EP 44 The Dichotomous State of HR, AI, and a Huge Announcement At The Very End of The Empty Red Seat

Tony and Steve talk about the state of HR, AI, eating catnip, and the fact that HR is both doing well and in trouble.  Tony's cynicism is both peaking and ebbing as he discusses HR with a wandering choo choo.  The guys discuss what is going on in the world of HR consulting and fractional HR.  Tony reads a post from Facebook and Steve gives a great HR in Life segment.  But don't drop out of the podcast early.  Steve makes a major announcement at the end of the podcast that you wont want to miss. 

Learn more about Fantastic Tony Benjamin at: https://www.thegrangellc.com/
Learn more about Steven “Big Deal” Smith at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/
Learn more about the books mentioned on the podcast at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/hr-life-podcast
Learn more about our sponsor MegastarHR at: https://www.megastarhr.com/
Lean more about Jobs for America's Graduates (JAG) at: https://jag.org/
Learn more about The Thrive Life Project at: https://www.thrivelifeproject.org/

Quote of the Episode: "AI is great but it won't take you on a date."  - TonyB.  

Creators and Guests

Host

Fantastic Tony Benjamin

I am a unique HR leader with more than 20 years’ experience working for some of Utah’s oldest, fastest growing, and most well-known companies. My experience includes Superior Drilling Products, Air Medical Resource Group, Control4, Ovivo USA and Deseret Book. I am a regionally recognized authority on building successful cultures and am an alumni speaker at DisruptHR SLC and DisruptHR St. George. I have earned an MBA from the University of Phoenix, a Bachelor’s degree from Utah State University, and am a certified Professional of Human Resources (PHR). I'm married to a woman out of my league, have three brilliant kids I doesn’t deserve and, although I travel a lot, live in Vernal, Utah.

Host

Steven "Big Deal" Smith

Steve will be the first to tell you that recruiting is marketing. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Finance at Brigham Young University and started his career in recruiting in Feb 2005. In 2008, he took a risk during a recession to help start a new company with Ryan Kohler, called ApplicantPro, a full suite HR platform for small to mid-sized businesses. In March 2025, ApplicantPro became iSolved Talent Acquisition, now serving 177,000 clients and close to 9800 employees. Before the merger, ApplicantPro made the Inc 5000 list 12 years in a row, Top Places to work in Utah 3 years in a row, and Steve was named the Small Business Utah HR Achievement Award winner in May 2024. iSolved was also named an Indeed Platinum Partner in 2023, 2024, and 2025 and is one of only ten ATS platforms in the country to obtain that designation. SHRM-CP & PHR certified, Steve currently volunteers on the Utah SHRM State Council as the immediate past State Executive Director. His book, The Hiring Tree: Laws of Applicant Attraction, was released in early 2023, and has helped thousands of organizations across the country rethink their approach to hiring. If you need help understanding the principles and role of SEO, marketing, and AI when it comes to attracting job seekers, Steve provides a solid framework for hiring effectively.

What is The HR Life Podcast?

The HR Life Podcast is a show about the work-life experience of those of us in Human Resources and business leadership. This long-form podcast is a conversation, casual, and not always the corporate line. Hosts and guests touch on everything from serious or even controversial topics to the absurdity of modern American business practices. Your hosts are Tony Benjamin, owner and founder of The Grange Strategic HR Consulting, and Steven J. Smith, Author of The Hiring Tree: Laws of Applicant Attraction and all-around important guy. Guests include the best minds in the HR world. Join the show weekly.

Tony Benjamin (00:09.213)
Welcome to the HR Life Podcast, a podcast about the work life experience of those of us in human resources and business leadership. Your hosts are fantastic, Tony Benjamin, owner and founder of the Grange, Strategic HR Consulting, and Stephen Bigdeel Smith, who is so important that somebody recognizes him no matter where he goes or what he's doing. Hey, Steve.

Steve-o (00:36.429)
Ha

Steve-o (00:39.854)
That reminds me of a plane ride I had once.

Tony Benjamin (00:44.377)
go, go, okay.

Steve-o (00:46.52)
Well, you you get on the plane and then somebody was walking by and he's like, hey, I know you. And I was like, I had no idea who you are, but OK. You know, we had this conversation and apparently he had seen me like a year and a half before at a conference of some sort. And he just remembered and he even shared the story of my lizard story with me. And I was like, but here's the funny thing. What people remember.

is sometimes very different from what actually happened. So apparently in his version of my lizard story, I was like five years old, which is really hilarious because that's not how old I was, but I was 11. But still, I was like five years old and apparently I had gone door to door to try to sell my lizards. like it was just it was just stuff that he added that I was like, that is fascinating that that's what you remember.

And he could not for the life of him remember what my presentation was about.

Tony Benjamin (01:47.395)
He just remembered the lizards. That's even better. That's even better.

Steve-o (01:48.91)
He only remembered the lizards. So that was really hilarious. It was so funny because like I said, and he had talked about me selling Whoppers to my, or buying Whoppers to my friends. And so I think there was just a version that I had shared with him. I don't share this a lot, but one of the cool parts when I sold lizards is I was making some pretty good money. I was making like $500 a month as an 11 year old, which is quite a bit. And so I would take, I was, I was, well that.

Tony Benjamin (02:13.978)
You were selling a lot of them.

Steve-o (02:17.678)
That because they were about $50 each. Some of them I could get about 100. So it wasn't a ton, but it was enough that it would give me a decent income. But anyway, I was I was kind of a large child. I was not or as my wife would say, I was a little fluffy. And and so, yeah. And so when I was a kid, I would scramble for friends. And so when I had all this money, I would literally take my group of friends to Burger King and buy Whoppers because back then Whoppers were like 59 cents.

Tony Benjamin (02:25.399)
Yeah, yeah.

Steve-o (02:47.656)
And I would just buy a whole bunch of whoppers for all my friends and we'd all sit there and they could all eat a whopper. And it's like, I felt bad because I realized after a while I was like, man, I am just buying my friends right now. This is not a good thing for me.

Tony Benjamin (03:01.945)
What are you talking about? That's the best way to get friends. Just buy them.

Steve-o (03:03.8)
But you know my favorite thing back then was I would I would always wait until I got a coupon off of those those world's finest chocolate. So back then when you would go and sell the world's finest chocolate in front of the stores or whatever, they were like a dollar. One of the coupons on the back was a buy one get one free Western bacon cheeseburger from Carl's Jr. And my gosh, it was my favorite. It was my favorite sandwich because it was like it was like 250. It was so expensive compared to.

Tony Benjamin (03:16.345)
All right, right.

Tony Benjamin (03:32.023)
Right, right, right, yeah.

Steve-o (03:32.522)
other burgers at the time. was so expensive. And I would always wait to get that coupon so that I could buy two and I would only take special friends to that because I would buy mine. But see, then I got smart. Later on, I would make my friend buy his and then I'd get the free one. But I wouldn't tell him that that's what was happening. It was so bad.

Tony Benjamin (03:53.273)
See, this is way different than this is why you're you and I'm me. But when I was a kid, we lived in East Leighton and there was a street is kind of like our so Highway 89. If anyone's been in Leighton Highway 89 there runs along the mountain. And my house was on a street called Valley View, Valley View Drive and my backyard ended at the highway. So the road was kind of this half moon.

sort of half circle. That makes it sound like a big curve, but it wasn't. It was a small curve, but you know, maybe two miles long, something like that, three miles long. And at the end of the street, down at the end where the highway was, was a gas station. And so we'd ride our bikes down and I don't know, it's probably, I don't know, half, maybe a mile down my back. It wasn't that far, but maybe three quarters, something like that. Anyways, we'd ride our bikes down.

And I was a spendthrift as a kid. just man any any little bit of change I could find in the couch cushions or whatever would go down there and spend money and and we just do it all. Sometimes I'd raid my sister's piggy bank and make her give me money and that she'd be mad at me because I'd always promised to pay her back. And of course I never would. So yeah it was. Yeah we got we bought all sorts of stuff.

Steve-o (04:58.382)
Nice.

Steve-o (05:09.804)
Wow. Way to go. You know, the the worst thing I did as a kid and this is I still laugh at this because it was probably the wildest thing I did, but probably was not the most kosher. My friend had this type of plant that was from California and I can't remember the name of the plant. I'll have to look it up. But in the plant there would be snails and my.

friend's mom would pay us like 50 cents for every snail that we could find because the snails would destroy it. And so she wanted us to go out and hunt snails. Well, we got really bored hunting snails. We'd find the snails and it's like, what do you do? You pour salt on them so many times and it's just no fun after a while. So we literally took straws. We took a straw and put a whole bunch of toothpicks in the end of the straw and they would poke the snail so that the snail would be on the end of the straw. And then we would create this rubber band.

quiver, if you will, and we would shoot it up in the air and then watch the snail like smack on the ground. And what was really bad is we started shooting it because behind his house was a road. And if we could shoot it just far enough, it would land on cars and the snail would just splat on the car. Just nasty. So bad. It was so bad. My friend Alan and I, I mean, we had a lot of fun with it, but I look back and I'm like, man,

Tony Benjamin (06:23.129)
flat on the windshield.

Steve-o (06:32.664)
That would have annoyed the crap out of me if somebody had hit my car with a snail. Cause that, that stuff was not easy to clean off, you know, and we never broke a windshield that I, that I remember. never did, you know, it was never anything horrible, but, but man, when that snail would land splat, was so bad, but you know, we got 50 cents to take them out of there.

Tony Benjamin (06:39.297)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (06:51.139)
So si-

See, this is how you know Steve is the borderline Gen X kid, because this is what we did. We were bored. We would do stuff like, our parents are like, come back at dark. And so you would go out and you'd play around, you'd come back when the street lights came on or to get food. And you'd just find something to entertain you and whatever it was. And you would come home when mom screamed out the door or whatever. But anyways, no, that sounds right.

Steve-o (06:58.862)
Ha

Yeah.

Steve-o (07:05.986)
Yep. Yep.

Steve-o (07:12.759)
Mostly food.

Tony Benjamin (07:23.223)
That's that sounds right. And it progresses from that point until you're a teenager and then you start playing with black powder. That's powder. And yeah. Well, we we would we would we would take CO2 cartridges, you know. OK, so we played paintball and we discovered that if you pack a CO2 cartridge with, you know, an empty one, if you pack it with

Steve-o (07:24.497)
Steve-o (07:31.394)
Wow, I never went that far, but okay, that's obviously a Tony story.

