#HRTechChat: Meredith Reilly on Building Your Advisory Village and Scaling HR Strategically

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Small businesses face growing complexity in HR, payroll, and benefits—but too often, leaders carry the burden alone. In this episode of #HRTechChat, Dylan Teggart talks with Meredith Reilly, Chief Sales Officer at isolved, about why it’s time to stop going solo.

Meredith shares how modern HR demands strategic partnerships—not just tools—and how activating an “advisory village” can help leaders scale smarter. From tech fluency to cultural alignment, they break down what today’s HR advisors must bring to the table.

If you’re still treating vendors as service providers, you’re missing the point.

Tune in to learn how synergy, not solo effort, drives results.

Our #HRTechChat Series is also available as a podcast on the following platforms:

See a service missing that you use? Let our team know by emailing research@3SixtyInsights.com.

Transcript:

00:00:00 Dylan Teggart

Hey everyone, it’s Dylan Teggart here again with another 3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat. I’m joined today by Meredith Reilly from isolved. Meredith is the chief sales officer and Meredith, thank you for joining me today.

00:00:14 Meredith Reilly

Thanks for having me. I’m really looking forward to it.

00:00:17 Dylan Teggart

Yeah, my pleasure. So today we want to talk a bit about, you know, small businesses. They’re often dealing with a ton of different things. Often understaffed. When it comes to HR benefits and payroll, they can sometimes be overlooked by the owners, the CEO, or the CFO or the controller. But unfortunately, these responsibilities frequently rest on their shoulders. We want to dive into that a little bit today before we. Do that. Do you mind telling the people a little bit about yourself?

00:00:49 Meredith Reilly

Yeah, I’d love to. And all of the things and all the reasons you just said, I’m excited to be here. So I’ve really background been in HCM for over 16 years really started in sales. Look LED teams, built partnerships and and ultimately help scale organizations. And I think what makes me most excited kind of the HR underdog. Theme is really connecting the dots between. Or what we call kind of their essential advisors, that we’ll talk about today and strategy because I know the pressure on the HR leaders face and the power of a well activated will kind of call advisory village right to drive real outcome. So again super excited to talk about this, this topic and been seeing it. And and within it for a long period of time now.

00:01:37 Dylan Teggart

Yeah, I like that idea. The way you put an HR underdog, it makes a lot of sense because it is kind of an uphill battle for a lot of these. Companies. So. You know, for someone who is not as familiar, maybe with this this kind. Of. Tier of companies and what they’re dealing with. Could you frame the situation? A little bit for people.

00:01:57 Meredith Reilly

Yeah, and I’ll I’ll give maybe a little thought provoking question before we go to landscape a little bit, but if you’re within HR or maybe an executive stakeholder that works with HR and advisor. Really I want to play with the thought today of how are you building your village? Because in today’s world, HR leadership is not about doing it all. It’s it’s basically not even possible, right? It’s about knowing who’s in your corner and how they can help you lead with impact. So think about HR in 2025. It’s not just harder than it was, but it’s just fundamentally different. So that rule of HR has really evolved kind of overtime from hey operational support to what it is today is a strategic architect, right? So HR leaders now navigate you know this landscape that’s shaped by things like technology, you know shifting workforce. Expectations and. Ultimately, kind of cultural complexity. So if I look at the the top list of things that HR, even though we thought of that as maybe people focused the top of their list are things like AI integration and digital transformation, right, that that play experience. Is is really strategic priority inside of an organization now? Certainly workforce planning kind of having a skills based priority for that. Manager burnout and Leadership Development also sits under the function of HR. De I, we’ll call it kind of reimagined the way that is today, but ultimately with how quick the world changes, how quick CEO’s, executives, organizations, make decisions they’re dealt with, you know, the change fatigue and organizational trust, and Dylan, that the the funny part is, if you even go back 10 years, which doesn’t even feel too long ago like. I like to look at HR and time periods. It’s like, what did they focus on that and what are they doing now and how quickly that’s changing? If we go back to 2015? To 2025. Then it was like head down, execution focused on compliance, you know payroll maybe those kind of basic engagements and now you’re like actually turn drives the strategy, the culture and the transformation. Right. We look back at 2015, that was still the time of, we’ll call it, the annual performance review. Now we know it’s not that, it’s this continuous feedback loop with agile goal setting. Then you go OK limited remote work at the time. We know pandemic, at least for the US, big, big change catalyst there. But today it’s like hybrid first global talent pools. But yeah, a lot of complex compliance issues that come up right then it was D yeah, I was certainly we’ll call it more of a compliance check box today it is. A cultural and business imperative, and then technology. Then it’s great supporting cast for HR. Today is technology is core to HR, delivery and decision making and kind of lastly when we do that compare. There managers in HR were default leaders and today managers are overwhelmed. Change agent agents really needing support. So when I talk about the village, I think you know I have a one year old and a three-year old. We compare that kind of to parenting right takes a village, it takes a village. Everybody tells you that but. For them it it is serious because their challenges are too complex and cross functional for HR to really carry along right in all sizes of organizations that. Argue. But now we think about who’s in that village. And that’s kind of what we’re going to talk about today is advisors like benefit brokers, accounting firms, financial advisors, even tech partners. And the list goes on, right. They’re not just vendors. They’re these Co architects. Or you want to keep playing with the the analogy. They’re kind of Co parents of HR culture, so they’re the ones that are going to help HR folks operationalize that trust. You know, embed the resilience and and really drive that strategic agility. And I think when I think of the best RHR leaders that I know today, it’s not. It’s not someone that knows it all. It’s someone that knows how to activate that village. When your advisors are really aligned with your company and your HR purpose. They’re going to amplify write your credibility, certainly capacity. But the most important part is really the impact, right? You’re going to go a lot further by bringing these people and having these people. Along with you.

