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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.”
Rebecca Taylor (00:01.848)
Hello and welcome to HR Voices. I'm here with Angela Shaw, SVP of Talent at Amplify Credit Union. Welcome Angela. Thank you so much for being here. I'm so excited to have you.
Angela Shaw (00:12.421)
Hello Rebecca, I'm excited to be here too. I love having a conversation, so this is going to be great.
Rebecca Taylor (00:18.53)
I think this is gonna be fun. think, you know, for those who are new here, you know, this is HR Voices. We explore real and fabricated anonymized employee relations scenarios through the lens of experienced HR and people leaders just like Angela. So we're gonna evaluate realistic workplace situations and demonstrate how we'll assess risk, apply judgment, and design practical responses. So the goal is to really sort of reveal to you how strong HR leaders think when we're facing ambiguity. We're not necessarily looking for a single correct answer, because as
me know, I think we talked about this when we were prepping Angela. There's usually no such thing as one truly correct answer in most situations and scenarios in HR. So this is kind of exploring the nuances and the complexity of that. Yeah.
Angela Shaw (01:00.603)
That is completely true.
Rebecca Taylor (01:03.882)
And so I have a scenario for us today. So this one's going to be a good one, I think. So I'm going to read it and we'll set ourselves in it and then we'll get going into the discussion. So we're calling this the workplace political polarization. After a contentious election, political tensions in the workplace have escalated. Employees are arguing in Slack channels, refusing to collaborate with colleagues who support different candidates, and filing complaints alleging hostile work environment based on political expression.
HR is fielding dozens of complaints from both sides. The CEO wants to ban political discussions at work, and the legal team warns that some political speech may be protected. So this feels like a very foreign scenario that we never would have encountered in the world ever.
Angela Shaw (01:45.623)
Right and not even recently I mean oh my god 50 years ago yeah
Rebecca Taylor (01:48.79)
No, not recently, not every day, not anything like that. this is, I should say, this is a fabricated scenario. So this isn't one that we're pulling from the headlines. This is one that we're sort of just generally speaking and saying this is something that's happening. So if you feel like this is something you can relate to and it's happening in your workplace, I promise you it's happening in a lot of different workplaces. And this is kind of what we're going to get into discussing.
Angela Shaw (02:12.143)
Yes.
Rebecca Taylor (02:13.214)
So if this were a situation that you were kind of facing in your role, Angela, I want to kind of, you know, sort of broadly open up the conversation and kind of think like in this type of scenario, what stands out to you as like the most risky or the most unclear? What are some of the lay of the land things that you need to kind of scope and understand when something like this comes across your desk?
Angela Shaw (02:35.079)
So I would say this is happening almost everywhere, some version of this. It might not be exactly the same rate or it may not be at the same level of.
importance or frenzy but a version of this is happening everywhere and I think two things come to mind to me about sometimes what makes a situation like this unclear. One is the inability of leadership and or HR to take action like they bury their heads in the sand and just act like it's not going on and if we don't talk about it it'll just go away.
And then the second thing I would say is having some clear structure around or thought process to there's a there is a difference between Agreement on beliefs and agreement on behavior and I think that's most important in an organization So what we're not doing is structuring what people believe
There's a if you have a thousand people there's a thousand or twenty thousand beliefs, right? So it's very hard to put structure around that especially when people are human and messy and bring all of our all of that to work But what we do have structure around is how people behave in our organization And so I think that is very unclear a lot of times when emotions become involved and people don't know what to do with all of the emotions They lose sight of what the actual important part is
Rebecca Taylor (03:34.432)
Yup. Yup.
Rebecca Taylor (03:43.768)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (03:59.183)
Yeah, I think it's a really good way to put it is like we can't necessarily dictate beliefs, but we can sort of have different expectations of behavior. And something you said that I wanna follow up on is, you said that HR usually is unable to respond in these types of scenarios. Do you mean that in the sense of they're unable to or they're unwilling to?
Angela Shaw (04:21.927)
think both or either or a combination, right? So me personally, I'm an HR person who has my say to senior leadership, right? So we're gonna talk about the stuff.
