Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
HR Voices is a scenario-based podcast for People Leaders who’ve actually had to make the call.
Each episode brings experienced HR and People leaders into realistic, anonymized workplace scenarios—the kind you recognize immediately. Performance issues. Messy conflicts. Investigations that don’t fit neatly into a policy box. Instead of talking about their own companies, guests react to outside cases and walk through how they’d think it through in real time.
There are no right answers here. What you’ll hear is judgment: how seasoned leaders balance risk, fairness, legal reality, and humanity when the stakes are high and the path isn’t obvious.
HR Voices is for HR, People Ops, legal, and leaders who want to hear how other smart humans actually handle employee relations—without confidentiality breaches, hypotheticals that feel fake, or a lecture on “best practices.”
Stacy Winsett & Rebecca Taylor | May 21
===
Speaker: [00:00:00] Oh, oh.
Speaker 3: and welcome to HR Voices. I'm your host, Rebecca Taylor, and I'm here with Stacie Winsett, Chief People Officer, RATPDev USA. Stacie, thank you so much for being here.
Speaker: Thank you for having me
Speaker 3: I'm excited to have you 'cause I know that your time is very hard to get. You're in the middle of a book tour. You're a high-powered chief people officer.
So thank you so much for being here on our show to talk about kind of, you know, this particular scenario that I know that we're very excited to dive into. Are you ready for your scenario?
Speaker: I'm ready. Give it to me
Speaker 3: Okay, so we're calling this one the shortcut termination. customer support manager stretched across two open headcount gaps and managing 14 direct reports fires an employee on the spot after a heated customer escalation call. No PIP, no written warnings, no HR consultation. He documents the termination the following day with backdated performance notes pulled from memory. Six months later, the employee, a Filipina woman, files a discrimination complaint. During discovery, metadata on the performance [00:01:00] documentation reveals it was created after the terminati- after the termination date. credibility collapses. What might have been a defensible termination with prior process becomes a six-figure settlement. also reckon with why a manager carrying an unsustainable workload was never flagged as a flight risk or a liability risk. So there's a lot to unpack in this one. There are more layers than d- the usual ones. So before we dive into a lot of the different sort of pieces that are making this, you know, sort of-- that we need to kinda look at, what stands out to you as the most risky or unclear in this scenario?
Speaker: tough one 'cause it-- there's a lot here.
Speaker 3: A lot of it,
Speaker: Gosh, I mean, I mean, I think, I think the lack of documentation is always what I, what I go to. I think that one is, is, is just if you don't have the documentation, it didn't happen from a legal perspective. And so I think to me, that's the riskiest o-o-overall, for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker: see, what could be a
Speaker 2: second?
Speaker 3: everything.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.
I think, um, obviously the, that [00:02:00] workload too, which is an interesting one. I have a feeling we're gonna get into that one in a little bit, but I think that the workload is kind of that secondary thing which may not necessarily be the manager's fault. But, um, but boy, that documentation is, 'cause I, I'm pretty sure that HR department has probably already done some training with this manager about documentation, uh, if I'm a guessing person.
Speaker 3: No, I, I'm with you there. And it's documentation with the correct timestamps too, 'cause they're,
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: put documentation in from memory after the termination, but that just, you know, any credibility of anything that could have been a valid termination
Speaker: Right. If they didn't give the documentation and the, and, and the person didn't get, get the, the copy of it, right? It didn't happen. Even if they did the documentation timely and they never issued it, it's not really worth much if they never gave it to them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's true if the employee doesn't know, if the employee was never given a chance to actually
Speaker: Yeah
Speaker 3: improve off the PIP or deal with whatever issues it were that were causing low performance, it might as well have just been, you know, like we're not even gonna bother with this, which [00:03:00] is a whole other issue. So from this scenario, and I always say this, these scenarios are fabricated, so we don't have any more information than what's here because it's, you know, they're not, they're not real people. So we have to make some assumptions and kind of navigate a little bit of the gray, which I think we're good at because that's what HR people do.
