maybe even write up a repair plan—but they’re not the one turning the wrench.
Consultants are valuable when you need a specific deliverable: an employee handbook, a compensation study, help navigating a single compliance issue, or an audit of your current HR practices. They bring expertise, they scope the work, they hand off the result, and the engagement ends.
The challenge? Once they leave, you’re the one responsible for implementing everything they recommended. And if you don’t have someone internally with the experience to execute that plan, it often ends up sitting in a binder on a shelf collecting dust.
I’ve walked into companies that spent $30,000 or more on consulting engagements only to find the recommendations were never implemented. Not because the advice was bad—but because nobody was there to actually do the work.
What Is Fractional HR?
Fractional HR is a fundamentally different model. Instead of hiring someone to advise from the outside, you’re bringing a senior HR leader onto your team on a part-time basis. They don’t just tell you what to do—they roll up their sleeves and do it with you.
A fractional HR leader operates as your HR executive. They’re in your meetings. They know your managers by name. They understand your culture, your pain points, your growth goals. They’re building systems, coaching your leaders, handling employee relations issues, and making sure you stay compliant—not just for a project, but as an ongoing partner in your business.
The “fractional” part simply means you’re getting that C-suite level expertise at a fraction of the cost of a full-time hire. Instead of paying $120,000 to $180,000 a year plus benefits for a full-time HR director, you might invest $30,000 to $60,000 annually for a fractional leader who brings 20+ years of experience across multiple industries.
It’s not a downgrade. It’s a smarter allocation of resources.
The Key Differences That Actually Matter
Here’s where this gets practical.
Depth of relationship. A consultant knows your problem. A fractional HR leader knows your business. They understand the politics, the personalities, and the unspoken dynamics that drive real outcomes.
Implementation. A consultant delivers a plan. A fractional leader delivers results. They’re accountable for ex*****on, not just recommendations.
Continuity. Consultants come and go. A fractional HR leader builds institutional knowledge over time, creating sustainable systems rather than one-off fixes.
Strategic integration. A consultant works on HR. A fractional leader connects people decisions directly to business outcomes—revenue, retention, productivity, risk reduction. They speak the language of operations and finance, not just HR theory.
Cost predictability. With consulting, costs are project-based and can spiral. Fractional engagements are typically structured as monthly retainers, giving you budget predictability with flexible scope.
Why Business Owners Should Consider Fractional HR
If you’re running a company with 10 to 250 employees, you’re in a tough spot. You’re big enough that HR issues are real and constant—compliance risks, hiring challenges, manager development, employee relations—but you may not be big enough to justify a full-time senior HR executive on payroll.
That gap is exactly where things go wrong. I’ve seen it play out hundreds of times over my career.
The owner or operations leader tries to handle HR themselves, relying on Google searches and gut instinct. Or they hire a junior HR coordinator who doesn’t have the experience to handle the complex situations that inevitably come up—the EEOC complaint, the manager who’s creating a hostile work environment, the multi-state compliance tangle, or the cultural crisis during rapid growth.
A fractional HR leader fills that gap with senior-level expertise. After 20+ years in Fortune 500 environments—managing teams of thousands, overseeing P&L responsibilities, and navigating every HR crisis imaginable—I can tell you that the issues small and mid-market companies face aren’t simpler than what big companies face. They’re often more complex, because there are fewer resources and less margin for error.
Most business owners in this position don’t need a consultant. They need someone who will sit in their leadership meetings, help restructure their management team, build the HR infrastructure their growing company requires, and be there when the next crisis hits. They need a partner, not a project.
That’s what fractional HR delivers.
It’s Not Always Either/Or
I offer both models because there are absolutely times when a project-based engagement is the right call. If you need an employee handbook built, a compensation benchmarking study, a compliance audit, or someone to come in and conduct a workplace investigation—those are defined projects with a clear scope and endpoint. That’s consulting, and it’s valuable.
But if you’re dealing with ongoing challenges—high turnover, compliance concerns across multiple states, leadership development, scaling your workforce, or simply building the people infrastructure that supports real growth—you need someone embedded in your business, not observing it from the outside. That’s fractional.
The smartest companies I work with often start with one and grow into the other. A business owner brings me in for a project—maybe an HR audit or a crisis situation—and once they see the depth of what strategic HR leadership actually looks like, they realize they need that on an ongoing basis. Other clients start fractional from day one because they already know the gap they’re trying to fill.
Either way, having one partner who understands both models means you’re not starting from scratch every time a new challenge comes up.
The Bottom Line
Consultants tell you what’s wrong. Fractional HR leaders fix it and build systems so it doesn’t break again.
Whether you need a defined project completed or an ongoing strategic partner—or you’re not sure yet—the first step is understanding what your business actually needs right now. The answer might be a one-time engagement that solves a specific problem. It might be a fractional leader who builds the systems so those problems stop coming back. Or it might be both.
The right HR leader doesn’t just cost you less than you think—they generate returns you can actually measure.

