HR Scope Of Service

Graphite HR provides a fixed-fee HR service designed to give growing organizations clearer ownership, stronger documentation, and more consistent support across the employee lifecycle. The service combines strategic HR guidance with hands-on operational support so companies can manage policies, employee issues, and people processes with more structure and less risk.

At its core, this is an HR function built to help organizations stop running people operations through scattered ownership, outdated materials, or inconsistent manager behavior. Graphite helps establish and maintain the handbook, policies, onboarding and offboarding processes, employee documentation, and day-to-day support needed to make the HR layer more stable and defensible over time.

The service is delivered through clearly defined engagement models. Some companies need primarily advisory support. Others need more active operational execution or deeper strategic partnership. In each case, the scope is designed to make HR more usable, more consistent, and easier to rely on as the business grows.

What’s Included

Every HR engagement includes a core foundation of policy support, employee lifecycle guidance, and maintained HR documentation. The depth of execution and ownership varies by engagement model, though the core areas of the function remain consistent.

That scope includes:

• creation and maintenance of the employee handbook
• drafting, updating, and maintaining HR policies and core documentation
• ongoing HR advisory support for leadership and managers
• employee lifecycle support across onboarding, ongoing management, and offboarding
• disciplinary guidance and related documentation
• termination and offboarding support, including required documentation and process coordination

The point is to give the company a more complete HR function rather than a collection of disconnected templates or one-off answers.

Employee Lifecycle Support

A major part of the service is supporting the moments that create the most operational complexity and HR risk across the employee lifecycle.

That includes onboarding processes and checklists, employee and manager support during day-to-day issues, disciplinary guidance, offboarding, and termination support. The purpose is to make these moments more consistent and better documented instead of handled differently each time. As organizations grow, these moments tend to become more frequent, more visible, and more sensitive. The service’s value is that the company is no longer improvising its way through them.

Termination and offboarding work may include fully loaded termination documentation, COBRA and benefits-related notices, and offboarding checklists and timelines. These are exactly the kinds of details that are easy to miss when HR is fragmented, and exactly the kinds of details that matter when the company needs its process to hold up under scrutiny.

Policy & Handbook Guidance

A core part of the service is creating and maintaining the written foundation of the HR function.

That includes the employee handbook as well as the policies and supporting materials that define how the organization handles employee matters over time. For many companies, the issue isn’t that no handbook exists. It’s that the current version is outdated, generic, inconsistently maintained, or no longer aligned to the way the business actually operates. Graphite helps close that gap by making sure these materials stay current, usable, and better aligned with the organization’s needs.

This matters because written policy is what keeps HR from drifting into inconsistency. When managers are working from maintained materials instead of memory or informal precedent, the company is in a much stronger position across both employee experience and risk management.

Performance & Workforce Changes

Graphite HR also supports the company through the kinds of people decisions that create pressure quickly if there is no clear process behind them.

That includes performance issues, disciplinary situations, workforce changes, and other employee matters where timing, documentation, and consistency matter. Depending on the engagement model, Graphite may provide guidance, written follow-up, templates, checklists, or more direct operational support to help managers and leaders handle these situations in a way that is more structured and defensible.

The practical value here is consistency. Instead of each manager handling issues differently or leadership stepping in late to clean up a messy situation, the company starts building a clearer precedent and stronger process around how workforce changes and performance matters are managed.

Benefits Administration Overview

Benefits administration sits near the HR function and often affects onboarding, offboarding, employee communication, and documentation, though it isn’t fully owned within the standard HR service.

Graphite HR supports the process by helping ensure benefits-related notices, offboarding steps, and related documentation are handled appropriately within the broader employee lifecycle. The service can also advise on structure, best practices, and vendors where relevant. However, benefits brokerage and carrier negotiation are explicitly outside standard scope.

That boundary matters because the service is designed to strengthen HR ownership and execution, not to absorb every external vendor relationship attached to employee benefits.

Compliance & Labor Law Guidance

HR carries constant legal, financial, and regulatory risk, which is why compliance guidance is a core part of the value of the service.

Graphite helps organizations reduce exposure by keeping policies, documentation, and employee processes more current and better structured. That includes guidance around issues like leave, wage and hour practices, documentation consistency, and termination handling. The service is designed to reduce the risk of small gaps compounding into larger operational or compliance problems over time.

That said, specialized legal services, immigration matters, and certain regulatory or audit-related work may require separate support or added scoping. The role of the service is to create a stronger, more defensible HR operating environment and to help surface risk earlier, not to act as a substitute for specialized legal counsel.

HR Intersections With Other Services

HR works best when it is connected to the rest of the company’s people and operational systems.

Payroll is the clearest operational dependency. HR relies on accurate payroll information for employee status, compensation changes, terminations, classifications, and effective dates. HR documentation and processes can also surface broader compliance-related issues that may need coordination with adjacent services when those are in scope.

That coordination matters because employee issues rarely stay isolated. Hiring, compensation, onboarding, leave, offboarding, and documentation often affect payroll, compliance, and broader operational workflows at the same time. When a client uses multiple Graphite services, Graphite manages that alignment internally so the client experiences one more connected operating system instead of a set of separate vendors or workstreams.

HR Pricing Model & Key Factors

HR is offered on a fixed-fee basis tied to the selected engagement model. Pricing reflects the level of ownership, access, and execution required to support the organization. The main engagement models are Advisory, Core, and Plus, with additional strategic or project-based work scoped separately when needed.

Pricing is influenced by factors such as:

• the engagement model selected
• the level of access and responsiveness required
• the amount of operational execution needed
• organizational complexity
• headcount and operational scope
• whether the work extends into more specialized or project-based support

As complexity changes, the engagement may be reviewed so scope and pricing stay aligned with the actual work required.

Boundaries

Graphite HR provides guidance, documentation, process support, and operational HR execution within the agreed scope.

The standard service does not include:

• recruiting or candidate sourcing
• interviewing or interview execution
• immigration, visa, or specialized legal services
• benefits brokerage or carrier negotiation
• final vendor or broader business decisions on the client’s behalf

Some areas may require separate scoping, such as board-level HR work, custom training development beyond facilitation, specialized audits or regulatory work, or contractor classification audits beyond included thresholds. These boundaries keep the engagement clear and prevent the HR service from drifting into unrelated ownership areas.