00:06:38 Dylan Teggart

Yeah, because I think ultimately. There’s this way too much for a single person to. Handle at this. Point. Yeah, this the amount that’s changing. And if you’re in the US, it’s like give multiple layers of jurisdictional. Of compliance you have to deal with. And it’s also changing fairly rapidly as we’re kind of in a bit of a change pointer like a period of flux. With the way we work. How people are working? And. But people still are chasing after that simplicity. 00:07:09 Yep. So. You know, so for. The demand of customers like that and for demand of customers who are looking for advisory like that, how are they kind of approaching these challenges and how are they changing to adapt to them?

00:07:25 Meredith Reilly

Yeah, everything’s kind of the butterfly effect. A little bit, right? That ripple since the world is changing, volatile, uncertain, complex, complex, ambiguous. The way that it is, HR shifts and then the people they lean on have to shift. So the advisor. There’s really, I think I’ve gone through this period that have changed out of, we’ll call it like transactional to helping be transformational. So we’re maybe they were seeing as almost like a service provider before, they’re really having to play that strategic partner role because HR leaders aren’t just expecting like subject matter expertise in an area they’re expecting. You know, insight, foresight, kind of that Co Creation Co architect, not just execution. And I I think about this and if you we’ll call kind of like categories, right. Because I think we all could say that culture is kind of the new currency, right? So now think about benefits, compensation, compliance. Those are really the culture carriers across HR and across companies. So advisors have to not just understand and not take orders, but they have to reflect the values. Of the company in every recommendation as well, right? And then you go to like, OK, let’s talk about technology now. So tech fluency is the table stakes. Nobody wants their advisor to be behind on tech. Everyone else is moving for. So I I think for me it’s it’s really. HR is digitizing rapidly, right? So advisors can’t just bring tech abled solutions. Yes, they should. But recommendations all the way from like you know if I’m if I’m benefits and like in AI driven benefits modeling, predictive analytics, static spreadsheets and those legacy systems. Don’t cut it anymore. Now you go OK well-being. Isn’t just a phrase, it’s a business strategy. So advisors are trying to help their clients tackle the financial, emotional, physical well-being that our quarter retention and performance. So they have to think about how to support the whole human and design programs to do that. Not just the way we used to think of it as an employee. And then kind of rounding out in the last couple, I know we talked about dei a lot, but this is a funny one where you talked about nuance, especially within the United States, right? Advisors have to help kind of thread that needle between navigating some polarized environments, right while staying true to inclusion goals. And this is this is a funny one, because misalign partners in this area can erode trust very quickly, but align ones are going to amplify. What? And then lastly, the concept kind of of we’ll call it like agility over authority where before we wanted our benefit broker to just be the subject matter expert there and tell us what to do. Agility is is a bigger value because the pace and change of demand, right, they’re going to, we’re going to look for advisors that are nimble, responsive. You can pivot with HR leaders and their strategies and really that long term value now comes from adaptability and not just kind of that. One time expertise. Things don’t stay static. They’re constantly moving and and advisors need to stay Evergreen and stay quite proactive. So I’d say to the folks that you have on you know whether you’re listening here from inside an organization, serving it or from the outside, you know the message as it relates to advisors. And the and the the relationship between HR here is really clear. HR is not just looking for service, they’re really looking for synergy.