Steve-o (07:44.622)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (07:52.217)
black powder, you know, gunpowder, and then you put a fuse in it. It's essentially a grenade and with shrapnel and everything. And so we started out, we started out by burying them just to see how powerful they were and exploding them. You know, you bury them a little bit and this goes off. And then you're like, how big was that? How big was the hole? And then then we discovered that if you throw it into company's pond, they're enlightened that it would kill the fish around it.

Steve-o (08:00.046)
Nice.

Tony Benjamin (08:20.021)
actually, that's not true. It didn't really kill the fish. It would go off because we bought my buddy bought the waterproof cannon fusing. That's what we would use it to go off. But anyways, you'd with throw it in the water and then it would go off. And it wouldn't really kill the fish because there was millions of bluegill in there. It wouldn't kill the fish. What it would do is stun them. And so they'd all float to the surface. Yeah, fishing with dynamite, in essence, and it

Steve-o (08:29.421)
Nice.

Steve-o (08:39.533)
haha

Steve-o (08:43.212)
Wow, I hate bluegill. Bluegill are so annoying because they just they eat all your stuff and then you just don't have a chance of getting a fish. They're just almost yeah, a real fish, right? You can't eat bluegill. I mean, you can maybe throw it on the fryer and you'd have like a fish crisp, but that's about it.

Tony Benjamin (08:47.114)
Yes, they are.

Yeah. A real fish. right. Yeah. That's right. That's right.

Tony Benjamin (09:03.129)
So we used to throw them out there in the company's pond and boom, it exploded and then you'd and then that all float to the top and would count how many came up the surface and that sort of stuff. So there you go. That's ladies and gentlemen, that's what it was like to be a child. Yeah. In the eighties, that was it. So.

Steve-o (09:14.807)
Wow.

Steve-o (09:18.734)
Oh, the childhood memories. It's a good thing you and I weren't kids together because we probably would have gotten in a lot of trouble.

Tony Benjamin (09:27.033)
A lot of trouble. That's that's exactly right. Well, everybody today is an empty red seat again. Steve and I are working on some guests that are going to come up and and that starting in the month, sometime this in the month of April here, those guests are going to start appearing on the podcast in different ways. And there's some really cool people coming up that I think are going to add some huge dynamics to this sort of stuff we're talking about. just be patient with us a little bit there.

Normally when we do this, we've got like this big topic that we want to address. And so we push off guests or whatever like that. but, and,

Steve-o (10:04.686)
especially if something crazy is going on in the industry right now, right? So it just makes it important to talk about.

Tony Benjamin (10:08.685)
That's right. That's right. And we have and the truth be told, we get emails from authors and stuff and they still want to come on the podcast. We've kind of held off for a little bit or I've held off on that a little bit. Just to kind of but anyways, there's lots of good guests coming up. We're going to do a bunch of those. But you know, if you ever want to know about how to build a grenade from black powder that you can get down to local sporting goods store, I'm your guy.

and endangered species maintenance is Steve's area of expertise.

Steve-o (10:37.582)
Wow.

Steve-o (10:41.74)
And the only charge is by the hour, guys.

Tony Benjamin (10:44.153)
That's right. That's right. My consulting rates. And if you're with a 501 C3 or nonprofit organization, I discount at 19%. So there you go. That's right. That's right. So anyways, let's there are a few things that I want to talk about this and Steve is you and I do this right? We we are in the mid 40s in our episodes now. And

Steve-o (10:53.198)
even better even better

Tony Benjamin (11:12.171)
And just so everyone knows, thank you very much for sharing the podcast. We had our best month ever of downloads in the month of March. So it's been good every month, I think since we had a little dip in December and then we've been climbing out and I think ever maybe it was February, February, March or were two best months in a row. And so we're expecting this month to be a growth month for us as well. but

Steve-o (11:21.228)
Nice.

Tony Benjamin (11:41.601)
Anyways, we're super, super appreciative of that. So and frankly, all I do now is I walk around with sunglasses on and tell people how cool my podcast is. And everyone goes, ooh. And then I go and my co host is Stephen Bigdeel Smith. And then everybody gasps and says, how do I get to meet Steve? And I have to tell them that I'm not allowed to give out his direct contact information. They can talk to his agent.

Steve-o (12:00.216)
Gosh.

Steve-o (12:07.214)
Well, just tell them we're gonna do a live one at the FuelHR conference. They just need to come in in May.

Tony Benjamin (12:11.011)
That's right. May 14th, right? I think that's date, May 14th. We'll be at the Fuel HR Conference Center. If you haven't registered for that, find that and get on there.

Steve-o (12:14.712)
Right.

Steve-o (12:22.04)
Yeah, you know, especially if you're a you're a sherm member of Central Utah, you know, the conference is free because it's part of your annual membership. And so if you haven't registered yet, you definitely need to register. I know right now we've only had about one hundred and three registrations so far, but there's over 200 members. I mean, that's only half. And you know, we're still a month out. And so, you know, some people just wait till the last minute to do the registration. But.

Tony Benjamin (12:27.8)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (12:39.56)
really?

Steve-o (12:48.782)
But yeah, if you haven't registered, go ahead and register because you have to register first of all, so we can get an account for food and all that stuff. But but yeah, it's it's just part of it. So you don't you're not paying anything extra. Just come. We've got some great speakers. I'm actually really excited about several of the speakers. And so pretty exciting. In fact, one of the speakers that we have coming that is it's actually my fault because they were asking, what what kind of

You know what? You know what? Speakers should we? Well, it's my fault because I say hey, we need to get Britt Davies there and you know Britt was she used to work for Vasa Fitness, one of the major fitness areas here. She was a HR director there for awhile and I just remember you know she was a client of mine and then she went to another company was a client of mine for a little bit and so I just I always had really good experience with her and now she's she's been starting to speak at several other local events here and I was like we should get her to the conference and sure enough.

Tony Benjamin (13:17.793)
fault.

Steve-o (13:47.458)
They called her up and got her and booked her. was like, wow, that's awesome. I mean, it was like within a week and a half of me bringing her name up. That's so it was kind of fun. Yeah, it was really fun. so anyway, so I'm excited to see her. I haven't seen her in several years because she's you know, she's bigger deal than I am. And so it's just fun to to to see people like that. It is absolutely possible.

Tony Benjamin (13:54.434)
that's cool. That's really, really cool.

Tony Benjamin (14:05.367)
Is that possible?

Not to take anything away from her, but you're kind of a not kind of you are a big deal like a huge deal

Steve-o (14:13.262)
No, she's she's really good and and I know Rachel DuPlan from Motivasi is gonna be there Tanya Bifis from Henry Schein I remember Henry Schein used to be across the street from where I used to work a long time ago And then Jackie Durfee from Revere Health and and David Alsop. I mean everybody loves David Alsop So so anyway, just some the cat the the people that are coming are just phenomenal. So I'm really excited for this year

Tony Benjamin (14:28.007)
very cool.

Tony Benjamin (14:33.165)
That's right, he has a sweet smile.

Tony Benjamin (14:39.923)
But you left out the biggest thing, right? Well, you sort of said it at the beginning, but we're we're going to be there and we're going to present. Yeah, we're going to be.

Steve-o (14:44.974)
Yeah, we're going to be there too live. We're going to do our first actual live, I don't know, semi live, I guess we go live and just record and release later. But yeah, yeah. Eventually we'll have to get a we'll actually have to do a live live one, see how that works. I don't know how you do that, though. So we'll see.

Tony Benjamin (14:52.855)
Live to recording. right. But we're gonna, yep, we're gonna be there and we're gonna.

Tony Benjamin (15:01.217)
Right, right. Well, we can we can stream, we can stream, we'll figure that out. If everybody's really interested in that, we'll figure that out. So it'd be just my luck that we'd set up this stream, we'd do all this promotion and marketing. And then we'd be like, everyone can join the live stream and put in comments and then no one would be there. It would crash, that's right. Right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Steve-o (15:10.008)
Yeah, yeah.

Steve-o (15:22.606)
Or it crashes. I can't do nothing.

Tony Benjamin (15:29.141)
Steve and I will talk and tell you all donate, I don't know, five bucks to this charity. We find that we're talking for three days straight. So until my wife gets tired of me being in here talking to myself and donates, she, she donates the five bucks just to get me off the air. Yeah. So anyways, right. anyways, so Steve, I, know, one of the things we were talking, let's, well, hold on.

Steve-o (15:39.043)
man.

and she does this, she's like.

Steve-o (15:49.005)
Hahaha

Tony Benjamin (15:57.719)
Let's do this before we get into that subject. Let's do this. Let's let's do our read. Running a business is hard. HR shouldn't be. Megastar HR is here to save you from bad HR with expert support and everything from hiring to handbooks, compliance to culture, need payroll help or recruiting power. We do that too. Fractionally and flexibly, no overhead, just results. Visit Megastar HR and let's grow your business together.

Thanks to Becca. appreciate that. Hey, and by the way, if anyone wants to sponsor the podcast, that's you just need to reach out to us. Just send us an email at the HR life podcast at gmail.com and we can kind of give you a package rate and kind of tell you what it is. We do all of our reads live and well live to recording and and all that sort of stuff. So welcome up and

you know, we do have some people that have been talking to me about that lately. So there's a very good chance we're going to have more or different sponsors coming up. But we think, we thank Becca for being willing to do so much for us at the beginning.

Steve-o (17:06.988)
Yeah, especially supporting us here at the very beginning and getting us going. So huge, huge help.

Tony Benjamin (17:10.585)
Yeah. Yep. So Steve, let's talk about the state of HR. We talk about this with guests all the time. And right, right. And I think my view of this is changing. You you re-listen to that first episode we did with Carissa. And we kind of talked about some of the things on, you know, I talked about some of my views on.

Steve-o (17:18.104)
Yeah, we ask the question always, right?

Tony Benjamin (17:37.505)
Sorry, I was just thinking to myself as I was saying this and stuttering through it a little bit that I often drift during my comments. And that's just stupid. I apologize to everyone who hears this. It's not a fantastic thing for me to do, but I do it because my mind is usually thinking five steps ahead of what I'm of what I'm saying. But but, you know, other than that first time when we talked about it, we haven't really talked about our view of this and how it's changing. And and so do you want to start or do you want me to start?

Steve-o (18:07.202)
No, go ahead. I definitely have some thoughts on this, but go right ahead because I feel like I've watched you change too, right? Which has been kind of fun to hear your take on it and especially with what people have been saying. Anyway, yeah, I'm just curious your take for sure.

Tony Benjamin (18:11.074)
Okay.

Tony Benjamin (18:24.217)
Yeah, yeah, no. Well, here's my thought. I'm still a bit cynical about the profession in general. I think there is an old world HR that is still very, very prevalent. And I think there's a new world, or X and Y as Rachel Child would say, right? There's a new world HR that's coming about. And I don't think it's all the way implemented yet.

