Services
Six ways to work together
Every engagement starts from the same conviction: education changes workplaces when it's designed for the people actually in the room — not bought off a shelf.
Workshops & manager training
Ready-to-book half-day sessions for leaders and teams, delivered on your campus or online. Practical, discussion-based, and built for unionized environments.
Curriculum & onboarding design
Your own internal education program — a manager-essentials series, a real 90-day onboarding curriculum (not a benefits binder), or a train-the-trainer package your HR team delivers themselves.
Required workplace training
The training Ontario employers must provide — harassment prevention, workplace violence, accessibility — delivered as genuine education people remember, not a compliance checkbox they click through.
Hiring-process consulting
Structured interview guides, hiring-committee training, and selection processes that are fair, defensible, and actually predictive. I teach your people to hire well — I don't do staffing.
Wellness program review
A structured look at your existing wellness and psychological-health supports, benchmarked against good practice, with a prioritized and realistic roadmap.
Advisory retainer
A set number of hours each month as your on-call wellness and education advisor — senior expertise without the full-time hire.
✦a note left for you — about this list
It's tempting, early on, to list every service you could possibly perform — it feels safer, like casting a wider net. It works the other way. A firm that does one thing gets referred: "she's the person who does wellness education for universities" travels from one HR director to another on its own. A firm that does everything is impossible to describe, so nobody describes it to anyone.
Notice this page's trick: six services, but really one sentence — education for people at work. Add a new service only when it still fits that sentence, and ideally only when a client has already asked for it. Let demand pull the menu; don't push it.
✦another, about the one service that isn't here
People will assume an "HR consultant" does hiring. Notice the card above says hiring-process consulting — teaching committees to interview well — and not recruitment. Recruiting is a sales business: contingency fees, candidate pipelines, endless outbound. It shares a word with your firm and none of the muscles. The fastest way to lose a niche is to accept work that merely rhymes with it. Practise the sentence: "That's not what I do — but here's who does it well." Referring work away, gracefully, is a senior move. It builds more trust than taking it.
Signature workshops
Ready to book this term
Each session runs as a half-day (3.5 hours) for up to 25 participants, in person or online, and is tailored to your institution before delivery. Priced per session — most engagements fit within a department's direct-approval authority.
Leading Through Burnout
Half-day · For people leadersWhat burnout actually looks like on a team, how to have the early conversation before it becomes a leave, and how to rebalance workload without pretending resources are coming. Leaders leave with a one-page conversation guide they'll really use.
Best for: chairs, managers, and supervisors of staff teamsReceiving a Disclosure
Half-day · For people leadersWhen an employee says “I'm struggling” — what to say, what not to promise, where the duty to accommodate begins, and how to loop in HR without breaking trust. Built around realistic higher-ed scenarios, not scripts.
Best for: managers, HR partners, and anyone staff confide inDifficult Conversations at Work
Half-day · All staffConflict de-escalation and honest feedback for colleagues who have to keep working together — in departments, committees, and shared spaces. Highly interactive; participants practise on their own real (anonymized) situations.
Best for: intact teams and departments after — or before — a rough patchNeed something these don't cover — return-to-work, psychological safety for team leads, supporting staff through change? Most of my work is custom. Tell me what your people are facing.
✦a note about the prices you can't see
The most common way solo consultants fail isn't lack of clients — it's underpricing the clients they have. Institutions buying training are not price-shoppers; they are risk-shoppers. A too-low quote doesn't read as a bargain, it reads as junior. Price per deliverable, never per hour (an hourly rate invites someone to do arithmetic on your worth; a workshop price invites them to judge the outcome).
And a rule for later: every time three clients in a row say yes without hesitating, your price is too low. Raise it for the next one. The reference base you're building is exactly what makes the raise stick.
How it works
From first conversation to delivery
A straightforward process, built for how institutions actually approve training — no long sales cycle, no surprises once the invoice arrives.
A free 30-minute conversation
We talk through what's happening on your team and whether education is the right tool for it — no obligation either way.
A tailored proposal
A short, plain-language proposal covering scope, format, and price — priced per deliverable, so there's a number to take to your approver, not a range.
Customization to your institution
Scenarios, policies, and union context specific to your workplace are built into the session before it's ever delivered.
Delivery, plus a short follow-up
The session runs on your campus or online, followed by a brief check-in to see what landed and what your people need next.
Approach
“Good training doesn't tell people what to think. It gives them somewhere to practise the conversation they've been avoiding.”
Every session is built on adult-learning principles: short on slides, long on practice, and honest about the constraints your people actually work within.
✦a note about hours and products
A consultancy that sells hours has a hard ceiling: your calendar. A consultancy that sells things it designed once does not. The workshop you build this fall can be delivered twenty times over three years — each delivery a day's work, the design already paid for. This is why the contract must always keep the workshop's intellectual property with you and give the client a licence to the experience. Guard that clause like the asset it is: your materials are the inventory of this business, and they're the only part that compounds.