00:11:20 Dylan Teggart

So, so pulling back a tiny, tiny bit, you know you’re talking about that reshaping of the. The landscape and the the value equation here so. For someone who’s a little less familiar with this. Could you lay out kind of the the, the stage who’s who are the main players? How does this really work in the real world? And if you have a example from a client? That would be awesome to kind. Of. 00:11:49 Yeah. You know, make it touch grass as the. Kids. Say yeah.

00:11:54 Meredith Reilly

And I’d be happy to because I think especially for most of the listeners, we’re probably more familiar with the maybe the HR side of it, right, the HR practitioner, the decision maker and side of the business that’s tasked with all of the. People matters and the strategy, but then advisors right that that sounds a little bit of a canned phrase, but if we just go to like, we’ll talk about three kind of industries that I’ve been talking to a lot lately where. Look, there’s some parallels, right? But there’s some nuance. What they’re all really looking to do is reimagine their role, to deliver kind of that smarter data-driven impact for their clients. So we think about this in terms of outcomes, right. So outcome to the actual employee inside of an organization by HR programs, the outcome. The business itself like what are they going to see and then the outcome to the advisor as a business making recommendations, offering service, all three of those things should be in that positive right in the. Relationship but the. Kind of the three. We’ll talk about a little bit are, hey, uh, a regional bank, right? Maybe have a banking partner that you rely on for business banking, you have an accounting firm that you’ve relied on for tax. You have a benefit broker, certain you’ve relied on them for insurances, employee benefit well in this programs, all of those folks are shifting what they’re doing right? So we’ll use the the bank as an example. Launching, you know, doing a a customer survey, finding out that what’s the top area where we’re missing for you and finding out that payroll is one of those, their bank, right. But wow, they’re looking for payroll recommendations, looking for payroll support. So being able to put those two things together and actually launching payrolls and offering for their clients kind of goes hand in hand. Again, those businesses are looking for more than a linear way of thinking, so the outcome to the Bank for doing this is deep in client retention, right? Added operational value to the to their existing bank relationships, maybe then bring on new customers, right? But it’s a big retention and value that. There’s a a great way they can leverage data throughout that for predictive analytics, but then the actual outcome to the business for leveraging that advisor and that capacity. Improved cash flow visibility, right, reduced payroll errors increased operational efficiency. I’d say that’s a pro all the way along, right then you move over to the world of the. Morning. So accounting building out an advisory practice quite high touch, they’re trying to serve clients, but pairing that with payroll and their Consulting Group, they have this unified compliance compensation strategy, high Touch again under one roof now. They also love data and analytics and their clients. Want them to make proactive recommendations all the time? What do you see in my business? I don’t want to just come to you. You’re the expert, right? What should I be doing? Where is my turnover? Benchmarking all those things they’re looking for. And now they have robust analytics outside of justice, the accounting landscape to point out those matters for them. So we’re seeing their clients with certainly, you know, low hanging fruit in the accounting world like enhanced audit readiness. But the the. Bigger side is optimized labor costs right align compensation with performance. Metrics, stronger governance, ROI, right. Again, net positive all the way through. And then last we’ll talk about the benefit broker. You know we have one where it’s you know they’re trying to offer this concierge level support to their clients that benefits are only one piece of the equation. Putting that together with human Capital Management is giving that that level of white glove treatment support cultural alignment for the HR teams that they support. They get to leverage analytics across it, but their customers are seeing employee satisfaction scores increase, right, reduced turnover, improved benefits utilization. Because now you have integrated payroll benefit and engagement tools. So you know whether you’re inside of it or again a business owner looking for that village. You know, these outcomes show how these advisors aren’t just really, I call meeting the moment or responding to the demand, right. They’re really reshaping what we would consider to be a value equation pair, high touch, smart. Analytics helping clients unlock the things that matter most. You know, efficiency, compliance and ultimately kind of that culture building strategic move.

