HR Is Not Just the Police

Most private practice owners think of human resources as a compliance function at best and a headache at worst. Brandon and his colleague Scott Ber, Chief HR Officer at Wellness Works Management Partners, challenge that assumption directly. HR is not about policing your team. It is about building the systems, the culture, and the infrastructure that give every person in your practice a legitimate shot at success.

Scott brings more than 30 years in the healthcare industry and 20 years in HR to the table. His career spans nursing and therapy companies across the country, and for the past 12 years he has worked alongside Brandon to serve practice owners through fractional HR support. His definition of fractional HR is precise: it fills in the blanks that most practices either cannot afford or do not know they need, covering everything from onboarding to offboarding while keeping organizations legally compliant in every state they operate.

The Number One HR Mistake Costing Practices Thousands

Scott identifies the rush-to-hire as the most expensive pattern he sees. When a practice loses a team member, the pressure to fill the void immediately leads to compromised decisions: overpaying, making promises that contradict the organization's goals, or offering an unsustainable caseload to land a candidate. That urgency costs more than the vacancy ever would.

The second mistake is not knowing the basic complexities of employment law. Exempt versus non-exempt. Employee versus contractor. Whether your termination has proper documentation behind it. These are not obscure edge cases. They are daily realities that, when handled incorrectly, create legal exposure that compounds over time. Brandon frames the solution clearly: the number one asset HR can bring a practice is structural accountability. When accountability is built into the infrastructure, you stop hiring based on hope and start hiring based on expectation.

Employee Handbooks: Stop the Cookie-Cutter Approach

Practices that pull a generic handbook template from software or generate one through an AI tool and call it done are taking a risk they do not fully understand. Not all handbooks apply the same way. Federal law has required provisions. State law adds its own layer, and in some states, legal language changes two, three, or four times per year.

Scott's approach involves a platform called Mineral, a learning management system developed by employment lawyers that automatically incorporates federal and state-specific updates. When working with a client, the goal is not just to produce a legally compliant document. It is to give the handbook a tone, to reflect the actual policies and procedures of that practice, and to distinguish clearly between what is required by law, what is best practice, and what is optional.

For practices operating in multiple states, the structure is even more specific. A practice in New York and New Jersey needs two handbooks: one combining federal and New York law, one combining federal and New Jersey law. Even lower-regulation states have unique provisions. The assumption that one handbook covers all employees regardless of location is one of the most common and costly HR errors in the industry today.

Telehealth Employees and Workers Compensation: A Compliance Blind Spot

The expansion of telehealth has created a new class of compliance exposure. A growing number of practices are employing clinicians who are licensed in one state, treating patients in that state, but physically living in another. The assumption that the practice's existing workers' compensation policy covers those employees is incorrect. Workers' compensation is state-based. If an employee moves from Massachusetts to Washington, a Massachusetts policy does not cover them in Washington. A separate policy through a different carrier may be required.

Before approving any remote work arrangement that crosses state lines, consult with your workers' comp provider to determine whether that employee can be added to your current coverage and at what cost. The same principle applies when employees work internationally, even temporarily. This is not bureaucratic overcaution. It is the difference between being compliant and being exposed.

At-Will Employment Does Not Mean No Documentation

Forty-nine states are at-will. That phrase leads practice owners to believe they can exit someone at any time without consequence. What it actually means is that an employee can also leave at any time, including with no notice. Employers cannot withhold final pay because a notice period was not honored.

The takeaway is not to stop asking for notice. It is to build accountability around that request through documentation rather than assumption. Brandon's approach involves specific agreements that outline the consequences of not providing the required notice, including the possibility of being deemed non-rehirable and, for licensed clinicians, a reporting obligation to the licensing board in cases of patient abandonment. Scott confirms that being transparent about those consequences upfront, in the offer letter and the employment agreement, is legally sound and practically effective. However, Scott adds a critical nuance: if you include those consequences in writing, you have to be willing to follow through. Consistency is not optional. It is the legal and ethical standard.

Job Descriptions: The Details Practices Skip

Scott is direct about what he sees in practice job descriptions: most of them are not good. They are either too vague to be enforceable or they apply the same requirements across roles that have nothing in common. The most essential element consistently missing is the phrase "all other duties as assigned by management." Without it, employees will hold you to the literal text and refuse tasks that fall outside it.

The other frequent gap is physical and functional requirements. The Americans with Disabilities Act requires that job descriptions accurately reflect what the position demands physically. If a therapist must be able to hear, see, or lift a certain weight, that must be stated. The standard for a job description is not what you wish your ideal candidate could do. It is what the role actually requires, documented with enough precision to hold performance accountable and enough legal grounding to protect the practice when that accountability is tested.

Ready to elevate your practice? Schedule your discovery call with Wellness Works today.

Want to hear the full conversation with Brandon and Scott? Listen to the Private Practice Survival Guide podcast wherever you stream.