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Small Team, Big Impact: How to Build and Scale HR from the Ground Up
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Transcript
About this episode
In this episode of the Future Proof HR podcast, Thomas Kunjappu sits down with Dorian Rhodes, Human Resources Director at Barton Associates, an architectural engineering firm with locations across Pennsylvania and North Carolina, to explore what it really means to build an HR function from the ground up. In a 60-year-old firm that had never had a formally trained HR leader before him.
Coming from large global organizations where he led HR across the US, Canada, and Brazil, Dorian made a deliberate leap to a hundred-person company where he became the first HR professional in the firm's history. Eighteen months in, he's already implemented the company's first HRIS, digitized paper-based employee records, redesigned the performance management framework, and built a talent pipeline that starts at the high school level.
Together, they dig into what it takes to earn executive trust when you're the first HR leader a company has ever had, how to reframe HR from a cost center to a profit center, and why the "fail fast" mindset is the single most important mental shift for HR professionals working in smaller, relationship-driven organizations.
Dorian also shares how the looming retirement of a 40-year veteran electrical engineer became the catalyst for a formal succession planning approach, why being a business person first and an HR expert second is the real unlock for gaining credibility, and what he believes the lean HR team of the future actually looks like. including when to bring in outside specialists and when to keep it internal.
Topics Discussed:
Why Dorian went from tens of thousands of employees to a hundred-person firm and what he found when he got there
The crawl-walk-run approach to building HR infrastructure from nothing
How to make the case for HRIS investment when every dollar counts and finance runs payroll
Reframing HR as a profit center: practical rhythms for building executive trust
The "fail fast" mindset and why not everyone agreeing with you is a good sign
Performance management rollout strategy, including how to get executive sponsorship before you send a single email
Succession planning in a firm where 40 years of tribal knowledge can walk out the door overnight
Building a talent pipeline from vo-tech and high school all the way through university career fairs
The ESOP advantage and how to use it as a recruiting tool with students who have never heard of it
What the future-proof small HR team actually looks like and when to bring in a COE on a contract basis
If you're an HR leader building a function from scratch, navigating a company culture that's never had formal HR before, or trying to prove your value to an executive team that sees HR as overhead, this episode is a grounded and practical look at what it takes to lead people in a company that's been running just fine without you, until now.
Additional Resources:
About the guest
Dorian Rhodes
