About Amy Hagan

Employment Investigations

Workplace investigations are one of Amy’s primary areas of expertise.

Amy is an AWI-CH Certified Workplace Investigator through the Association of Workplace Investigators and has conducted high-level employment investigations for dozens of public and private organizations.

Her investigative experience includes allegations involving:

• Discrimination
• Harassment
• Retaliation
• Workplace misconduct
• Policy violations
• Hostile work environment allegations
• Leadership and executive complaints
• Conflicts of interest
• Ethics concerns
• Employee relations matters
• Workplace behavior and conduct
• Complex interpersonal and organizational complaints

Amy brings an unusual level of operational HR experience to the investigative process. Having spent decades managing employee relations, labor relations, HR operations, and executive-level decision-making, she understands how an investigation fits within the broader employment environment.

Her approach emphasizes neutrality, thorough evidence review, carefully structured witness interviews, credibility analysis, clear allegation framing, and well-supported factual findings.

She is frequently engaged when organizations need an experienced independent investigator who can manage sensitive, high-profile, or particularly complex workplace matters.

Executive HR Leadership

Amy has spent much of her career leading entire human resources functions.

She has served in senior HR leadership roles including Chief Human Resources Officer and Human Resources Director and has managed HR operations for organizations ranging from growing businesses to large, complex public-sector organizations.

Her experience includes responsibility for the full HR lifecycle, including:

• Employee and labor relations
• Workplace investigations
• Talent acquisition
• Compensation and classification
• Benefits administration
• Performance management
• Organizational development
• Training and leadership development
• Leave and accommodation management
• HR compliance
• Workforce planning
• Succession planning
• HR technology
• Policy development
• Executive coaching
• Labor negotiations
• Risk management
• Organizational restructuring
• HR operations and administration

Amy is equally comfortable developing long-term HR strategy and stepping into the day-to-day operational realities required to make that strategy work.

She has built HR departments from the ground up, redesigned existing functions, established policies and systems, developed HR teams, improved workflows, implemented new programs, and led organizations through significant organizational change.

Government HR Expertise

A significant portion of Amy’s career has been spent serving public-sector organizations.

Her experience spans federal, state, county, municipal, and special-district government, giving her extensive familiarity with the unique operational, regulatory, political, labor, and organizational challenges that exist within the public sector.

She has led HR and employee-relations functions for government organizations and has provided consulting, investigations, organizational studies, labor-relations support, and HR advisory services to public agencies throughout the United States.

Her public-sector work has included advising and supporting cities, counties, special districts, public authorities, and large government departments on matters involving:

• Employee and labor relations
• Workplace investigations
• Collective bargaining
• Grievances and disciplinary matters
• Organizational structure
• HR department design
• Classification and compensation
• Policy development
• Performance management
• Leadership development
• Workforce planning
• Succession planning
• Organizational assessments
• HR compliance
• Risk management

Amy understands that public-sector HR requires more than technical knowledge. It requires the ability to work effectively with elected officials, appointed leadership, boards, unions, department heads, employees, attorneys, and community stakeholders — often simultaneously.

Corporate HR Experience

Approximately half of Amy’s career has also been spent in corporate America.

Her private-sector experience includes major national organizations such as Goodyear Tire, Cisco, and PepsiCo, along with healthcare, behavioral healthcare, technology, private-equity-backed organizations, and consulting environments.

This combination of public- and private-sector experience gives Amy a particularly broad perspective.

She understands the structure, process, accountability, labor environment, and public scrutiny common in government organizations while also understanding the speed, financial pressures, operational demands, and growth expectations of private companies.

That allows her to bring lessons from both environments into her consulting work.

Employee & Labor Relations

Employee and labor relations have been central to Amy’s work throughout her career.

She has managed complex employee-relations matters involving conduct, performance, discipline, workplace conflict, accommodations, leave, policy violations, management concerns, executive issues, and sensitive terminations.

Her labor-relations experience includes collective bargaining, contract interpretation, grievance administration, labor-management relations, mediation, arbitration preparation, management response to labor complaints, and day-to-day administration of collective bargaining agreements.

Amy has served in both first- and second-chair roles during labor negotiations and has participated in national bargaining efforts in the private sector.

She has worked with numerous major labor organizations and understands both the strategic and operational sides of managing a unionized workforce.

Organizational Leadership & HR Operations

Amy’s consulting work is deeply operational.

She works with organizations that need more than advice — they need someone who understands how to run the function.