About
Jessica Yu
I've spent my career inside university HR, in employee wellness — designing education for staff who are facing real challenges: burnout, conflict, health changes, and the hard conversations that come with all three.
That inside view is the difference. I know how collegial governance actually works, what unionized environments require, and why training that lands in a corporate office can fall flat in a department meeting. I build sessions for the room you actually have.
I work with universities, colleges, hospitals, municipalities, and community organizations across Ontario.
- University employee-wellness practitioner — education design and delivery for staff and leaders
- Specialist in mental health at work, accommodation, and return-to-work education
- Experienced facilitator in unionized, multi-stakeholder environments
✦a note about where clients come from
Your first clients will not come from this website. They will come from the ten people in higher-ed HR who already know your work — the OD leads and wellness peers at other institutions you've met at conferences and communities of practice. Write their names down. Tell them, plainly, what you now do. The website's job is only to make you look as credible as you already are when they go checking.
After that: teach in public. One useful LinkedIn post a week, one talk a quarter. Visibility that demonstrates the work beats any amount of advertising that describes it.
What clients say
Client feedback
This section will fill in as engagements are delivered. Every workshop closes with a request for two honest sentences — here's where they'll live.
“[ Client quote — to be added after first engagements ]”
“[ Client quote — to be added after first engagements ]”
“[ Client quote — to be added after first engagements ]”
FAQ
Questions institutions ask
If your question isn't here, the free 30-minute conversation covers the rest.
How much does a workshop cost?
Workshops are priced per session, not per hour, so the fee reflects the outcome rather than the clock. The exact price depends on format and customization — you'll get a specific number in the proposal, not a range to guess from.
Can you tailor a session to our institution?
Yes — every session is customized before delivery, using scenarios, policies, and union context specific to your workplace. Nothing goes out as a generic slide deck.
Do you deliver in person or online?
Both. Sessions are designed to be just as practical and interactive online as they are on campus — choose whichever suits your team and budget.
Do you work with organizations outside universities?
Yes. Alongside universities and colleges, I work with hospitals, municipalities, and community organizations across Ontario — most of my client base is higher education, but the same principles apply anywhere people are managing burnout, conflict, or accommodation.
How far in advance should we book?
Six to eight weeks gives comfortable room for scoping and customization, especially around a busy term. If you're working with less lead time, ask — it's often still possible.
Do you do recruitment or staffing?
No. I teach hiring committees to run fair, defensible, and predictive selection processes — I don't recruit candidates or provide staffing. If you need that, I'm glad to point you to people who do it well.
Contact
Tell me what your people are facing
The first conversation is free and useful either way — 30 minutes to talk through what's happening on your team and whether education is the right tool for it.
Or
Based in Guelph, Ontario · Serving institutions across Ontario, in person and online · Fully insured (professional & general liability)
✦a note about the months with no email
Consulting revenue is lumpy. There will be a month where this inbox is silent, and it will feel like the business is dying. It isn't — it's the rhythm of the trade, and every consultant before you has felt it. Two protections, built early: keep six months of expenses in the business account before you rely on this income, and convert your best workshop clients into monthly retainers — two retainers make the floor of a bad month a floor, not a pit.
And in the silent month, don't discount. Use it to design the next workshop. The quiet is when the inventory gets built.
🌱a letter for the founder — read when you're ready
Jessica — if you've found this, you've been reading your own website the way a visitor would. Good. Do that every few months; it's the cheapest strategy review there is. A few things worth knowing in advance, so they don't surprise you:
Year one is about proof, not profit. The goal is three delighted clients whose praise is captured in writing, not a revenue number. Deliver each engagement slightly beyond what was promised, then ask — while the glow is fresh — for two sentences you can quote. Those sentences are the firm's real balance sheet.
Keep the day job and the practice in separate rooms. If you're employed at a university, disclose this practice under its conflict-of-interest policy before your first paid engagement, never serve your own employer, and never build client materials on employer time or tools. The discipline feels bureaucratic; it is actually what lets both careers grow without one poisoning the other.
Growth has stages — don't skip one. First workshops (proof), then curriculum projects (margin), then retainers (stability). Only when retainers exist should you consider the bigger moves: incorporating, raising prices past the market rate, or bringing in an associate. Each stage funds the confidence for the next. The founders who burn out are the ones who tried to start at stage three.
Say no early and often. Every misfit engagement you accept costs you the referral you'd have earned from a fit one. "That's not what I do, but here's who does it well" — said warmly — is the most profitable sentence in consulting.
And when it gets lonely — solo practice does — remember that the quiet months build inventory, the hard clients build judgment, and the whole thing was designed so that what you already love doing (teaching people through their hardest working days) is also the product. There's nothing to become. Just more people to reach.
— left here for you, with confidence in the founder