Tonja has been with TPO since 2016. She is a Senior HR Professional with a career encompassing over 25 years in HR management. She has extensive private, non-profit and public sector experience with both small and large organizations. T onja partners with clients to navigate through complex HR challenges and needs and skillfully coaches them through difficult and sensitive employee relations issues. Given her experience as a successful HR leader, she considers alternative options, and focuses on areas of exposure and opportunity, empowering executives, boards and managers, while focusing on what is best for each organization and its unique HR objectives, mission and values. She excels in a broad spectrum of HR functions focusing on the HR component of risk management, regulatory compliance, policy development, employee/labor relations, contract negotiations, conflict resolution and leave management.
Amber joined TPO in 2012. With over twenty-five years of experience in the administrative field, she steadfastly assists in the daily operation of TPO, ensuring that overall business office administration, client deliverables, marketing, communications, and technology practices are smooth, efficient, orderly, and state-of-the-art. She takes the lead in the creation, development, and delivery of client deliverables – including on-site client assignments providing full–range HR Generalist support. In addition to being TPO’s Webmaster and internal technology expert, Amber manages all aspects of TPO’s collateral material, training administration (VirtuaLivesm Online and In-Person), TPO’s Annual Employment Law & Leadership Conference, and electronic communications.
“Amber sets the bar for consistently excellent internal and external customer service.” (The Russells)
With TPO since 2008, Brian brings 30 years of investigative experience to provide critical information for businesses, organizations, attorneys, and government agencies. As TPO’s Director of Investigative Services, Brian combines his years of experience with the latest technology to oversee all TPO client investigations including alleged harassment, discrimination, and malfeasance. He conducts reliable Pre-Employment and Post-Employment Background Checks, consults on Internal Theft & Fraud issues, Workplace Violence Consulting and Pre-Litigation Research. As a risk management and loss prevention specialist, he investigates and analyses root causes, patterns, and trends to reduce exposure and liability.
With TPO since 2018, Luisa is an HR professional with fifteen years of proven results in employee relations, benefits, recruiting, training, investigations, management transitions and labor relations. A native Spanish speaker, she has multi-industry HR experience including agriculture, hospitality, manufacturing and construction and multinational companies in states with complex human resources laws including CA and MA and other countries including Mexico. She offers Bilingual/Cultural HR support for TPO clients including Leadership & Compliance Training, Investigations, Misconduct and other Workplace Concerns, HR Tools and Consulting and translations/interpreting. You can call on Luisa for your Spanish language HR support needs to deliver high-level HR knowledge and cultural alignment!
Caron joined TPO in 2018. She has 30+ years of experience as an HR Leader supporting public, non-profit, private, and private equity organizations. Caron writes and updates comprehensive employment policies, procedures, tools, and systems. She coaches and advises TPO clients regarding employment regulations, leave management, investigations, conflict resolution, change management, and overall best leadership and HR practices. Caron has expertise in a variety of human resource functions to include mergers, acquisitions, public reporting, compliance regulations, and talent planning. Caron specializes in TPO’s HireRight Systemssm providing full-range support to plan, source, evaluate and hire the best possible candidates for our client’s. She excels as a recruiter, and authentically enjoys the process of finding ideal candidates for her clients.
Michaelle has been with TPO since 2019. She is a senior HR leader with 30+ years’ experience and success in regulatory compliance, HR policy and operations for private, non-profit, and public sectors. TPO clients rely on Michaelle for compliant HR policies and programs from hiring to onboarding, performance management and development, confidential investigations, training, team effectiveness, engagement, and retention. Her calm temperament and practical approach help diffuse challenging employment situations before they escalate. She is equally passionate about serving the developmental needs of all employee levels, supervisors, and managers, and as a business partner to executives. Michaelle specializes in HR Strategy initiatives such as designing and facilitating succession planning, leadership retreats, mentoring programs, leadership assimilation, 3600 feedback, change management and more.
With TPO since 1995, Melissa provides top-notch consulting and training to clients, as well as leading the charge in keeping TPO’s HR Tools and HR Consulting up to date with the ever-changing state/federal HR Regulations. She excels at taking complex employment issues and simplifying them in an understandable way to ensure client understanding and implementation. Melissa is a regulatory expert who specializes in demystifying leave acronyms, wrangle complicated wage & hour requirements, and ensuring that clients feel more confident in their HR practices. With a particular penchant for working with non-profits and smaller businesses as part of TPO Annual Membership, Melissa helps business leaders and those charged with the HR function shine.
