Today on the Atlanta Business Show we welcome LaSonya Berry. She’s the CEO of HR Consulting Firm; McPherson, Berry & Associates. She’s an author, HR executive speaker, and coach. LaSonya has an exceptional track record of helping businesses and individuals achieve their full potential in HR.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Bridget: Hello everyone, and welcome into the Atlanta Small Business Show. I’m Bridget Fitzpatrick. We’re very excited to talk with our next guest, LaSonya Berry. She’s the CEO of HR Consulting Firm, McPherson, Berry & Associates. She’s an author, HR executive speaker and coach among many other things. LaSonya has an exceptional track record of helping businesses and individuals achieve their full potential, and she’s worked with Fortune 500 companies such as IBM and General Electric for over 18 years.
LaSonya, thanks so much for joining us today.
LaSonya Berry: Thank you Bridget for having me.
Bridget: Yeah, we’re glad to have you here. Can you talk to us a little bit about McPherson, Berry & Associates and what you do to help small and large businesses?
LaSonya Berry: Wonderful, yes. Most of the time, when people see the name they think, ” Oh my gosh, this is a law firm.” And we often tell them, ” If you had us, you wouldn’t need employment lawyers.” So we help small businesses, large corporations, specifically with their talent management challenges that they may have, or just to make sure that they’re doing things correctly and in compliance.
Bridget: Very good. Now you talk about, you help individuals to be informed and transform so that they can outperform. Can you talk to us a little bit about this?
LaSonya Berry: Oh yes, especially when it comes to small businesses, most of the time the owners know their craft, but they are not great at managing people. And so being informed and helping them to understand what they know and what they don’t know. Some of them really think, “I got this, it’s my business, what I say will go.” But they don’t realize the fact you still have to be in compliance, you still have to make sure that you’re engaging your people correctly.
Bridget: Shauna, is there a difference would you say in outperforming or simply succeeding?
LaSonya Berry: Oh, most definitely. So if you want to be successful as a business owner, you gotta make sure you’ve got the right people in the right place, and having the right talent on board. Because your organizations are smaller and you have less to perform with, so you wanna make sure you have the right resources. So having the right talent on board, making sure you manage them, because one of the key things that business owners find themselves dealing with is turnover, which has a direct impact to their bottom line. So if you’re doing that, you’re definitely not outperforming.
Bridget: For sure. Now what are some of the things that companies should be looking for when they’re looking for a HR partner?
LaSonya Berry: So when you looking at a HR partner, you don’t want someone who’s just gonna give you compliance information, you want someone to really understand your culture, really understand what your business goals are, where is it that you are taking your company? So that they can do the right workforce planning with you and grow with you. You wanna partner, not just an HR face. Not just someone just to do payroll. So think of them as a part of your executive team.
Bridget: Okay great. Now, we’re halfway through 2018 now, do you have any advice for business centers to help them outperform for the second half of the year?
LaSonya Berry: Oh yeah. You gotta make sure, you do your HR checklist. Make sure you’ve gotten all your reports completed. Some of the things that we definitely see that happens is when you look at performance evaluations; most of the time, they’re not completed. You’re so busy working in the business, you forget to work on the business, and making sure not just that they’re meeting their goals, but are you in alignment as far as what you need to succeed to reach your goals, but more importantly, so that you can outperform. You don’t want to just get there, you want to make sure you’re going above and beyond, with your company to make sure it’s around for a long time. So sustainability is key, and you need people to be sustainable.
Bridget: Absolutely. Thank you so much for joining us, great advice for our small business owner watchers here on ASBN. Thank you so much for joining us and we look forward to having you back again.
LaSonya Berry: Thank you, Bridget.
