HRchitect Reviews

4.1

73% would recommend to a friend

(30 total reviews)

Matt Lafata

81% approve of CEO

70% positive business outlook

HRchitect has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 30 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The HRchitect employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Management and consulting industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

30 reviews
2.0
13 Jun 2019

Beware!

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good salary, with excellent bonus potential.

Cons

Shady practices, not paying out bonuses that are owed. I had been warned but didn't believe it until I was impacted. Laid off after years of excellent performance with no severance. Dog eat dog, political culture. Watch your back...

avatar
HRchitect Response
6y
Thanks for taking the time to review your experience! We’re proud to offer above-market salaries and generous bonus opportunities, and I’m glad you found those to be satisfactory. I’m concerned to hear you say that a bonus wasn’t paid out. I’ve been with HRchitect for over 15 years and we have never not paid out a bonus, and wouldn’t dream of trying to withhold an earned bonus, especially if we are put in the difficult position of having to lay someone off. Our bonuses are paid to consultants quarterly, so for example, if an employee was laid off in June, that person would’ve received their bonus payment for Q2 (April – June) along with their last payroll check and their severance package (usually delivered all in one check). The only exception to this is if a person was let go for cause in which the bonus program clearly states that it would be forfeited. It’s heartbreaking to have to lay off an employee, but sometimes a vendor stops selling a product, or a client puts a major project on hold, which can sometimes have a downstream impact on our implementation projects. We’ve done a ton of cross training and certifications, so that helps to insulate us from that risk as much as possible and we always first look at where else we can place somebody within our company. If you were laid off, which only happens when there is a lack of project work for a period of time, you would’ve received a severance package. The ONLY time someone wouldn’t receive a severance would be if they were fired, rather than laid off, which would happen for some sort of “cause”, for example, if someone did something like consistently failed to meet project deadlines, failed to consistently communicate with clients as well as internally with management or members of their team, or something else performance-related. Even then, we would put somebody on a performance plan first to try and correct the behavior. We look at all HRchitect employees as family and while this is a business, we still use empathy and compassion as guiding principles in how we treat our employees. I’m also concerned about your comment mentioning HRchitect has a “dog eat dog” culture. Nobody has mentioned that to us before and we take comments like that very seriously. That’s certainly not what we’re striving for, as we usually have several consultants working on a project, and if they aren’t working together to make each other successful, that’s jeopardizing our success and our client’s success, and that would be a problem. I certainly hope it’s not the case, but if there were folks you worked with while at HRchitect who weren’t collaborative or helpful when you were paired together on consulting projects, I’d really like to know about it, in addition to learning more about your bonus and severance concerns. I set up an online survey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/HRchitectGlassdoor), and if you’d be willing to take the time to tell me more about this situation using that survey, I’d really appreciate it. Of course, it’s 100% anonymous.
1.0
2 May 2017

Horrible place to work

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

When business is good, the compensation is good. But when business slows down, watch out - ZERO job security... Don't expect final payouts of compensation, bonuses, etc.

Cons

After being warned by other former employees, I finally understood what Matt Lafata and HRchitect were all about. Terrible management, no internal processes, unfair practices, constant layoffs with no severance, horrible political work environment. I could go on and on...

avatar
HRchitect Response
9y
Firstly, I would like to thank you for taking the time to review your experience working at HRchitect. It is through feedback from all our employees (past and present) that we are able to continually improve upon our employee experience. I was very disappointed to read of your negative experience working for the company. While I don’t know the specifics around your specific situation, and an apology will regrettably not alter the outcome of your employment experience, I do extend it with all sincerity. We do pride ourselves on offering highly competitive compensation to our consultants. I was concerned to read your comment about final compensation, and in my understanding, believe this is referring to severance packages, which we offer where appropriate. We pay bi-weekly in the current pay period (not in arrears) which ensures that employees are paid for all hours worked. Unfortunately, the consulting industry in the HCM space can be volatile in terms of demand, so we make our best efforts to insulate our team from that risk by offering cross training in other implementation practices in the event that one consulting practice slows down. Turnover at HRchitect is extremely low, especially when compared with other firms, and layoffs are an absolute last resort. We’ve had minimal layoffs in the 20-year history of the company, and included some type of severance package when appropriate, regardless of whether the state that employee worked in requires one or not. I’m sorry to hear that you heard negative comments from former employees. Referrals from employees currently make up a large percentage of our workforce and we feel this is a testament to the positive experience our employees currently have. We will always be working to improve our employee experience and this was reflected in HRchitect recently being named a “Great Place to Work.” I’m pleased to share some of the changes that we’ve instituted in past years to improve this including offering Unlimited PTO, continually improving our benefits package including a wellness allowance, opportunities for leisure travel for in-person team bonding and meetings, and we have many more enhancements planned for the near future. Thank you for your feedback, and we’re sorry that you didn’t have a better experience working with us. We wish you all the best in the future, and if you ever would like to discuss further, please reach out to Matt Lafata or our HR team at any time.
3.0
17 Nov 2018

