Third Voice is HR consulting for companies that need real expertise without a full HR department. From performance issues and difficult conversations to strategy and day to day operations, we help you handle people challenges before they become problems.
A handbook nobody has opened in years. Managers running teams they were never trained to run. Compliance obligations that were never actually assigned to anyone.
None of that is negligence. It is what growth looks like from the inside, and it tends to stay invisible until somebody asks a question nobody on staff can answer.
Growth
Twenty people run on trust and good instincts. A hundred people run on policy, documentation, and somebody whose actual job is keeping up with California labor law. Most companies cross that line without noticing.
Leadership
They were excellent at the work, so they were given a team. Nobody taught them how to give hard feedback, sit with somebody’s reaction, or document any of it in a way that holds up.
Isolation
Sometimes it’s an HR leader who came up through another function. Sometimes it is an owner whose office manager handled it until it got complicated.
We bring more than fifty years of combined HR experience across public agencies, higher education, tech, manufacturing, and agriculture. We help HR teams and business leaders meet compliance, manage risk, strengthen employee relations, develop leaders, drive HR strategy, and build the confidence to handle difficult conversations.
The ongoing work between people who still have to work together on Monday. We resolve conflicts that have stalled, build programs and processes managers will actually use, and coach the managers running them to resolution.
We prepare managers for high-stakes conversations with a clear structure, the evidence, and language that holds up, then check the decision against policy and precedent so it stays consistent. We coach the delivery itself, including how to handle emotion and resistance, and we can support you after with documentation, expectations, and next steps.
For teams that have outgrown the structure they started with. As organizations evolve, we partner alongside leaders to shape the future organization, develop leaders, and guide change efforts to ensure successful adoption and sustain progress.
California labor law is its own specialty, and most companies this size have never had anyone whose actual job was keeping up with it. We audit what you have, discover where the gaps are, and develop a plan to close them.
Getting all of it right at once is hard: the structure, the everyday conflicts, the conversations nobody wants to have, and the compliance underneath all of it. Denise and Amy have spent their careers on those four things from the inside, which is a different job from advising on them.
Denise is a seasoned HR leader with more than three decades in HR operations, employee relations, leadership coaching, and organizational development. She is known for a clear, practical approach to complex challenges, with deep expertise in union environments and high-stakes investigations.
Amy is a senior HR leader and executive coach with more than twenty years across public agencies, higher education, tech, manufacturing, and agriculture. She is known for bringing clarity to situations that are emotionally charged, complicated, or hard to say out loud.
An approach built for a company twice your size will not fit yours. We shape the work around what is actually in front of you, so the operations run, people work together, and the hard conversations get handled with confidence.
In person or on a call, whichever is easier. The point is to understand where you are actually running into roadblocks, which is rarely where it looks like from outside.
What we would do, what it would take, and whether we are the right people for it at all. If we are not, we will say so on that first call and point you at somebody better.
A plan built for your organization rather than lifted from the last one. Then we are there for the work itself, getting you ready to lead it or sitting in the room while you do.
Tell us what is going on and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right people for it.