Rebecca Taylor (04:25.251)
Yeah.
Angela Shaw (04:34.723)
And this is what I think will happen if we don't address this. And this is what I think maybe we should communicate about. Or this is how I think we should approach this. But I'm not always the final decision maker. And so sometimes what I feel or want or suggest is not what we actually do. And that's OK, too. I mean, that happens in like any workplace that you have a boss. And so like that's a normal thing. So it's for me personally, at least behind the scenes, I'm going say the thing, right?
Rebecca Taylor (04:44.237)
right?
Rebecca Taylor (04:54.669)
Yeah.
Angela Shaw (05:04.443)
But I may not always have the power to actually just go out into the organization to communicate something. Or if it's not me, but other people, sometimes they do have the power, but they just don't use it. They don't say the thing. They don't address the elephant in the room.
And a lot of reasons why people are worried about how 50 different people are going to take something. Well, they're going to take it 50 different ways, right? But if you structure your communication around something specific, like your values in your organization, behavior you have defined, how you communicate with each other, that's something you can defend and stand on. And so people get lost in worrying about too many things or they haven't defined the structure around how to do that thing. And so they just don't.
Rebecca Taylor (05:52.493)
Yeah, it's kind of like you just put it off until you're faced with something and then if you're trying to design a way to navigate complicated situations like this while the complicated situation is happening, you're just making it a lot harder for yourself.
Angela Shaw (06:04.091)
Correct, because you're making it up as you go along. You may not realize you're setting precedents. You can't defend that. mean, maybe you documented in that moment to be able to go forward and create some of that precedence process, right? But it is a lot difficult to do it in the moment.
Rebecca Taylor (06:08.515)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (06:19.17)
Yeah, yeah. And I think in situations like this, like this specific, you know, political polarization, disagreement in the workplace, and, you know, people refusing to work with others, I feel like this is one of those scenarios that it's not about the first half of the context. It's not about the fact that people disagree. It's about how we react to each other when we disagree. And I see so much discourse about
Angela Shaw (06:42.673)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (06:47.63)
being willing or unwilling to work with different people in different workplaces. And I think what's really hard as HR is to make the company's answer about what the behaviors are and about kind of like what you said and not about, we're not trying to navigate political beliefs and trying to change everyone's minds or anything along those lines, right? It's kind of like our job as HR is to navigate the, refuse to work with this person part, not the, disagree part.
Angela Shaw (06:59.729)
Yeah.
Angela Shaw (07:15.813)
Yeah. And you know what? That takes honest, hard conversations with employees. It also takes getting your managers prepared and ready to have those conversations and supporting them in that. And when they can't, HR is stepping in to help have those actual conversations with people. And I get that it can be hard to tell someone.
I understand and value your beliefs, but that cannot define how you treat your coworker in our workplace because people get very angry about stuff like that. I've heard a lot of people say, hey, we can disagree on pizza toppings, but we can't disagree on human decency, right? Which is structurally that is true. And I get that right. But inside of an organization where your main focus is whatever that organization is focusing on.
Rebecca Taylor (07:56.492)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Angela Shaw (08:09.781)
You may have to work, most often you are working with people that you don't agree with everything on. Piece of topics, political beliefs included.
Rebecca Taylor (08:19.406)
Yeah, yeah. Even the like the people and you know the the
organizational piece of it too, sometimes, right? Like there's, I saw something, I saw a post the other day that was sort of calling for companies to disclose who they donate to or what political parties they donate to or what super facts they donate to. And that's probably its own other scenario to discuss, but it's just kind of speaking to like the expectations of having five generations in the workforce that kind of approach work and life differently and have different kinds of philosophies to it.
Angela Shaw (08:44.903)
I guess, for sure.
Rebecca Taylor (08:56.176)
This is the stuff that HR is always navigating. When we talk about five different generations in the workforce, we're not talking about age. We're talking about life perspective, life stage, life experience, and expectations of what work is too. And that's where the fun part really sits.