We live in the gray. So from the way that this scenario is written, it sounds like this did move to a discrimination claim that led to a settlement. So not one where we're trying to avoid a settlement, but one where we got there,
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3: and now we're kind of like looking around and saying, "Okay, how did this happen?
How do we prevent this?" So from the timestamp of the settlement has happened, now we have to deal with the other stuff that's here. Where do you begin your investigation process? Who do you talk to? What kinds of information are you looking for?
Speaker: Yeah. Um, and I would hope that, that we would already be in the middle of this long before that actual settlement, right? If we've got... I mean, depending on... I mean, I g- guess it depends on how long it took to get to the settlement. But the minute, [00:04:00] the minute we're aware, obviously, I'm gonna wanna deep dive into understanding, okay, what documentation do we have?
Um, and, you know, really get deep into what has happened. Um, can we prove? I, I always when, when we're preparing for either, either an arbitration or, um, a board of adjustment or, or EEOC case, I'm always asking the who, what, when, where, why, right? Um, the, the manager will state, "This is what happened." Well, I'll say, "Well, how can you prove that's what happened?
Um, how do we know what's, what's happened?" Um, you know, was the, was the, was the employee aw-aware of the policy, right? Do we have proof that they signed off on the policy? I mean, you have to be able to literally button up every... I always, always, you know, tell them, think about law and order. You're, you're, you're in a courtroom, and you're gonna have to prove up everything that, that comes out of your mouth.
You need to be able to prove up what happened when. Did you have a witness, right? And so I'm gonna wanna d- go deep into all of that documentation. And if there is none, I'd be asking the questions, "Okay, well, [00:05:00] why?" Right? "Why wasn't this done? Did you receive training as a manager, um, on, on investigation practices?"
Um, right, where, where was the breakdown there? Was it between you and your boss? Well, did HR fail to, to, you know, to give you that training? Um, and what in the world were you thinking of the, you know, that you, you would backdate documentation? That would have been... Hopefully, at some point, um, I would be starting to think about, you know, our, our values as a company and how did they...
And I certainly in my company, our values are very clear, and we, we lead with them every day. And I can't even imagine a manager thinking that that would be okay. So that would be another little piece I'd wanna deep dive on.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I'm with you. And I think a part of this that needs to kind of come into the conversation early is the stretched across two open headcount
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: managing 14 direct
Speaker 2: Well, then, oh
Speaker 3: this manager is not positioned to make sound decisions, right? So it sounds [00:06:00] like, you know, they have 14 direct reports.
It's a customer support situation. So you're talking about people who are, you know, navigating maybe customer complaints, customer issues. You know, when you're in support, people don't always come to you to tell you how wonderful they are. A lot of times they're, you know, you're dealing with people who are disgruntled or unhappy. And so, you know, it says that this employee was fired after a heated escalation call. So tense situation, high cortisol, high stress. I know we can't go back in time in this fake scenario, but let's put ourselves back in this moment. Let's say a manager does hear th- this escalation. could they have done differently in that moment that may have avoided this whole thing altogether?
Speaker: So let me ask you a question, just a clarifying question here. Is-- Was the, the, the firing manager the one that got heated? Do we know that or not?
Speaker 2: Do we?
Speaker 3: not just because... Well, actually, I don't know. That's a
Speaker: I know. I was, I was taking this as maybe it was the manager itself that... Or, or between the two of them, it got heated and escalated. So I don't know. Okay, let's assume that it was the [00:07:00] employee.
Speaker 3: could assume either,
Speaker: Yeah, right?
Speaker 3: fun of
Speaker: All right.
Speaker 3: both, both could be true.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker 3: termination.
Speaker: so let's call it and say this is an employee 'cause I literally literally had this ve- a very similar sit-scenario last week.
We had an employee whom we, we were terminating, and it was, it was, It got heated. And, and not that we were getting heated, it was just the, the, you know, the, they were, they were reacting. And I think the, you know, the thing that we have to do as HR professionals, as managers, sometimes people, sometimes people just need to feel heard.
