HR overwhelm is real
in small business.


We help you reduce the load.

HR Services for Canadian Small Business

Formerly delivered through ConnectsUs HR since 2006, Sienna HR provides practical, cost-effective HR support for Canadian small businesses, startups, and US companies with staff in Canada. Our services include:

If you’ve worked with ConnectsUs HR before, nothing has changed except the name above the door. Same team. Same service. Same standards.

HR Services

HR typically evolves as follows and can get more complex as your business grows. We’ll meet you where you are and build from there.

HR Essentials

Employment Agreements
& Handbook

Your employment agreements and handbook sit at the core of the employment relationship. When drafted properly, they don’t just set expectations and support management decisions, they materially change the financial impact when things go wrong and form the baseline for everything HR.

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HR Support

Expert HR help
when you need it

HR help without committing to a full-time hire. HR support can be part-time, fractional, on-call, or project-based, depending on what you need. Day-to-day staff issues, tricky conversations, recruiting support, one-off projects, and help hiring your first HR role when you’re ready.

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HR Software

Move
your HR online

Still managing HR through email and spreadsheets? It may be time to move it online. We clean up your HR, optimize your workflows, transition everything into affordable HR software that we set up, and train your people to use it. Faster processes, better compliance, and fewer mistakes.

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Who We Help

We provide HR support to Canadian small businesses operating primarily in Ontario, Alberta, and BC.

Who we work with:

You need HR support that works in the real world, not corporate theory.

You need the right HR basics in place so issues do not turn into distractions or legal exposure. That usually means clear employment agreements, a practical employee handbook, and guidance you can actually use when people problems show up. You want help managing performance, attendance, terminations, pay practices, and workplace expectations without HR jargon or overbuilt processes.

You also want a trusted sounding board when something feels off and you need to sanity-check a decision before it becomes a problem. We support small businesses with straightforward HR advice, compliance that fits your size, and structure that helps you run the business instead of reacting to HR issues.

You’re a US-based business with employees working in Canada and need Canadian HR support without hiring Canadian HR headcount.

Canadian employment rules are materially different from the US, especially around termination exposure, notice, severance, leaves, and enforceability of contracts. Running your Canadian team using US assumptions creates real financial and legal risk.

You need an HR partner who understands Canadian employment standards by province and can translate them into practical employment agreements, policies, and processes that fit your existing culture and operating model. We help you hire in Canada, issue compliant offers and contracts, align handbooks and workplace policies, and support employee relations and terminations, without forcing you into a heavyweight HR structure.

You’re hiring your first employees or scaling quickly and want structure before bad habits get locked in.

Early growth is where most long-term HR problems start. Inconsistent offers, vague expectations, side deals, and managers improvising all create confusion and risk. Once that culture sets in, it’s hard and expensive to unwind.

We help you put the right structure in place early, including strong employment agreements, a clear company playbook, assist with workforce planning, recruiting and onboarding.

The goal is to support growth without slowing you down, while keeping expectations consistent and defensible as the team grows.

You’re responsible for HR and overloaded with day-to-day work, leaving important projects stalled.

You need experienced, practical support that actually reduces your workload and moves stalled work forward.

We act as an extension of your team, helping with projects like reviewing and tightening HR materials, updating employment agreements and handbooks, improving core HR processes, and supporting investigations or complex employee issues.

We also support HR software implementations, starting with process cleanup so the system reflects how your business actually operates.

When you need a second opinion or a trusted sounding board on sensitive issues, you get direct, experienced input from someone who understands the realities of HR, not just best-practice theory.

You work in operations or finance and HR responsibilities keep creeping into your role.

You are focused on running the business, but HR issues keep pulling you in. Hiring, terminations, attendance problems, documentation gaps, and policy questions start consuming time you do not have. Meanwhile, important HR work gets pushed aside because it never feels urgent until it is.

We step in to take ownership of specific HR responsibilities or long-ignored projects, clean up inconsistencies, and put structure in place so the same issues stop recurring.

If you are considering moving from paper-based HR to HR software, we help you standardize and streamline first, then implement in a way that improves efficiency, compliance, and visibility.

Your team is fully remote or mostly remote and informal rules are no longer enough.

Remote and hybrid work introduces different risks and pressure points. Expectations around availability, scheduling, overtime, performance, privacy, and data security need to be clear, especially when managers are not physically present. What works in an office often breaks down when everything is distributed.

We help you put clear, enforceable employment agreements and handbooks in place that reflect how remote and hybrid work actually functions. HR run through email and spreadsheets becomes particularly chaotic in a remote environment. You may benefit significantly from transitioning to HR software so everything lives in one place online and is accessible to both management and employees. We do the heavy lifting by reviewing and tightening your HR workflows, configuring the system properly, and supporting rollout and training so the transition actually sticks.

Plastics Manufacturing
Ontario/USA

“ConnectsUs took full ownership of a complex cross-border HR project and delivered precise, fully customized Canadian employment agreements and policies. Their expertise, responsiveness, and attention to detail gave us complete confidence in our Ontario HR framework.

Anthony C. Satira
Chief Financial Officer
Multi-Plastics Inc.
Ohio, United States

full review

Communications Systems
Alberta

“ConnectsUs guided us through our HR setup with patience, clarity, and real expertise. They delivered exactly what we needed, on time and at a fair price, leaving us confident, protected, and fully compliant.

Nicolette Chapman
Managing Director
Onyx Communications
Alberta, Canada

full review

Cleaning & Restoration
BC

“ConnectsUs transformed our document-based HR into a professional employee manual and successfully transitioned us to HR software. Their hands-on support, combined HR and technology expertise, and thoughtful training delivered immediate ROI. Our team loves the system, and we couldn’t be happier with the result..

Irene Barlas-Rimar
President
Coit Residential Cleaning & Restoration Services
BC, Canada

full review

More Client Stories

Why Us?

Sienna HR is the services arm of ConnectsUs HR. Since 2006 and over 10,000 subscribers, ConnectsUs has worked exclusively with Canadian small businesses and we understand what works.

We are a boutique firm by choice. No recycled frameworks. No junior handoffs. You work with one dedicated liaison who knows your business and cares about getting it right for you.

Your work is led by Ariane Laird, Founder of ConnectsUs HR and Principal Consultant at Sienna HR. As a business owner, Ariane understands HR as part of running a business, not as a separate corporate exercise. She is passionate about customer service and relationships and ensuring that HR is handled right from the start.

Our work has a strong legal track record, and clients return to us year after year, with many having worked with us for over a decade.

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Ariane Laird
Principal Consultant

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