Angela Shaw (09:13.221)
Yeah, because a person who is in the everybody wins a trophy generation versus the person who comes from a we just work hard and keep our head down generation and we just take what we get are going to have totally different perspectives about how anything is handled, including how you communicate with each other.
Rebecca Taylor (09:31.618)
Yup, yeah. So if you were in this, if you had this scenario, just if you had this very hypothetical scenario ever cross your desk, what are some of the first things that you'd want to understand? So let's get into kind of like, how do you start to not necessarily take action yet, but in the sense of trying to get to understand who do you want to talk to? What is it that you really need to kind of, what information do you need to have?
Angela Shaw (09:55.878)
Yeah, so it's going to be the person who's making the initial complaint because that's how it's going to come to HR like the initial person, whether it's an actual employee in the dispute, whether it's a manager saying this is what's happening and I want to be able to address this or if it's coming from leadership, we have no control in our Slack channel and what are we going to do about that? It's understanding from that person's perspective what the actual problem is. If it is an employee to employee dispute, that's more investigative.
Because it's an actual thing that has come to your desk that you need to have steps in a process So there's a beginning and an end like what we did to this and how Because of this and how we communicate that to everybody involved, right? So I need to understand what that initial person coming to me how they feel in that moment So it's not just about this is what happened But these are humans and we have to give space for people's feelings and space for someone to actually like say all the things that they want to say
Rebecca Taylor (10:38.648)
Yeah.
Angela Shaw (10:55.821)
So that requires patience and listening. That's a lot of like HR and what we do this patience and this listening. So it's not an immediate solve. is let me listen to this person. Let me ask questions that we completely understand. Sometimes that's 50 % of solving the thing because in that dispute with the other person they aren't feeling heard. So like I'm gonna give you some space to be heard right. Second part in an investigation for me anyone is who else was there or heard this or was involved and
Rebecca Taylor (10:55.981)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (11:02.702)
That true.
Rebecca Taylor (11:12.654)
true.
Rebecca Taylor (11:16.066)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (11:25.39)
Mm-hmm.
Angela Shaw (11:25.641)
I want to talk to those people also. The last person I'm going to talk to is the person who is being accused of whatever the thing is. And we say accused not because it's not about whether they did or didn't do it. It is the perception of the person who's coming to you about this thing, right? Because, correct, correct. And it is.
Rebecca Taylor (11:34.679)
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Taylor (11:40.482)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (11:45.174)
Yeah, the person the person has the grievance against like you're the one I have the issue with. Yeah.
Angela Shaw (11:51.716)
So you have all your information which helps you ask this person the questions. But even with them it's starting with, are you aware that there's an issue?
What do you think happened in that situation and even giving them the opportunity to do all the talking that they want to do and also feel heard in the situation and I think that's the way it always starts. It's just the listening part taking in all of the information before you can even decide some steps to take and I think it's very important to not rush through anything and that's what you're communicating. Hey right now we just want to get all the information right now it could be it's escalated to a point of you do
Rebecca Taylor (12:10.669)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (12:16.824)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (12:23.33)
Yeah. Yeah.
Angela Shaw (12:32.259)
to put some structure in place like you two are not going to be in a room together if you have to have a conversation there needs to be a third party or whatever like you might actually have to put some real structure in place for conversations going forward for these two people even if they have to work together so it could be involving the team lead or the manager even for them to be able to work together so i think just being open and flexible about every situation is different and how you how you handle that to create some
Rebecca Taylor (12:41.123)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (12:44.663)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Angela Shaw (13:02.159)
calm in the meantime.
Rebecca Taylor (13:04.652)
Yeah, some calm is key. Yeah. I love that you start with sort of letting them be heard too, just sort of giving people space to be heard. Because in my experience in situations like this where there's a lot of tension that's escalating really quickly or there's sort of like blowups either on Slack or people blatantly refusing to work together because of different philosophies that they have that...
Angela Shaw (13:06.639)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (13:29.287)
that wasn't the case before, but now an external event has happened, right? An election of whatever. And then now this is sort of escalating.
Angela Shaw (13:33.777)
Right.