Good work/life balance, but no security

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good work-life balance. Decent pay. The VP of Implementation Services is the nicest guy you'll ever work with. Unlimited PTO- IF you can get any of your requests approved. Big believers in your weekends are for you, and holidays are for family. You will never be expected to check email on company holidays.

Cons

Lack of projects and hours makes for bored consultants and no bonuses. Some consultants will have tons of billable projects while others are left without any work to do. Nepotism. If there is a lack of projects, you will be let go. There will be no warning, no severance and no bonus payout, if you are owed a bonus. They also take their noncompete very seriously and will come after you if you leave them for another SI firm. Inability to close projects leaves consultants feeling frustrated. The ego in the leadership team is unbelievable. Lack of communication is a big issue, particularly when issues or problems arise.

avatar
HRchitect Response
7y
Thanks for taking the time to review your experience! I’m glad you found good work/life balance, and thanks for your kind words about Brian – we think he’s great, too. I’m glad you found your time at HRchitect to allow you to maintain a healthy work/life balance, and that you found value in the unlimited PTO. With a smaller organization, it can be tricky if multiple people working on the same project want to take PTO at the same time, since we don’t want to compromise the quality of our client’s projects. We’re working on this by cross-training more of our consultants so someone else can assist on a project in the future if we have many overlapping vacation requests. I’m sorry you were bored at times. We try very hard not to overwhelm our consultants with too heavy a workload, but it sounds like you were up for more of a challenge and we didn’t provide you with enough of that. We’ll do better in the future by making sure to check in with consultants to make sure they aren’t feeling bored. All consulting companies go through ups and downs in work demand, and typically, other consulting companies will let someone go as soon as a project ends and there isn’t another to fill that gap. This is not how HRchitect operates. We hold on to our consultants as long as we can and put a strong focus on cross training and other initiatives to help avoid that situation. If we do have to make that drastic decision, we always pay out bonuses owed and severance pay based on how long somebody has been with the company. The only reasons someone would not be offered severance pay would be termination due to cause (i.e. performance) or if they quit and chose to leave HRchitect voluntarily. We do have a non-compete agreement, which is the standard in consulting, because consulting organizations spend a great deal of time and money training and cultivating their consultants (at least we do). Unfortunately, some people will take advantage of that if a company doesn’t have a non-compete agreement. However, our non-compete is fair, in comparison to what we’ve seen from other consulting organizations. There’s a short time limit on it, and as long as someone leaves and doesn’t go immediately to a direct competitor (of which there are few), there’s never an issue. We live in a nation of laws, and just like anybody else would, we do ask that employees respect that legally binding document that they signed when they accepted employment. Our leadership is really proud of the HRchitect team. We hire great people and they do amazing work for our clients. For example, Matt recently said in a weekend update (our internal newsletter), “Thank you for being part of the greatest consulting team in the world!”. I see this as leadership having the utmost confidence in the employees at HRchitect, but I see how this may be perceived as overconfident. We’re always trying to improve communication, especially as a remote company, and although we have weekly internal newsletters, quarterly company-wide calls, and annual face to face team meetings, there’s always room for improvement here. We continue to work on that. If you have suggestions to improve communications that you’d be willing to share, we’d love to hear from you.
Viewing 1 - 3 of 30 Reviews

Glassdoor has 30 HRchitect reviews submitted anonymously by HRchitect employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if HRchitect is right for you.