And, you know, the worst thing you can do is, is do tit for tat. You have to be able to, right, take that step back, just let them get it out, and sometimes, you know, once they feel heard, then they're able to calm down a little bit. Or maybe is you, you, you get what you need to say out, out of the way and say, "Look, let's, let's talk tomorrow."
Right? "I wanna, I wanna give you some time. I know this has been a lot." Right? Give them some understanding, and just, just kind of bring that pressure down and say, "Let's talk tomorrow. I know [00:08:00] this is a lot. Let's, you know, let's, let's, uh... I know this is, you know, this is getting heated. Let's, let's take a t- take, take some time because I really wanna make sure that we hear each other and, and, you know, that I've got all, all of your feedback or, or whatever," depending on the situation.
So I think I would, I would've done that, um, especially-- And before you even get to termination because you never know what's going on in that person's life. I mean, this person could be dealing with, with a family member that's on, you know, that's on hospice, right? Th- they could be... We have employees, some of them that are, that are, you know, are borderline homeless, right?
There's so much going on in their life that you may not realize, and this is just-- it, it just came out. So maybe that's what happened, and they made one bad mistake and, you know, they called their manager a bad name, whatever it was. Is that really how we wanna end their career if it was a one-time thing?
What-- You know, if they were a good employee up to that point, I'd be asking the question: What drove them to that?
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Like it's a, I think that is the exact question is how did [00:09:00] we get here?
Speaker: Yeah
Speaker 3: a lot of times in investigations, there's the combination of the f- the, the things that happened, the objective like of the things that occurred, but then a lot of the conversations sort of revolve around intent, the context around it, you know, and w- how did, how did we get here?
Because I don't think every mistake deserves termination, right?
Speaker: No, because I, I would, I wouldn't be employed, right? I, I was having, I was having this conversation yesterday and, and you know, I, I talk about giving psychological safety with my teams and,
Speaker 4: Here
Speaker: and it's so true. I, I just, I'm just blunt with them. Guys, I've done-- I've, I've actually sent a demographic file out to the masses, to the masses via email with pay before accidentally.
Speaker 4: Oops.
Speaker: You know, it doesn't get much worse than that, so you're, you're probably good, right? We're gonna, we're, we're going to get through it no matter what it is.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, it's true, and there is a lot of fear [00:10:00] of making mistakes in general now because, know, there's so much talk about companies that are downsizing and how AI is replacing jobs, you know. All of, all of these narratives, whether the facts are true or not, the narratives are there, so they impact how people relate to work.
Whether if they feel like their job is actually in danger or not, they think of things differently. And so there's a lot of pressure, whether it's real or fabricated, right? To not mess up, because if you are on the, you know, if you're b- ever on the chopping block, you wanna at least say, like, "Well, I never messed up.
Like, maybe someone else
Speaker: Right.
Speaker 3: And so it's created sort of scenarios where, you know, sometimes people aren't taking risks that they should in their job. It's hard for them to be creative, and they're just in this sort
Speaker: Yes, they're stuck. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3: fear, and that's never good.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker 3: goes well.
Speaker: No, a-absolutely, and, and you don't get that, that real productivity. And I will tell you, when, when I see my team and, and, and we have, we have a-- we have this code word because my, my [00:11:00] personality style is just go, go, go. And, and so I just tell them, "Look, when I'm going too fast, I give you total permission to say, 'Whoa, hang on a minute, Stacy.'"
And that's immediately... When they say that, it's immediate. I, I know that's my code word. I, I step back and say, "Okay, I'm going too fast," right? I start laughing. And, and we, we have fun with it. And, um, and they have that space to be able to say whoa. And, and because of that, I get a ton more productivity from them, right?
It's genuine. It's well thought out. They're not, they're not operating from that fear. Yeah. You know what one of the things I was thinking about, about this particular case? You know, some of this could be cultural too.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: right? You know, it's a Filipino w-wo-woman. We don't know who this manager was. Do they completely not understand each culture?
Could he have done something that could have offended her that he had no idea? And I, and I share that because you know, I'm, I'm, I'm a, I'm an American Indian woman, but, but we have, we have a, um, a very diverse, uh, group within our, our company. And so [00:12:00] I'm always really careful. There's, there's things that we just say naturally, these, these, you know, folk legalisms and things that, that we say and these sayings that you really don't know that there may be meaning behind them for other cultures.