Rebecca Taylor (13:38.663)
That's usually most of what you're navigating is emotion. It's just people have certain ways that they feel about this situation and maybe they feel powerless to express it in other ways. Maybe this is just like, it's just a very emotional situation, no matter what side you're on. And so that's most of it is just saying like, Hey, maybe we just let's blow off some steam. Maybe, you know, maybe let's just like hear what the real issue is before we try to fix, like fix anything. Right. Yeah.
Angela Shaw (13:42.193)
Friday.
Angela Shaw (14:01.125)
Yeah
Angela Shaw (14:06.503)
Right, exactly. That's space to be heard for an HR person being able to give that 100 out of 100 times is what needs to be done.
Rebecca Taylor (14:15.822)
Yeah, Yeah, yeah. And in terms of when you're listening to these folks and you're talking to them, what are some assumptions that you're going to be really careful to not make?
Angela Shaw (14:28.325)
Yeah, regardless of whether our personal beliefs are aligned or not, not using that to make judgment.
So if it's someone I agree with, I'm not aligning with them in this situation because I agree with their beliefs. They actually could have been the one who had behavior that they shouldn't have had. Or if it is a person whose beliefs I do not agree with judging them and treating them in a negative way because my beliefs are different from theirs. Like that's the exact thing that I wanted employees to not do to each other. And so I have to be very careful that I remain neutral in that and that
Rebecca Taylor (14:37.592)
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Taylor (15:02.669)
Yeah.
Angela Shaw (15:07.477)
I really am just listening to figure out what happened and how we address what happened. It's not about whether or not I align with their individual beliefs and so I'm a human too. I have personal beliefs too. I have experiences and things that have happened to me and so I just have to be very cognizant and aware of that. Also I'm not perfect so if I do or say something that maybe... I mean...
Rebecca Taylor (15:23.31)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (15:27.469)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (15:31.182)
I disagree. think you probably are. I think you are.
Angela Shaw (15:35.235)
I'm not. mean, yeah, but I one thing I will do is circle back. I will circle back and either whatever needs to be done, try to make something right, apologize for something, ask for grace, whatever the thing is. I do circle back.
Rebecca Taylor (15:40.396)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (15:51.843)
Yeah, yeah, and that is important too when it's sort of when the situation's deescalated a little bit, if it has, circle back and kind of say, hey, so how are you feeling today? This is very reminiscent of, I was the head of HR for a company in 2016. And I think the hard part, if I'm putting myself back in this scenario in that type of position, the other part that was also really hard was sort of like.
Angela Shaw (16:01.093)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (16:16.02)
sometimes I agreed or I was still processing my own like my own human reaction to something and When it sort of escalates really really quickly it takes so much emotional intelligence and emotional regulation to become neutral again to really navigate these situations and that's Sometimes the hardest part of being an HR is like because we all have opinions, right? We all have Regardless of the situation. It's like there's a reason why they there's a reason why there's a whole process to be selected
Angela Shaw (16:39.685)
Right.
Rebecca Taylor (16:45.914)
for jury duty because people just make judgments, their biases, that's just natural, And so the hardest part is sometimes taking a beat and taking a breath. And I think it's really important as HR to not react, but to respond because there's a big difference between the two.
Angela Shaw (16:48.347)
Right.
Angela Shaw (17:03.789)
It is and one of the things for HR people is how do we prepare ourselves ahead of time for hard situations like that? Like we should be if you know, you're going into a conversation about something specific like this. How did you prepare yourself? Right? I would be reading up on how do I remain neutral? What are the right responses to a situation like I would be preparing myself so that when I go into the situation, I am able to be the bigger person. I am able to be
Rebecca Taylor (17:24.546)
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Taylor (17:28.077)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (17:32.759)
Yeah.
Angela Shaw (17:33.626)
patient and listen like I am able to do that so as an HR person you have to be able to go into situations and prepare yourself for those situations.
It sucks and I hate it, but I do have to be the bigger person. I gotta be the adult in the room. Like I don't get to just have a meltdown and have a fit and take my ball and go away, right? These are the things that we tell us or should be. I would tell any HR person these are the things you should be telling yourself on a regular basis and these are the things that you should be building in yourself. These are skill sets that you can build and you should be building them.
