Competent Solutions for Complex Situations
We Turn Our Expertise Into Your Results
Using our uniquely broad and deep expertise, we look at your full-picture and zoom into custom solutions that deliver practical results tailored to your business needs. The value we offer impacts your bottom line at two levels:
- Preserving Your Success: Building infrastructure, avoiding liability, problem-solving, and protecting your company’s reputation as an employer.
- Increasing Your Success: Developing the mindset inside your company that becomes the brand you want to have outside, attracting talent, developing leaders, optimizing and incentivizing performance, measuring results and ROI.
Preserving Your Success:
Increasing Your Success:
Building infrastructure, avoiding liability, problem-solving, and protecting your company’s reputation as an employer.
Developing the mindset inside your company that becomes the brand you want to have outside, attracting talent, developing leaders, optimizing and incentivizing performance, measuring results and ROI.
HR is Puzzling. Navigating It Doesn’t Have To Be.
We Turn Complex Into Capable.
Whether you need to propel your business by creating a strategic HR action plan or you just need help with an urgent HR question, we will meet you where you are. We deliver specific results from a full-view perspective. Like helicopter pilots, we can analyze your circumstances at a 10,000-foot global perspective, quickly descend to deal with a mid-level HR management challenge, then go down to Earth to facilitate the solution to an employee conflict. Our focused but integrated approach includes HR consulting services in these areas:
- HR strategy development
- HR analytics, dashboards, ROI
- HR infrastructure
- Employee handbook and policies
- Workforce planning
- Culture development and change
- Employment branding
- Talent acquisition
- Onboarding
- Organizational effectiveness
- Leadership development
- Learning
- Diversity, Equality & Inclusion
- EEOC Consent Decree and EEOC Conciliation Agreement Implementation
- Engagement and retention
- Performance optimization and FeedForward systems
- Total rewards: compensation, incentives, benefits
- Leave and disability management including interactive process and reasonable accommodation
- Employee relations, conflict resolution
- Terminations, reorganizations and reductions-in-force
- Workers’ compensation
Skilled fact-finding for practical resolutions
We are timely, objective and thorough.
Our expertise and credentials bring results, while our integrity and approach create a favorable experience. Our uniquely broad and deep perspective magnifies the quality of our investigations at every step, including planning, rapport-building, effective interviewing, report production, and presentation of results to discerning clients such as boards of directors.
Our credentials include AWI-CH, and our practices reflect the Association of Workplace Investigators’ excellence. Based on client preference and availability, our investigations are conducted by:
- HR Consultant who is a Licensed Private Investigator (Cláudia Schwartz, California PI License 28731 & AWI-CH)
or
- Employment attorney who is a Sr. Investigator (J.D. & AWI-CH)
Broad Experience, Deep Expertise
Comprehensive Perspectives Forming Credible Opinions.
Our capability and credibility as HR expert witnesses are unique because of our comprehensive and extensive accomplishments in areas including:
- Human Resources leadership roles in companies with up to 10,000 employees across industries
- Hundreds of workplace investigations, the AWI-CH credential and a California PI License
- Directing the UCSD HR Leadership Program, where leaders share their current and evolving HR practices
- Teaching applied employment law for HR professionals at universities including UCSD for over 20 years
- Court-appointment to implement an EEOC consent decree resulting from one of their largest class-action settlements ($47 million)
- Creation and delivery of training programs, including harassment and bullying prevention, respect in the workplace, investigations, employment law for managers
- Extensive knowledge related to disabilities, interactive process, reasonable accommodation, leave management, return to work, employment separation, and related discrimination, harassment and retaliation complaints
- Understanding of diversity from professional and personal experiences as members of legally protected groups, including being born and raised in Latin America
Inspiring Change In A Changing World.
We spark learning for lasting results.
