Red & Associates, a Spokane Valley human-resources consulting firm formed six years ago, is joining forces with Moloney+O'Neill, the longtime Spokane-based insurance and employee-benefits brokerage, executives at the two firms say.

John Moloney, president of Moloney+O'Neill, says the alliance—at least for now—won't involve a formal merger with Red & Associates or an acquisition of its assets. Rather, it will be more of an operational melding that will enable the brokerage to offer its clients added employment-related services and also expose Red & Associates to more potential clients.

"It's real important that we keep them as a separate entity" for the time being, Moloney says. "They're going to have the same management. They're going to continue to have independent clients as well as shared clients. It's going to be good for their business, and good for ours."

He adds, "We're going to have a co-ownership. We're both splitting the cost of everything. We basically are doing a joint venture."

Ultimately, though, he and Red & Associates co-founder Pam DeCounter say, the two firms expect to be operating fully under one umbrella.

"We're just really, really excited. This is something that hasn't been done that we know of in many places," DeCounter says.

While most of Moloney+O'Neill's clients are business insurance accounts, employment-related issues such as regulatory compliance, discrimination, and safety training are areas where those clients also have considerable risk exposure, Moloney says. Thus, the brokerage can provide a lot of added value to its clients by being able to offer them Red & Associates' consulting expertise in those areas, he says.

DeCounter says, "For us, it is a perfect partnership, because we're able to work with their employers and employees at minimizing that risk. There is great benefit there. Where an employer is most at risk is through their employees."

Moloney+O'Neill, founded in 1947, currently employs 99 people. It occupies a total of about 25,000 square feet of space on the sixth, seventh, and eighth floors of the Lincoln Building, at 818 W. Riverside, and also operates a satellite office at 7950 Meadowlark Way, in Coeur d'Alene.

Red & Associates, which DeCounter and Angi Shamblin founded in 1996, employs eight people and occupies a 2,600-square-foot building the founders and their husbands own at 10209 E. Broadway.

DeCounter says one of that firm's employees already has moved from the Valley to Moloney+O'Neill's offices, and she and Shamblin will relocate there next month. They envision that the employees remaining in the Valley will move downtown within the next 18 months, she says.

Along with consulting, Red & Associates does project work such as rewriting employee handbooks, doing background checks, and interviewing job candidates, DeCounter says. It also offers human-resources outsourcing.