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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 (00:01.112)
Hello and welcome to HR Voices. I'm your host Rebecca Taylor and I'm here with Lisa Santin, the CHRO at Graham Packaging. Lisa, welcome to the show.
Lisa Santin (00:09.863)
but thank you. Thank you for having me, Rebecca. It's great to be here.
Rebecca Taylor (00:13.454)
Yeah, thank you so much for being here. I know we just met like minutes before we started recording, but I can already tell that we're going to have a good back and forth. That this is going to be a good chat. I'm very excited. And for those who are new here, HR Voices explores real and fabricated anonymized employee relations scenarios through the lens of experienced HR and people leaders just like Lisa. So we evaluate realistic workplace situations and demonstrate how we would assess risk, apply judgment, and design practical responses.
So our goal here is to reveal how strong HR leaders think when facing ambiguity and not to find a single correct answer because as we know, that so rarely exists in the wonderful world of HR that we work in. So Lisa, I know we just picked your scenario, but are you ready to hear it out so everyone kind of knows what we're working with? Okay, so we're calling this one the promotion pregnancy coincidence. A marketing manager has passed over for a director promotion two months after announcing her pregnancy.
Lisa Santin (01:00.339)
I am ready.
Rebecca Taylor (01:11.01)
The role is given to a male peer with less tenure. The hiring committee cites concerns about quote bandwidth and quote continuity for a role that would launch a major initiative during her expected leave period. She files a pregnancy discrimination complaint under the PDA. The company argues the decision was made on legitimate business grounds. HR's investigation uncovers that the word bandwidth quote unquote appeared in the hiring committee's written notes three times in connection specifically with her candidacy. But no such notation exists for other candidates.
So this is a loaded one. This is a big one. So before we jump into all of the pieces that kind of make this complicated, what stands out to you as the most risky or unclear in this scenario?
Lisa Santin (01:54.225)
Well, there's a few things, right? First of all, this scenario is way more common than people think. It sits at the intersection of two things where you can easily struggle. It's legitimate business planning and it's unconscious bias. And then there's the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which is very, very clear that you cannot treat pregnant women differently than you would treat any other employee that's on a temporary medical condition, has a temporary medical condition.
Rebecca Taylor (02:00.461)
Mm.
Lisa Santin (02:23.575)
And I think really what stands out is the word, two words, bandwidth and continuity. They do a lot of heavy lifting in this case, and it's really where it gets interesting.
Rebecca Taylor (02:36.735)
Interesting is a great word for it. It makes me want to open up my notepad and just kind of like start to ask everybody so many questions about what does this mean. speaking of which, let's say, you you're kind of you're, you know, you're seeing what's happening here. You need to start to kind of, you know, investigate and kind of get an idea of what's actually happening versus like what's the, you know, what's the like, where's the truth in this? So who do you start to talk to first and what information are you looking for?
Lisa Santin (02:38.0)
You
Lisa Santin (02:43.411)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Santin (03:01.331)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Santin (03:06.471)
So you're talking to, of course, the employee. You're talking to the hiring managers in the interview team and anybody else that may be involved in the hiring decision. Because that's really what it comes down to is who's making the hiring decision. When you start doing this, you're going to have to look at it from many different lenses. You're going to look at it from the employee lens. You're going to look at it from the company lens.
Somewhere in the middle is where you're going to find some of your answers. And it's not going to be clear cut because this is really hard to do. as you know, everything we do in HR is pretty much in the gray. I mean, I remember talking to people back earlier in my career where they would call for advice and they'd say, well, know, they want to follow flow charts. Like if yes, then go here. If no, then go there. And really, their head would almost explode when I say, well, it depends.
Rebecca Taylor (03:46.082)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (03:55.745)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (04:01.708)
Yep.
Lisa Santin (04:02.855)
because the context depends on it. we could go through and like this, we could talk about this for sure. However, you have to make some assumptions, right? You have to make some assumptions through this whole.
Rebecca Taylor (04:11.97)
Hmm?
Rebecca Taylor (04:15.851)
Yeah. And there has to be context, right? That's why the it depends is sort of such if HR had a tagline or merch, the merch should be it depends because it's true. It's like the context of the of the situation is what makes things complicated and the different sort of factors that kind of got to it being this particular issue. Right. You know, so so let's say, you know, as you're kind of figuring out what's going on,
Lisa Santin (04:20.402)
You
Lisa Santin (04:24.403)
Good fun.
