Vanessa Brulotte, Employee Relations Partner at BambooHR

Show Notes

Catch It at a Simmer: BambooHR’s Vanessa Brulotte on Employee Relations, Clear Communication, and AI in HR

Summary

When employees only reach HR at “eruption,” it’s already too late.

Vanessa Brulotte, Employee Relations Partner at BambooHR, shares how to build a trusted, centralized ER function that catches issues at a simmer—so leaders and employees can collaborate toward resolution instead of crisis.

With nine years at BambooHR across TA, HR, and ER, Vanessa brings practical frameworks for fairness and consistency, from creating visible “safe spaces” in a hybrid environment to setting shared expectations and alignment before projects go off the rails.

She unpacks why communication fails even with good intent, how to avoid ruinous empathy, and simple habits—like recap notes—that prevent misinterpretation (cue the Amelia Bedelia lesson).

Vanessa also dives into AI’s role in HR today: use it to scale clarity and prep tough conversations (think SBI-F talk tracks), ask it to push back, and put guardrails in place—never as legal counsel. The episode closes with a reminder many HR pros need: protect your own wellbeing, set boundaries, and show up with calm when it matters most.

Timestamps

[00:45] – Vanessa’s path at BambooHR and why she built a centralized ER function

[02:22] – Fairness, consistency, and creating a trusted “safe space” for employees

[05:20] – Hybrid visibility: why showing up onsite builds access and credibility

[07:58] – The real reason communication fails—and how to catch issues at a simmer

[08:27] – Alignment before action: roles, decisions, contributors, and deadlines

[11:00] – High vs. low context communication (and the Amelia Bedelia effect)

[12:37] – Recap to prevent rework: simple practices that keep teams aligned

[14:12] – AI in HR: scaling clarity, SBI-F talk tracks, and asking for pushback

[16:09] – Guardrails, not legal advice: using AI responsibly

[19:30] – HR wellbeing: boundaries, mental health, and showing up with calm

Takeaways

- Build trust early so issues surface at a simmer—long before crisis and escalation.

- Drive clarity: align on who decides, who is responsible, who contributes, and by when.

- Over-communicate with intent—use recap notes, confirm “what good looks like,” and avoid ruinous empathy.

- Prepare difficult conversations with the SBI-F framework; practice and plan language in advance.

- Use AI as a thought partner to draft talk tracks and challenge your thinking—ask it to play devil’s advocate.

- Set and socialize AI guardrails; never treat AI outputs as legal counsel.

- Protect your own capacity: limit doomscrolling, set boundaries, and create pauses to bring calm to charged moments.

Sponsor

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What is HR Voices?

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)
Hello and welcome to HR Voices. I'm your host, Rebecca Taylor, and I'm here with Vanessa Brulotte, who's the employee relations partner at BambooHR. Vanessa, welcome.

Vanessa Brulotte (00:10)
Hi, thank you. I'm so excited to be here with you, Rebecca. Thanks for having me.

Rebecca Taylor (00:14)
Yeah, I'm so excited to have you here. It's like the second we joined this call before we even started recording, we were just like instantly going back and forth. So I think this is going to be a really good, a really good chat, really good conversation. Um, so I'd love to start kind of at the very beginning. Can you tell us about Bamboo HR? Tell us about your role and kind of what brings you here.

Vanessa Brulotte (00:31)
Yes. So Bamboo HR is an HR software company and they offer kind of an all-in-one HRS platform. Anything from performance management, reporting, onboarding, hiring, all the different things in one system for easy use. And I know I'm biased. I've been at Bamboo HR for nine years and yes, my, this is perfect timing because my ⁓ anniversary is coming up next week. So.

Rebecca Taylor (00:48)
Nine years!

Happy anniversary!

Vanessa Brulotte (00:58)
Thank you.