And, and luckily, people that are close to me have said, "Stacy, I don't know if you knew this or not, but when you say this, there's actually some, you know, some context behind it. You might wanna be careful." And I would, you know, just mortified because I would have had no idea. And so it's, it, it's-- Sometimes things can get crossways just because of that.
And so I think that's why it's so important to dig deep into what happened that one episode that all of a sudden you're wanting to just, you know, get rid of a good employee. ' Cause it,
Speaker 3: go
Speaker: it takes a lot, as you know, to get people in the door and keep them and... Right? And, and in our, in our business, it is important that we keep our people.
We, you know, we hire a ton of CDL drivers and, and top, um, you know, mechanics and technicians, and we can't afford to be losing those, right? We spend a lot [00:13:00] of time and effort to find them and, and so I really wanna know what, what's going on before you, before we say leave.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh, I'm with you. It's kind of like you wanna look back and see have there ever been any claims made against this manager, either by
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: or by other people.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I think sometimes that can be hard data to find if the company doesn't have an anonymous reporting system or, or anonym- or an actual one that, you know, an identifiable perform-
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Yeah
Speaker 3: It's like you have to be able to understand if managers do have behaviors that are causing tension on the team, and not with ill will, right?
Speaker 2: Bye.
Speaker 3: and
Speaker 2: Bye
Speaker 3: both things matter in every single, you know, kind of conversation. So it could be that, you know, maybe this manager doesn't really, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure
Speaker 3: guidance.
Speaker 2: the word
Speaker 3: is like when I read the, when I read sort of the quote "facts" of this
Speaker 2: Right
Speaker 3: scenario I think of it, you know, sort of two ways now that we've kind of talked this through a little. Like there's the manager who, you know, fires the employee after a heated escalation call [00:14:00] because they're just like they're at their wit's end.
It's the, you know, the whatever the, whatever happened was so egregious that it needs to just go, and then they put in performance notes 'cause they're like, "Oh, this is the stuff that I've been meaning to document, but I couldn't because I'm stretched so thin and have all these things." So maybe the things that are from memory are fact,
Speaker 2: Could be.
Speaker 3: is gone
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: they're putting them in afterwards, right?
Speaker 2: Right
Speaker 3: Then there's the other side of it, which is a little bit more nefarious, which is this manager knows that they messed up, and now they're like, "Oh, I have to write, I have to make sure that I have some sort of a pathway here that shows that, you know, there were performance issues and that it wasn't just this one incident." And it, you know, we're never gonna know which one is the truth, and there are probably 10 other ways this could look at too. But I think that's kind of the, the part of this that is kind of interesting is like the documentation is where the case is made or broken, and the, the facts that got you there don't weigh as much as how it's captured.
Speaker: And think about this, 15, even as soon as 15 years ago, there wasn't meta- metadata, right? [00:15:00] There wasn't there-- You know, you might have discovery, but for the most part, you wouldn't be able to go back and, and forensically look to see when that was done, right? You might have a, a, a note to file, a memo to file.
There can be lot- lots of ways. But now, now, now with the internet and AI and all this metadata, yeah, you can't get away with stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And even there's a lot, you know, there's so much more data now in general than there was, you know, especially with the rise of AI. is all about sort of, you know, putting all of your data into one place and figuring out how to tell the story behind all the different little systems that we use that capture how we work. Not even just within HR, just in general, right? We all have, the way we show up to work, we, we, you know, interact with so many different people, systems, you know, things that we touch. And so there are so many different ways you can measure and look at how an employee's experience might be or what risks might be in the company.
And I wanna kind of lock, look at the last sentence that's in this scenario, which is, "HR must also [00:16:00] reckon with why a manager carrying an unsustainable workload was never flagged as a flight risk or a liability risk."
Speaker: Right. That-
Speaker 3: That to me is like there's something there,
Speaker: Yeah. Well, exactly. And I think too, as I think about everything that's on HR's plate and what, what, you know, takes the most of our attention workforce planning is always one of the last things. And so I think it's critical, um, as an executive team, I think it's, it starts at the top.
