Surgical Employee Relations & Workplace Investigations
We diagnose and fix critical human-risk liabilities hiding in your portfolio acquisitions and corporate infrastructure—protecting your EBITDA, reducing voluntary attrition, and insulating sponsors from board-level liability.
Corporate HR & ER Leadership
Sovereign investigation reports
Flat-fees, zero billing-leakages
EBITDA & deal margin protection
The Workplace HR Risk Scorecard
Uncover invisible compliance liabilities, assess manager-effectiveness friction, and compute your potential financial litigation and turnover exposure in under 5 minutes.
Premium Surgical Tiers
Outcome-Based Consulting Solutions
Forget basic hourly billing. We provide high-impact, board-ready packaging with transparent outcomes that align with your organizational goals.
Investigation Protocol
Independent Sovereign Model
Fully independent, third-party workplace investigation protocol to insulate the Board, General Counsel, and PE Sponsors from liability during serious employee claims.
- Digital communications & evidence audit
- Multi-round witness recorded interviews
- Certified factual findings matrix
- Independent legally defensible report
- 1-hour board-level executive briefing
- Remediation & post-investigation timeline
EBITDA Retainer
Strategic Portfolio Partner
Ongoing fractional Employee Relations Director support for Private Equity firms looking to protect deal margins and manage human risk in multi-state portfolios.
- Surgical ER Risk Audit of policies
- Manager SOS emergency advisory SLA
- Active progressive discipline audit
- Secure anonymous whistleblower hotline
- Monthly Portfolio Risk Scorecards
- Up to 12 consultation hours/month
Leadership Sprint
Accountability Cohort
A highly-intensive 4-week cohort sprint designed for SaaS founders and healthcare systems with young, first-time, or technical leaders.
- Standard progressive discipline framework
- 2 Live manager feedback workshops
- Custom performance Warning letter templates
- Founder 1:1 strategic advisory coaching
- Calibration of rating review scorecards
- 30-day post-training implementation check
Nichelle Shillingford
Founder & Principal, Human Resource Surgeons LLC
Most HR consultants focus primarily on basic administrative compliance. At Human Resource Surgeons LLC, we take a fundamentally different approach. We believe that critical workforce issues should be addressed strategically and decisively before they turn into costly legal battles.
How We Differ:
“Most HR consultants focus on compliance. I help leaders address employee relations issues before they become legal issues, coach managers to improve performance and accountability, and create cultures where employees want to stay and perform at their best. I possess 20+ years of HR leadership, employee relations, performance management, and engagement experience and can often quickly diagnose and provide effective solutions.”
Our work is tailored specifically for Board-level directors, Private Equity operating partners, and clinical executives who require high-precision diagnostics, independent neutral workplace investigation reports, and scalable manager accountability sprints.
Proven Clinical Records
Anonymized Case Files & Outcomes
We treat human-risk mitigation with surgical precision. Explore the case histories of our real corporate intervention results.
Post-Acquisition Integration & Risk Mitigation for $45M Manufacturing Portco
Acquisition finalized with severe HR due diligence gaps, including high management turnover and historic, unresolved sexual harassment allegations against a VP.
Systemic failure of progressive discipline tracking, missing signed compliance handbooks, and direct conflict of interest in local HR manager reporting pipelines.
Deployed immediate HR Surgeons Audit framework; established third-party whistleblower hotlines; structured legally defensible progressive separation of toxic assets; trained first-time supervisors in difficult feedback protocols.
Board-Level Whistleblower Investigation for Outpatient Medical Network
Whistleblower alert targeting clinical director alleging patient charting fraud, systemic discrimination, and intimidation of compliance staff.
Extreme conflict of interest. Internal HR felt intimidated and lacked certified credentials to run objective investigations targeting executives.
Invoked the Sovereign Board-Level Investigation Protocol; conducted multi-witness forensic interviews; delivered court-ready case files with direct, independent compliance evidence matrices.
Accountability Framework Design for Rapidly Scaling SaaS Org
Rapid Series-A growth led to inexperienced engineer promotions; culture tanked resulting in extreme Glassdoor reviews and active retention risks for critical R&D staff.
Subjective Performance reviews (bureaucratic checkboxes) causing management resentment and complete lack of documented expectations.
Built complete Performance Management-in-a-Box system; designed metric-driven PIP guidelines; conducted live "Surgical Conversations" manager bootcamps.
FDA-Regulated Team Performance Calibration & PIP Turnaround
High conflict in R&D and QA testing divisions adjacent to strict FDA audits, threatening regulatory deadline delays.
Conflict-avoidant management delaying critical feedback, causing sudden, poorly documented separations and risk of retaliation claims.
Designed custom progressive discipline framework; audited file compliance for 120 employees; implemented daily performance feedback loops.
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