Learning, unlearning and relearning is crucial to sustain career and organizational success. We take a pulse on what you want to achieve and accelerate your progress with learning in these key areas:
Leadership Development:
Research has shown that leadership effectiveness is the most powerful factor impacting employees’ discretionary effort and performance. Seizing this opportunity is pivotal for organizations to thrive in a world that is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. We stimulate leadership development that aligns internal culture, external brand, and business results. We offer learning sessions online and in-person. Examples of programs:
- Solve as You Evolve: In this comprehensive program, a group of high-potential cohorts participate in a combination of workshops and individual coaching. Over a few months, they achieve individual goals while creating collective solutions for organizational issues or plans to seize business opportunities.
- Competencies for Developing Leaders: This can be delivered as a workshop or multiple sessions, building proficiency in key skills needed for success (for example, hiring new talent, setting expectations, inspiring collaboration and commitment, managing conflict, optimizing performance and accountability, managing within the law, coaching, corrective action, and ending the employment relationship).
- Custom Workshops: Learning that is specific to the skills and results you want to achieve. We use time and cost-efficient ways to listen to participants and quickly gather information for meaningful experiential learning. We integrate our offerings with your business goals and accountability systems.
Harassment Prevention Training, DEI and Related Programs:
- Harassment Prevention Training for Supervisors as Required by California Law: We draw real life situations (adapted for confidentiality) from our work as investigators, expert witnesses, EEOC consent decree monitors, and consultants. Our training includes innovative experiential activities that capture participants’ attention and translate learning into action. We support compliance with legally required information, handouts, post-training assessment, and acknowledgement to avoid liability.
- Respect in the Workplace Training for All Employees as Required by California Law: This program is different from traditional “harassment training.” We carefully create impactful experiences that support behavioral change while also addressing bullying, discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and the company’s complaint process.
- Diversity, Equality & Inclusion offerings that range from “town-hall meeting facilitation” to interactive learning sessions tailored to each organization’s culture.
Training on How to Conduct Investigations:
- The learning is unique in its practical skill-building. It is tailored to the client company and includes step-by-step learning, extensive materials, real-life examples, experiential exercises, feedback, consultation on practices and processes.
- Training is usually delivered in a one-day workshop. It can be adapted to the client’s preferences.
Training and Learning Related to HR:
- Learning on HR Competencies: Assessment and mentoring on functional and technical aspects of Human Resources.
- Employment Law Review: Comprehensive training or sessions by functional area. Learning can be facilitated in workshops or one-on-one.
- Programs Related to Disabilities and Leaves: Comprehensive or specific sessions on the integrated disability management policies and practices, interactive process, reasonable accommodations, leaves of absence under federal and state law, return-to-work, etc.
Optimizing and Sustaining Performance
We are catalysts for insights and results.
We partner with you to identify the changes that would make the most positive difference in your effectiveness. We fuel development with purposeful questions, goal prioritization, practical skill-building, an actionable plan, and opportunities to make change sustainable. Coaching can be offered one-on-one or in groups.
Our coaching certifications include Stakeholder Centered Coaching, which is the methodology developed by the #1 coach in the world (Marshall Goldsmith) and quantitatively proven in studies involving 248,000 participants. Our specialized coaching includes:
Coaching for Leaders and Professionals
- Executive coaching, with the option to follow the Stakeholder Center Coaching methodology.
- Development for high-potential professionals committed to excel in their roles or evolve into higher challenges.
- Coaching targeted at increasing effectiveness in selected areas to reach well-balanced performance.
- Process to maintain a high-level of engagement and contribution by professionals who are valuable in their role, but are not pursuing advancement and are at high risk of burn out.
- Coaching for succession planning, retirement, or knowledge transfer.
Coaching Following Investigations and Employment Actions
- Post-incident coaching with professionals who are valuable, yet need to improve in certain behavioral areas.
- Coaching to address goals in Performance Improvement Plans.
- One-on-one coaching and training to minimize recurrence of unproductive behaviors, such as actions inconsistent with respect in the workplace and the company’s harassment, discrimination and retaliation policies.
Coaching on Presentation Skills
- Coaching on virtual presence and online presentations.
- Coaching on effective presentations, assessing and addressing the behaviors with the greatest impact on goal achievement.
- Coaching and preparation for specific presentations, including video-enabled practice and feedback loops.