Steve-o (18:40.813)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (18:54.613)
and I, and I, I, I really, it's funny cause I hear all the time stories, people give stories or whatever and, and they, they say things, and, I think, well, that was stupid. I, I, look, I just have to admit this. I'm just like, why, why would you do that? Like, right, right. Well, it just, there's some stuff that HR people do that just drives me bonkers.

Steve-o (19:15.736)
cynical right off the bat.

Tony Benjamin (19:23.201)
You know, I'm aware of one company that they had something really bad going on. One of their executives was doing some very, very bad things with female employees. they, and instead of saying to when they found out about it, instead of saying to those employees, holy crap, we're sorry, this happened. We fired the guy. You have our apologies. What can we do to help you get over this and all that sort of stuff. Instead, what they decided to do was they were going through and slowly firing the women.

that he had done it to. then, right? Yes. Yeah, right, right. They're, trying to cover their butts. And, and he was a C, he was a C-suite employee. So they were, they were firing, they were firing the women that this had happened to. And then after they had fired the last one, then they fired him and they were sweeping all this under the rug, right? They were just going through and slowly getting rid of them all. And they'd do a

Steve-o (19:54.402)
What? Because it's their fault. 100 %

Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (20:19.619)
You know, one here, one there, and they do it all on performance related issues. So there was no, you know, whatever they would just find ways. Right. Right. Right. And I just think, and that sort of stuff still happens. And by the way, that, that VP of HR in that company had more than 20 years of experience. And so in, in New York, by the way, so it's not like she didn't know what was going on. Right. And it just, anyways, or shouldn't have known what to do, but it was, it was just.

Steve-o (20:25.826)
Yeah, they can track it back or whatever. So sad.

Tony Benjamin (20:49.589)
So I'm still cynical. I'm still cynical about some stuff and I hear some stuff of bad cultures.

Steve-o (20:54.887)
Especially when you have experiences like that, you know

Tony Benjamin (20:57.879)
Yes. Yes. so like, I'm, I'm, I'm very cognizant of that sort of stuff. And I, and it frustrates the, know, out of me on the other hand, I look at what some people are doing. Some of the guests that we've had on in the innovative ways they're doing it. You know, I got to listen to Tracy Kalmar give a presentation again the other day and holy crap was she inspiring. That woman has got the interviewing process.

down into what motivates people. It is. She's incredibly talented and I'm very proud that we had her on the podcast and she's still not a hugely known commodity. But anyways, she's incredible. Someday people are going to look back and go, she was discovered on the HR Life podcast. And we're going to say, yes, she was. anyways, the point just being is that like,

Steve-o (21:28.46)
Isn't it cool? She's so fun. Yeah.

Steve-o (21:47.305)
Hahaha

Tony Benjamin (21:55.129)
I have both of these, it's dichotomous, I guess is what I'm saying. And I, and I, and I really, really believe, that AI is going to eliminate the old school HR. I really believe AI is going to eliminate that.

Steve-o (22:12.014)
That's my take on it as well. I really believe that, especially for those HR folks that truly just try to focus on the processes. And the sad part about this is those types of professionals are so focused on the processes that the reason they're nervous is because now they feel like they don't have job security, I guess would be the best way to describe it.

And this is not about job security. This is about taking those elements so that you can be more of a strategic partner. I mean, that's the whole purpose, right? And so I don't know. I'm with you on that. And Tracy is a good example of why the human element will never be gone. It will always be there and required. You know, it reminds me also of our guest, but but but Hema or Vegema, Vegema.

I always pronounce it incorrectly. I want to say Vajima because I'm bilingual in Spanish and so I just want to pronounce it like that. But you know, one of the things that she was really good at is they were struggling and getting talent. And when she partnered with some of the local colleges and used that as a tool to develop apprenticeships and actually got grants to pay for it, that was just a really good example of being a strategic partner. And you can't do that if you're so focused on just process because she could have said, well,

There's no people in the market. We've already hired everybody and anybody that lives in our small town. We've already seen everybody. Everybody already knows who we are. So there's not much else we can do. And I know a lot of my clients over the years. There are several that I've spoken with that have have literally done that. They just they tell me there's no more we can hire in the area. There's nothing else we can do. We're at a complete standstill. We're done. And they completely give up.

Tony Benjamin (23:41.976)
Right, right.

Steve-o (24:04.332)
And I just, that is not a strategic approach. Whereas Tammy took that and said, well, wait a minute, why don't we create our own talent and worked with the local university and develop these programs? They just recently had their first graduates ever from that program. We should totally have her on the podcast again, just to talk about what that must've felt like, knowing that she's the one that put that program together. And it was a couple of years. It's been a few years.

Tony Benjamin (24:23.498)
Right, right.

Steve-o (24:33.582)
but their first graduating class, I believe, happened this year. That's exciting. Those are exciting things. And again, that requires a human element. She could not have done that and developed those relationships using AI. It wouldn't have worked. So a prime example of that.

Tony Benjamin (24:49.881)
No, that's no, that's, that's exactly right. And, and, and it's funny because we, we tend to say AI can do anything. And I think the potential for AI to do anything is real, um, over time as it learns. Um, but I also know AI has some major flaws still in it and we're waiting for those to be resolved and until they are.

it's going to be, it's going to be a bit ugly. And, and I, it, they're really, really good at C A B C give you D right? Like they're, they're, they're really, really good at that. The, the, the interactive earth, I shouldn't say thinking cause that's not entirely true either, but the, ability to get all the facts and, and know when you're wrong, isn't there yet because they're only based on what they see, but see,

Steve-o (25:29.048)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (25:48.405)
This is, this is the AI. don't know. My point is, is that AI is going to remove a lot of those tasks and it's going to, and it's going to, it's going to remove a lot of those tasks and it's going to leave the core real function of HR there, which unfortunately many people in our profession are not equipped yet to handle. So I think it's a, I think it's a huge.

I think it's a huge concern and something that we all need to pay attention to. And it's going to be, I think, I think over time, right, we're going to have to, I, maybe I'll just say this way, over time, we're going to lose a lot of our numbers to do that sort of stuff. And which, go ahead.

Steve-o (26:34.284)
Yeah, well, you know, and, know, I talked to Tracy recently. I've been following her on LinkedIn. She is starting to use AI to actually develop a Q &A portal for her employees, which I think is a genius use of AI. And I'm hearing this across the board with a lot of professionals where they're finally understanding and learning that, hey, I can create this this I don't even know what to call it. Just a Q &A section where an employee can ask about benefits. You know, they can ask.

general questions and just get the answers that they seek right away and honestly that is a really good use of AI and and it's so unique and different for every organization and so she has had to feed it particular policies and information so that the AI is good she's had to test it to make sure that AI is actually giving them solid information and not you know creating stuff like like AI tends to do at times yeah

Tony Benjamin (27:31.225)
drawing conclusions. Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Steve-o (27:33.518)
So that kind of stuff, I don't know, that part really fascinates me, right? yeah. Well, I was gonna say it's a really good example of using a concept called pull prompting to develop a better push prompt. And I know a lot of people don't, sometimes they don't realize there are two different types of prompts there, but it's really important.

Tony Benjamin (27:39.801)
that agreed agreed agreed. Yeah, no, that's good.

Tony Benjamin (27:57.645)
Now, this is one of the things you're going to be talking about in Virginia this week. Right, right.

Steve-o (28:01.706)
I am. So tomorrow I fly to Virginia. I'm going to be speaking at the conference. And this will be the first time I actually address this concept of a pull prompt and a push prompt. In the past, I've just really done just the push prompting because it's the simplest and it's how most people are using AI. But pull prompting is even better because it allows you to be more strategic and more in depth to

be able to kind of push for much clearer and straightforward tasks that you're trying to accomplish. I don't know, it's a lot more complex. It's kind of like the concept of going back and forth, but you start with, AI, pretend that I have no clue what I'm doing. What kind of questions would you ask me if I were to develop this project as an example? What questions do you need to answer to actually help me give you the right information? The reason it's helpful is because

It's cool because it's as if you have a consultant right there with you who is asking you the right questions so that you can give it the right information so that it then knows exactly what kind of information to give you at that point. And I think that's why it's so critical because oftentimes, you know, a lot of people right now are just using AI to ask a question. You could go to Google and do that.

But that's how a lot of people are using AI today. They're just asking it a question. Hey, AI, should my cat eat grapes? And then they use AI to try to figure that one out, right? When they could just probably do a Google search on that. But that's where people are going, especially younger kids.

Tony Benjamin (29:36.942)
All right.

And the answer to that is your cat can eat anything except whiskey. Don't give it whiskey. I'm just kidding. I have no idea. I have no idea what I'm talking about. When I have that question, I ask my daughter.

Steve-o (29:45.518)
You

Hmm

Steve-o (29:51.746)
I think we need to create one of those hybrid grapes like a catnip grape. I think that would be fascinating. I know it sounds disgusting, but to the cat, they would probably be really excited.

Tony Benjamin (29:58.925)
That sounds gross. Yeah.

So, so here's, here's before I get back to the rest of my state of HR comment. So, um, for those of you who've never done this, if you've, if you've ever grown wild mint in your yard, it is, it is a, if you've never done this, it's really cool. Wild mint is incredible. Like it's just, and it's peppermint. It's what it was, whatever, but it's meant that just it's a plant and you tear off the leaves and it tastes like peppermint gum. It's really cool. And.

Steve-o (30:10.414)
As I distract everybody.

Steve-o (30:33.838)
That's wild.

Tony Benjamin (30:34.969)
Yeah, exactly. You screw it, you screw wildly along riverbanks or whatever, but you grow it anywhere in your yard is met. The only problem with growing is that it likes to take over everything. Like it spreads crazy fast. But anyways, here's the catch is that catnip. When you have a catnip plant, catnip and mint, the leaves look very similar. They're shaped the same. Yes, they're just a little bit different color. And catnip comes from like one big

Steve-o (30:45.902)
Nice.

Steve-o (30:57.567)
Interesting.

Tony Benjamin (31:04.313)
plant as opposed to 50 different plants. And so at a house I used to live in, they had some catnip that was growing out front and I didn't realize it was catnip and not mint. So I pulled off a few of the leaf. Uh huh. Now it didn't give me a buzz or anything, but it was just like, oh, that's, that's not great. It was kind of bitter. So

Steve-o (31:15.672)
What did you do? Eat it?

I was like, wait a minute, did this? Nice. Well, and I know my grandmother used to grow mint in the garden and she did it because it would repel certain insects, mosquitoes and such. And so it would, you know.

