Category Archives: Office / HR / Employment

by Ann Donnelly

For small business owners, the “to-do” list is often a mountain that never levels off. Between managing growth and daily operations, the complex world of human resources—compliance, payroll, and employee relations—can quickly become a liability rather than an asset.

Jennifer Barry, J.D., HR Consultant Practice Leader at GTM Payroll & HR, says businesses don’t have to choose between a hefty salary and a “recipe for disaster”.

“Asking non-HR staff to take on these duties is risky,” Barry said. “You may alienate the employee, you may lose them, and frankly, they may just get it wrong. Many HR areas require strict compliance, and there is no room for error”.

Fractional HR is emerging as a major tool for smaller businesses or startups operating on a lean staffing budget. The concept is simple: instead of hiring a full-time mid-level HR professional at an average salary of $80,000 per year, a company can hire a highly experienced consultant for 10 to 12 hours per week, only when needed.

“Consultants can often do in 10 hours per week what a full-time employee can do,” Barry noted. “Because they aren’t ingrained in the organization or distracted by day-to-day office operations, they work with a level of efficiency that is hard to match internally”.

At GTM, the consulting team functions like a “Halls of Justice,” providing clients with access to a “superhero” on call. These generalists bring up to 30 years of experience to the table, supported by a network of specialists in areas like employment law, training, handbook development, and benefits.

For many owners, the sign that it is time to look outward is a simple lack of “peace of mind”. Barry suggests owners ask themselves: What am I doing that I don’t like? What is taking too much time? Where do I lack the knowledge to proceed?

“When a business grows beyond the abilities of the owner, or hits that 20-employee mark, it’s time to seek professional help,” Barry said.

Late last year, Warren County officials disclosed that more than $3 million was mistakenly sent from the Treasurer’s Office after staff fell victim to a phishing scam. Two routine wire payments believed to be legitimate vendor transactions were redirected to fraudulent accounts.

This was not a technical failure or a sophisticated cyberattack. It was a breakdown in how routine business decisions were made and verified.

That is what makes phishing so effective. It hides inside normal work.

How Phishing Gets Past Capable Teams

Modern phishing often does not look suspicious at first glance. Emails are designed to feel familiar, frequently appearing to come from known vendors, contractors or internal staff. Formatting looks correct, timing makes sense and the request fits neatly into an existing workflow.

Common examples include a request to update banking information, a revised invoice or a reminder that a payment needs to go out.

Add urgency, and the email blends into a busy inbox. Nothing about it feels dramatic. That is the core of social engineering: getting people to act, not just to click.

Why Smaller Organizations Are Common Targets

Smaller organizations run lean by necessity. Fewer approval layers and handoffs mean fewer chances for someone to pause and ask whether something looks right.

By Rod Bacon

The difficulty working parents have finding reliable child care has been an issue for decades. Various government and private sector programs have attempted to solve the problem to no avail. Now that many employers are requiring employees to return to the office, at least part-time, following the COVID-19 pandemic, many in the social services field are calling it a crisis.

According to Abbe Kovacik, executive director of Brightside Up, Inc., a child care resource center that serves Albany, Fulton, Montgomery, Rensselaer, Schenectady, and Saratoga counties, the child care issue is multi-faceted. 

“Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic it was a challenge for families to find and afford regulated high quality child care in Saratoga County as well as across the state and country,” she said. “The pandemic had a significant impact on child care centers with two-thirds of working parents changing their child care arrangements.”

By Rene A. Walrath

As we move into 2025, the job market has experienced a significant transformation, evolving into what many are calling an “employer’s market.” This shift is characterized by increased leverage for employers during hiring, a wider pool of candidates, and heightened competition among job seekers. It is essential for both employers and employees to understand the factors driving this change and its implications in the current landscape.

Global economic challenges, including inflation, rising interest rates, and geopolitical tensions, have led many companies to adopt more cautious hiring practices. Layoffs in certain sectors, particularly in tech, have created a surplus of skilled professionals competing for fewer job openings. Although the pandemic initially expanded opportunities for workers through remote work, companies are now recalibrating their operations by consolidating roles, enforcing stricter return-to-office policies, and reevaluating workforce needs, which has resulted in fewer available positions.