Jill co-founded TPO in 1991. Combined with her prior corporate HR experience, she has over thirty-five years of increasingly broad and responsible experience in the field. She has trained and coached hundreds of supervisors, managers, executives and HR staff in basic and complex employment skills and leadership techniques to decrease legal exposure and increase employee relations and productivity. Jill brings deep HR expertise, and innate listening and communications skills to the table. Her current role includes being a Senior Advisor to all TPO staff; ensuring TPO’s long-standing quality and excellence; that firm culture is healthy and strong; spearheading and overseeing brand consistency and communication; the integrity, efficiency, and effectiveness of TPO’s structure and systems; and of supreme importance – supporting all matters of client relations and satisfaction.
Robert co-founded TPO in 1991 drawing on his past success as a “serial” entrepreneur and business owner. He partnered with Jill Russell to combine their innovation, skills, talent, energy, resourcefulness, professional networks, great TPO colleagues and affiliates to build and sustain TPO through today. Robert is a hands-on Senior Advisor to staff and clients, particularly in high-risk areas such as investigations and terminations. His investigative expertise dates back to his service in the US Navy involving top secret crypto-analysis and interpretation. Robert’s internal focus is all things business management – including finance and accounting, legal compliance, day-to-day operations, payroll, benefits, AP/AR, and technology. Robert has a huge passion and commitment to TPO, the staff, clients, and community.
| Some of Us Are Natural Leaders (Most of Us Aren’t!). Come Learn How to Lead Like the Pros! |
| As a current or newly promoted supervisor or manager, you face a wide variety of challenges. In addition to accomplishing your own projects, you are expected to hire, build and motivate a team to meet department and company goals. Consequently, your performance is based mostly on the performance of others! During this program, we explore practical techniques, tips and solutions you will need to not only succeed but excel in your leadership role. |
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| Respecting Diversity in the Workplace! | ||
| California requires organizations with 5 or more employees to provide harassment training. TPO’s interactive training program goes beyond the topic of sexual harassment to address all forms of unlawful harassment, discrimination and retaliation in the workplace (age, race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, color, etc.). | ||
SUPERVISORS – At least 2-hours of training
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NON-SUPERVISORS – At least 1-hour of training
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SEASONAL/TEMPORARY EMPLOYEES – hired to work for less than 6 months, must be trained
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Spanish | |||
| It’s All About Leaves! | |
| Managing and integrating these complicated State & Federal leave laws has always been a challenge! It is no secret these laws were not written for simplicity or ease of administration. In fact, there are numerous opportunities to fumble… whether you miss an important notification requirement, stop benefits short of legal requirements or fail to offer the amount of leave allowed. Don’t put your organization at risk! We will unravel the pieces and help you develop a system to cope with the overlaps and differences so you can be confident. | |
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5-49 Leave Interaction Compliance – CFRA/PDL/WC | |||
50+ Leave Interaction Compliance – CFRA/FMLA/PDL/WC | |||
| If You Administer Payroll, You Need to Sit in on this One! | |||
| Covering the most commonly misunderstood and incorrectly applied principles of CA and Federal wage & hour compliance that (collectively) cost employers millions each year. Tune in to what you need to know about wage and hour compliance by staying ahead of significant wage and hour risks to prevent (avoidable) litigation. “You’ll be glad you did!” |
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| The Workplace is Changing – Are You Ready? | |
| Working remote is a historic shift in the future of how many are working. Although not viable for everyone, digital tools are making it easier for a large amount of work to be done away from the workplace. When it’s the right fit for your organization, embedding a remote workforce can yield productivity gains and employee gratification. But there is more than simply providing workers with online access to office applications. The key is enabling employees to carry out their work optimally that conforms to regulatory and safety requirements while keeping employees interconnected to you and the team. Some of the questions we’ll answer include: How do we know if remote work is right for us? What are the benefits and challenges? What makes for a strong remote workforce? | |
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Planning a Management, Executive or Board Retreat?
Bring out the best in your leaders and position your organization to surpass its goals by establishing a clear HR Strategy that will have the greatest impact on your organization’s success!
A “chance to get away from it all”, important in aligning your HR Strategy to your vision, mission, and organizational strategies that energizes leadership practices and revitalizes your culture and commitment. Visualize your next leadership retreat led with a clear purpose, facilitated with open communication and free of distraction concluding with a PLAN of ACTION that will be accomplished!
You Have a New Vision, Mission and Strategy! Now What?
Discover what it takes to effectively lead change and apply the tools and processes to establish a “line of sight” to guide the team’s transition to the desired future state!
No matter the type of changes your organization needs, getting your employees, supervisors and top leaders on board is key. Change management can take many different forms but applying a structured approach will pave the way to success. Imagine how a well-defined transition management process can help mitigate risks including increased cost, productivity drops, increased absenteeism and employee attrition.
Move Your Business Forward with Confidence!
Making the decision to restructure is among the most difficult challenges leaders’ encounter. And telling an employee their job is eliminated is never easy. Being clear on the business rationale, affected positions and intended outcome is just the start … there is so much more!
