Ep. 248 Why HR Is a Growth Strategy, Not Just Compliance, with Neil Katz

Most business leaders spend a shocking amount of their day buried in people management, anywhere from ten to fifty percent, dealing with compensation, compliance, benefits, onboarding, offboarding, and employee relations. In this episode of the Business Growth Spotlight, Heidi Schalk sits down with Neil Katz, founder and CEO of Exceptional HR Solutions, to unpack why HR is not just a compliance checkbox but a genuine growth strategy, and why the fractional model is changing how small and mid-sized companies build their people function.Neil brings 19 years in HR and a team with over 450 combined years of experience to the conversation. He explains why companies under 250 employees usually do not need a full time HR person, how fractional partners deliver expertise at 15 to 20 years of experience per person without the distraction of internal politics and endless meetings, and why the real cost of turnover is closer to six months of lost business impact than most owners realize.The conversation goes deep on hiring mistakes, including Neil's counterintuitive advice to try to talk great candidates out of working for you to reveal their true desire. He and Heidi also tackle culture, the number one thing employees actually want from leaders, and the reality of AI in HR. Neil is a huge fan of AI as a tool but is direct about its limits: it does not know what it does not know, and it will never replace the human connection at the heart of human resources.They close on visibility and growth, covering Neil's relationship-first outreach philosophy, why he has spent two years nurturing deals that eventually close, the challenge of measuring social media ROI, and the rise of AEO as the next frontier in how businesses get found and recommended by AI.To connect with our guest, click on the links below:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neilkatzhr/ Website:  https://exceptionalhrsolutions.com/ Connect with me:LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidischalkcoaching/🎁Spotlight to Scale Blueprint:  https://spotlighttoscale.com/blueprint 🎁Join us for a free 60 Minute Webinar on Visibility and Getting Recommended by AI:  https://becomeairecommended.com/grow