A look inside HR at a small business

For over two decades, Britta Larsen has only worked at companies with less than 100 employees. This, she said, has allowed her to craft better employee experiences.

“I have always worked, for 25 years, at founder-led companies…with founders who are still involved,” said Larsen, who leads HR as the VP of people operations and culture at Bespoke Post, a subscription box service founded in 2011.

Larsen told HR Brew that while she only has two direct reports in HR, she believes it’s easier to run the function at a smaller company, especially when assisted by tech.

HR <3 small biz. Larsen joined Bespoke Post in March 2020 just as employees were switching to remote work amid the Covid-19 pandemic, so she had to meet all of her employees virtually. For the next 17 months, the New York City-based company’s roughly 90 employees only knew Larson from the shoulders up.

While many HR leaders had to operate virtually during this time, Larsen said working with a smaller workforce helped as she navigated a new, remote environment.

Four years later, Larsen still appreciates the tight-knit nature of her employee population. Because small businesses are, well, small, Larsen said HR can more easily prioritize the needs of both executives and employees, treating everyone as an equal stakeholder. It can be much harder to accomplish this at larger companies, she said, where you simply have more employees to oversee and investors that need to be prioritized, too.

Larsen reports directly to co-founders Steven Szaronos and Rishi Prabhu, and since she’s “one degree of separation” from them, she’s able to bring decisions that impact employees directly to their desks. “At an under 100-person company, that’s the beauty of what you get to do,” she said.

Small biz HR tech. While there’s beauty in running HR at a small business, it also means Larsen and her two direct reports are responsible for benefits, time off, compensation, and more that dozens of employees would oversee at a larger company. That’s why Larsen said she relies on HR tech.

One of her favorite platforms is Justworks, a professional employer organization (PEO) and payroll software geared toward small businesses.

“[Justworks] cater[s] to small companies and gives us resources that we wouldn’t typically have,” Larsen said. Not only is it “user-friendly,” but “from a benefits perspective, [we’re able] to offer One Medical, Teladoc Health, and Kindbody…they really continue to offer things that allow me on an annual basis to say to [employees], ‘Look what more we’re offering you.’”

Because of tech like Justworks, she said her team is able to focus more on employee experience on a daily basis. “[It’s] an extension of my team and my department.”