Having a well thought-out, clear business case to base these crucial decisions on is essential. We’ll provide the key components in developing a written Restructuring Plan that defines the business rationale, selection criteria, position impact, timeline and necessary risk assessments. We also include the resources and tools to design critical communication and transition plans.
Do you have the Right People in the Right Roles?
Applying TPO’s 5-Step Model will provide invaluable help. Our model keys in on your current and future workforce needs so you can follow a 2–3-year plan for aligning the development of your current team members and bringing on new hires with the right critical skills.
Do you need more people? Different kinds of skills? More leaders? What positions will you need to hire to fill gaps? Who can you develop? What takes priority to meet your organization’s objectives? Our 5-Step Model, takes you through defining your current state, projecting your future needs, identifying your position and skill gaps, determining what needs to be “fixed” and establishes a plan to get to your optimum workforce.
Think This is Only for the BIG Organizations?
Think again! Unexpected change happens and your business’s continuity is reliant on having the right leaders in place. Without a preplanned succession plan strategy, you may be caught unprepared and scrambling if and when a key player abruptly leaves.
Whether you own or are responsible for a small or mid-size business, with one successor role or many, succession planning ties to your organization’s goals affords a smooth leadership transition. TPO’s Internal Model for Successor Planning starts with assessing your leader(s) capabilities, interest and potential and determining targeted and actional development.
Do Your Senior Leaders Know Their Strengths & What Might be Holding Them Back?
Coaching leaders about their strengths and development needs, how they are perceived, and what is needed to achieve a higher level of performance has an important impact to you and your organization’s continued success.
360 Executive Coaching, different from training, allows leaders the opportunity to be responsible for their own learning and development. As a collaborative experience between participant and the TPO Executive Coach, executive coaching provides an individually tailored approach to helping leaders understand their strengths, how they are perceived by others as well as creating a safe space for them to grow and work through new approaches.
Do New Leaders Take Longer Than Expected in Getting Up to Speed?
Research tells us it typically takes new leaders 13 to 18 months of learning and experience to make significant impact in the organization. Waiting a year is a pretty daunting propositions for most organizations!
TPO’s Leader Assimilation program is a facilitated learning approach that integrates the new leader into the culture and important relationships. Completing this personalized program enables the new leader to more quickly align and assume expectations gaining confidence in their new role.
Developing Leader Skills Through Mentoring Others
Remember when you were looking to make the leap to the next level of your career? Did you have a mentor to help guide you? In lieu of a manager, employees can turn to their mentor for career guidance, interpersonal development, inner workings of the organization and more!
Benefits of structured mentoring creates a learning culture, increases job satisfaction while reduces the cost of learning. TPO’s structured Internal Mentoring Program promotes facilitated employee matching based on pre-established criteria, sets relationship guidelines including frequency of meetings, and how to market and manage the program to gauge overall success.
| How You Handle a Problem Will Determine the Outcome. |
| This program provides insight into handling conflict in the workplace. Each of us has a preferred method of dealing with conflict, whether they are aware of it or not. This preferred style might not be an appropriate response to every situation. This program is designed to broaden the repertoire of approaches and options in dealing with conflict. |
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| Where the Rubber Meets the Road! | |
| Your job as a leader is to set people up for success. When things go off course, leaders take action. Are you unsure about how to coach your employees to tap into their greatest potential? Do you find yourself coaxing with little to show for it rather than motivating and engaging your team? Let’s face it, substandard performance impacts everyone and misaligned behavior is even worse. Attending this session will inspire you to develop your employees while addressing performance challenges with increased skill and confidence. Drawing on decades of experience, TPO delivers straight-forward ready to implement performance management knowhow. | |
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| Is it ME? | |
| Often “difficult” people are those individuals who have a style of communicating that is different than our own. This two-hour program discusses the how “difficult” people impact the work environment and looks a bit more closely at the reasons such people are perceived as “difficult” as well as discussions and practical tips on how to change the “difficult” situation to one that is more productive and rewarding. | |
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| How to Free-Up Your Time While Developing Others | |
| A significant part of your job as a manager is to develop people, and delegation is the key. To be a truly effective manager, you must be comfortable delegating work and making sure your employees are accountable for delivery. Upon learning how to effectively delegate you will find it gives you the time and ability to focus on higher-level tasks by giving others the ability to learn and develop new skills, develops trust, improves communication and most of all, improves efficiency, productivity, and time management. | |
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| What’s Really Going on Here? | |
| How to figure out what’s really going on through competent (UP-FRONT!) fact-finding. Have you ever thought: “If I knew then what I know now…I would have done things differently!” Every day you are faced with new situations that require you to problem solve and make sound decisions – sometimes that is easy, often it is not. So how do you, analyze the situation and arrive at the best outcome? Learn proven tips and techniques to practice and use right away when faced with both routine and complex problems. | |
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| How to Run Meetings that Matter! |
| Yes, it IS possible to run an effective meeting, solicit important input, stick to an agenda, make decisions, follow up on action items – and start and end on time! Meetings are critical for communication, teamwork and productivity and they don’t have to be painful and frustrating. Studies show that American businesspeople spend over 9,000 hours per year in meetings – so learning some techniques to do them right should be a top priority! |
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| Not Just Another HR Buzz-Phrase! | |
| Learn the top strategies for Getting Your Key Employees to Stick Around and Deliver Over-the-Top Performance! Here’s the formula: You’ll discover successful techniques from recruiting and interviewing through the development and promotion stages of the employee life cycle. | |
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| It’s Never Been More Challenging! | |
| It’s fair to say the labor market has been turned on its ear!
