We were built for the leaders who
carry it all.
Michaels HR Consulting is a boutique executive HR advisory firm. We work with growing organizations that need senior people counsel and an experienced advisor who can help them act on it.
About the firm
Not a department. Not a vendor. An advisor at your table.
The origin
20 Years on the Other Side of the Desk.
Before this was a firm, it was a pattern.
Shelly Michaels has spent more than twenty years in senior HR leadership across technology companies, nonprofits, and growing organizations. Different industries. Different challenges. The same truth: as organizations grow, people decisions become business decisions.
A founder had built something real and then hit the wall every founder hits — the point where instinct stops scaling and the organization needs structure. An executive director was balancing a board, a budget, and a growing team with judgment alone. A leadership team was making a consequential people decision without anyone in the room who had made that decision before.
They didn't need another HR vendor. They needed an experienced advisor with the judgment to help them make the right decision before it became the expensive decision.
Michaels HR Consulting exists to be that advisor.
The origin
Five convictions that shape every engagement.
01
Every hiring decision, promotion, pay decision, and separation moves a number on your financials. Treat them accordingly.
People decisions are business decisions.
02
Done well, compliance is not a constraint. It is what lets you move fast without looking over your shoulder.
Compliance creates confidence.
03
The plan is written by leadership and executed by the people who run the one-on-ones. Invest there.
Managers determine whether strategy succeeds.
04
Culture is not what the handbook says. It is what leadership does the first time something goes wrong.
Trust is earned through action, not policy.
05
If our work makes your organization more complicated, we have done it badly.
HR should simplify the business.
How we work
Three commitments.
You get the reasoning, not just the recommendation.
Every policy, investigation, and recommendation comes with the context behind it, the risk you are actually carrying, and a clear next step. You should be able to defend the decision to your board without calling us first.
We build capability, not dependency.
Your managers should need us less each year. We train, document, and hand off deliberately, because an organization that cannot function without its advisor has not been advised well.
We name the problem early.
The expensive version of every people problem is the one nobody said out loud for six months. We believe difficult conversations are easiest when they're had early.
Founder
Shelly Michaels, MS-HRM, SHRM-SCP
Shelly has spent 20 years leading human resources inside organizations where the stakes were real and the resources were finite — technology companies scaling faster than their structure, nonprofits protecting a mission through hard years, civil rights organizations where the work and the workplace had to hold to the same standard.
She holds a Master of Science in Human Resource Management and the SHRM Senior Certified Professional credential. She teaches human resources as an adjunct professor at Long Island University. She serves on the boards of Project FIND and Mercy University.
Those experiences shaped the way she advises clients today. She has sat in the operator's chair, making the call. She has sat in the board's chair, reviewing the call somebody else made. She has stood in a classroom explaining why the call was right or wrong.
Clients hire her firm because she has already seen their situation from all three angles.
The firm
Boutique by design.
We intentionally remain boutique so that the person you meet is the person who does the work. Engagements are led by senior practitioners, supported by a bench of experienced HR professionals we bring in when the scope calls for it.
We are based in Brooklyn, New York, and work with organizations across the country. We are proudly independent, and we intend to stay that way.
Start with a conversation.
Thirty minutes with a senior HR advisor. Bring the people decision that's keeping you up at night. You will leave with a clear read on it and a recommended next step, whether or not we work together.