She has led HR operations from beginning to end, including developing organizational strategy, building HR infrastructure, establishing policies and processes, designing departments, managing staff, coaching leaders, creating performance systems, addressing compliance concerns, managing employee relations, and presenting recommendations to executive leadership and governing boards.

Her work frequently includes:

• HR department creation and redesign
• Organizational assessments
• HR audits
• Operational improvement
• Policy and procedure development
• Leadership coaching
• Executive advisory services
• Workforce planning
• Organizational restructuring
• Succession planning
• Performance management
• Employee-relations strategy
• Labor-relations strategy
• HR technology implementation
• Management training
• Change management

Amy is often brought into organizations when the situation is complicated — when HR needs to be built, repaired, strengthened, reorganized, or temporarily led by an experienced executive.

Executive Coaching & Leadership Advisory

Amy has spent decades advising executives, department heads, managers, and HR leaders through difficult organizational and employee situations.

Her executive coaching work focuses on practical leadership rather than theory.

She helps leaders navigate issues such as:

• Difficult employee situations
• Organizational change
• Accountability
• Performance management
• Executive communication
• Conflict
• Leadership transitions
• Team dynamics
• Organizational structure
• Decision-making
• Employee and labor relations
• Succession planning
• Building stronger management teams

Because Amy has sat on both sides of the executive table — as the HR leader responsible for advising senior management and as an outside consultant advising organizational leadership — she understands the pressures leaders face when making difficult personnel and organizational decisions.

Board & Executive Presentations

Throughout her career, Amy has regularly presented complex HR, labor, organizational, and operational matters to executive leadership teams, governing boards, elected officials, and senior decision-makers.

She is experienced in translating complicated HR issues into clear business and organizational recommendations.

Her presentations have included matters involving organizational structure, investigations, workforce strategy, compensation, labor relations, HR operations, risk, policy, succession planning, organizational change, and executive decision-making.

Amy believes senior leaders should not have to become HR experts to make sound people decisions. Her role is to provide them with the information, context, options, and professional judgment necessary to make informed decisions.

Organizational Development

Amy’s expertise also extends deeply into organizational development and organizational design.

She works with organizations to examine how people, positions, leadership structures, and systems interact — and where those systems are creating unnecessary problems.

Her work includes:

• Organizational design
• Department restructuring
• Role clarification
• Spans and layers
• Leadership development
• Strategic workforce planning
• Succession planning
• Change management
• Team effectiveness
• Organizational assessments
• Performance systems
• Executive coaching

Amy frequently finds that what initially appears to be an employee problem is actually a structural, leadership, process, or accountability problem.

Her approach focuses on identifying the underlying organizational issue rather than simply addressing the immediate symptom.

Teaching & Developing HR Professionals

Amy has also spent approximately two decades teaching at the college level.

That experience has strongly shaped how she works with executives, managers, and HR professionals.

She believes effective consulting should leave an organization stronger than it was before the engagement.

That means not simply solving the immediate problem, but helping leaders understand why the problem occurred, how to recognize it in the future, and how to build better systems going forward.

HR Does AI (opens in a new tab)

Amy is also the founder of HR Does AI (opens in a new tab), a separate practice focused specifically on helping HR organizations understand and responsibly implement artificial intelligence.

While AI is an increasingly important part of modern HR operations, Hagan HR Consulting remains focused on Amy’s broader work in executive HR leadership, employment investigations, employee and labor relations, HR operations, and organizational development.

Organizations specifically seeking AI consulting, HR automation, AI policy development, or HR AI implementation can learn more through HR Does AI (opens in a new tab).

A Career Built Around Solving Difficult HR Problems

Amy’s career has not been limited to one industry, one type of employer, or one area of HR.

She has worked across government and corporate America.

She has operated inside both union and non-union environments.

She has led HR departments and independently investigated them.

She has advised CEOs, executives, boards, government leaders, department heads, managers, and HR professionals.

She has built HR functions, transformed existing ones, negotiated labor agreements, coached executives, investigated serious workplace complaints, redesigned organizations, developed leaders, and managed the daily realities of running complex HR operations.

That breadth of experience allows Amy to quickly understand both the immediate issue an organization is facing and the larger organizational dynamics that may be contributing to it.

Sometimes an organization needs an investigator.

Sometimes it needs an executive advisor.

Sometimes it needs a stronger HR operation.

Sometimes it needs a structural change.

And sometimes it needs an experienced HR leader who can step into a complicated situation, identify what is really happening, and help lead the organization forward.

That is the work Hagan HR Consulting was built to do.