Rebecca Taylor (04:44.897)
you're looking at sort of the concerns about bandwidth and continuity. Do you talk to the hiring team or who was involved in those interviews?
Lisa Santin (04:53.691)
you have to talk to the hiring team because it's their decision that led to where we are right now. Now, when you're talking to the hiring team, one thing that stood out is where it said that the person that was chosen had more tenure. Now, tenure's important, but depending on the level of role, it may not be the only thing. Just because somebody has more tenure in an organization doesn't mean they have more experience.
Rebecca Taylor (05:10.059)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Santin (05:21.531)
or that they don't have more experience and that they're not more qualified for the role than the woman that we're speaking about, the pregnant woman who was interviewed. So that's some of the place where we were talking about context matters. It's like, okay, what is the background of the person that you spoke to and you ultimately chose? And you wanna compare the resumes of somebody, somebody in those positions and the people that were all interviewed and chosen.
Rebecca Taylor (05:33.068)
Yeah.
Lisa Santin (05:51.124)
And, um, you know, we'll probably get to this, but usually to try to avoid something like this, you have a rubric of, you know, what are we looking for? And like a way to score people. And depending upon that score, you also have notes and, you know, then you could at least say there's some data behind our decision. And in this situation, it doesn't seem on that there was any data behind it. It was just more of a gut feel.
Rebecca Taylor (06:08.428)
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Taylor (06:14.061)
Yeah.
Lisa Santin (06:21.009)
and you can only go by the notes that are directly in front of you.
Rebecca Taylor (06:21.313)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, I'd want to look at the notes from the interviews too, like pull that documentation and just kind of see to your point, whatever, however they scored the scorecards and the rubrics, if those exist, at minimum any notes that they took, you know, in the interview. I used to work with hiring managers who specifically didn't put notes in the ATS because they were like, well, I don't want you to have to see them in case they could be an issue. I'm like, well, maybe don't make hiring decisions about things that could be an issue then because the issue is not that.
Lisa Santin (06:27.463)
Yeah.
Lisa Santin (06:52.915)
Exactly. Now we do it a little bit differently. We don't put the notes into the ATS because it's too hard for the hiring managers to figure out how to navigate the ATS. So instead, we try to create a form where it asks the very simple questions and people will answer that form. And it's required that they give feedback. then we made it even easier where it's like grade one through five, one being at least the lesson.
Rebecca Taylor (06:54.919)
Rebecca Taylor (07:12.322)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Santin (07:22.205)
five being the best. And then we say, okay, you have these grades and then you at the end you have some open-ended questions.
Rebecca Taylor (07:29.761)
Yeah, yeah. And I think what's so important about that is that's what starts your documentation. So you're taking notes to ideally see that this interview process was fair and equitable. But it also kind of starts as someone's initial record for employment or initial record for this promotion, right? So interview scorecards, they don't always have to be something that you're using to cover yourself, right? It can be, here's documentation about what
Lisa Santin (07:45.917)
Right.
Rebecca Taylor (07:55.923)
stretches this person might be making in this role so that we can determine how we can support them, right? There's always sort of, everyone always assumes negative when they're thinking about documentation, but you know, when you think about it through the lens of it's actually generally meant to make this person as successful as possible, it's not the enemy.
Lisa Santin (08:09.521)
Right, right. And it also gets the hiring team all aligned because in that what you're doing as you're preparing your rubric or you're looking at the skills that you want to write, right? So it's everybody's aligned around what are we looking for here? What does a successful person look like? What do they have? What skills and abilities do they have?
Rebecca Taylor (08:30.602)
Yeah, yeah. And interestingly, you mentioned tenure, because I know tenure is mentioned in this scenario, that the other person was chosen because they have tenure. But the concerns that are noted are about bandwidth and continuity, which don't have anything to do with tenure. So can we talk about those words? Because you said that those words are doing a lot of work in this. So talk to me. someone, when you see something like this where the feedback is that there's a concern about bandwidth in a pregnant candidate, what is that?
Lisa Santin (08:43.347)
Correct, correct.
Yeah.
Lisa Santin (08:55.955)
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Taylor (08:56.938)
What does that really mean? And have you ever seen something like this in real life?