Coaching for Sales and Business Development Professionals
- Hands-on coaching (“live” or “behind-the-scene”) that immediately impacts business outcomes while skills are being developed. This instant ROI coaching method includes sales coaches building scripts as they listen to the prospect, and the sales person using the script during the call and keeping it for later use.
- Sales strategy and skill development using emerging technology and apps that maximize lead generation, funnel management, and accountability to meeting goals.
- Sales Enablement, ranging from assessments to complete roll out of enablement platforms.
Coaching for HR Professionals
- Assessment of HR leaders’ effectiveness.
- Competency development for increased effectiveness or promotion readiness.
- Structured and practical learning on HR functions and employment law.
- “Just-in-time” answers and tools as needed.
- Coaching to support specific goals or projects.
Coaching on English Language Skills and Business Writing
- Practical competency development on English language communication – spoken and written.
- Coaching and editing to increase the effectiveness of written communications.
You Don’t Have To Be An Expert
We are.
How well do you navigate the complexity of sensitive health and family situations, conflicting needs, heightened emotions, and perplexing laws? We have spent thousands of hours building expertise in these areas, so you don’t have to. Addressing such needs constructively is essential to becoming an employer of choice and preventing one of the main basis of employment discrimination complaints in California: physical and mental disabilities. The solutions we bring include:
- Facilitating the interactive process and reasonable accommodations for disabilities
- Development and review of Leave and Return to Work company policies
- Creating and implementing comprehensive Integrated Disability Management policies and programs
- Establishing processes and managing the complexity of workers’ compensation and non-occupational based leaves of absence mandated by federal and California laws, including their interface with paid sick leave (California and City specific) and benefits (provided by employers and federal/state government agencies)
- Consultation and non-legal representation in hearings, e.g., Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board
- Expert witness in employment litigation
Integrity And Sense Of Business Strategy...
"Cláudia Schwartz is an experienced HR professional who brings integrity and a sense of business strategy when addressing the HR aspects of the business. Cláudia is very creative and committed to delivering tangible results for the client. She does everything to ensure client satisfaction."Claudia Mazanec, Human Resources, QualcommVisionary, Strategic, Proactive...
"Cláudia Schwartz is the archetypal Human Resource “leader”: visionary, strategic, proactive. If you need expert HR advice, seek Claudia. Claudia is the mentor/coach I think of when I want to increase my HR Director’s effectiveness."Brett Mosher, CEO , Palco LabosI Believe Her Work Is A Gift...
"Cláudia Schwartz is an individual who I have championed for over 15 years because I can trust her and the work that she does. Professionally and personally, she has assisted all of the people to whom I have referred her. I believe her work is a gift they have received in terms of her competence, ability, experience, professionalism, and doing the right thing. I turn Cláudia over to Vistage members and others to whom I recommend her, and I can walk away. I don’t have to worry. That is important to me."Ozzie (Austin) Gontang, Vistage ChairI Highly Recommend Her Without Reservation...
"Cláudia is an outstanding resource for any aspect of the Human Resource field and I highly recommend her without reservation. I first met her in 2001 when she gave an extensive HR culture session to my Northern California Vistage group. I was so impressed with her insights on creating a successful culture that I kept her contact information handy for any future HR/culture opportunities. She ultimately worked with me on 2 different projects. The first was a change management issue and the second was hiring a replacement HR executive. In both cases, Cláudia was great to work with. She was very knowledgeable with great insights. She also had the ability to give thoughtful feedback/course correction advice in a direct, but effective way. In the case of filling the HR Executive position, her advice and counsel resulted in an outstanding hire that was critical in then helping my company successfully navigate major opportunities and changes."Duane Nelsen, CEO, GWF EnergyShe Reads Between The Lines...
"I really trust Cláudia’s expertise in HR strategic planning and metrics. She was instrumental in helping us frame all aspects of our HR strategy and dashboard process. If not for Cláudia, we would never have identified the right strategies to be in full alignment with the business. She reads between the lines, sifts through, and makes things clear and concise. She is easy to work with and has a very strong client satisfaction orientation. We think the world of Cláudia and look forward to working with her for years to come."Daryl Smith, VP of HR, Cox Communications