Yes. And with nine years, there's multiple capacities I've used the product in both in town acquisition management and HR. So kind of a full scope there. so definitely biased. I will call that out. Yeah. Thank you. Right. Yeah. It's all about that. Yeah. So in my role, it's the employee relations partner and I really focus in on

Rebecca Taylor (01:12)
You're allowed to babe. You should like the company that you work for. just, know, if you have the option to, why not? Yeah.

Vanessa Brulotte (01:26)
helping support performance management, investigations in the workplace, as well as terminations, all of those super fun, exciting things, right? ⁓ But the one thing that I love about it is at the heart of my role, it's really creating clarity and trust during moments that can feel really challenging for people and being able to help them cope and navigate through all these different challenging times. And so that's the one most rewarding thing about my role that I love.

Rebecca Taylor (01:32)
Mm. Very chill, yeah. ⁓

think that's a really, I love the way that you put that, where it's just kind of like you're trying to give them clarity in such an unclear, sometimes very stressful type of situation. Because when you're in employee relations, you're mostly dealing with people who are not having a great day or not their best time at the company, right? ⁓ And I noticed that you started in HR. So you were sort of like an HR business partner, more on the HR side of things. How did you start to specialize in employee relations?

Vanessa Brulotte (02:22)
Well,

it's, you know, we could sit here for an hour to talk about all of that. But kind of the short version of this is I love the strategy with the executives and kind of talk about people planning, but I really found that I had this like deep passion for the people and the inner workings of making sure that everyone felt heard and they had a chance to.

to be treated fairly and consistently across the board. I was like, hey, I'd to build something like that because I want everyone to have a fair chance and we all are approaching things the same way. And so I created a centralized function for employee relations and have kind of built on that for the last two years. Now I have ⁓ a ⁓ colleague that's helping me with all of this and now it is centralized to where I get to every single day ensure that there's fairness and consistency.

people are heard and work through some of the most challenging issues. And I just find so much more joy in that than sitting at the table later doing strategy. ⁓ And so it's more of like where finding my passion was.

Rebecca Taylor (03:29)
Yeah, that's really cool because it's kind of like employee relations. Yes, there's you think of the more negative side of it, right? Of like cleaning things up or dealing with sort of challenging situations. But it could also you mentioned just sort of letting people feel heard. know, it could there's a lot that can kind of fall into the employee relations category, right? It's literally how we relate to each other as employees, which can be just a good place to kind of give feedback, help people to kind of navigate the workplace a little bit better. And it's kind of like if you

Vanessa Brulotte (03:48)
Yes.

Rebecca Taylor (03:59)
create a situation where people can feel comfortable going to you for multiple different things. You're not only going to be dealing with them in crisis, you're also going to be supporting them through maybe just change or maybe just things that are a normal part of the process, but they have that extra layer of support. And I think that's really

Vanessa Brulotte (04:13)
Exactly. Well, the best part is, like the more you build trust and that credibility of being that safe space, the more that people come to you when things are only simmering, they're not at eruption. Because when things are at eruption, you cannot navigate through that. That's a, okay, we need to make a solve right now and I'm not willing to collaborate or come up with resolve together. It's, you really need that, the catch at that simmer moment ⁓ to really.

Rebecca Taylor (04:23)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa Brulotte (04:43)
⁓ Sorry, we can cut this out. I was trying to think of like a way to kind of like say that, but really it's catching things in the simmer so you can really collaborate better versus at the eruption phase.

Rebecca Taylor (04:50)
Yeah. Yeah.

I think that's cool. It's kind of like the, you know, it's kind of like you let certain things, it's like when you're cooking rice, right? Like you put the water, you put the rice in the water before it starts to boil so that it just kind of like cooks that way. So it's like, it is true. It's kind of like if you're waiting for something to blow up, then it's going to be a lot harder to solve the problem. And then there are going to be more problems that lead up to that big problem too. So it's kind of like creating good, consistent habits, behaviors, and just

Vanessa Brulotte (05:14)
Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Taylor (05:20)
feedback points is really, really key. what's so, is bamboo, do you work on site? Is it a hybrid environment? Is it remote? Like, how do you work together?