Lisa Santin (09:01.139)
So yes, when it comes to something like, people have a tendency to use neutral words to help mask any kind of discriminatory motivation. And I don't think they do it on purpose, right? It's our unconscious bias. So what you're doing is you're trying to pick out those words and really dig into them and say, well, what do you mean by that? Because the word bandwidth, as we know in this scenario, showed up.
two or three times on hers. And if bandwidth is an issue with that, just in general that you're looking for, then why didn't it show up with other people? Why is it only the pregnant woman that this showed up with? And I've been fortunate with the hiring teams that I've worked with. We have hired people who were pregnant and we found out they were pregnant before we made the offer and we still made the offer because they were the right.
And we had good people and good hiring teams that were focused on two things. One is filling the role and the other is, okay, filling the role is one thing, but we have to come up with an operational plan should somebody have to go out on leave. So yes, it's two separate things and we have to figure them out, but they were able to disconnect those two and say, yes, this is the right person for the longterm.
Rebecca Taylor (10:17.835)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Santin (10:27.277)
And how do we, so how do we separate those things? And if we choose this person who is the right person, who is the most qualified candidate, who fits in with our culture, then how would we have some sort of continuity to work through this operational plan to make sure that when they do go out, we could survive?
Rebecca Taylor (10:45.332)
Yeah, yeah. I think we are calling out so well is short term thinking versus long term thinking because, you know, a pregnancy leave is a short term situation, right? You know, so it's like this is only going to be something that you're going to have to work on for continuity for a certain amount of time. If you're making a long term decision, such as this person in this role, just based on a short term scenario or a short term thing, then you're not really thinking about.
Lisa Santin (10:50.631)
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Taylor (11:13.93)
the right fit, you're thinking more about, I would say convenience, honestly. And, you know, like when you're on a team, you have to be able to have a continuity plan because anybody could go out for an extended leave at any time. Anyone can have an accident and, you know, have to be out for a few weeks. And so it's like, you have to be ready for a continuity plan regardless. But I find that it just gets put so much on pregnancy specifically.
Lisa Santin (11:17.917)
Yeah.
Lisa Santin (11:26.279)
Yep. Exactly.
Rebecca Taylor (11:41.894)
And I know there's many bias reasons why that we could probably have a whole other podcast about that, but it's a real challenge.
Lisa Santin (11:49.318)
Now, launching a major initiative during some key leader or key employees leave period is a legitimate business concern and you do have to plan for continuity for that. But the key word is you have to plan for it. So it's not a reason to say no to somebody who's the most.
Rebecca Taylor (12:02.241)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (12:06.605)
Right, exactly. And now what you've done is you've not picked someone for a promotion for reasons that were biased. And now she's filed a pregnancy discrimination complaint. So now this has been escalated, right? Like the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, it's a legally protected, it's a legal piece of the pie. now when it's reached this kind of escalation, there are usually so many stops along the way that could have prevented it from getting here.
But now you're the HR person who has to deal with something that's being escalated, that the business seems to disagree with the escalation because they're saying that the decision was made on legitimate business grounds. So when you're doing this investigation and you find that bandwidth continues to appear in the hiring committee's written notes, what do you do with the discrimination case? Or how do you kind of start to piece that together?
Lisa Santin (13:03.901)
Well, the case itself to me is you really look at it and you look at what you have in front of you. And a lot of times with managers, they're saying, well, that wasn't my intent. And it's not about the intent, it's about the impact. And we all know that. So there's times where you have to really look and say, what are the positives, what are the negatives here? And how do we kind of pull this together?
Again, you're looking through the lens of the company, of the employee to make sure that you're treating somebody fairly. But you're also looking through the lens of the company because you want to mitigate risk. And to me, what I would do in this situation, looking through and saying, okay, here's the notes. It's come up a couple of times just with one person who happens to be pregnant, the worry about bandwidth. It's in writing. It's all discoverable. you know, regardless of intent,
it really looks bad. And how do we manage through this? So my recommendation would be let's figure out how to settle this. Let's retrain our hiring people, our hiring managers and the people who are on the hiring teams to interview. And how do we implement a structured interview and evaluation process immediately so that moving forward we don't run into this again?
Rebecca Taylor (13:56.429)
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Taylor (14:19.98)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's the structured interview process that, you know, is sometimes overlooked in promotion situations too, right? There's a lot of, you know, a lot of my HR career came in recruiting and it was so focused on, you know, bringing in the right talent, new hires, all of that. And the promotion process can just be so underrepresented in interview training because, you know, they assume, well, I know this person, so I know whether or not this person's right for the role, but it just basically means that
you're making most of your decisions based on bias. you know, there's, yes, there's historical precedent, there's performance, there's all of that. But, you know, usually if you're not interviewing people for promotions, then it can get sort of sticky. Yeah.
