We have lived this work from the inside.
Common Ground Compliance started with a simple frustration. The federal and state rules that govern a workforce are knowable, but the help to follow them is either too generic to act on or priced for companies far larger than the ones that need it most. We are building what we wished we had: clear, current footing for growing employers, in plain language, kept up to date.
Compliance is rarely the hard part. Keeping up with it is.
The obligations themselves are usually clear once you find them. What wears a team down is everything around that: the changes nobody announced, the deadlines buried inside routine filings, and the scramble to show the right thing was done after someone asks. We started here because this is the part that quietly breaks.
The moving target
Rules that change quietly
A new state requirement or an updated federal threshold rarely arrives with a headline. It tends to surface in a filing or an audit, well after the window to prepare has closed.
The language problem
Written for lawyers, not operators
Most guidance is either a paywalled legal memo or a generic checklist. Neither one tells a busy team what actually applies to them, or what to do when a deadline is 72 hours out.
The proof problem
Doing it right is only half of it
When someone asks how a decision was made, good intentions are not evidence. A record does: what the obligation was, what was done, and when.
What we believe
We pair real HR experience with the systems to back it up. We have sat with the audits, the filing deadlines, and the gray areas where the rule is not obvious until someone has to answer for it. That is the perspective behind every brief. We believe compliance should be clear enough to act on, current enough to trust, and documented enough to mitigate the risks.
A few principles we do not bend on.
These are not slogans. They are the standard we hold every brief to before we ask anyone to rely on it.
Descriptive
We explain, we do not direct
We tell you what the rules are and how they tend to work in practice, so you can see your obligations clearly. We are not attorneys, and none of this is legal advice.
Current
Useful before the product ships
While Groundwork is in development, we publish free monthly breakdowns of what is changing in federal and state HR and compliance, so following along keeps you ahead today.
In the open
We show our work
We would rather hand you a real example than a promise. The sample brief on the homepage is exactly what subscribers receive, in plain language, with the dates that matter.
What is here now, and what is coming.
We would rather earn your attention before the product than after it. So we are building in the open, and we are useful from day one.
The Common Ground Brief
Monthly notes on the federal and state HR and compliance changes that matter, written for operators, not lawyers, with what to do about each one. Free to read, and yours the moment you join the list.
Groundwork
The system we are building to make all of this repeatable and mitigate the risk: every obligation organized, every action logged, timestamped, and provable. It is not available yet. Joining the list is how you follow the build and get early access when it opens.
Follow the build from Tampa, Florida.
Monthly updates on the federal and state HR and compliance changes that matter, with what to do about them, plus early access when Groundwork opens. Written for operators, not lawyers.