Nadia Ardebili was interviewed by SD Voyager

On June 28th, 2018 our Founder Nadia Ardebili was interviewed by SD Voyager. Below is the reprint of her article.

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nadia Ardebili.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.

I started my career in hospitality and business management and while in college, was taken on a behind the scenes tour of the Mirage Resorts by my professor at Cal Poly Pomona, who happened to be the former Human Resources Director at the world-famous Mirage Resorts, Inc. That is where I fell in love with the world of Human Resources! After about 18 years in the industry and my 10-year mark at the CA Center for the Arts in Escondido as the Human Resources Director, I decided to listen to my peers (and my intuition) and combined my passion for Human Resources and small businesses (I come from a family of entrepreneurs and small business owners) and formally launched my own consulting firm in 2011.

Over the years, CA HR Services has helped countless small businesses and non-profits meet their HR needs with anything from recruiting and hiring amazing employees, to training and developing small or large teams with customer service skills, sexual harassment prevention, safety and more, to teaching managers the most effective ways to address and improve behavior or performance issues. And when push comes to shove, we step in and assist with challenging investigations or terminations. I am fueled by my desire to provide HR excellence to all our clients (small or large) and differentiate ourselves by being affordable, responsive, professional and exceptionally friendly.

Over the years, our team has grown to over 11 employees (and we’re adding more amazing consultants to the team as I speak) and operate in over 15 different countries. I’m truly blessed to be doing what I love and surrounded by an amazing and wonderful team and clients. I also get to pay my passion forward by teaching the HR certificate program at MiraCosta College.

Has it been a smooth road?
Every business has its share of struggles. My struggles first began by trusting my intuition and taking a chance on myself. I mean, who leaves a steady income for a part-time consulting gig with no guaranteed hours? And if that wasn’t enough, I was a single mom of two adorable young boys so I carried the weight of my small little world on my little shoulders. As time went on, I realized I may know how to manage Human Resources but I had no idea how to successfully run an outsourcing/consulting business. My family had always owned and operated traditional brick and mortar businesses so the concept of outsourced services and essentially serving as “HR-on-Wheels” had never been tested. And I found no manuals or books on this topic.

So I had no choice but to pave the way and figure it out on my own. It was a scary concept and worked many 15-hour workdays and many sleepless nights (coffee became my best friend), learned how to develop a website, wrote countless articles, created templates, learned all about low budget advertising, became a saleswoman (an area I truly lack in), tacked accounting (my weakest skillet) forced myself to attend those intimidating networking events and more, all while undercutting my rates in order to build my book of business. But looking back, I don’t necessarily think of them as struggles; rather, each were necessary experiences and steps I had to take in order to exercise and develop critical business muscles!

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the CA HR Services story. Tell us more about the business.

CA HR Services specializes in providing expert consulting services for businesses located throughout United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia but we primarily focus on California-based companies. At a time when companies face mounting labor laws and confusing regulations, we help small businesses with all their HR needs while minimizing legal risk.

Our most popular outsourcing services include HR Compliance Audits (including I-9 verifications and file clean up), providing businesses with new template forms and common sense processes, create legally compliant Employee Handbooks, recruiting, hiring and onboarding, workplace investigations, Disciplinary Actions, terminations, wage & hour audits (meals, breaks, compensation programs, timekeeping regulations, overtime compliance), ensuring proper employee classifications (exempt/salary vs. non-exempt/hourly), creating up to date job descriptions, Training and Development (variety of courses including mandatory Sexual Harassment prevention) and much more.

I’m most proud of the reputation CA HR Services has created for providing superb HR services and our commitment and dedication to treating every business as if it were our own.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
With the increase in labor laws and regulation as well as a shrinking global marketplace, I predict the need for increased HR outsourcing services in local, regional and global arenas. HR professionals need to be far more business and labor law savvy, customer-centric, malleable and provide affordable yet sophisticated services.