You, you have to, you have to be looking at that. Um, b-because of all the change that is happening in the world, um, our company's really good at this. We look at our organization, um, probably d- I, I wanna s- let's call it twice a year, but sometimes it, it could be even every quarter. We literally are looking to see, do we have this right?
Um, we went through a, um, a big, um, a big, uh, salary grading exercise, um, um, gosh, it was about a year ago. And we went through every role in the organization. We looked at span of control. Is this right? And we made a lot of decisions and changes that, at that point in time. [00:17:00] But, um, and so when we go to look at promotions, that needs to be part of the re-review, right?
If there-- If someone leaves and we're gonna be replacing it or we're gonna eliminate a position, that's when that review needs to happen right there. Um, we were, we were looking at, at this scenario last week with, um, because I, um, I have an, uh, an open, um, HR director role, and we're looking at, well, what can we do differently?
Because, um, you know, we're bumping up to a capacity issue, and I really need another set of hands versus one. So if I could get two out of one. And but we looked at what does that do from a span of control? And we were like, "Yeah, that gets you, you know, that gets you up to, you know, ten, eleven direct reports."
And we, you know, and we really started, you know, questioning that because, um, that's not gonna be sustainable long term. So what else do we need to do in order... If we have to go that route for in the short term, let's just know what we're doing and know how we're gonna offload some extra workload along the way.
Or, you know, instead of [00:18:00] weekly, uh, one-on-ones, maybe it's bi-weekly, or depending on the criticality of the location. If it's a larger location, maybe they get it w- you know, once a week. If it's some of the ones that don't have issues often, maybe it's every two weeks or... But we're-- But that's the time to really be thinking and making those decisions.
And that's where HR needs to... We know these, these, these transitions are happening. We have to step in and say, "Hold on a minute. Let's think about this."
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the hard part 'cause, you know, there's a lot of push right now in the time and season that we're in of work- of the workforce where, you know, AI is making people into these super workers, quote unquote, whether that's true or substantiated, you know, we're sort of okay. So people are becoming these super workers, which some companies are looking at it as we need fewer people, so, fewer managers.
So a manager can manage many more people becau- and, and a manager isn't gonna just manage anymore, which is not a n- it's not a new concept, right? The concept of a player coach [00:19:00] style manager job description's been around for a while, where you have your individual contributor work, plus you're now responsible for people. And I think this is just a scenario that kinda indicates the risk of that, right? Because you could have a lot of people that are performing really highly, but you don't then have the capacity to navigate a situation when it needs to be navigated. Like, you're not gonna be making the right decisions.
You're gonna be operating from a place of, you know, fear, survival, or just general I don't have time for this.
Speaker: Who's coaching?
Speaker 3: Sorry?
Speaker: Yeah, and who-- Yeah, who's, who's, who's really coaching them, right?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker: If, if there's... I, I don't care who we are, at what level we are, we need to always be developing. I ex- you know, and, uh, my boss is constantly looking for continuous improvement, and if we never have those conversations, that's not going to ever improve.
So, so that's where, uh, it's those conversations that happen, and if you've got 11 of them... I mean, I had, I had, um, eight or nine at one point, and it, it was a lot to try to get in just to, just all of those one-on-ones. And, and the one-on-ones become, [00:20:00] "Okay, what's going on?" Right? Just you catch me up instead of, "Let's talk about your development."
Right?
Speaker 3: work that you're responsible for among all those direct
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And it's funny 'cause it's like, you know, you think about one-on-ones as 30 minutes on your calendar or however long it is, but there's a whole human attached to that with
Speaker 2: Great.
Speaker 3: human life and a
Speaker 2: Great
Speaker 3: thing that they might be bringing into that conversation.
And if you're not, if your nervous system isn't regulated enough to be present in that conversation, then how are you going to navigate that well?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it...
Speaker 3: this, right? Like, because there's the story where there was legitimate performance concern, but there was no time to, like, really coach, move through it, document it, whatever.
