Why I Started VirgilHR - An HR Tech Automation Compliance Solution

Earlier in my career, as a Director of HR for a tech start up, we decided to start hiring remote employees. It was an exciting time for me because it opened up our ability to start recruiting talent outside the DC area, which made my job a lot easier, so I thought. Little did I know the woes it would bring me from an employment and labor law perspective. As we started hiring more employees in different states and localities, and once we started hiring employees in California, I became inundated with legal requirements I had never encountered as an HR professional. Though wading through the complex legal landscape was burdensome, I found the challenge to be stimulating and even thought about pursuing a legal career as a result. But that’s how complicated it became - I started studying for the LSAT. Massachusetts passed a law restricting us from asking candidates about their salary history. Did that mean that we couldn’t ask the question if the candidate resided in Massachusetts or if we did business in Massachusetts? How would I know if the candidate was physically present in Massachusetts? I called the state legislature and their response was, “you won’t know, so just don’t ask the question.” Got it. Then the city of Philadelphia passed the same law. How were we to keep track of every locality passing these laws? The easiest thing to do would be to simply not ask the question at all. Being in the DC area, I experienced a lot of confusion when employees were working from home in Virginia three days per week but in the Maryland office twice per week - or vice versa. Which laws applied? Maryland’s or Virginia’s? The questions were endless, as?were the laws. So Google became my best friend. But time did not - I didn’t have enough of it, especially as an HR department of one. Here’s where even the most well-intentioned organizations see mistakes fall through the cracks. Here’s where you get in trouble.

Surely, there had to be a technical tool out there that could simply tell you what law applied to the work you were doing? But alas, no such tool existed. Everything was manual. The best solutions available still required you to spend time doing research and dig through layers of their websites. Because of these problems, the idea of VirgilHR formed in my mind, but it took years before I had the courage to quit my job, coral an amazing team, and build our fantastic, revolutionary product that, if I do say so myself, would change the way HR champions compliance in the future.?

So what makes VirgilHR different? First, no more research. I hated spending all that time on Google researching the legal requirements. I was always worried I was missing something, particularly the local nuances unknown to most. And I wasn’t confident I was finding the most up-to-date information. We provide you with prescriptive, real-time legal guidance in the moment, directly at your fingertips. No research required. Second, we offer several layers of education in our product. What do I mean by this? You may be handling a COVID-19 leave request for an employee using our solution, and Virgil will provide you with all the legal guidance you need to make the right, compliant decision based on all applicable laws, but we will also give you guidance on other areas, such as presumption of retaliation and discrimination associated to COVID-19 and other concurrent laws that may be relevant to the decision you’re making. Third, we’re fully automated and integrate directly into your HRIS, making our chat function with your HR team seamless, quick, and proactive. Reactive risk response is out the window. Fourth, we facilitate a self-service model. Depending on how your organization operates, you can now equip your managers with the right legal guidance to make compliant decisions too, without all the back-and-forth between managers and HR. Pretty cool, huh? There’s an exhaustive list of the benefits to using VirgilHR, but I’d hate to ruin the surprise. Check us out for yourself by learning more here and requesting a sales consultation.