Competition is fierce and small to mid-sized employers are struggling to find the right talent. Despite efforts to “Keep Their Best People” employers are facing the highest skill shortage in over a decade. Learn how to take your recruitment and selection process to the next level as we will help you design a structured and reliable hiring “system”. In doing so, we’ll share TPO’s HireRight Systemssm Strategic Staffing Checklist, our proprietary framework for a structured approach to sourcing and hiring the best. |
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| It’s Never Been More Important! | |
| Employees want more and different things and employers need to rethink their retention practices. or their best people will move on. True Engagement is an Employer’s Most Potent Competitive Advantage – but that’s easier said than done. There are endless varieties, requiring a strategic level of approaches to keep your top performers in today’s challenging job market. You will learn some of the innovative ways smart employers are drilling it down and reinforcing a culture of respect and enrichment. They are infusing meaningful value of work and providing flexibility to help retain their employees. | |
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| Changes Happen to Us Everyday… Discover How Handling the Change Will Help You Succeed Through the Transition! | |
| You’ve heard it before… change is inevitable. In the business environment, it is common to see re-organizations, new leaders, mergers and acquisitions, reductions in force, changes to benefits, and much more. With these changes comes loss in your employees’ productivity (and maybe even your own!) as everyone tries to figure out how they will be affected by the change. Will they have jobs and if so, how will they be able to effectively get their jobs done. We will focus on key elements of managing people through transition so that they can focus on the future! | |
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| Giving Your Best and Betting the Most in Return! | |
| Are you happy with your Performance Management system and practices? Dissatisfied with their “check off the box” approach, many employers are changing their performance management philosophy to a culture of continuous dialogue and feedback. Through planned goal setting and real time employee check-ins, managers are learning it is easier to provide needed real-time resources for improvement and growth yielding reduced conflict and increased employee confidence and motivation. Want to learn more about what others are doing and how you can too? Join us as we cover: | |
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| Do a Quick Mental Scan of the People You Work With. Notice Anything? |
| They are diverse and including a rich variety of backgrounds, styles, perspectives, values and beliefs! So how can you leverage differences and diversity to spark good relationships and ignite performance? TPO will shine the light on (often unconscious) biases and blind spots that hamper the power of respect and inclusion. We will share some simple strategies to improve communication skills and interactions with diverse individuals for a more cohesive, harmonious and productive workplace. |
| Going Beyond Individual Performers to Supercharged Teams |
| Individual behavior styles and preferences have a direct impact on our interpersonal relationships on workplace teams. Team members differ from each other in important ways including their values, behaviors, talents, temperaments, wants and beliefs. This program will help you become a more successful leader and unlock some of the mysteries of developing and sustaining positive team dynamics. You will be: |
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| Not Enough Time in the Day? You Are Not Alone! | |
| Time waits for no one and being efficient with time management is every busy leader’s dream. Beyond calendars and scheduling, this session provides tips on reducing time wasters, running more effective meetings and delegating without guilt. | |
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| Ensure that Your Customers Receive the Best Service – And Tell Others All About It!! |
| This workshop is for all employees who interact with clients and/or support customer relations. Customer service training is a key to ensuring your customers receive courteous, timely, informed assistance. This can help assure customer satisfaction leading to repeat business, a good company reputation, referrals from current customers, and increased sales. |
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| What Supervisors, Managers & HR Staff Must Know! |
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| Increase Skills & Confidence / Minimize Legal Challenges / Reduce Missteps
Provides a convenient quick course covering critical HR basics including employment regulations, compliance and HR best practices. After just THREE 2-HOUR SESSIONS, managers with direct reports and HR support staff learn the fundamentals and context of their HR roles and responsibilities, CEE builds confidence to know when to slow it down, put things on hold, get the right answers; and THEN proceed. |
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VirtuaLive Schedule: July 12, 19, 26 | |||
VirtuaLive Schedule: October 12, 19, 26 | |||