Vanessa Brulotte (05:32)
It's a mixture kind of depending on what area you're in. Cause I know some teams come in two days a week, others it's three days a week. And there's, there's some teams that don't come in at all. especially if we've got folks out of state, you know, we don't want somebody to have to fly in every day. ⁓ not possible. ⁓ but, but at least for me, like I try to be there two, three days a week, just to make sure I'm onsite visible because sometimes having the visibility of.

Rebecca Taylor (05:33)
Okay, bye.

Yeah, yeah, fair.

Vanessa Brulotte (05:59)
employee relations that safe space. It's like, ⁓ yeah, I have them available to me. It's not just some random channel that I hope they get to. They're actually a human being and I want to go connect with them. So it's kind of a mix.

Rebecca Taylor (06:10)
Yeah,

yeah, that's cool. Cause it also kind of gives probably more opportunities to kind of give and get feedback too, right? Cause when you're totally remote, you have to be really systemized in it and really kind of support it. When you're hybrid, there's sort of more opportunity for casual feedback, I think, just cause you could run into someone or you can witness things. And, you know, it just, I think it just gives sort of a different nuance or a different layer kind of like to what that conversation can look like. you know, HR is a very,

Vanessa Brulotte (06:25)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

yeah.

Rebecca Taylor (06:38)
chill environment to be in, you know, in general, right? Because you're dealing with people and there's always sort of, you know, challenges and obstacles and opportunities. So what are some of the challenges that you're seeing right now that you're kind of working on just in general in the field?

Vanessa Brulotte (06:53)
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of common challenges and I think there's one theme that I wanted to kind of talk through a little bit that I see as like trending right now and that's communication. We always assume that we are the best communicators. That's like the worst assumption anybody can make is I communicated and set boundaries and they just don't know ⁓ what they're doing. Actually, can I start that over? Because I have like.

Rebecca Taylor (07:19)
Yeah,

go for it. No, you're good. You're good. And the more authentic, the better too. So don't feel like you have to be like super, you know, super, I don't know, succinct as you hear that I'm not. So you're doing great. ⁓ Yeah. So I'll ask it again too. So I'll start kind of like with the ask. Yeah.

Vanessa Brulotte (07:20)
Sorry, I get so excited to talk to you, Rebecca. I'm like, there's so many thoughts.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah, ask it again. Yeah.

Rebecca Taylor (07:41)
⁓ So working in HR can kind of have its own sort of nuances and lots of things we're always juggling, especially because you're dealing with lots of people from all walks of life who have different challenges and different obstacles they're trying to kind of overcome. So overall right now, what are you seeing as some of the biggest challenges that HR is facing?

Vanessa Brulotte (07:58)
Yes, I think the first challenge I want to hit on is that many people facing organizations is that communication, it doesn't hit the mark. It's not due to a lack of intent, but because we naturally communicate from our own perspective. And assuming we're being clear or that others interpret messages the same way we do can create those unintended gaps. there's an example I was thinking about is

Rebecca Taylor (08:08)
Yeah.

Vanessa Brulotte (08:27)
somebody had asked me one time, they were an HR leader and they said, you know, my leader is supposed to be helping me with this project. What do I do if my HR leader isn't supporting me in this? Like they own this too. And so what I did was I was like, hey, let's pause for a moment. Have you seek to understand what alignment they had on who's responsible for the deadlines? Who's the final decision maker? Who's the contributors? Who?

who needs to participate because your leader might have a completely different perspective. They might think that, I thought we had a conversation and that you were gonna run it because I made this particular comment and you may have completely misinterpreted what they said. And so both of you are kind of going down this path and they might be frustrated with you. And so it's like we need to start with having conversations with each other because again, it goes back to that simmer, catching things at a simmer so then it doesn't escalate.

⁓ and don't allow ruinous empathy to get in the way of having that hard conversation because sometimes when we just talk to each other as human beings and seek to understand and assume the best to try to understand perspectives, we're more likely to come out of it with like a more collaborative resolve and can ⁓ reduce the likeliness of escalation later and you get more, ⁓ it just drives you further to success.