00:16:29 Dylan Teggart

Yeah, because I feel like a lot of the times the results may vary. You know, you’re dealing with businesses where there’s a lot of factors involved and it may be a little tricky for some of these businesses to. Accurately quantify. How and when they fit kind of that sweet spot and you touched on a few of them there because you’re because you’re kind of looking for that intersection of people who needs business strategy, measurable outcomes. 00:16:44 Yeah. And. You know, for someone that that’s in the thick of it, maybe they’ve been caught up in kind of the the mire of just running this themselves been not, you know, they finally found a partner that works for them. 00:17:09 Yeah. What do you? See what do you think are the 1st results they start seeing where kind of eases off the pressure from them.

00:17:17 Meredith Reilly

Yeah, and. And it’s funny because you you mentioned those 3 categories. I always think about it like you know, we call it qualitative or quantity. But the outcomes or the impact that the the business actually experience, but then there’s also the feeling right, like being able to acknowledge and almost like hover above yourself to say like what would that look like if it was in practice that can be hard to do sometimes, right? But I think the people on the inside of it that you talked about is. What would good look like? Like what would that feel like inside of an organization you found the right partners? Right. You know, systems the right things for you. You’re talking about improved employee well-being. Hey, there’s career development going on flexibility here and we know why that matters is it fuels engagement, retention and ultimately, you know, trust inside of the organization. Then you go into your into the business strategy side of it. What does that feel and look like? You know, revenue growth, innovation, maybe it’s customer satisfaction. Well, that’s really good for HR as well. When we talk about our ROI, because it’s aligning. HR with the Organizational’s fundamental kind of core goals. And then the measurable outcomes piece, sometimes it’s hard, but that’s like productivity turnover rates, Net Promoter score, cost savings. I think sometimes our HR friends don’t do themselves justice to connect back to those deliverables because why it matters for HR is it proves their ROI, right. And and guides and supports future investment. So. That how you know you’ve hit the sweet spot. You can look through it from those two standpoints to go. What does it feel like the the retention, the engagement score as a productivity increases, maybe it’s customer satisfaction and those strategic agility growth like all those things you can be looking at and then you go OK, there’s hard metrics. And strategic indicators that put together right, so hard metrics, cost savings, turnover, compliance issues reduced someone and some revenue per employee maybe or per team. The strategic indicators are again the alignment with HR and business KPIs. Impact of engagement, however, often run engagement survey scores, what’s the impact of engagement on innovation, customer satisfaction and then manager effectiveness in that leadership pipeline strength like that’s. Those are the things that we’re talking about with with qualitative and quantitative here. And if you don’t have those things, that’s a really big indicator to look back at your group, who’s who’s in, who’s in that Co parenting situation with you, who’s in your village and who can help.

00:19:59 Dylan Teggart

Yeah, in long term. Where do these relationships usually end up? You know you’re four or five years down the road. What does that relationship look like opposed to, you know, the first the first year?

00:20:12 Meredith Reilly

Yeah. So you find the right partners that are Evergreen, you don’t have to change partners out again. So a lot of HR folks are tasked with going back to selection, vendor recommendations, technology, there’s systems all over the place. There’s sellers like. You know I’m in the sales world that are going to try and tell you to do things, but when you find the right group and find that right village. You’re often forming into what 2027 holds, and you’re building the plan for 28 and you’re all working on those things together because again, they’re aligned. They understand your goals, they understand what you’re trying to achieve, the tone and the vision, the culture, and yes, have a subject matter, expert area and a subject that can help you. But I feel like a few years out, what that looks like. For you as a business is, you’re not ripping and replacing systems and ripping and replacing partnerships, you found the ones that are aligned and now you can evolve and be Evergreen from there. And now you’re talking about the outcomes more than you’re talking about finding a new partner.

00:21:14 Dylan Teggart

Yeah, because I feel like so many businesses and you know, small and large, but more often small, since they’re kind of moving. Fast. And may not have the resources to really evaluate something thoroughly. You know they they. Either rely on recommendations of someone else. So you really want to trust that person because the alternative is you just keep trying things and you keep spending money or you buy things and you don’t really know how to use them and you. Never really they. Never really take off. Yep, Yep. In long term. There. It’s just financially a bad move, but also adds more stress to you, not just because you know I gotta use this thing to learn how to use this thing. That’s. Another thing on my plate. Yep.