Rebecca Taylor (17:49.855)
Yeah, someone has to.
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (18:00.173)
Yeah. Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (18:09.824)
I think that is such smart and good advice because it's true. It's like you don't want to build and practice these skills when you really, really need them. It's like you need to train them. You need to, you know, just practice before something like before you are dealing with something like this. And something like this can be any type of scenario. That's just this one is, you know, the theme is political things, but it's more really about dealing with heightened with a sudden sense of heightened emotion with with people who have a lot of conviction over what's right and what's wrong.
Angela Shaw (18:24.612)
Yes.
Rebecca Taylor (18:39.728)
That can be applied in so many different scenarios and you got to be that that neutral person even when you have an opinion.
Angela Shaw (18:40.559)
Yes.
Yes, you do. You know, my mistake, I gotta control my face a lot.
Rebecca Taylor (18:52.298)
That's the hardest part.
I know, I'm like, have ever been in a meeting and you're just like, my God, did I just make that face out loud?
Angela Shaw (19:02.632)
Hehehehehe
Rebecca Taylor (19:04.768)
I feel like it's like HR is really good at sort of the poker face, sometimes almost to our detriment because that's also where sometimes employees will struggle with finding us authentic. You know, speaking like broadly, right? Because like we are so used to just being sort of neutral and sort of being very contained. And I think that there's a balance between doing that and like showing your personality sometimes, but yeah, it's like the, the controlling of the face or the responses. We have our own code too. It's just like.
Angela Shaw (19:15.365)
Yeah.
Angela Shaw (19:28.474)
Right.
Rebecca Taylor (19:34.625)
like, do you want to repeat that? That's usually what I'm like, you just said something you might not want to say again. I'm to give you another chance. Yeah. Can you explain that to me? Walk me through it. So at some point, you've done your investigation, you've spoken to the people, you've spoken to the accused, the accuser. And at some point you have to make a call of...
Angela Shaw (19:36.249)
Yeah!
Angela Shaw (19:42.127)
Let me make sure I understand. Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (20:02.638)
something, right? Because we do have to take action in some way, even if it's just like we're setting a policy, we're figuring out how to navigate these two people. But what's the risk of moving too fast, of jumping too quickly to a solution? And on the flip side, what's the risk of moving too slow, like waiting too long to address it?
Angela Shaw (20:04.027)
Yeah.
Angela Shaw (20:24.015)
Yes, I think moving too fast is making the wrong decision, setting a precedent that you're not ready to keep up, making a decision based on emotion, like even your emotion. A lot of times moving too fast will do that for you. Moving too fast will make you want to be swayed by the crowd. And you're not always neutral in the way that you need to be your objective.
Rebecca Taylor (20:30.638)
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Taylor (20:37.474)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (20:44.226)
Yeah.
Angela Shaw (20:52.485)
So moving too fast, you know, it's like having ego. It will take you a ride every single time.
Rebecca Taylor (20:58.99)
Mm-hmm.
Angela Shaw (20:59.271)
Although I will say if you've done some good pre-planning you have good structure in place you've communicated well within the organization around behavior or your values or your service standards or whatever the things that determine how you act sometimes you can move fast when you have all of that in place. Moving too slow is leaving everyone in limbo everyone and that means that no one actually knows what's going on what to expect what this actually means right so
Rebecca Taylor (21:21.294)
Mm-hmm.
Angela Shaw (21:29.235)
Being in limbo is the worst place for anybody to be. And so moving too slow is that. So it leads to, like most people on all the sides feeling unheard, not taken care of, there was no action, the loop hasn't been closed, which doesn't encourage the kind of behavior that you want going forward.
Rebecca Taylor (21:51.342)
Right, right.
Angela Shaw (21:51.696)
Right, so if you're going to ask someone to not do this thing, not talk like that to your coworker, work with this person every day, if you wait too long to give them that message, they're going to think it's not authentic.
Rebecca Taylor (22:05.164)
Yeah? Yeah?