Tony Benjamin (31:32.153)
Oh, yeah, yeah, that does. Yep. And dogs won't pee on it. So like, if you have a dog that, you know, has a kennel or something next to something important, and they pee on it, you just you plant a little bit of mint there, and they won't pee on it. There's different weird stuff like that. But anyways, yeah, there you go. There's the difference. So the state of HR and all that I what we're talking about here with AI and all that, I think that's really important. And again,

Steve-o (31:38.939)
that's interesting.

Tony Benjamin (31:57.919)
I'm very, very optimistic and especially after talking to our guests and all the things that they've been talking about. I'm very optimistic about the future of HR and it's going the right direction. And for me, who my business, literally my vision is to revolutionize HR, to make it into what it should be. This is very exciting for me. There's some really cool stuff there. On the other hand, I see what is out there and I'm pretty cynical. And matter of fact,

And no offense to Rachel or Krissa or anybody else who had this experience where in college, a professor came to you and said, you know, you'd be really good in HR. No offense to anybody that has done that, had that happen to them or whatever. But I'm just cynical enough that people think HR is pathetic and this person can't do anything else. And so I'm going to recommend them to HR. I think that happens just because of our bad reputation.

And again, the pros that I've talked to are people and we've talked to on the show that have had that they're fantastic at what they do. And so I don't think that was ever the case with any of them, but I do think that sort of thing happens. And, and I think it's important to recognize it. It just to. Yeah.

Steve-o (33:09.038)
I have a question for you that is about this state of HR because I've, you know, recently looking at work and talking with a lot of people, I feel like there's this ongoing trend of a concept called fractional HR where smaller businesses are starting to outsource fractions of their HR department to a consultant or a professional.

Tony Benjamin (33:27.383)
Yes.

Steve-o (33:37.102)
It's a lot cheaper for them to do that than to actually hire them as a full-time employee, but it still allows them some of the resources and just things that they would need from an HR perspective, right? When things are happening, they have somebody they can turn to and rely on, et cetera. Almost like SHRM, right? Us as HR professionals, sometimes we'll call SHRM or other bodies like that, or a legal advice or what have you.

But this is a fractional HR where they can actually call about certain situations that are happening in the organization. I'm just I'm interested in learning a little bit about your take on this because I'm seeing it a lot. I've even had clients over the years. They become a fractional consultant after many years of experience in HR. And then they go into fractional consulting and they they do really well. They have a lot of businesses that rely on them. And so I'm just curious your take on that side of it, because I believe that is a

side of the state of HR that has seen a huge influx in recent years, especially since COVID. I feel like since COVID, it has really skyrocketed more than ever before, partly because of remote work and flexible work arrangements have been a lot more popular, which actually supports the idea of fractional HR. So anyway, I'm just curious your take on that because I'm starting to see that quite often. And yeah, it's just fascinating to me to see how many professionals are

are using that to their advantage and truly helping some of their clients and companies out.

Tony Benjamin (35:08.573)
yeah. So fractional HR and look in our, in our read with, with, Becca, we, we, you know, we mentioned that as she says fractionally and, so the initial concept of this, the general concept is, that I can't afford to hire a full-time HR person, but I can afford to hire a fraction of an HR person and they're going to do my HR for me. And generally I've got small, I'm a small company. don't need HR full-time or I don't

Steve-o (35:18.318)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (35:36.921)
appreciate HR well enough to hire somebody full time. so, but, right. But the, the, the idea is that you buy a fraction of an HR person. So, and, generally this is some sort of consultant and, and so there are lots and lots of HR consultants out there right now. And yes, you're right. Since 2020, this has really picked up and, and I would, and

Steve-o (35:41.26)
I knew that was going to come out. I was waiting for it.

Steve-o (35:50.702)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (36:05.113)
you know, when Becca said this to me, she was right. And it really when she was on the air with us, this this idea, you know, she was like in 2016, you were way ahead of the curve. And I really think I was to have this sort of thing going out there. But this idea where I just purchased part of it and a lot of people get into it and they what ends up happening, they're a quote unquote HR consultant. They have three or four clients and they just do the HR work for those three or four clients.

And they call it fractional HR. You're buying a fraction of me. And that's, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, and usually the, the best way to do that is you pay a flat amount per month for coverage. And then if it gets crazy, the HR consultant says, look, I spent too many hours this month. I need you to do something different. And, and that sort of stuff, but it,

Steve-o (36:37.006)
And they're able to do it well and effectively because they step in when needed. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (37:02.361)
that's the idea. Most HR consultants never make it out of this out of they have three or four clients, they do HR work for them, they get paid enough to get by. And frankly, it's because they come from two income households where they don't have to make lots and lots of money. They're getting by they do well, they have a good living and it's like a job, right. And and so that that's kind of the idea. That's the kind of the idea behind it. Now.

That's different per se. So I offer fractional HR to people and they commit and they provide those services to people as well. But I also offer a lot more. The thing with fractional HR that I have an issue with is that it leaves you reactive and you are, it's like you just hired a normal HR person and they're just doing your transactional work for you, right?

Steve-o (37:33.976)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (37:54.668)
Yeah, there's no strategy, if you will, per se.

Tony Benjamin (37:56.917)
Right, right, right. There's no executive level HR that's happening. And a lot, the answer to that, of course, will be, well, I don't need that. I'm a small company. And my answer to that is by the time you know you need any HR, you need strategic HR so that when you grow, it's done correctly because the transition is the difficult part. And so, and anyway, so I offer that as well to people after I do the strategic

portion for them, vision, mission and values and all those things. I offer it there. It's going to be a much more popular thing and it's going to grow going forward. But I don't think it solves a lot of the problems that are out there and no offense to any of my competitors and all that sort of stuff, but I don't think they understand really what they're doing, but lots of more HR people are wanting to do this. They really are wanting to get out of a corporate hole.

Steve-o (38:51.328)
They are because they have the capacity and they have the know-how and they can apply it to other organizations in similar industries or similar backgrounds or what have you. To me, there are four elements that should exist in Fractional HR and number one is the strategic leadership. You really need somebody that has that strategic mindset to help you in essence build the infrastructure so that

it scales so that because eventually you're going to be out, you're going to need your own HR team, you're going to grow big enough, you're going to need to hire somebody internally and the fractional piece will inevitably go away in that sense. Unless you just hire that consultant full time, which is what happens oftentimes. But my point is, think I think strategy is definitely the first part of it. Yeah, you've got the implement implementation and the support side of it.

Tony Benjamin (39:38.585)
That is what happens.

Steve-o (39:46.626)
And then you also have the scalable system side of it. They might need some help, like what kind of systems should we use, things like that. And they don't have all the overhead costs of an actual employee, like the employee taxes and 401k match and medical, dental, all that kind of stuff, right? The benefits, if you will. So there's absolute value to fractional HR in that sense, but I agree with you. I think the true fractional HR folks that are going to be very effective.

have the strategy piece there and they're actually gonna help you develop that proper infrastructure so that when they're no longer needed, you now have an infrastructure in place that matches your company core values and mission and who you are and you can build from there and actually start hiring internally. I'm with you on that for sure.

Tony Benjamin (40:29.773)
No, that's, yeah, yeah. And that's exactly it. And the future of HR consulting is, I believe what I am doing and that I will have those people working for me who want to do that. But it's not going to be the central focus of our business. You know, when I first started in HR, we would have, and by the way, I'm firmly of the belief that most companies still do this. I would come in, I'd work in HR and I was mid-level or whatever. And then we had an attorney that I would call. Okay.

and do that stuff. A lot of companies say, well, I'll just call an attorney when I get an HR question or something and the attorney will give it to me. And no offense to anyone named, you know, no offense to anyone named Mark Tolman or anything like that. And I don't think he would take offense to this sort of thing, but that lawyers are not HR people. There is a difference. Matter of fact, on my website, I have an article, when to call, when to call a lawyer and when to call an HR consultant. And, and

A high level HR person can do 90 to 95 % of what an attorney can do for you. How does the law work? That's right. And we've been there, done that. Yep.

Steve-o (41:33.624)
Yeah, because they have the knowledge and know how and the experience. They've already gone through it. They know how to address those situations. You're absolutely right.

Tony Benjamin (41:40.825)
Yeah. Which is, which is why I can act as a paraprofessional at a legal law firm, right? At a law firm, I can go in there and I can, I can do all those things. And, and it's because 90 to 95 % of what they're asking, the difference is when you get to a high look, and I can draft legal documents, right? And I have an attorney back them up for me and make sure I've got it right. But the truth is, I can draft those legal documents. Writing a contract isn't all that complicated.

Steve-o (41:46.477)
Yeah, exactly.

Tony Benjamin (42:10.689)
So 90 to 95 % of that sort of stuff your high level HR person can do. What you need for an attorney is official responses. If this goes to court, what is the likelihood that this argument wins? So I don't try things, right? I'm not a trial lawyer. I don't have a law degree. can't, I don't, I'm not licensed to operate as quote unquote a lawyer in the state of Utah. But everything short of that I can do. But that just, what that means is

When I have a question and I know legally the answer, but I don't know how it plays out in court. The lawyers I work with and Jason Hamer is an incredible attorney. He'll a lot of the times I'll go to him. I'll say, Hey, Jason, I know what the law says about X, Y, and Z, but if we go to court on this, how does that play out? And he'll say something like, well, I know the law says that Tony, but you never went on that. And I'll be like, Whoa, okay. Right. That's when you need an attorney. Yeah.

Steve-o (43:05.261)
And that's good to know, right? I remember Mark Tolman as a guest talked about how the headlines is not the law. In other words, you have to be able to distinguish between the noise versus the reality. Like he really, I recall him talking about that heavily and that's exactly the case, right? When you're a lawyer and you've gone through so many cases that are so very similar, you know exactly how the law is going to react and you know exactly what the outcome is going to be because you've seen the same outcome.

dozens of times already. And there's value there, right? The HR person, the HR professional that has also been through those many cases doesn't necessarily have to be a lawyer to know, here's probably what the outcome is going to be in this particular situation. So there is absolute value there to having that strategic partner as a fractional HR consultant in that sense. So.

Tony Benjamin (43:57.881)
Exactly. And, and the other thing, the other reason why I like flat fees that companies pay to consultants like me are because when you call me, you're not timing how long you're on the phone with me, right? At $400 an hour. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve-o (44:10.126)
Correct. Yeah. You're not getting a different invoice every time with different hours or whatever you put in for me this week. It's just a flat fee. I have access to you and period. You we can reach out as needed.

