Most startups forget SOC 2 has an HR component until audit day…

When a startup gears up for SOC 2, the focus almost always falls on the technical side. Engineers draft diagrams of cloud infrastructure. IT runs penetration tests. Founders spend late nights reviewing access logs and vendor contracts.

Everyone’s bracing for the big day. Then, the auditor asks a question that wasn’t on anyone’s radar: “Can you show me where your employees acknowledged your security policies?”

The founder looks around. Someone remembers sending the handbook in Slack six months ago. Another says, “I think we had people sign something on their first day.”

The auditor shakes their head. “I’ll need actual records.” And just like that, the room goes quiet.

The part no one warns you about

SOC 2 isn’t just about protecting data with firewalls and encryption. It’s about proving your people know how to handle that data responsibly.

This is where many startups stumble.

Onboarding: One CEO told us he gave every new hire a welcome chat about culture but never wrote down a process. When the auditor asked, “Where’s the record of training?”—he had nothing.

Handbooks: A team had copied a 40-page handbook from the internet. But when the auditor interviewed employees, none of them had actually seen it. “If it lives in Google Drive and nobody reads it,” the auditor said, “it doesn’t count.”

Offboarding: Another founder explained that they “usually” remembered to shut off accounts when someone left. The auditor asked for proof of the last three terminations. They had screenshots for one… and nothing for the others.

Incident response: A startup had a brilliant technical incident response plan. But, when asked, “What would HR do if an employee mishandled sensitive data?”—the person handling HR said, “We’ve never talked about that.”

These gaps aren’t about bad intentions. They happen because founders assume SOC 2 lives in the server room, not in the employee handbook.

What happens on audit day

We’ve seen this play out again and again.

One founder stayed up three nights in a row, back-dating policy acknowledgments in DocuSign so the auditor would have something to review.

Another startup had to pay for an extra month of auditor time—thousands of dollars—because they needed to rebuild their termination records from scratch.

In one painful case, a team passed all their technical checks, but got flagged for weak HR compliance. Their SOC 2 certification was delayed by six months, which cost them a contract with a major U.S. healthcare client.

The irony? Their tech was airtight. Their people's processes weren’t.

The hidden cost

Forgetting HR in SOC 2 prep has three consequences:

Lost time. Weeks spent chasing signatures, updating policies, and recreating records under pressure.

Lost money. Extended audits, legal costs, and—worst of all—delayed deals.

Lost trust. Auditors and clients alike wonder: if you can’t track your own policies, how can you safeguard theirs?

How Roire HR helps

This is where we step in. At Roire HR Services, we bridge the gap between HR and compliance so founders don’t end up scrambling.

We make the HR side of SOC 2 real and repeatable:

Onboarding: Security training baked into the first week—explained in plain language, with proof of completion.

Handbooks: Not dusty templates, but bilingual (Spanish, when applicable), culturally aligned handbooks employees read and auditors accept.

Offboarding: Automated, documented processes so every departure closes the compliance loop.

Incident response: Clear HR protocols that fit alongside IT’s playbook, so people know exactly what to do.

We don’t just check boxes. We build habits. By the time the auditor asks, you already have the receipts.

Our philosophy

We believe compliance should strengthen culture, not strangle it.

That’s why our motto is: “We make compliance human, not bureaucratic.”

Because at its best, SOC 2 isn’t just about certification. It’s about showing clients, investors, and employees that your company takes trust seriously—both in systems and in people.

The takeaway

If you’re preparing for SOC 2, don’t make the mistake of treating it as just an IT project. Your HR practices are part of the story too.

Audit day can either be a scramble of lost signatures and awkward silences… or it can be the day you prove to the world that you run a company built on trust, from servers to staff.

The difference lies in how you prepare.

Let’s make sure your HR side of compliance is as strong as your tech side.