With more individuals re-entering the workforce post-pandemic—including retirees, part-time workers seeking full-time positions, and international talent—employers now have access to a larger and more diverse talent pool.

By Rose Miller

Many managers are finding it difficult to manage today’s multigenerational workforce.  It is becoming clear that younger employees express themselves differently from older employees. As a person in the Boomer category, I struggle too.  I’ve had to learn to adapt management strategies to fit the various generations, who work, think, train, and communicate differently.

The workplace is more multigenerational than ever before. It’s not unusual to find employees over 60 working alongside 20-year-olds, and it’s possible to find recent college graduates supervising employees old enough to be their parents.

The primary generations in workplaces today are Baby Boomers (born between 1946-1964), Generation Xers (born between 1965-1980), and Millennials (born between 1981-2000), with members of Generation Z (born from 1997-on) quickly filling a larger share of job vacancies. 

The competitiveness of Boomers and the ego-centric approach of Gen Xers are causing friction with the younger generations. Layer on a company’s need to preserve institutional knowledge, and it’s critical that older managers begin to transfer knowledge to the younger generations.  

Although we should be mindful to avoid stereotypes or try to paint with too broad a brush, there are certain tendencies that a group will commonly identify with. As a group, each generation has different values, attitudes, expectations, needs and motivators. Managers are dealing with employees with shifting views towards job satisfaction, which is tethered to employee retention. 

Boomers tend to be characteristically hard-working, loyal to company and career, respectful of hierarchy, and enjoy face-to- face meetings. They value security, stability, and structure. Problem: They have trouble letting go of power.

Generation X are characteristically independent, fast learners who are impulsive yet practical, flexible, creative, self-reliant, and cynical. They value work/life balance, a casual and friendly workplace, flexibility and freedom, feedback, diversity, and independence. Problem: They don’t like being told what to do.

By Susan Elise Campbell

If executive recruiter Renee Walrath has one mission for her business and her clients, it may be “helping people and their families.” As top-level and mid-level executives and managers move from position to position, Walrath said she and her staff of nine at Walrath Recruiting, Inc. are “dedicated to the perfect fit” as they connect companies and candidates.

The pandemic touched the executive search industry like every other. Employees quickly moved to their homes in great numbers and then slowly have been called back. Now an individual may want to work remote, but the positions are no longer out there, according to Walrath.

“I have no one-hundred-percent remote job openings in the Capital District,” she said. 

Last year, in 2023, a “big chunk of organizations made the move back to their offices,” said Walrath. “Now our firm gets calls that ‘my company is calling me back in, but they are out of California or in Boston.’”

“They say, ‘we moved here to New York, like it here, and want to stay here,’” she said.

Only one of her client companies offers working at home full time, but the individual “has to live near headquarters in New Hampshire just in case,” she said.

By Rose Miller

I went to the Multiple Sclerosis Society’s Together for a Cure fundraiser where the keynote speaker gave an eloquent speech about being a victor or victim. 

Dealing with MS can be daunting on a continual basis. It can impact your ability to live your life fully. The keynote speaker wrapped up a victorious talk with, “Will life happen to you or for you? Do you see your life as a nightmare or a fairy tale?” She told the crowd how MS will not defeat her.

I was reading Michael J. Fox’s new book where he writes about how he takes after his late mother, who had an impactful positive attitude. He said, “She never added up the losses. She’d always look at the gains.” 

Boiled down, these two people exhibited a mindset of abundance versus a mindset of scarcity.

Stephen Covey initially coined these terms in his best-selling book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” Scarcity mentality refers to people seeing life as a finite pie, so that if one person takes a big piece, that leaves less for everyone else. 

Psychology studies have found that children who believe intelligence can be developed were better able to overcome academic challenges versus children who believe their intelligence is fixed in some way. A scarcity mindset can limit a child’s growth.