Tony Benjamin (44:21.229)
Yeah. And those of us back in the day who used to use employers council, and I assume employers council is still around. And before it was employers council was something else I can't remember now. But anyways, those were really cool because you just paid for membership and you just called and asked questions, right? And that was really cool.

Steve-o (44:40.046)
There are the ones that do a lot of the legal training, right? The HR, I know they have HR trainings and legal trainings and they have a catalog of that kind of stuff, right?

Tony Benjamin (44:45.337)
Yes, and that's more that yes, and that's a lot more of what they do now. It started out back in the day where you paid a subscription and you could just call and ask them questions. And I got lots of my early days, I got lots of answers that way. But anyways,

Steve-o (44:55.886)
Okay.

Steve-o (45:00.482)
I know one of my old clients, Arapaho Libraries, worked with them quite a bit. They had a lot of good things to say, actually. So they've done really well with them. Yeah, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (45:05.239)
Yeah, yeah. No, and I think it was highly valuable, right? And look, but again, don't do the deal where you go out and you pay an hourly amount. If you want to pay an hourly amount or something like that for if you want to do it for contracts and stuff like that, for a lawyer, I totally understand that. You know, if you want a legal opinion, hey, if this goes to court, what is likelihood of me losing or you've dealt with the the EEOC 50 million times, what are they going to do about this?

Right. Predict that that sort of stuff. Yes. Get attorneys for that or some very nuanced pieces of the law and odds are they're going to come. They're to tell you that they have to research and get back to you anyways. But anyways, that sort of stuff makes sense. But the flip side of that is, is, is 99 % of that a high level HR person like myself or Steve and his areas of expertise, we can tell you those things already.

The law isn't that complicated. Well, I shouldn't say that the law is very, very complicated and mumbled and all that sort of stuff. But those of us who have been through it enough, we generally know 99 % of the time where the pitfalls are and can help you walk around that. But there you go. That's my fractional thought.

Steve-o (46:14.392)
Yeah, well, it's just like, yeah, and you know, part of the fractional has to do with hiring. And I can tell you right now, not only with helping with the job ads, but the content on your website, the types of like, like for here, here's a good example. I'm to throw this out there because all of you listening right now who work for a company probably have some type of career page on your company website. My question is this. How often do you change the content on your career page?

Most people will tell you, I haven't changed it since 2012, 2013, when career pages started becoming popular. That's a problem. That's not good. So as a consultant, I would come in and help you understand, here's what you need to have as part of your website, as part of your career page. And here's the dynamic pieces that you need to have so that your careers page is much more effective at attracting job seekers as opposed to just having something static up there that has

Tony Benjamin (46:51.726)
Yeah.

Steve-o (47:11.55)
literally been the same for, you know, 12, 15 years. So.

Tony Benjamin (47:16.289)
And it's, and it's part of your employer brand to your point. think people about fall over when I, when I it's so, for example, I have a client, they just hired a permanent HR person to come in. And I was telling them that I wanted the HR person to have access to all their social media platforms and whatever other marketing tools or whatever they were utilizing. And they were like, why they're not going to do marketing. I'm like employer brand.

Steve-o (47:18.904)
Correct. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (47:44.537)
is a huge chunk of what you do. And you need to be branded in every market you're in. okay, Steve, I'm curious now, this has all been bounced off my idea of the state of HR go, I'm curious what you've learned over time and your thoughts on it.

Steve-o (47:46.806)
It's yeah, absolutely it is.

Steve-o (48:02.926)
Well, and that's why I brought up the fractional HR piece, because that's something I've been seeing quite a bit. I just I felt like that was something to really talk about, because I do see that as part of the future state of HR, that that's going to increase, that you're going to see a lot more HR professionals go into this fractional consulting space, especially for smaller businesses. I see this more for smaller companies up to maybe, you know, two to three hundred employees, because once you get to that point, you're going to have to start hiring internal.

You're going to want somebody in house. But the cool part is I still think you can have a fractional HR consultant, even if you do hire somebody full time internally, right? You could still have that business model. Correct. Yep, exactly. And that's the beauty of that. So to me, that is a huge piece that I've been learning over the last, you know, almost a year that we've been doing this now is that there is room for this fractional HR state of HR.

Tony Benjamin (48:33.593)
Yeah, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (48:40.875)
Until you have a C-suite level HR person. Yep. Yeah.

Steve-o (49:00.34)
And it's, I just think it's hugely beneficial to small employers out there who are trying to build up to that point where they actually have an executive suite HR person on staff, because there's a lot of companies that just simply don't. Sometimes they just, they can't afford it right now. And I think part of the reason they can't afford it is not because they truly can't afford it. I think what they struggle with is they struggle to define the value of that type of person in their organization to pay them. Right.

You know, especially if all they're doing is working with the CFO and the CFOs. Yeah, we just don't have budget for that. OK, well, what if we actually gave a budget to it because we can see the impact and the ROI it's going to have on the rest of the organization? Right. And I think these smaller companies are they rely so heavily on the CEO and the CFOs take where they're just looking at the numbers. They're not paying attention to the people. And I think that's where a huge struggle is. So to me, the future state of HR is recognizing that.

recognizing that people make all the difference here. I love one of the quotes that you had in one of our episodes we just did recently that those people define the organization. You take away all the people and you have nothing. You have no revenue at all in the organization. just, think that's, that is the true state of HR at this point is helping business leaders understand the value of having a people operations person in place, whether that's in a consultant base.

Or that, like I said, that executive level person at that point, which is why I think fractional HR has to have a strategic executive person who is ultimately responsible because that's where you need to head. You need to head to that that point where you have that executive. I think that's what I've gotten the most out of kind of this state of HR and some of the trends that I've been seeing, especially with a lot of the people that we've been speaking with and just their, you know, I don't know, like you think about Ben Eden.

Tony Benjamin (50:38.455)
Yes.

Steve-o (50:54.414)
Andrea Hollingsworth, even Jeremy Breckheisen to a point. We have to understand that how you see yourself, how you're empathetic and that type of leadership also is a critical part of the state of HR. If you don't have those elements as a leader, you're going to struggle, period. Your company is going to struggle, your executive suite is going to struggle. And so I think that's...

That is something I've learned heavily also with the state of HR from individuals like that who've really talked about how these results or outcomes are sometimes tied to the burnout and the quiet quitting and how you see yourselves and how you effectively manage your empathy and being nice to people and just stuff like that. That is absolutely part of the state of HR and it needs to be, especially as we go forward.

Tony Benjamin (51:52.055)
No, no, that's a very good point. you know, as you were talking about that, it's defining out even as even as you were talking about that, in my head between the difference between small and medium sized businesses, right. So a small business, you can't afford all that you're probably not using a lot of AI, your processes are manual, they're going to be that way, because you're just starting out and you're bootstrapping everything. You have enough money to pay part time, maybe a couple thousand dollars a month to somebody.

Steve-o (52:04.92)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (52:21.657)
but you haven't got, you you can't pay him 10 grand a month because you just can't afford it. And so, and yes, and that turns into that over time. Now, and I really do believe, Steve, thanks for bringing it up, that HR consulting is the new wave of how small up to medium sized businesses are going to do this. I think, you know, look, if you don't have a permanent HR person in-house by the time you're 150 employees, you've got a problem.

Steve-o (52:42.926)
Correct.

Steve-o (52:50.658)
That is a problem. agree. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (52:51.641)
And, you need, by the time you're at 300, you need an executive looking, an executive level HR person within your organization. And once again, if you're not again, you're, hurting your company. Um, anything else you want to add to that really quick?

Steve-o (52:58.958)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (53:04.812)
I agree. Yeah, the only other thing is just, you know, keeping the human in it, right? There's a reason why it's called human resources and the human side of it directly impacts all business outcomes period. In fact, it reminds me of that love group study from Andrea Hollingsworth. If you recall our second episode with her, there was that love group study outside of California. They had hundreds of businesses they were looking at. And then those that were the most successful were the ones who kept

Tony Benjamin (53:24.067)
That's right.

Steve-o (53:34.52)
the human connection because it had a direct impact on the business results and outcomes. In fact, those businesses, if I recall correctly, outperformed in the 30 % more. It felt like if I, I recall correctly, just based on how those things were panning out and, and that's something that we have to recognize that the future state of HR still has to absolutely have that human connection period. And I, that's what I learned a lot, right? AI is great.

Tony Benjamin (53:59.17)
It, yeah. No, no, exactly.

Steve-o (54:03.468)
and it'll help with processes, but you have to have that human connection, period.

Tony Benjamin (54:08.141)
I just came up with a new phrase in my head. AI is great, but it won't take you on a date.

Steve-o (54:14.254)
Wow. You heard it here first, everybody.

Tony Benjamin (54:15.889)
You

There you go. There you go. Okay. I wanted to, I wanted to read this and again, this is from this, uh, and, and, and, uh, I have no idea who the person who was, who posted this on Facebook, this came from, uh, that human resources group. I'm right, right. It doesn't matter. Um, and yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyways, this is, this is what she wrote in this group. And I, and I think it's, I think it's really important cause, uh, and I want to address it, but is she, I, and I'm assuming it's a woman. have no idea.

Steve-o (54:31.714)
And it doesn't matter. Because you know there's other people out here feeling.

Tony Benjamin (54:48.643)
Hello everyone. So I need some advice. I recently graduated with my master's degree in HR and landed an HR assistant job. I'm only a month in and my boss already yelled and finger pointed at me. She's extremely overbearing as frowny face. And on top of that, she's so unorganized her training. I feel it's not being efficient or effective on me. I feel like I'm learning nothing. I don't want to walk away.

But what should I do? Any advice? And, and I think, look, it's the comments that this person is getting as a whole bunch of get out of there. Don't let them abuse you. Don't don't, you know, don't stay in a toxic environment and all that sort of stuff. And I, and I think, yeah.

Steve-o (55:34.21)
Yeah.

Which is typical of social media, right? Because the first thing they want to do in social media is they want to jump to the emotion of it and just say run away. Period. know? Protect, yep.

Tony Benjamin (55:45.261)
Yeah, yeah. And protect yourself and look, there's some value to those comments. And as the person who stands up in front of large groups of HR people and who says, if your company doesn't appreciate you, go, don't stay there. Right? I say that all the time. If they're not going to appreciate what you do or take your advice at all, then punt and run, find somebody who will. And then maybe those companies over time will learn that they can't treat people that way.

Steve-o (55:51.63)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (56:13.317)
The flip side of this is, is number one, if this is your first job outside of school, you just got out of school. It's there's also a tendency to be ultra sensitive to this sort of thing and not understand. Yep.

Steve-o (56:25.696)
especially coming out of school and all those classes that are teaching you a certain way and that's the only way you know at this point it's so true.