Lisa Santin (15:03.475)
And when you have a structured interview process, you're usually giving people the skills that we're looking for along with some canned and structured questions to ask that they could finesse in their own way, but they have to ask these questions. And the interview process, it's already very artificial to begin with. It's an artificial environment. people tend to feel that it's making it even more artificial.
Rebecca Taylor (15:24.672)
Yes.
Lisa Santin (15:31.026)
by having those structured questions and it doesn't flow naturally. so I get it. I get that it's not easy and sometimes it's not ideal. But if you're able to get skilled at it, you could have these questions in your own voice and you are able to ask follow-up questions on your own that help have a little bit of that finesse and a little bit of more of that natural flow to a situation, into a conversation.
Rebecca Taylor (16:00.778)
Yeah, make it feel less impersonal in something that, like you said, can already feel very artificial and is very artificial, which I love that you called that out, by the way. Because interviewing is weird, but it is what it is, though, right?
Lisa Santin (16:08.455)
Mm-hmm.
It is. When somebody shows up, you're usually getting their best face that they're putting on. sometimes that's them naturally all the time. And other times they're just really putting on a facade. And you do your best to try to dig in and figure that out, especially with new people. Now with internal people, you know them a little bit more, which actually makes this process even harder because you usually have a little bit of a relationship with them. So.
Rebecca Taylor (16:17.536)
Yes.
Lisa Santin (16:39.707)
a structured interview process with canned questions isn't the easiest when you already know somebody.
Rebecca Taylor (16:45.78)
Yeah, yeah, especially when it's very tempting to make that a performance in and of itself and still make a decision based on how you know this person or not. Because that is the hard part is we can't, know, bias exists, implicit, explicit, it exists no matter what. And it's something that is sort of that skill that we all have to continuously just kind of, you know, build like how to see through our own biases, you know, positive or negative, right? Because, you know, it's like,
this person's like me, therefore they should be good at this. That's an example of bias, even though some people think that's a good thing. And it is sort of like this, it needs sort of continuous training. And I think it needs to be continuously sort of monitored, sounds like a dramatic word, because I'm not talking about mass surveillance, right? But just sort of looking at any type of scenario where decisions are made internally that aren't just based on, or that aren't backed up as much with data. Because data is,
where a lot of it kind of needs to come from, But there's a lot of competing priorities here too, right? Because the thing that makes this extra complicated, in my mind anyway, isn't just that the person was passed over for this role, it's that they're an internal candidate, so they still work at this company. So how do you navigate an employee who has filed a discrimination complaint under the PDA who still works at the company? How do you navigate even just talking to them and working with them on this?
Lisa Santin (18:12.34)
You know, that's the hard part, right? Because you have, again, you have a relationship with this person and they're there all the time. And you know, the fortunate thing is if they're interviewing for another role, nine times out of 10, it's in a different department or with a different manager. So you're not worried about somebody potentially retaliating because they're reporting to them every day and they just file a complaint about them. Now, again,
Rebecca Taylor (18:18.74)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (18:39.98)
Yeah.
Lisa Santin (18:41.766)
It depends because it could be that you're interviewing for one level up and you have the same, you know, you're, you're the person you're interviewing with is your manager's manager and maybe they're feeling pressure. So we really, it depends, but you know, hopefully this is something manageable. And if it's not, then you need to take a step back and really say, okay, how do we manage this to the best of our ability? And, know, other times it's you, you have to get a little more creative.
Rebecca Taylor (18:51.446)
Yeah.
Lisa Santin (19:09.618)
And sometimes that means talking to your internal or outside counsel, or sometimes it's talking to another HR person within your organization if you have one, so that you could really kind of talk a situation through. Because sometimes when you're talking, at least with me, when I'm talking through a situation, that process of thinking out loud is very creative. somebody asking you questions or saying, well, what about this?
Rebecca Taylor (19:09.878)
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Taylor (19:31.648)
Yeah. Yes.
Lisa Santin (19:36.797)
or what about that? And you just start thinking through other scenarios and you end up coming up with the best situation or the best answer available. Not necessarily the perfect answer that's gonna make everybody happy, but you have a situation at hand, you have to make a decision with the information that you have, and you have to make the best decision you can. And it may upset some people, but you just have to move forward and do the best you can.