Rebecca Taylor (09:46)
Yeah.

Yeah, clarity is kindness, as they say too, right? So it's like, if you can be, yes, exactly, yeah. And it's like, if you can be clear and you can be direct with someone, then it's great. think that there's like, was reading something or watching something. I forget if it was, I forget where I saw it. I forget if it was like a video or if it was a book, but it's been like living in my head. ⁓ There's different ways that people communicate, which is like the, and it's cultural. So there's high context communicators and low context communicators. And so like,

Vanessa Brulotte (09:53)
Yes, like Brené Brown.

Rebecca Taylor (10:20)
High context communicators are more like they're speaking very directly, very clearly. They'll state like, you are not fired. You are getting promoted or like whatever that is in the workplace. And then low context is more speaking in inferences ⁓ or kind of just saying like, well, I didn't tell you you weren't fired. So like, why would you assume that you are? Like, and there's different sort of ways to communicate where, you know, I think that in the workplace, it can't hurt to be almost overly clear because

even if you're not that type of communicator naturally, your team might be. And the more clear you can get, the better, especially when you look at, it is true that if you think you're a great communicator, you're probably not. There's probably some work to do and that's okay.

Vanessa Brulotte (11:00)
Yeah, exactly. Yes, yes.

It makes me think of back to the Amelia Bedelia books back from the 80s. Yes. And if any of the audience members have no idea what that is, you have an employee who's employed by employer and the employer makes a list of saying, hey, dress the chicken and draw the drapes. And most people probably would look at that list and say like, I need to...

Rebecca Taylor (11:09)
Yes! my god, my favorite books growing up. I loved those.

Vanessa Brulotte (11:28)
⁓ spice up the chicken and I need to move the drapes and and she took it literally and actually drew drapes on a piece of paper and then dressed the chicken in overalls and shoes.

Rebecca Taylor (11:39)
Yep.

It's so funny because it's like that is the part that it's also where a lot of change initiatives fail. It's like because people think that they're being clear with communication and it's just how I think it's sort of like there's an onus on the communicator to make sure that they're communicating as clearly as possible. But I think there's also we need to leave space for us to ask questions to just to clarify us, meaning the listener, the communicative, I guess.

because it is a sort of a two-way street. Like there's nothing, I think that there's like so much of an instinct to just like go, go, go and go really fast and just keep on moving that there's nothing wrong with just sort of taking a second to pause and say, hey, what does good look like in what you're telling me? What does, like, just, can I just repeat this back to you to make sure that I understand it? ⁓ Because that's where you really start to kind of get a lot of the true elements of what someone's saying. ⁓ And I think that's cool.

Vanessa Brulotte (12:37)
exactly.

Yes. Well, and it makes me think about there's so many times I tell people, you know, the best thing you can do is recap your conversations to each other. If you've got a big project coming, recap it to each other. It's not a documentation trail. It's really to make sure, are we aligned? Like, hey, did you capture this the same way as I did? And they might say, no, I thought this was this. Well, all of a sudden now you have clarity and you're probably preventing the miscommunications, misalignments.

Rebecca Taylor (13:06)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa Brulotte (13:07)
before you get further down the road where it becomes escalated.

Rebecca Taylor (13:10)
Yes, because then it's just like, well, we took this project so far down, we should have stopped at step two just to make sure now we're off on this whole different direction. And we've put all this time and resource into it. And now we have to either backpedal or just keep going even if it's not what it was intended to, if it's not coming out the way that it was intended. Yeah, yeah. So it's funny, you we talk about, I always like to talk about challenges because I just think, you know, it's being, one of the things that I know about

Vanessa Brulotte (13:17)
Yes.

Yeah, exactly. Yes.