Tony Benjamin (56:30.36)
Yep.

And they are teaching you the ideal that that is what you need to understand. They're teaching you quote unquote, the theoretical right way to do it. And, and, and there's value in that. I don't, I don't want to, but you don't know what business is like and what you may mistake because look, a professor or, or an instructor at a school treating somebody a certain way would be highly improper versus in a

place. Right? That's a very different that you're not a student, you're a co worker, you have an assignment role in jobs. And if you don't do it, you just don't get a bad grade, you get fired. And and by the way, the person who you're not doing it for that you report to, they might also get fired. So like their livelihood depends on you. So there's all that you were going to say something, go ahead.

Steve-o (57:03.544)
Mm hmm. Yep.

Steve-o (57:26.936)
Well, the only other thing I was going to say is the other challenge with posts like this is in one paragraph, the assumption is I now know the whole story. And the reality is we don't. We don't know the whole story. don't we don't understand, you know, the it's kind of like doing a workplace investigation. In this type of scenario, I would want to talk to the to the actual the chief human resource officer or whoever it was that they're having the.

Tony Benjamin (57:48.397)
Yes.

Steve-o (57:56.61)
biff with right now. Like I would want to hear all sides of the story to really, truly understand and have the big picture of what's happening in order to provide an appropriate response, which is why some of the responses of, run away. This is not the environment you should be in. And I absolutely agree with it. Like if, this is the reality that this is the only thing that's happening and after hearing all the sides of it, that this is exactly what's happening, then yes, I would say you probably shouldn't be in that environment. You should look for something else, but we don't have the whole big picture.

And when you don't have the whole big picture, it makes it really difficult to give advice, if you will. You know, this is the challenge of giving advice to your friend or whatever. You know, like if I talk to my mom, my mom is always going to give me some awesome advice, partly because she knows me really well, but she's only hearing my side of the story. And so kind of like chat, GPT, I'm only going to get the advice that it thinks I want to need to hear. Right. Not totally not trying to bash on my mom or anything like that.

Tony Benjamin (58:44.6)
Right, right.

Tony Benjamin (58:51.361)
Yes, yes, the advice that you want. Yeah.

Steve-o (58:56.514)
But she knows me well enough that she'll ask me additional questions to help me deep think it and really look at the big picture if I need to. She is, exactly. Yeah, this is true.

Tony Benjamin (59:03.139)
But she's, but she's also all in for you and she doesn't care about anybody else. Right. Right. No. that's, and that's very much here. Here's the response that I posted on this and not that I, but I, I think it illustrates this. I wrote, I can't believe you're snow. I was going to say something. the problem with all of these responses are that none of us know you. Many recent grads are too sensitive. Many of us worked in terrible companies and put up with way too much.

Steve-o (59:13.792)
here we go.

Tony Benjamin (59:32.257)
If this is a really bad situation, you should leave. But maybe you have unrealistic expectations. At just one month in, generally, it's a good idea to wait and learn. But I'm not there and don't know you. And then to me, this is the most brilliant part of what I wrote because I occasionally do that.

Steve-o (59:50.414)
Give yourself a pat on the back there, buddy. Actually, you should applause right now.

Tony Benjamin (59:52.78)
Right, right.

I wrote, good luck, either way you're going to learn a lot. It's an exciting time. I think, I, to me, that in the end is where this ends up. and I don't know what yell means, right? We all have our own definition. That sounds silly, but we all kind of have our own definition of what yell means. My wife and I occasionally have different ideas of what yell means.

I think I'm just being adamant and she thinks I'm yelling or vice versa, right. And it's

Steve-o (01:00:28.002)
Yeah, you don't even have to raise your voice. It's just the tone of voice. Like right the way you say it, suddenly they they hear you yelling and you're not necessarily yelling, at least in your mind. And so you're absolutely right that there is a definition there of what is truly yelling. Well, it's going to be different for a lot of people.

Tony Benjamin (01:00:31.702)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:00:36.121)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:00:45.433)
Exactly. so, and so anyways, that that just brings to the point. I don't know if this is a toxic environment or not. I worked someplace where the guy was where my boss was six, five, who would stand really close. And I'm by the way, I'm only five, eight and a half. So there's quite a difference there. And he would he would stand over me and get really close and yell at the top of his lungs at me. Right. I don't know if this boss is doing that.

Steve-o (01:01:08.782)
Did he ever spit on you doing that? that's where it just ends for me. You start spraying it, instead of just saying it, I'm just like...

Tony Benjamin (01:01:11.929)
No. Yeah, no, it was none of that. No. No, no. But he would get really close and yell. But the my right. But if it's I don't know, you have to make the judgment call him when it's really abusive or whatever or not. But I don't think it's very hard to know to do that when you come out of school, if that's reality or not. And so I can't really give you the right. The problem with giving advice is that sometimes people take it.

Steve-o (01:01:35.65)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:01:41.527)
And then you own, if you gave the advice you, you partially morally own whatever they chose. but I think it's, I think it's a really fantastic way to, to dive into that and, look at that. And that to me is part of the, the state of HR and, what, and what is out there is that question that was in that group. And that's, that's why I brought it.

Steve-o (01:02:04.93)
Well, goes. Yeah, it goes back to the culture, right? Yeah. So did you see the post from Utah Shurm? I think it was yesterday or the day before. There was it was it was really cool. It said that your employees are the primary customers of your company's culture and values. If your culture was a product. And I love this question. If your culture was a product, would your team recommend it to a friend? And I love that type of question because

Tony Benjamin (01:02:07.833)
Yeah.

Steve-o (01:02:34.24)
In this scenario with with this particular individual talking about what's happening, would she recommend it to a friend? Right. Would others around her in the department or other employees, would they recommend it to a friend? The culture like, come work for us. You know, you know, as I've been interviewing and doing a lot of things recently, it amazes me when I ask the companies themselves about their culture and what they like. Some of them are completely hesitant and they don't know what to say.

And I'm like, wow, you really don't have the ability to recommend your own culture. That's a problem for me, right? To me, that's a red flag. And because of that, I have chosen not to pursue certain organizations in that sense. So it's amazing to me. Like I said, I really love this post from Utah Shurm because I thought it was such a great question. If your culture was a product, would your team recommend it to a friend right now?

Tony Benjamin (01:03:11.767)
Yes.

Steve-o (01:03:31.342)
And I think that's something we can all internalize in our own organization because HR, we don't own the culture 100%, but we absolutely have an influence on the culture. And we have the ability to, as Tracy said multiple times, this ability to really help others see the culture and coworkers and such. Like there are ways we can see that culture and those core values.

So anyway, it's just a fascinating post the other day.

Tony Benjamin (01:04:02.295)
And you know, of course, I disagree with you on that. Of course, we own the culture. We own the culture. We own the culture. Don't try to get out of it, anybody. We own the culture. It's our core responsibility.

Steve-o (01:04:04.769)
I know you do.

I well, well, I what I mean, OK, so hold on. Yeah, let me back up. Yeah, it is our course once. But what I'm saying is, is when you have an executive leader who is not following that culture and is doing things that this is what I mean by this. Yes, we own the culture and we have the ability to really permeate the entire organization. But when you're doing that, but then you have a leader who is completely going behind the backs of people and just doing things that they shouldn't.

Tony Benjamin (01:04:19.597)
Yes.

Steve-o (01:04:36.544)
I worked for a boss years ago that he was so horrible that while you had some really good people that were really trying to live a solid culture, it was almost impossible because this leader would frown upon those types of things and call you out when you were doing the right things. That's unbelievable to me. so, again, we own the culture in HR, but we...

Tony Benjamin (01:05:02.243)
But that's...

Steve-o (01:05:04.51)
If the leadership is not going to promote it or be on board with it, it's such a tough sell. Such a tough sell.

Tony Benjamin (01:05:12.173)
No, and I and I agree and I always relate it this way because lots of CEOs and business leaders can understand this a little bit better. But if you've got a highly experienced CFO and that CFO is telling you, hey, we're we're dropping money in this area or this is not a good business decision or we're bleeding cash or you're spending way too much on this new project or all that sort of stuff. If you just ignore them and plow ahead anyways, then

you deserve what you get. Right. And the same thing goes with your HR person. If you're ignoring them, you're blowing them off. And they're like, look, we're bleeding people, or bleeding culture, or we're bleeding productivity, because you're an a hole to all your employees. Well, then, to ignore them, you do it at your own risk. Right? You do it at you do it at your own risk. And and I, and it's exactly the same thing. And that is why if you're a CFO,

and your CEO won't take your advice. They won't follow your guidance. They won't conform to gap, right? Then then you quit and you leave. And it's the same thing as an HR. If you're telling them, hey, the way you're doing this is hurting the morale of your company and your productivity and everything else. And you're doing this, this, this and this. Then then. If you ignore that, then you're stupid. I just put it that way. Like I often think.

If someone out there wants to create a car dealership where yours and maybe there are some out there, I've just never run into them. But if you have a car dealership and you actually have an employee friendly environment there where it's supportive and growth minded and all that, you're going to knock it dead. Like you're going to, you're going to be so far ahead of all your competitors and, you know,

Just because you say you're friendly and nice in your advertisements doesn't mean you are.

Steve-o (01:07:10.494)
like the advertisers say that we hear you. I'll be honest to you that that is a local. But here's the thing, there's a local company here that does that. We hear you and I will say I have purchased a vehicle there before and I've purchased other places. And so far my experience there has been very different and very positive because it didn't feel like the pushy sales. And you could tell the employees there.

Tony Benjamin (01:07:13.145)
I was not going to mention that company by name.

Steve-o (01:07:37.44)
were actually enjoying what they were doing. And when I say enjoying, I mean, it was not just the salesperson, it was also the finance person and and the customer support person on the front desk lady. Like it was multiple people and you could tell a difference. Right.

Tony Benjamin (01:07:49.315)
Now, but you know, though, that with that, reputation that particular company has amongst HR people, right? Like, it's not pretty. It's not pretty. And I know several people have been there. Yes. So.

Steve-o (01:07:55.374)
I know.

It's unfortunate, but yeah, yeah, no, like I said, there has to be a balance, right? A balance in the force.

Tony Benjamin (01:08:07.641)
Right? No, no, I get it. Yes. That's, that's very much truth. Anyways, that's a good example of that. But my point was, is that culture is a competitive advantage. And if you're if they're ignoring you in HR, or whatever, that's the same as you ignoring the an accountant, or your CFO, your staff account, when they say, Look, this isn't working financially, you got to do something or, hey, or and then the CEO says something like, Well, let's just cheat on those taxes a little bit.

