One HR foundation for every company you buy.

We support your firm across the entire investment lifecycle. That starts with HR compliance reviews during due diligence and continues through integration, ongoing HR support for each portfolio company, and a dedicated help line for employees.

Every portfolio company works to the same standards, with documentation tailored to how that business actually operates.

Yes. Our HR compliance evaluation reports identify potential risks and liabilities in areas like payroll, benefits, and labor laws, so you know what you are buying before you close.

We start with an HR assessment, build a customized HR roadmap, and then carry out the recommendations in it. That can include change management and culture alignment, HR technology migration, and consolidating payroll and other back-office functions.

For one PE client, we moved 11 separate payroll systems onto a single master payroll.

Not necessarily. PuzzleHR supports a wide range of HCM and payroll platforms, including ADP and Paylocity.

When consolidating makes sense, we work directly with each company’s admin to take on the bulk of the implementation, and our document transfer service protects data integrity when systems change.

Each portfolio company works with a dedicated HR Business Partner and HR Service Partner. They attend standing meetings with the company, handle everyday HR questions, and support employee relations, disciplinary matters, and investigations.

Your firm also gets a quarterly business review with the HR Business Partner.

Employees can reach a dedicated HR help line, which improves engagement and takes administrative work off your leadership team.

Our Employee Direct Connect service answers 80% of HR questions in 30 seconds or less.

Yes. HR is where most firms start, and we can consolidate other areas of back-office as the relationship grows, including managed payroll, timecard services, managed benefits, and HRIS administration.

Private equity firms outsource HR across portfolio companies to standardize the HR function, remove compliance liability, and protect EBITDA without adding headcount at every portco. A fractional HR model gives each company in the portfolio a full HR department on a subscription, run to one standard the operating partner can see.

This page covers what unmanaged HR costs a portfolio, how outsourced HR works across multiple companies, and what it does to exit value.

Every portfolio company carries HR risk, and most of it stays invisible until diligence. Worker misclassification, unpaid overtime, missing handbooks, mishandled leave, and expired compliance postings sit on the books as unrecorded liabilities. One company's exposure is a nuisance. Fifteen companies' exposure is a pattern that shows up in every exit.

The second problem is inconsistency. Each portco runs HR its own way, on its own platform, with its own gaps. The operating partner has no single view of risk, cost, or quality across the portfolio.

The three options are build, buy, or outsource. Building means adding an HR hire at every portco, which raises G&A and drags on the multiple. Buying a PEO means co-employment and ripping out payroll systems. Outsourcing to a fractional HR provider keeps each company's systems in place and runs the HR function to one standard across the portfolio.

Outsourced HR fits the PE model because it is modular and subscription-based. A portco takes just compliance, just payroll administration, just leave management, or the full department. Coverage scales up during a hiring push and down after a restructure. No new FTEs. No renegotiation.

No. A PEO co-employs the workforce and usually requires moving to its own payroll and benefits platforms. Outsourced HR is a service, not co-employment. The portfolio company stays the sole employer, keeps its existing systems, and buys only the HR functions it wants. For firms that value clean cap tables and platform flexibility across a portfolio, that distinction shows up at exit.

Yes, in two ways. It keeps HR off the payroll as fixed G&A, which protects EBITDA and the multiple it earns. And it produces documented, defensible HR operations that survive buyer diligence.

Undocumented HR liabilities get found in quality-of-earnings and legal diligence. When they surface late, they turn into purchase-price adjustments or deal delays. Standardized HR records across the portfolio remove that friction before the buyer's lawyers start digging.

A carve-out or add-on needs a working HR function on day one, and the transition clock is short. Standing up HR internally takes months. A fractional provider steps in immediately, runs payroll and compliance from the first cycle, and migrates records without breaking data integrity.

This matters most during the transition services agreement (TSA) window, when the seller's HR support is about to switch off and the acquired company has nothing of its own yet.

PuzzleHR evaluates risk across five areas: talent, policy, compliance, culture, and organizational vitality. Its analysis identifies HR-related business risks and the mitigation steps needed to address them.

Noncompliance with federal, state, and local labor laws can drag down business results and expose portfolio companies to legal and financial risk. PuzzleHR reviews compliance and outlines the steps needed to mitigate exposure.

PuzzleHR uses a proprietary diagnostic system to deliver the intelligence needed to de-risk investments, decrease costs, and increase profitability at portfolio companies.

Managed Human Resources is PuzzleHR’s outsourced HR solution, where PuzzleHR’s team manages HR functions—such as compliance, benefits, and learning and development—on behalf of a company, rather than just advising on them.

PuzzleHR can add value at any stage of the investment lifecycle: during due diligence before an acquisition, post-close to mitigate HR risk, during add-on acquisition integrations, and throughout the hold period to improve portfolio performance.

A conversation with our team about how HR runs across your portfolio companies. We look at payroll and HRIS, compliance, benefits, and hiring, then show you where consolidating could save time and money and reduce risk.

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