Rebecca Taylor (13:37)
HR just from working in HR and from chatting with people is that like, can be very lonely and you kind of feel like you're solving a lot of problems yourself. You have to lean on community. ⁓ And so, you know, I think just, you know, being able to kind of speak to that is, is really, it's nice to kind of be able to have a space like this to help people to kind of hear like you're not alone. No one's a great communicator and that's okay. That's the job. The job is helping them to get better, right? ⁓

Vanessa Brulotte (13:55)
Yeah.

Yes.

Rebecca Taylor (14:01)
So what's something on the flip side of that, what's something that you're excited about? Like, do you have a project you're excited about or just a thought that you're kind of like pursuing right now?

Vanessa Brulotte (14:12)
Yes, I mean, I'm really excited because going into 2026 leading up to this year, there was kind of this huge drive to embrace AI, implement AI, and now it's here. Like it's now part of everyone's strategy. A lot of companies are like, how can I integrate this and actually help it scale our teams? so in HR, there's kind of this exciting opportunity now to say, okay, how can AI partner to scale my role?

because we don't want AI to ever replace where human decisions need to be made. Like that needs to be clear. it's AI should not replace that. But how can it help scale us to set us more free to do great work? And I've kind of toggled around with even different leaders and it's like, hey, how can you use AI to help you to make sure that you're being super clear in your conversations? So for example, like if you need to go have a crucial conversation with a peer.

Rebecca Taylor (14:44)
Right. Yeah.

Vanessa Brulotte (15:07)
and ⁓ you utilize like the SBIF framework. So situation, behavior, impact. Hey, what are we gonna expect in future? Kind of having a conversation with each other. It's like, hey, go consult with AI and say, hey, I need to have this hard conversation with my peer. How do I do this? Like help me come up with a talk track. Here's what I'm thinking. Could you give me feedback and help us become better communicators? I think that there's some really cool.

ways that we can use it as a resource. Obviously it needs to be a resource. It can't be the full truth. Like it needs to be used as a partner, not your full on answer. ⁓ I see people sometimes misuse it as legal counsel. And ⁓ my goodness, I think that's definitely a Yes, I think that's definitely a challenge HR folks are gonna run into is more and more people using it as legal counsel.

Rebecca Taylor (15:45)
Yeah, that terrifies me. The lawyers are probably like, yeah, I'm doing that because we'll fix your problem.

Vanessa Brulotte (15:58)
and having to help them navigate the laws because it doesn't understand the nuances or state or local laws if you're asking about a federal law. And so that's gonna be interesting.

Rebecca Taylor (16:09)
Yeah, yeah, I agree. I'm kind of like curious to see how this is going to go, especially when you look at tools like sort of more generic AI tools like Chachi PT, Copilot, Cloud. It's they're they're educated by, know, unquote, educated, trained by whatever's on the Internet, right? They're looking at YouTube. They're looking at Reddit. There's no I mean, I was always taught that everything on the Internet isn't necessarily true, right? So

You have to, you know, there is certain, I think we're building a literacy to kind of have a little bit more skepticism around what, you you might get at first and understand how to, you know, evaluate your sources and see is the thing that it's telling me, is this actually true? ⁓ It's kind of why I'm also just an advocate for specialized, more closed AI tools to do specific jobs, especially within HR. I mean, it's the reason why I was so interested in even partnering with All Voices in the first place. It's because

you know, it's employee relations and it's AI for employee relations. That's not something that you want to outsource to like your generic AI tool ⁓ because it's something that, you know, if you're building it specifically to solve those problems and to, you know, hyper-personalize someone's employee experience, which is what AI does allow you to do, then you're at least operating within a space where your information is safe. You can know that the recommendations it's going to make you are

a little bit more cohesive. Like, RAI is never going to give you legal advice, right? It might say you might want to talk to a lawyer, but that's as far as it's going to go. Yeah.

Vanessa Brulotte (17:31)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Setting up those guardrails

is going to be so crucial. And if you don't have them, it's like, now's the time. Set up the guardrails and a shared alignment on how to utilize it correctly.