Let's just see how far we can skirt before the IRS gets ahold of us, right? And that's the same thing as somebody saying, let's see what we can get away with with treating these employees this way.

Steve-o (01:08:46.882)
Well, I'm to tell you right now, it's very similar to my wife in the nursing field when she has a sales marketing person trying to come to her and tell her, hey, we need to put this these people in hospice and those people are not qualified for hospice. You could dip into Medicaid fraud. Well, my wife is not going to deal with that because she doesn't want to lose her license. She's not an idiot. Right. And that is not worth it to her. So she will.

Tony Benjamin (01:09:10.605)
Yeah.

Steve-o (01:09:13.172)
absolutely push back with the doctor and everybody and speak her mind to say, no, I'm not, I am not going to sign off on this because it appears that they're not qualified and I don't want us to get in trouble for Medicaid fraud. I think that's really important that there is a fine line where you have to say, look, this is my limit. I will not cross these boundaries. And my wife has had to do that several times.

Which is unfortunate because again, you have these marketing and sales folks that are just trying to push the line and say, hey, we need more sales. We got quotas or what have you. This is where I think some, especially in the HCM space, because I've been in the HCM space for years selling software and products and services. And it really bugs me when the quota is so high or so ingrained that the salespeople are fudging the numbers or selling things to clients that

that don't really need it because then it just leads to turnover later on and it's horrible. It is horrible to me. And so you have to set your own boundaries as an individual from an HR perspective or whatever industry you're in and stick to your guns there. Like just don't, I don't know, don't deviate from that. So anyway.

Tony Benjamin (01:10:12.633)
Hmm.

Tony Benjamin (01:10:28.301)
No, no, you're. Yep. You're, you're exactly right. You're exactly right. And I, and I, yes. That's, that's, I, that's where I was going next. You're right. Okay. Here we go.

Steve-o (01:10:32.642)
OK, so I have a cool story. Are we going to do our HR life? Because I've been I've been kind of dying to share this. Yay.

Tony Benjamin (01:10:57.335)
All right, all right, I like that. Woo, that music gets me every time. All right, here go.

Steve-o (01:11:00.334)
Oh, here comes the story. Tony, this one shocks me because it happened this week. My brother-in-law has been interviewing for another company in Salt Lake City and flew to California, did the whole interview process and just had a really good experience. The background check finally came back. He accepted the offer on Tuesday. So today is Sunday, accepted the offer on Tuesday. So he said, OK, I'm going to go into my office on Wednesday and I'm going to let them know. I'm not going to give them a two week notice because I start on Monday.

Because companies here in Utah, especially tech companies, are notorious that when you go in to give them a two weeks notice, they let you go that very hour. As soon as you give them your two weeks notice, they're just notorious for it. There's a lot of companies out here that are notorious for that.

Tony Benjamin (01:11:38.862)
Yep. Yep.

Yep.

And by the way, that's stupid, just putting it out there.

Steve-o (01:11:46.382)
It is, but you know, I don't know. I don't know why some companies are outweighed. But anyway, so so this this old notion, I just feel like the old notion of the giving a two weeks notice is just long gone. Like it's just it's almost nonexistent now. Yeah, I really do. And maybe I'm a little jaded because I've seen so many of my friends and professionals in here in Utah, especially when they go in and give a two week notice, they just get let go within the hour. I don't get it.

Tony Benjamin (01:11:49.452)
It's stupid.

They're vindictive and they feel betrayed. That's why.

Tony Benjamin (01:11:59.159)
You think so?

Tony Benjamin (01:12:13.689)
Yeah, and no, I don't either. And all that means is that the employer A, doesn't trust you, B, feels betrayed and they're being vindictive, or C, they're just plain stupid. I mean, I don't know. Anyways, go ahead. Go ahead.

Steve-o (01:12:21.998)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (01:12:32.15)
Anyway, here is why he was very frustrated about this whole situation, which to me is, I'm just going to share the story, Tony, and then you tell me what your thoughts are. So he goes in, his manager, his direct manager that he works with was out of town this week. Why? Because his wife is nine months pregnant and at any moment will be having a baby. Right? So

Tony Benjamin (01:12:44.121)
Okay,

Steve-o (01:13:00.45)
The day he goes in and so he tells his bosses or his manager's boss, like the VP, goes into the VP and tells the VP, hey, guess what? I'm starting a new company on Monday. So this is my last week. I've got a couple of days left. And he's like, look, you don't need to tell my manager, just wait, because they're having a baby. It's their first child ever, right?

And he's like, I know how important that is. I know how critical that is. So that's why I'm telling you, because my manager is out of town. The VP proceeds to text the manager right after that meeting with with with my brother-in-law. And. I can't believe this. The manager is in the hospital. His wife is in labor at the moment when he's getting this text message and phone call from the VP to let him know that my brother-in-law is leaving.

Tony Benjamin (01:13:26.03)
Right, right.

Tony Benjamin (01:13:56.121)
Wow. Yes. That's the exact Rachel's going to love this episode.

Steve-o (01:13:56.736)
Where have we heard these stories before? Right. Rachel's going to love this story. She's absolutely going to love it. So anyway, Cody, my brother-in-law, calls me and he's so frustrated. He's like, who does this? Like who in the world goes and bugs the manager who's literally having their first baby ever? His wife is in labor and you're bugging him and pulling him out of the labor room or at least trying to because you need to let him know that

I just put in my three days notice and I'm out and I'm going to be gone on Monday. I mean, he's he's he obviously took FMLA and he's like, he's going to be gone for the next couple of weeks. know, his wife just is having a baby. And he was so livid that his VP would do something like that and literally bug this manager who is trying to take time with his family to go and have their first child. I come on. I remember my first child being born.

Now my experience was quite different, but it's such an emotional time and there's a lot of excitement there too, right? And so, man, what are you thinking? so Cody was just so furious that this VP would go and do something like that. And so my question is, do you agree with Cody? Do you agree with his frustration that they would literally try to take

this manager out of the labor room to make sure that he was aware, hey, we've got to replace Cody now. We've got to make sure we're on top of this.

Tony Benjamin (01:15:28.291)
Did now did he tell the did he tell the manager to call him back or anything or do something about it or

Steve-o (01:15:35.898)
I don't I don't know the whole situation there. Cody was just furious that he even called the manager involved him. Yeah, it just bothered him. And the reason it bothered him is because he specifically told the VP, I know my manager is out this week. I know his wife's about to have a baby. It just so happened to be on the same day. He didn't know that. But he's like, here's here was Cody's comment that I think has a lot of validity. He says that manager is now going to always remember the day his wife had a baby that I quit on.

Tony Benjamin (01:15:38.937)
Okay. Even bothered him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve-o (01:16:06.168)
that I left the company. And that will be ingrained in his head and probably shared as his birth story for all generations. So Cody was just livid and so frustrated by this experience. So anyway, so there's the story. There's what happened. He was just so frustrated and he went ahead and finished out the week. They didn't let him go right away. They let him go ahead and finish the last three days or so.

Tony Benjamin (01:16:06.807)
Yes.

Tony Benjamin (01:16:15.843)
Yeah.

Steve-o (01:16:33.818)
which he was grateful for. was almost expecting to be let go, but he wasn't. so, especially with his manager gone, maybe there are a few things he needed to take care of. But he was so frustrated, especially because he told the VP, don't talk to my manager until he gets back. There's no point. He's having a baby. Let him be. And that's what the VP chose to do. So there's the story.

Tony Benjamin (01:16:57.613)
No, that's and look, and I think, well, my official answer to that whole story is it depends. How's that? But that's right. Or a lawyer, either one. But right, right. No. So here's the thing is why you were telling that story. I can totally see if I'm the VP and I'm going to let that manager know and I'm texting and telling him. Right. And I and I do this sort of stuff with people on vacation.

Steve-o (01:17:04.91)
What you sound like an HR person

Whoa.

Tony Benjamin (01:17:28.041)
Here's a few of the it depends parameters, however, okay. Number one, if I know the guys in his wife's in labor at that moment, which if you report to me and you're having a baby, man, I'm keeping tabs on you because I care about you not because you're an employee, but because I'm cheering you on. And I'm not bugging them all the time, but I'm cheering them on. Wow, she's in labor. Congratulations. If there's anything we can do, let us know. If there are any emergencies, let us know. We'll come to the hospital.

Steve-o (01:17:47.01)
Yeah, absolutely.

Tony Benjamin (01:17:56.985)
right or whatever it is, right. And I have done that, by the way, with employees when they are at the hospital and then suddenly there's a problem with the baby. I'll jump in a car and I'll go see him. And matter of fact, in one case, it three and a half hours away and I went and did that. But the point is, there's much more different story too. But anyways, the point is, is I would be in contact with them. So I would know baby goes or mom goes into labor on that day and baby's on its way.

Steve-o (01:17:57.452)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:18:26.521)
I'm not going to bother you. would never text you if I knew the baby was on its way that day. That's number one. Number two, I also would not bother you if you were on FMLA leave. I would not know you're an FMLA leave, which by the way is the employees way of telling me, but out of my life, right? But out, I'm taking my, my FMLA paternity leave or whatever. Yes. Yes.

Steve-o (01:18:47.406)
That is why it exists, to allow them to take the time and spend it with their family, which is the most important thing in their life, period.

Tony Benjamin (01:18:57.547)
And, and, by the way, just as a note for everybody, legally speaking, if you're pestering people while they're out on FMLA and you're not allowing them to have their FMLA leave, or you're telling them over and over how much you miss them, you're denying them true FMLA leave and there's a legal consequence to that. So

Steve-o (01:19:14.444)
And that's the point I wanted to make because I talked to Cody about that and I told him about that, that there is an element of being careful there, right? Because if he was on leave, he was absolutely on leave and Cody knew he was on leave, which is exactly why it just elevated his frustration with the whole situation. So.

Tony Benjamin (01:19:16.974)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:19:23.555)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:19:35.417)
No, and I get it. And look, it also depends on how high of a level that manager is, right? So if I'm in the C-suite and the manager in this situation is a VP, I'm sorry, but I can text you as a VP anytime I want to. Now that, again, it depends on FML and all that other sort of stuff that I mentioned before. But generally speaking, if you're a VP, you're never really off. Let's just be straight about that. That's the price of becoming a vice president.

Steve-o (01:19:40.546)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (01:20:04.801)
or above. But again, having having said that, it depends on the situation, I can totally see myself doing this, I know you're off. And I'm assuming that mom's not having the baby right now. And I put in a text to you, you got a few days off or something, and I texted I text you, don't respond to this right now, dot dot dot. But so and so just gave their notice. Talk to you when you get back.

