HR consulting — Atlanta, Georgia
Your people ARE your business.
If you’ve got employees, you’ve got HR — whether you planned for it or not. I’m the HR director you can’t justify hiring full-time, for the businesses that need one most.
Workers’ comp — DOL and EEOC — I-9 audits — ACA — Handbooks — ADP Workforce Now
Not theory. Operations.
I’ve spent nearly twenty years running human resources for a multi-unit, high-volume restaurant company in Atlanta. Thousands of hires. Workers’ compensation claims from first report through hearing. Department of Labor investigations across five metro counties. I-9 and E-Verify compliance across a parent company and every one of its subsidiaries. A workforce that’s more than half Spanish-speaking.
I built that department from nothing, and I still run it.
So when I tell you what happens when the I-9 binder is a mess, I’m not quoting a webinar.
Shannon L. Cate, MSHRD
Master of Science, Human Resource Development — Georgia State University.
Human Resources Director since 2007. HR manager at The Home Depot before that, and eleven years with a Burger King franchisee before that.
Compliance that holds up
I-9 and E-Verify audits. ACA tracking and reporting. DOL and EEOC responses. Record retention. Handbooks written to how you actually operate instead of to a template.
Workers’ comp, managed
Claim investigation and documentation. Panel compliance. Return-to-work programs. Hearing prep. And the supervisor training that keeps the next injury from happening at all.
The people part
Hiring and onboarding. Manager training. Employee relations. Terminations you can defend. And an HRIS that does the work instead of creating more of it.
Why this matters right now
What it costs when nobody’s watching
This isn’t meant to scare you. It’s meant to be specific, because vague warnings are how this gets ignored for another year.
$288 to $2,861 per form
That’s the substantive I-9 violation range. In March 2026, ICE moved more than ten error categories from technical to substantive — which removed the ten-day window you used to get to fix them. A 150-person operation with sloppy I-9s is now looking at six figures.
$42 million in back wages
Food services led every industry in the country for Department of Labor wage-and-hour violations in fiscal 2025 — more than 4,000 violations resolved, and the highest total recovery since 2019. If you run restaurants, you’re the number one enforcement target. Not a target. The target.
$3,340 per employee
The 2026 ACA employer shared responsibility penalty, per full-time employee, per year. The other one’s $5,010 for each employee who gets subsidized coverage instead. One measurement period set wrong at a sixty-person group is a very unpleasant letter.
Who I work with
Restaurants and hospitality. Franchises. Retail. Trades. The businesses that run on people — usually hourly, often multilingual, always more exposed than the owner realizes.
If your company’s already got a real HR department, you probably don’t need me. If HR is the thing that happens to whoever’s standing nearest the problem, we should talk.
You’re probably a fit if
HR isn’t a cost center. It’s how you scale.
The first conversation is free and it’s not a sales call. Tell me what’s actually happening and I’ll tell you the smallest thing that fixes it.