“HR is more than ‘Fill out these forms and don’t get into trouble,’” said Justin Hall of Salz Group on his ethos and approach to leading a bustling HR organization.
In November 2024, Justin Hall was hired to expand the HR function of Salz Group, a New York City-based multi-franchise owner of 41 Dunkin’, Wendy’s, Wingstop, and Taco Bell locations across four of the five boroughs of NYC, as well as vendor stands on the Staten Island ferry.
Hall and his two HR teammates oversee the HR needs of 650 employees, 250 of whom are full-time and approximately 30 of whom are in administrative roles at Salz’s corporate office. Salz Group’s employee base is as eclectic and diverse as the city it’s based in, with 80% of its employees speaking English as their second language.
From the Kitchen Table to the Boardroom
Part of Hall’s strategy was structuring procedures and streamlining everything that touches HR in a process he calls taking the locations “from the kitchen table to the boardroom.”
While Salz Group owns all of their locations, many still operated similarly to mom-and-pop shops, with less-than-consistent practices and procedures and HR there to enforce the rules. “HR was reactive, not proactive,” Hall explained.
As part of his overhaul, the department collectively decided to aggressively eliminate as many outdated, manual processes as possible. Hall wanted to help them focus on risk mitigation and opportunities for success, and to justify why they were strategic functions of the business rather than just an additional administrative burden. He didn’t want to do this by creating more work for people; he wanted to build things into daily activities.
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