Rebecca Taylor (19:49.249)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (20:05.929)
Yeah. And I love that you called out asking either peers or other HR people or counsel for advice, because so many investigations go wrong when someone just sort of thinks that they don't, that they can handle it. Even when we can handle things, it never hurts to just get sort of perspective and opinions when within, know, especially within our own teams, Obviously, note and confidentiality exists in different things when it comes to general counsel or the legal team.
You know, you can be free and open with them. And if you have other HR peers within the organization, you know, usually if you have someone who you can speak freely about these types of things, it always, always, always helps to just have the other side or just a thought partner, even if it's just validating, you know, the pieces that you know, because that way, you know, you're truly looking at any, any sort of part of this scenario that could play out because there's always
There are always so many different ways things can go depending on what the next thing is that someone does, right?
Lisa Santin (21:09.65)
And a lot of it is based in human emotion, correct? Because somebody who feels discriminated against, they're very emotional about that. generally speaking, what actually makes pregnancy discrimination so important is that it often doesn't look like malice, it looks like planning. when somebody is to bring up the fact that they filed a claim of...
Rebecca Taylor (21:11.999)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (21:29.267)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Santin (21:35.665)
pregnancy discrimination, the person who the claim is against usually also has emotions because they're thinking, that was never my intent. You know, I'm really just trying to protect my organization and the company and I'm trying to plan and that so when you raise those emotions, it's working through emotions that sometimes is the most difficult part of this because you don't want to because you know, motion sometimes oftentimes can be very unpredictable.
Rebecca Taylor (21:56.341)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (22:02.791)
yes. yes. And that's mostly what I think we navigate in investigations. It's like it's why it depends is the answer so many times because whenever you're talking to anybody, it depends on what they're going to show up with that day, what energy they're going to have, how they're going to feel and what actions they may or may not take, how much they trust HR. Because sometimes you're not going to get the full story if someone doesn't feel that they can trust you.
Lisa Santin (22:16.68)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Santin (22:22.43)
Okay.
Rebecca Taylor (22:28.905)
That's what kind of makes it's navigating all of that stuff that makes it very, very hairy and why you could probably give this scenario to 10 different companies and have 30 different possibilities with each one, right?
Lisa Santin (22:40.468)
And again, in a good environment, maybe this person was treated unfairly, but there's a way to make it right. that's, again, I do think that people who are discriminated against, what they're looking for is to be heard and to have some sort of solution to feel like they've been validated and that we're going to do something to make it right.
Rebecca Taylor (22:50.163)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (23:07.177)
Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. That's half of it is just like validating them, like you said, and just sort of saying, you're right to feel how you feel. I'm not going to dismiss how you feel. Let's kind of see you, hear you, and get you to the best place that we possibly can. And I keep thinking in this scenario, if she interviewed for a director role and someone else gets picked, I keep wondering, did this person get picked and is this now her boss? Like, was she passed over?
Lisa Santin (23:34.952)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (23:36.659)
and this other guys are her boss now. So, you know, you're the HR person. How do you navigate that if that's true?
Lisa Santin (23:43.489)
boy, that's something really difficult. And that's where I really get, it depends, right? What kind of relationship do they have to begin with? Is the relationship strong to begin with? How's the relationship with overall with the company? Is there something else that she wants to do? How many director positions do you have? Is there another director position that could potentially be opening up soon? It's just so many things that you have to look at. You just have to start peeling back the layers. Like it's almost like an onion. Start with layer one.
then you go to layer two, then you go to layer three, then you go to layer four, and at some point you're coming to a core where you have to make a decision. But at least then you've looked at all the different aspects and the different layers so that you're making a very well informed decision.
Rebecca Taylor (24:27.561)
Yeah, yeah. And I would think that you'd have to involve her in ultimately what happens, right? So I think that, and this is sort of like tough, right? Because retaliation, you know, it can look like retaliation if where she files her pregnancy discrimination claim, she's now moved to another department, right? So that can, that won't necessarily look great unless it's like handled the right way. And I think the only right way to do it is to involve her and make it.
Lisa Santin (24:48.82)
I'm done.
Rebecca Taylor (24:55.785)
her choice, right, give her the option. Yeah. Yeah.