Rebecca Taylor (17:49)
Yeah, yeah. And I think that's kind of where there's a lot of opportunity, kind of like what you were saying, is like, can we scale our jobs? How can we scale the work that we're doing? And even for those HR folks that are feeling lonely because maybe they're a team of one or their team's gotten reduced for whatever reason, AI can be a really good thought partner, kind of like what you were saying about using it as a way to kind of line up a conversation. You can also ask AI, like, hey, this is a

This is a program that I'm trying to roll out. This is what I've done so far. Am I missing anything? Like just even having that is really, really, you know, it can be really beneficial if you're kind of just trying to get a lot of stuff done at once too.

Vanessa Brulotte (18:30)
Yeah,

totally. And a lot of times, if you're using it a lot, it tries to agree with you. So ask it specifically to push back. Hey, I want you to play devil's advocate on me right now. What am I, like, so I like that you say, what am I missing? Like ask it to do that specifically, it's important.

Rebecca Taylor (18:36)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Yup.

Yeah, yeah, and it's funny because I think that it's all programmed to just validate us all the time, just like our algorithms are. It's all like echo chamber, right? And that's not the way real work is done. And I was reading something the other day where someone was, they were posting about, I think it was like agreement fatigue. And it's just like, we're all so sick of AI saying, that's so great. You're so smart. Look at you. It's just like, we're like, no, I'm ⁓ not.

Vanessa Brulotte (18:51)
Yes.

Rebecca Taylor (19:11)
I do think that's kind of where we're seeing more people kind of have more discussions that are a little bit more like thought oriented to kind of specifically debate things, which is nice because that's how really good decisions get made at a company. It has to have some friction, right? If there's no healthy friction, then you're never going to get anywhere.

Vanessa Brulotte (19:30)
Yep, yep, totally.

Rebecca Taylor (19:32)
Yeah. Well, do you have any closing thoughts? really I, you know, I could definitely keep going, but I know we're at time. I want to be respectful of your time. So do you have any closing thoughts? So are you.

Vanessa Brulotte (19:38)
You're amazing.

Yes. Yes. There's, there's one thought that I just wanted to close with and, it's all about in HR. Like you said, it can be very lonely, especially for those HR teams of one. And we need to take care of and prioritize our own wellbeing and our own mental health where I mean, we're, seeing just in, trending so far in this year. And I saw last year there's.

There's a rise in mental health and for HR, we're expected in a lot of these hard conversations to come in as that neutral party with that high emotional intelligence and be everyone else's calm, but we're all human beings too. So what are we doing to make sure that we can come into that with the calm? Because if you have two storms meeting each other, calm and resolve is not created when two storms meet. And so,

Rebecca Taylor (20:28)
Yeah.

Vanessa Brulotte (20:33)
how do we take care of our own mental health and wellbeing and just think about what are you doing for yourself to make sure that you create pauses. If you're doom scrolling, you're impacting your amygdala and hyperdrive and you're going to have chronic stress and you're not gonna find that core calm for yourself. ⁓ And so do what you can to take care of you ⁓ and find that calm and...

set those boundaries because nobody else is going to set those boundaries for you. Like you have to prioritize and set them because yeah, that's that's pretty much like my final thought.

Rebecca Taylor (21:05)
Yeah, great.

Yeah, no, I love that. And it's so true. like no one's going to set those boundaries for you. And it's the only way once you set those boundaries and you do take care of yourself, like you mentioned, you can show up a lot better for the people who really do need you to, for the employees who are coming to you for advice or for help. we're not everyone's therapist. We're not people's parents. That's not the role that HR plays. But we do still have, like you said, the responsibility to show up in a different way to.

you know, to some more charged conversations. So you're right, you can only do it if you take care of yourself. Yeah. Well, Vanessa, thank you so much for being here. This is a really, really great conversation and thank you to everybody who's listening. ⁓ And I hope everybody has a great rest of your day. Bye.

Vanessa Brulotte (21:36)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Thank you.