00:21:56 Meredith Reilly

Yep, and we see a lot with that too, like trying to find the right partners. There’s a vetting process in that, too. There’s relationship, there’s trust, there’s, you know, maybe the things that they’re recommending. But I think about something like so much change has gone on for these advisors too. Like you look at your benefit broker. You know, if they’re showing up once a year at open enrollment. That’s very different than someone that’s being a proactive steward for you and Co architecting your HR strategy and your business, right? Just looking at it so. Yeah, there’s a lot of demand to keep up for advisors for HR folks, but I would also evaluate those relationships just to say, hey, notice when they’re proactive, notice, when when they’re coming to you, but have you even gone to them, like, go to them first and see what they do with that, cause you might not be? See asking them so it is it is. It is both of those sides of the coin where you’re going. How often are they being proactive with me? But I’m also giving them a chance to make recommendations, but definitely a one time of year engagement is not what a partnership looks like anymore.

00:22:58 Dylan Teggart

Yeah, it’s kind of that count. You gotta lean on each other and understand that it’s not just a. One person team, it’s not you, don’t. Have to be. Going through this head down on alone and there’s nothing. You know, there’s something honorable to it. But why? Why stress so much, I guess. In the end, you know.

00:23:15 Meredith Reilly

Yeah. Do you want to be a hero or you wanna involve your village in it? Yeah.

00:23:18 Dylan Teggart

Yeah. For sure. So like you know. As we approach the end of the half hour here, what would be your you know, circling back to the key takeaways for someone to sum it all up? What would those look like?

00:23:33 Meredith Reilly

Yeah, I would look through again, look through advisors, right, look through your partnerships or if you are an advisor, doesn’t matter which side of the coin you’re on. They’re moving from transactional to strategic folks for an HR business. So look for that payroll is now you know and not my world HCM, it’s a strategic touch point. Right it it, it adds trust, transparency, talent retention data and high touch engagement together are really that gold standard like an advisor who pairs something like an analytic with empathy. That’s what we’re looking for to drive better outcomes. And then alignment on HR goals being really essential, not just kind of that measurable impact, that’s really important, but it goes beyond what we would call like baseline operational support. And then business outcomes really matter the outcome to the employee, the outcome to the customer or the outcome to the you know someone on so on throughout that we’ve talked about. So you know my final, I guess like plea to folks or or the way we can sum. Up is whether you’re leading, HR, or advising it. It really is to ask yourself, are you activating? You know your full village or in our previous example that hero? Are you trying to solve it alone? The future of this strategic HR or landscape depends on partnerships that deliver more than service. So it’s really that right, it’s it’s that takes stock of your ecosystem and reflect on all the things that we talked about to say like. Hey, let’s go build a synergy with our our advisors challenge our team share the episode and and and see if we can build that synergy that really scales your business.

00:25:19 Dylan Teggart

Yeah, absolutely, I think. In today’s day and. Age. With so much at our fingertips, there’s really no excuse to just kind of go tread alone through these things. It’s there’s a million options at at your disposal and technology is there to help a lot of the time.

00:25:36 Meredith Reilly

Yep, and the advisor part of that is the advisor piece is the human. So you get the benefits of all the research you could do online. But the human to actually have the empathy to sit and understand your goals and to help you make again those Evergreen kind of proactive recommendations that is, that’s the goal. That’s the sweet spot.

00:25:58 Dylan Teggart

Yeah, you gotta have that trusted partner that you can really lean on and. Have an opinion you can believe.

00:26:04 Meredith Reilly

For sure. That’s why we’re all. Here, right.

00:26:06 Dylan Teggart

For sure, Speaking of which, which is a nice segue to wrap this all up? Thank you again for joining me and if anyone wants to reach out to you with any more questions about this topic, we’ll be the best place to.

00:26:20 Meredith Reilly

Yeah, I’m happy to take anything. Meredith Riley here at iselfriley@isolvedhcm.com. I’m happy to chat if anybody wants to connect on this topic, but it’s been a been a true pleasure and honor to be able to talk with you and with everybody listening.

00:26:34 Dylan Teggart

Alright, thanks so much, Meredith, and thank you everyone for tuning in. This has been another 3Sixty Insights, HRTechChat.

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