Lisa Santin (24:57.288)
Yes, give her options. I love to present people with options because if you give them one option, they feel like that you're doing this is being done to them and it's really not an option. But if you give them several options and ask a lot of questions during the process to learn about them, what is your... So you wanted this role and you interviewed for this role. What were you trying to get to when you... What's the goal you were trying to achieve with this role? Is there a different way to get you to that
Rebecca Taylor (25:06.815)
You're forcing them. Yeah. Yeah.
Lisa Santin (25:26.068)
and still keep you on track.
Rebecca Taylor (25:26.304)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (25:29.855)
Yeah. And I love that you're bringing up sort of more career path type questions with this person and not just, you know, do you want to report to this new boss or not? Because if you think about it, if she was interviewing for a director role, we don't know, she could have been interviewing externally too. So this is sort of your chance to win back this candidate in more ways than one. And maybe it could open up a lot of other opportunities, but this is sort of where I think HR really has the chance to shine.
Because if you can just acknowledge like, it shouldn't have happened this way in a way that makes you legally protected, right? Because this is always like the balance.
Lisa Santin (26:06.388)
That's why you work with the 30s. They tell you exactly how to say it, but you tell them what you want to say and they tell you how to say
Rebecca Taylor (26:13.352)
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So if you can acknowledge that, like, you know, this scenario, this shouldn't have happened the way that it did. You know, we understand what it is that got us there. We're going to fix it. Now let's focus on getting you to the best place possible here. That gives you such a chance to help this person feel supported. And, you know, if that's handled properly, then you could win back an employee.
for life, right? I mean, I think that there's, but if it's not handled properly, then as soon as she gets the chance, she's gonna leave and I wouldn't blame her, right? Like this is where so much of our job is in the just making someone feel cared for and respected and heard. And that is still good for the business because if this person was so close to getting promoted and basically the only reason that they didn't promote her was because of her bandwidth and potential continuity, that tells me that this person is still a valuable employee at the company.
So it's advantageous for the company to keep them. And if HR can play a role in making that happen, that's what we're here for. That's how we work with the business. Yeah. OK, so I know we're at time, actually, believe it or not, which is wild to say. So I have one last question for you. And it's sort of in a similar vein to this, but also a little bit out of left field, because I think this is an important question about trust in HR sometimes.
Lisa Santin (27:17.396)
Definitely so true.
Lisa Santin (27:27.154)
Okay.
Rebecca Taylor (27:36.414)
But what is one assumption about HR that you think needs to be challenged?
Lisa Santin (27:40.501)
Oh, it's that HR is just the people people. And while, you know, there's so many people in that are nude HR that I interview and whether they're interns or entry level HR people or lower like, like early in career HR people that you ask them, well, why did you choose HR? And they say, well, I chose HR because I love people. And you know, my old, joke that I say to them is always like, Hey, you've been doing this for 26 years. You're not going to love the people anymore.
It's gotta be done in that. And to build the trust, you have to like the people, you have to have a way with people, but you also have to understand the business. And I think what happens is people get pushed into that, you just deal with the emotional people, you just deal with the people side, and they're not seen as business partners. And I do think that when you realize that you are a business partner that...
Rebecca Taylor (28:10.665)
Yeah.
Lisa Santin (28:38.654)
happens to focus on the people aspect of the business, that you not only are you trusted by the employees, but you're also trusted by your peers and the leaders within the organization.
Rebecca Taylor (28:48.841)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. And I've been seeing so many themes of that too, just where, you know, this is sort of a sea change in HR in so many ways, just with the way AI is coming into play and how our roles and jobs are changing. And it's almost easier to get business information now than it ever has been before, thanks to AI. And it's just such a cool opportunity for HR to kind of like...
really, if you're not already comfortable with the business, the truly business side of your job, this is kind of like the great time to start to learn it and really get comfortable with it. Yeah. Yeah.
Lisa Santin (29:23.848)
Right, it starts with understanding the why behind what you're doing and why behind what other people are doing. Because if you could understand the why, then as things start coming down, you could start being more creative with your solutions.
Rebecca Taylor (29:37.065)
Yes, yes. my god, so well said. And Lisa, thank you so much for being here. I think this was like, you know, we could have gone in so many different directions with this too. And I feel like we could just keep on peeling that onion on this. But thank you for your perspective and for sharing, you know, with everybody who's listening to this too. And thank you everybody for listening and I hope everybody has a great rest of your day.
Lisa Santin (29:57.182)
Thank you, thanks Rebecca, I appreciate you having me on.
Rebecca Taylor (30:00.288)
Yeah, thank you. Bye everyone.