So we got here, and then it just became this type of
Speaker: And, and what's sad--
Speaker 3: other one where it's not
Speaker: and it's sad, you, you, you lose two people out of this,
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker: you lose the whole credibility. The company loses credibility. That manager loses credibility. And depending on you know the rumor mill in the [00:21:00] industry, that person's credibility could be shot for the entire industry.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker: so it just, it breaks my heart.
But, you know, because again, you hate that people resort to that, that they felt like they had to go there instead of asking for help to say, "Hey, this is where I am, right? How, how can HR help me?" I always, always try to tell people, I use this scenario, and this is gonna sound really bad, but, but the, the show Scandal.
Did you ever watch Scandal with,
Speaker 3: I know of
Speaker: with Kerry, Kerry Washington? Well,
Speaker 3: Yeah
Speaker: I always, you know, I tell my managers if they, if they know about this show, I'll say, "You know, we're your Lyd- Olivia Pope, right? We're the ones that are going, you know, going to, to help you, right? If, if you s- get, if you get, get into trouble, you're going to call us, and we're gonna get you out.
And then we're gonna t- they're gonna show you that if, if you do it again, then we're gonna go bury the body," right? and, you know, and they-- and we, we do that tongue in cheek, obviously, but it's, it's to help them understand we're here to help you. That seriously, we are-- we're not the, you know, we're not the hatchet [00:22:00] department.
We're truly there to be your partner, to help you be your best that you can be. And, and when you get in those tough situations, you know, that's what we're here for.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. think this is an argument for HR, which I know
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 3: term that a lot of people are kinda using in different ways. But with the way that I would define what proactive HR could do in a scenario like this is, you know, looking at, constantly looking at things like headcount.
You know, you talked about doing headcount planning quarterly, even just to double-check, like, have the right amount of people? How, you know, how is everybody doing? I do think that that's, like, the perfect example of what I'm talking about, because when you have people that are stretched too thin for too long, either because, you know, their work load is too high or their span of control is too wide, whatever the situation is, you know, that is something that needs to be addressed.
It can't be something that you're just telling people like, "Well, just deal with it," or, "Just keep your head down and keep going." Like, that's not, that's not sustainable. and, you know, from a business perspective, that's not even smart. So it's like, you know, there is data that [00:23:00] shows you, that can sort of give you some insight that says, "Hey, maybe this is someone...
Maybe you've never had an issue with them. Maybe it's never been raised, but maybe have a conversation with this person. Check in with them." Because if they haven't had time to document their own performance issues with their team, maybe they haven't had time to document their own issues with themselves and their own asks, right?
They
Speaker: Right. Right.
Speaker 3: be on the wheel.
Speaker: And, and I, um, in, in my book I talk about this a lot about that over-functioning because at, at some point, you know, they are going to hit a wall, something's gonna happen. You know, they're going to explode. And, um, and I-- and you... These, these people, you can see them. You can see when someone's over-functioning, when they're, they're, they're...
And, and I'm, I'm one of the worst, right? If, if they're up doing emails at 4:00 and 5:00 a.m. and they're still doing emails at, you know, at midnight, um, or all, all throughout the weekend and you know that they're, they're a workaholic, you-- I... Not that, not that some people are, are just wired that way. But you gotta at least ask that question: Is everything okay?
Are you feeling the pressure to be able to do those [00:24:00] things? Are you taking care of yourself? And those are the conversations I don't think we're great at having because because being there for everyone else and, and coming through for everyone and being able to handle a big workload is generally rewarded as a leader.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Um, and but it's at some point, right, that that's going to come due. It's gonna come due in either their performance, in, in, in their health. And so, um, and, and I've, I've recognized that. That's, that's part of the, part of the book. I've recognized, you know, what is the cost? And so how do we, how do we recognize that with our own people and how do we put those boundaries in?
Um, luckily we have a, a French parent company, and they're fantastic at boundaries. And they put-- they literally put in their email, um, you know, you know, know that you... You know, if this, this email finds you after hours, you know, you don't have to respond. I was like, "Well, I'm not brave enough to do that in the US yet," but, uh, but it's-- but I, but I love it.