Angela Shaw (22:05.679)
Right? So waiting too long can just lead to all of those kinds of things too. If the actual investigation or the actual decision making is just taking longer, that communication part about it, hey, this is still at play. This is when you can expect some something from me.
Rebecca Taylor (22:11.192)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (22:24.568)
Yeah.
Angela Shaw (22:24.935)
Doing that extra step to communicate to the people in the process What is going on and what the expectation is about the time frame? Don't just not talk to somebody for three months about the thing, right? Like you you need to communicate because there are times that it might take a little longer So you could be talking to legal you could be talking to your senior team You know, there's a lot of things that could be going on that might add to the time frame That's out of your personal control and finishing a situation
Rebecca Taylor (22:35.03)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (22:53.836)
Yeah, yeah.
And I think we can't cave to pressure from the CEO either. There's the external pressure, because there's always, there's always so many, so many different angles and pressures to balance, right? There's the company culture. So the values of the organization, you know, that's sort of the piece that we have to protect and really be the stewards of. Then you think about pressure from the CEO, which that's the top person, right? So that ultimately that's, you know, someone who can be difficult to disagree with or difficult to push back on. is our job as HR to push
Angela Shaw (23:13.274)
Yes.
Angela Shaw (23:23.303)
Right.
Rebecca Taylor (23:25.252)
back on the CEO and it doesn't have to be a bad thing. You know, just because that type of tension is normal, natural and good. But then there's also the...
Angela Shaw (23:32.966)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (23:36.577)
the pressure of keeping work going, which is the thing that managers are always worried about. So in this scenario, the CEO wants to stop all political talk at work. And legal is like, I don't know, some parts of speech could be protected. Like we really can't, we can't like do that to people. and so I think like there's moving too fast. If you're, if you just agree with what the CEO says, just to be like, well, yeah, you're the boss. You could be, you know, you could be opening up a whole other, a whole other can of worms that you don't want to open.
Angela Shaw (23:39.109)
Yeah.
Angela Shaw (23:52.667)
Great.
Angela Shaw (24:06.213)
That is true because the part about banning all political talk people also have different definitions of what political talk is. And so it would it would it would be difficult to try to have a definitive definition around what political talk is which it sounds very simple and I know that it's not but we take it back to.
Rebecca Taylor (24:07.67)
and I'll you
Rebecca Taylor (24:14.818)
Yes.
Angela Shaw (24:27.523)
our behavior and how we talk to one another in respectful ways and how we treat each other. Right. So there's a difference between someone announcing their political party and someone calling someone a racial slur. Like these are these are different things right and our reactions are going to be different. So it's like that that is what we're putting structure around. We're putting structure around our behavior. So someone should know that they're they can't use a racial slur, but if they're having a conversation with a co-worker that they think is cool.
Rebecca Taylor (24:31.374)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (24:40.738)
Yes. Yes. Yeah.
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (24:53.806)
Yeah.
Angela Shaw (24:57.517)
cool meaning we are on the same wavelength and maybe they're having a conversation about their political party but then it turns out their person is not actually cool with them. Right that's a that is a different kind of situation and so I think it's hard to definitively define political conversations but again it goes back to how we structure conversations and how we treat each other and our behavior to one another.
Rebecca Taylor (25:00.577)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (25:06.018)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (25:09.581)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (25:22.146)
Yeah, yeah. I think that's so true, is sort of defining the parameters of what political talk is and making sure that we're not keeping it too broad, but also not too specific where it could be something that is actually protected speech at a company.
Angela Shaw (25:38.384)
Right, right. So some examples at an organization, someone got in a group chat. It wasn't the entire organization, but it was like their department, but still it was probably like 50 people and made a joke about building the wall in Mexico. Right. But it was public. There are 50 people in this conversation. Right. Versus say there's someone who
Rebecca Taylor (25:51.384)
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Taylor (25:55.767)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (26:00.397)
Yep.
