Facilitate real conversations.
Automation handles noise; humans handle nuance. HR should make hard conversations clearer, earlier, and fairer.
Micah Keawe — Founder & Principal HR Consultant
Actually good HR, designed.
I help founders and executives build principled people systems: fair compensation, clear promotions, and headcount planning that scale with trust.
hello@besthr.coWhat Actually Good HR Means
Actually good HR means nobody gets blindsided. It is a culture of clarity: crisp communication, shared expectations, and as few surprises as possible.
Companies scale, pivot, and innovate, but too often run copy-paste HR playbooks. If the company is trying to be best-in-class, the People systems should be too. Start with the essentials.
Automate the grind.
Spreadsheets should not eat the function. Build workflows and data pipelines so people can spend judgment where it matters.
Set expectations that stick.
Trust comes from clarity. Roles, growth paths, goals, and decisions should be simple enough to explain and repeat.
Ship processes worth bragging about.
If it affects pay, promotion, or headcount, it deserves product-level craft: tested, readable, and built for use.
How I Work
Discovery & audit
We map goals, risks, constraints, current practices, and the places where employees or managers are guessing.
Design & decision
I draft the system in plain English, with trade-offs visible. You approve the path before we operationalize it.
Implementation & enablement
Docs, comms, templates, manager guidance, and handoff. The output is meant to be used, not admired.
Pricing
People systems are foundational. When they are aligned, documented, and measurable, they become assets instead of recurring fires.
Pricing is straightforward: advisory support, focused sprints, and fractional leadership, each scoped to the level of operating ownership your team needs.
Advisory Retainer
$12,500 / month
Principled guidance on tap for founders and executives.
- Up to 2 standing calls per month
- Asynchronous reviews of docs, comp bands, and comms
- On-call input during cycles or sensitive changes
Project Sprints
$18,000–$32,000 / sprint
Fixed-scope, outcome-driven work for a specific people system.
- 2-5 weeks per sprint with defined deliverables
- Plain-English drafts plus working templates
- Leader and manager enablement materials
Fractional People Ops Lead
$38,000 / month
Senior People leadership capacity for teams that need experienced operating ownership.
- Embedded operating cadence with your team
- Own key cycles: compensation, promotion, and planning
- Stand up processes, vendors, dashboards, and rituals
Pricing is flexible for companies under $1M in revenue.
“Micah has a rare ability to design people systems that are principled and pragmatic.”
About
Former People leader at OpenAI. Operator at heart. I treat HR like product: design the system, test it against real constraints, write it in plain English, and ship it. No theater, just outcomes.