Let Our Team Support Your HR & Safety Compliance Needs

You didn’t start a business to stress over HR, safety compliance, or payroll, did you? And you shouldn't have to. The Big Picture Consulting serves businesses nationwide with human resources, employee management, safety training materials, payroll advice, and tools to help you succeed.

We know how to help companies like yours because we work with residential service providers every day: HVAC/heating and cooling, plumbing, electrical, garage doors, landscaping, and more. And trust us, you'd rather we help you identify what's wrong at your company than find out about it from OSHA or the Department of Labor!

No matter where in the United States you do business, our team can help you with Trade-focused, personalized HR expertise.

Foundation Retainer | HR & Safety

Essential HR resources for running a business in the Trades, from HR pros familiar with your industry. Unlimited access to expertise from real people, with no long-term contracts.

Employee Handbook

We'll review your existing handbook or make you a new one from scratch! Personalized to your state, size, industry, and company preferences.

Document Templates

All you need for hiring, firing, discipline, legally required posters, and more. Access our standard templates, or we'll customize them for your business!

Employee Life Cycle Consultation

A comprehensive review of your employee journey, from hiring to firing, to identify compliance risks and provide best practice ideas.

Custom Safety Manual

Keep your employees safe—and your business compliant—with a personalized, OSHA-compliant safety manual.

Safety Resources

Business-specific monthly OSHA-required training topics and Safety Data Sheets (SDS) to keep you on track.

Unlimited HR Advice

Contact us any time for unbiased expertise on HR, hiring, employee management, safety, regulations, compliance concerns, and more!

Executive Retainer | Hands-on HR Administration

In addition to providing HR foundations, we can join your team as remote HR facilitators. It's like hiring an experienced HR admin... without paying extra for OT, benefits, or payroll taxes!

HRIS Support

We work in your preferred online system to help with employee file management and other HR tasks.

Recruiting & Hiring

Assistance with job postings and screenings to save you time—without outsourcing to AI (which can be legally risky!).

Onboarding & Offboarding

We handle the busywork of employee setup and termination tasks, plus background checks.

Payroll Processing

We'll take care of payroll—you just make sure the inputs are correct and sign off when it's ready!

HR Employee Support

As unbiased third-party advisors, we're available for employee questions, concerns, or complaints.

Priority Assistance

You've hired our team as an add-on employee, and we treat you as our top priority!

Payroll Compliance & Compensation Plan Management

Most compensation plans using incentive pay (i.e., spiffs, commissions, task pay) are NOT compliant with overtime laws. We can help reduce your legal risk and make sure your pay plan encourages employees to do their best work.

Sign up for Compensation Plan Management for short-term or long-term solutions to your pay plan headaches.

Pay Plan Review

For all retainer clients we'll look at your current plan to highlight any compliance risks or concerns with incentive pay.

Pay Plan Deep Dive

Sign up to have us take a detailed look at your P&L and payroll data to make sure materials and labor costs are in-line and suggest improvements or overhauls.

Tools & Calculators

Custom tools and training to help you reduce the risk in pay calculations and to better incentivize employees.

BPC Proprietary Pay Plans

For an easier, more efficient compensation plan, consider Diff-Comm or Flex-Rate. We developed these plans in-house to blend the best features of pay plans (hourly, commission, combo) into a system that motivates workers, optimizes your budget, and minimizes compliance risks. We work together to personalize the plan to your business. We present and explain the new pay opportunities to your employees, then we process your data every pay period to provide real-time data and reporting. It's that easy!

Retainer Account Pricing

A Retainer account gets you access to everything you need for a small monthly cost—foundational HR & Safety services, with the option of hands-on HR administration.

FAQS

What does it mean that you offer "HR for the Trades"?

Because we work with companies like yours every day (HVAC, plumbing, electrical, garage doors) we know and understand the laws that impact you. The problems you address on a daily basis, from incentive pay to OSHA requirements to the use of company-owned vehicles, are topics that a standard HR firm just doesn’t understand. Not only do we know your industry, as a small family-owned company ourselves we can relate to many of the challenges you might face. We get to know you personally and offer honest advice that's easy to understand and specific to your needs. We guarantee no canned responses or AI-generated content... just real expertise from real HR pros.

Do you do one-off project work?

While we can offer one-off advice in a pinch, this will only get your business so far. We prefer that clients keep us on retainer so we can provide you with ongoing advice, essential resources, and proactive tips as your business progresses. This way we can help you get to the root of the issue and solve it, instead of just putting a band-aid on it, and ensure your company documents (employee handbook, safety manual, required employee paperwork) align with the decisions you make. 

Retainer accounts are flexible, affordable, and require no long-term commitment. Check out our services page to learn more.

I've got an AI-generated Employee Handbook and Safety Manual I made with an online template. Why isn't that good enough?

Even the best templates don’t take into account your industry, company size, state-specific legislation, and personal business preferences. And they are often written in "legalese" so they're impossible to understand. These details matter when it comes to putting policies into daily practice and keeping your company legally protected. Because we specialize in handbooks and safety manuals for the Trades, we make sure they do exactly what you need. Plus, we offer advice on best practices so you're not just compliant but also competitive in the industry, giving you an advantage in recruiting and retention.

Why do I need to worry about payroll compliance?

Unless you're paying pure hourly wages - or your employees never work overtime - you may be getting it wrong. Overtime pay is tied to the average an employee earns over the pay period, not their base hourly rate. So if an employee gets performance pay (spiffs, bonuses, etc.) on top of their hourly rate, you need to add BOTH when calculating overtime. Most payroll software doesn't make this easy on you, so if you're not taking extra steps to be compliant, you probably aren't!

We can help your business by making sure your payroll is compliant, easy to manage, sustainable, pays your employees fairly, and makes you competitive in the industry. Let us do the hard work for you!

Real expertise from real HR pros—specialized in the Trades

If you're in HVAC, plumbing, electrical, or garage doors, let us give you the foundations to run your business compliantly, and act as your unbiased on-call experts for any employee situations or questions. No generic templates or AI or long-term contracts—just personalized help to let you run your business with peace of mind!