It's a lofty goal that I hope that we can get there at some point because, 'cause the US in general, we're not, we're not great [00:25:00] at, at that self-care yet. But man, I can't wait to get there.
Speaker 3: I love that you say that with a growth mindset. We're not there yet. Hopefully
Speaker 2: going to get there.
Speaker: We're,
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I think once you recognize it and, and we start talking about it and, um, and, and again, if you have a healthy leadership team, man, that, that, that makes all the difference too. We have a really healthy leadership team, and so we're able to talk about those things, uh, you know, openly.
It doesn't mean that, that we're not gonna still drive fast 'cause we are. We've got so much to get done. But we're constantly looking at what else can we do differently because we recognize it's not sustainable, right? We can't keep going at this pace and, and if we don't have enough automation or we're not using the AI tools, right, it's going to...
We're not gonna be able to be prepared for the future. And we've, we've grown three times the size in three years, and we're continuing to grow, so you have to start doing some things differently. You can't keep doing things manually.
Speaker 3: yeah. Oh, yeah. have a lot of these conversations just at All Voices too, where it's, you know,
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: meetings?" 'Cause we're
Speaker: Oh gosh, [00:26:00] yes.
Speaker 3: So we're like,
Speaker: We sure do
Speaker 3: many? Do we need all of them?" You know, and even, you know, we look at th- and we're a startup, so we're kind of like, you know, startups are kind of
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3: for having
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: insane schedules,
Speaker 2: Yep
Speaker 3: that.
And I have to say, you know, and I've been in startups my whole life. I, I founded a company before, so, like,
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: you know, I know all the
Speaker 2: Yeah
Speaker 3: like, the constant thread is the human part. And, you know, it's not gonna kill your company if you have a summer Friday once a month, but it is gonna do a lot for the morale on
Speaker: Out completely
Speaker 3: right? And that's, like, the balance that I think is, like, so important because at the end of the day, this is really a cautionary tale of what happens when your workforce isn't, isn't planned properly. And, you know, it's like it le- this is what the issues really lead to when you ask too much of people and
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 3: enough resources to do
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, this is what makes me sad.
Speaker 3: Me too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And believe it or not, we're actually at time. I know we could talk, we could-- I feel like we could talk about this for
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: So I have one final [00:27:00] question for you. So what do you think is one assumption about HR that needs to be challenged?
Speaker: Uh, I think, um, from a manager's perspective, either they assumed that, that, that HR couldn't help them. They didn't, they didn't, they d- didn't realize they could escalate, uh, whether it was they had too much on their plate, whether they had, um... whether HR could actually, uh, be of service. I think that's, that's, that's the one that really stands out, um, to me from the manager's perspective.
Um- And then I guess on the, on the workforce planning, uh, I think
Gosh, I, I just, I mean, I think there's a huge assumption that HR, you know, maybe, maybe there was too much on HR's plate here and, and so they didn't-- they weren't able to do the workforce planning. So, um, I think maybe, um, there's a big assumption that HR is gonna handle it. So maybe, maybe there's some, some joint accountability here between ops or managers and, and HR as, as to, you know, that workload.
It's, you know, [00:28:00] it, it should be a joint responsibility. So it could be one of those situations where, where everybody was assuming it was the other person looking at it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Ooh, very, very well said. It's like the cul- it could be not just one issue with this one person, but it could be a cultural issue that is why it's compounding. Ooh, I love that. I mean, I hate that it happens, but
Speaker 2: Great.
Speaker 3: insight.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker: You're welcome
Speaker 3: Well, Stacy, thank you so much for being here and talking through this scenario with me, and, you know, in the middle of your book tour, too.
I know it's like, you know, like I said, I'm so glad that we were able to get some time with you, and thank you for sharing all your insight with us.
Speaker: Thank you. I'm glad to be here and, and ask me back another time. Would love it. It's been great
Speaker 3: yeah, would love to have you. Yeah. And thank everybody for listening, and I hope y'all have a good rest of your day.
Speaker: Hey, everyone