Angela Shaw (26:06.043)
is heterosexual straight made a comment to a person in the LGBTQ community about how they were leaving a place because of gay people or people in the LGBTQ community, right? It's the conversation between the two of them that happened. wasn't a public conversation. Like even in those two situations, how you handle it could be different based on the investigation, right? And so again, these are the kinds of real things
Rebecca Taylor (26:20.343)
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Taylor (26:25.677)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (26:32.802)
Yeah.
Angela Shaw (26:35.817)
actually happen.
Rebecca Taylor (26:37.665)
Yeah, it's true.
Especially, think it's hard sometimes for some people who become very friendly with their coworkers, because then it's just like, you know, it's one thing if you upset a friend, or it's one thing if you're making jokes with a friend and, you know, whatever, whatever that situation is, that's one thing. But when that friend is also someone who you work with, it just makes things so much more complicated. Because, you know, like you, if you met at work and you became friends at work,
Angela Shaw (26:45.467)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (27:09.537)
then that's your primary relationship. And if you become friendly, that's great. But also know and understand that your interactions, if you say something or if you do something that repeatedly upsets that person or something so egregious that that person feels the need to report you to HR, they have every right to do that. So workplace friendships are different from friend friendships, especially it's different if you leave and you're no longer coworkers.
Angela Shaw (27:13.073)
Right.
Rebecca Taylor (27:38.347)
That can get really complicated, especially for people earlier in their career who are just kind of figuring that stuff out.
Angela Shaw (27:44.208)
And also early in their careers when they don't understand the structure around your behavior in a workplace. So there are even parameters to bring your whole self to work to the professionalism definition. There are some parameters to those things too. And early in your career, you may not have learned all of those, all of those parameters yet.
Rebecca Taylor (27:51.723)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (28:04.909)
Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, just getting to some closing thoughts here, because believe it or not, we're almost at time, which I feel like there's so much more that we can kind of dive into this topic too. Maybe we'll do part two sometime. I know.
Angela Shaw (28:14.951)
I can't believe we're at time like what?
Rebecca Taylor (28:21.097)
I know, I know, but you've dropped so much wisdom for folks who are listening here. Even just sort of have a plan before something like this blows up. Practice these skills, especially if you're in HR, practice that emotional regulation, practice being neutral so that when a scenario like this comes up, those muscles are already there. But do you have any closing final thoughts and words of wisdom for anybody listening to this?
Angela Shaw (28:43.719)
So I would say in preparation of something happening that hasn't happened yet, do you know what your communication plan is in your organization? Do you know what y'all stand for when it comes to behavior, like whether it's your values or service standards or whatever? How do you apply that? That is important for you to know that building relationships with your CEO and senior leadership so that when something happens, I mean, I've.
three years in with my CEO and I will say things to him. can I will I don't have an issue but sometimes there is still a little bit of like I'm going to have to tell him something that maybe he might not like or whatever but that relationship building is just so important. It is helpful when you when something does happen or come up because you've already put a good plan in place to be able to address something right to be able to act in a way that's not too fast or too slow and have a process that part.
Rebecca Taylor (29:32.077)
Thank you.
Angela Shaw (29:37.41)
is really important. So that relationship building. And then the last thing I would say is a lot of times it is as HR people we want to make it about everybody else but real action and change starts with us.
how we're preparing ourselves, how we're ready to do graceful pushback, how we're ready to speak up. Again, when I speak about that, prepare yourself for difficult conversation. All of that lies with the HR professional. Like you decide who you are as HR and how you stand up in the world as HR and you make that determination between good and bad HR. And I always tell people who report to me or people in my circle, if you can sleep at night and you feel good about your decision making and you had a knowledge
Rebecca Taylor (29:54.957)
Hmm.
Angela Shaw (30:24.833)
based from which to make a decision, you did the right thing and you move on from there. And so that would be the advice that I would give any HR person.
Rebecca Taylor (30:33.066)
I love that. I'm going to leave it at that because that's so good. And thank you for sharing your wisdom with everybody listening to this. I hope, you know, find Angela on LinkedIn, follow her. She's got so many good things to say. And thank you, Angela, so much for being here and thank everybody for listening. I hope you have a good day. Bye.
Angela Shaw (30:50.194)
Thank you for having me. Bye everybody.