Not sure where your HR stands?
Take the free HR Health Checkup at AskMickie.info to see where you’re covered and where you’re exposed. It takes 10 minutes, it’s completely free, and it might save you from a very expensive surprise.
Or, if you’re ready to talk, reach out directly to schedule a free 30-minute consultation. Whether you need project-based support or a fractional partner, we’ll figure out the right fit together—no pressure.
Mickie Murrell, MBA is the founder of Ask Mickie, LLC and serves as Chief HR Strategist. With 20+ years of Fortune 500 experience at Amazon, Crocs, and Prysmian Group, she provides C-suite HR leadership to family-owned, founder-led, and mid-market companies navigating growth, transition, and everything in between.

Call now to connect with business.

02/17/2026

This chew monster fell asleep on my legs. I can't move or I will wake this precious baby. This is my life now ❤️

02/11/2026

I am new in town, but not new to the world of HR. If you own or run a business, I know you didnt start it to deal with HR issues. The reality is HR issues ARE business issue. And if not handled well, they fester and can be really costly in ways that don't always show up on as a line item on your P&L. I created Ask Mickie, Strategic Fractional Human Resources to be the person you can trust to handle these things for and with you and your team. You might not want or need a full time HR or the full-time salary that goes with it! But it would be nice to have someone that answers the phone when you call. I have very reasonable rates and we can customize the arrangement to fit your needs and budget. If you are at a place where quality HR would be helpful, give me a call. We can grab of coffee and talk it out!.

02/11/2026

Hi! I am new in town but not new to HR
If you own or run a business, I know you didn't start it to deal with HR issues! You would rather be doing what you love. That is why I started Ask Mickie, Strategic Fractional Human Resources to be there when you need someone, but don't want or need the full time salary that goes with quality HR partnership. Give me a call, we can grab a coffee and talk!

02/10/2026

A Different Way to Think About It
You wouldn't represent yourself in a legal proceeding just because you understand the law. You wouldn't perform your own audit just because you know your financials. Not because you're incapable — but because having an impartial expert in your corner produces a better outcome.
HR crisis management works the same way.
The leaders who navigate workplace complaints most effectively aren't the ones who know the most about employment law. They're the ones who recognize that bringing in the right expertise at the right moment isn't a sign of weakness. It's the most strategic decision they can make.

Mickie Murrell is the founder of Ask Mickie, LLC and a fractional HR strategist specializing in crisis response, workplace investigations, and strategic HR leadership for growing businesses. With 20+ years of Fortune 500 and operations experience, she helps business owners navigate complex people challenges with clarity, compliance, and confidence.
If you're facing a situation that needs experienced HR guidance, reach out directly: (937) 397-3428 | [email protected]

02/09/2026

The Cost No One Calculates
Every business leader understands the direct costs of an HR crisis — potential settlements, legal fees, compliance penalties. Those numbers are sobering enough.
But the cost that actually reshapes a business is the quiet one: the erosion of trust that happens when a complaint is handled without structure.
The employee who sees the process and decides this isn't a place where concerns are taken seriously. The manager who watches leadership fumble the response and loses confidence. The top performer who starts quietly looking elsewhere because the culture suddenly feels less stable.
Those departures don't show up as a line item on a crisis report. They show up six months later as turnover you can't explain, engagement scores you can't move, and recruiting costs that keep climbing.
Handled well, an HR complaint can actually strengthen an organization. It demonstrates that leadership takes concerns seriously, follows through with integrity, and creates accountability at every level. That's not damage control — that's culture building. Let's get ahead of it and have a plan in place. I am only a phone call away.