Right. I can totally see that because I don't want to blindside him or anything like that. But that's very, very different. Again, if you're my employee and your wife's in labor, I probably know your wife's in labor because I'm your friend. Right. And so the answer to, yeah, I mean, yeah, it's kind of all over, but that's just, I don't know. It's you're right. And it's, and if they've requested FMLA and all that just stupid. Yeah.

Steve-o (01:20:53.464)
Well, again, Cody was just frustrated because he specifically requested them not to say it yet. Let him have the baby. Give him several days to enjoy the moment. I don't want to be part of that baby story. And that's where he was just extremely frustrated. So yeah, anyway, crazy story. So there we go.

Tony Benjamin (01:21:10.295)
Yeah, no, I, I get it. There we go. That, wait, wait, wait. We always end with.

You know what? The clapping doesn't work anymore. I'm going to have to upload a new clapping sound. That's terrible. Okay. Well, it was even better answer than we thought.

Steve-o (01:21:23.83)
Damn, I'm so sad. Here, I'll clap.

Tony Benjamin (01:21:32.205)
Yeah, see.

Steve-o (01:21:32.897)
This is the HR life guys. This is like real stuff

Tony Benjamin (01:21:37.849)
That's right when AI doesn't want to help you clap, just cheer. Or maybe what they're saying is,

Steve-o (01:21:44.238)
Wow. There we go. we

Tony Benjamin (01:21:45.721)
Maybe that's what it is. Anyways.

Steve-o (01:21:51.062)
I am so glad that I don't have control over the noises because you realize I would play them way too much.

Tony Benjamin (01:21:59.993)
Well, yes. And there's an art to it and we haven't quite gone that far. Maybe if those of you in future land are listening to this and you're like, we're at episode, you're listening to episode 200. You're like, what was the podcast like in its early days? And you're listening to this. You're like, wow, they don't use very many sounders. Now you'll know why, because some of them don't always work. So there you go. But anyways, that I well,

Steve-o (01:22:25.995)
I blame user error.

Tony Benjamin (01:22:29.837)
You could, but that one, that one just isn't working. The clapping one isn't working. Yeah, it did. It didn't tell about a week and a half ago. Well, there you go. So I'll have to, I don't know, I'll send off a tech support a thing, and then there'll be all these emails back and forth. okay. Now that since we've gone through all of that, when a child faces a serious illness, the entire family feels the impact.

Steve-o (01:22:33.646)
Well, it's weird because it worked before. feel like it was doing okay. man, so disappointed.

Tony Benjamin (01:22:59.799)
Thrive Life Project steps in to lighten the load, delivering nutritious meals and engaging STEM kits directly to families homes completely free of charge. It's more than support. It's a community of care. Learn more at thrive life project.org. That's thrive life project.org. And a shout out to Brock and all the wonderful things that he's doing. You know a guy is doing really well.

when he's had tragedy in his own family recently and he want he's been giving so much to the community and is so involved in everything that in a small town they elected mayor. It's it is really cool Brock Brock's cool guy that's just tip of the hat to him and what an incredible story. So anyways, cool, cool organization as is all the stuff that we do. And hey, do you when is the Jag date? Did

Steve-o (01:23:38.616)
That's cool. That's cool.

Tony Benjamin (01:23:56.515)
Did we have that or when is it coming up?

Steve-o (01:23:57.08)
So yeah, so the JAG date is April 30th and March 1st. So it's those two days. I think they're doing some other stuff the days before that, but I believe I speak on the 30th. And here's the funny thing. So some of you may or may not know, but there was a restructuring in my company. I no longer work there. So all of my emails are, I don't have access anymore. So I can't even look at what the...

Tony Benjamin (01:24:03.095)
Okay.

Steve-o (01:24:25.102)
I don't even remember what day I was speaking or the time. So I'm trying to get a hold of them. So hopefully I'll have an update this week so that I've got that information again. But I do know that it is the 30th. I'm speaking on the 30th and then the first. And I believe the first is when we'll be able to record. I'm just trying to confirm with them what's going on. Because like I said, they're probably messaging me now and they're like, oh no, how do we get a hold of him? Because all they had was my work contact info. They didn't have any other info.

Tony Benjamin (01:24:50.24)
Yeah, yeah, that's right. Right. Well, hey, when you when you founded the company and worked there for like 18 years, I guess that's you know, you get dependent on it. So

Steve-o (01:24:54.944)
Anyway, so stay tuned.

Steve-o (01:25:00.044)
I know, it's so ridiculous. The hardest part is my cell phone number with work because I had to send them my phone right away and that cell phone, I mean, everybody has a cell phone. I've been giving away that cell phone number for 20, well, 17 years. And so yeah, it's kind of tough. So there you go.

Tony Benjamin (01:25:19.276)
Yeah. Well, I'll this everybody prepare yourself because Tony's going to be a little schmaltzy, not converse, not controversial. Yeah. But no, Steve, you're an amazing person and, and you've done more for recruiting, I think in our country than almost anybody else. And you've set the bar so high. I'm dismayed that, you know, that, that you're not there anymore, but

Steve-o (01:25:29.582)
What? That's shocking.

Tony Benjamin (01:25:48.965)
I've yeah, but I, but I just, I think you've done so much more wherever you're going to go. And just so everyone knows, I'm trying to recruit, recruit Steve to just forget all of his high paying whatever and come work with me and be a partner at my company. But anyways, but the Steve, you're, you're an incredible person and wherever you land, it's going to be incredible. And just tip of the hat to you, my friend there.

Steve-o (01:25:49.004)
It was not mutual. I will say that much.

Tony Benjamin (01:26:15.392)
You know, I joke at the beginning of every one of these episodes about what a big deal you are and you truly are. but I want everyone to know that I can only make those jokes because of the impact you've had. One of the coolest things I respect about you is that you farm potential clients years in advance. You literally farm potential clients by creating relationships. And I, by the way, am one of those relationships that you

cultivated. And I just I respect it to the nth degree. I wish everyone in this world would be more like you and their sales approach. It's it's remarkable. It's refreshing. And you honestly help people you don't sell you help. And when they're ready for that help or need that help, you're always there. You just want to make sure they know about it in advance. So anyways, you're good.

Steve-o (01:27:06.658)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I want to be the one to think about. always tell people in real sales is as soon as the need arises, I hope I'm the one you think of. That's really what I want. And that way, OK, now let's let's talk business. We've been friends all these years. Now it's time to talk business and help. So yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:27:15.862)
Right.

Tony Benjamin (01:27:24.63)
No, and that's exactly right. And I think you built the best ATS in the world. And I used it at one point, and it was quite a while ago, but even then it was really, really good.

Steve-o (01:27:36.162)
Yeah, and I still think it's one of the best in the world, which is really hard because, yeah, my heart is still there. And, and when you use the system, you just have to know that about 70 % of all the features in that system were, were designed by my friend Heather, but obviously working with her in product and, and, having her help design all of it. I mean, my heart and soul is in that system and it it always will be, it will always have my footprint in there no matter what. So.

Tony Benjamin (01:28:00.631)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:28:06.006)
No, that's that's very good. And I there you go. That's I, you know, had I known because we talked about before whether or not you're going to say anything. And there you go. Had I known you're going to do it, I would have done the breaking news intro first, because that's in the HR world. That was a pretty significant drop. So anyways.

Steve-o (01:28:23.702)
Nice. Well, that's all right. They can think about it in their head or you can always pencil it in later.

Tony Benjamin (01:28:29.996)
That's right. Maybe insert it later. If you heard it as you're listening to the episode, you'll know that's what I did. Yeah, I got it. It's her later. You know, I want to take a minute to while we're all here and since we're talking about people, I want to thank everybody who's been on the podcast. You know, I was just looking over my list and Jeremy and Carissa and Becca, Katie Connell, Priscilla Wadman, Rachel Child, Kate Thompson, Xavier.

Steve-o (01:28:34.754)
Yeah, you know, I penciled in.

Tony Benjamin (01:28:58.584)
Josh Breckheisen, Dan Merkley, Matt Hilbig, everybody who's been on the show. You guys have done so much. Diane being with us, that was a hilarious episode. I'll never forget that because of all the technical troubles we had. Steve Jaffe, who we still refer to a lot. we've, and that's right. And Chris.

Steve-o (01:29:14.668)
Yeah, yeah, with the layoffs stuff, yeah. Which I can truly relate to now.

Tony Benjamin (01:29:25.194)
or Allison Avila and in her stuff and Claire, we love you, Claire matter fact, we ought to just have unclear so we can just say whatever we want again. I miss Claire talking to her. It's been too long. You know, and Tammy that you mentioned earlier and Joy Lynn matter of fact, it's been like two and a half three weeks since I talked to Joy Lynn. I don't know what's going on in my life, but it can't be good. Desmond Elronna.

By the way, I get comments all the time. Desmond Elrond, if you're listening to this, get comments all the time about how cool that episode was and how funny you are. I literally have people that said they went and found you online and followed you just for the humor. You were that funny. it was good. Wes and Andrea, of course, has been with us a couple of times and Mark Tolman and Tracy again and Amy Adler and Ben Eden, Stacey Peterson.

Steve-o (01:30:00.386)
Yeah. yeah.

Steve-o (01:30:05.506)
Yep. Yep.

Tony Benjamin (01:30:18.102)
We're just, so grateful for all of you for helping us with all of this stuff. And, and not least of which of all our Christmas, our Christmas guests and our wives and look, it's, it's a Sunday night and that's a family night. My wife is in the other room, totally tolerating me doing this. And I just tip of the hat, our wives and their patients with us.

Steve-o (01:30:28.984)
Yeah, our wives, the housewives of the podcast.

Steve-o (01:30:42.614)
Absolutely.

Tony Benjamin (01:30:43.978)
Even if they do listen to the podcast at twice the speed, sometimes that's okay. but just.

Steve-o (01:30:48.428)
Yeah, that's what mine does.

Steve-o (01:30:53.055)
She skips my voice because she doesn't want to hear me anymore, but she listens to everything else.

Tony Benjamin (01:30:56.376)
Everything I say, that's very nice. Alicia, that's very nice. Thank you. Anyways, thanks to everybody. And we're getting a little schmaltzy about all this. Just Steve putting me in the mood for that with his announcement.

Steve-o (01:31:10.84)
Well, and we're almost at our year mark, which is crazy to think about. And that's exciting. And we've had some incredible guests. We're going to continue to have some additional ones. We've got some people we're meeting with. So we should have some new guests here popping up fairly soon. So we're excited.

Tony Benjamin (01:31:13.516)
That's right. That's right.

Tony Benjamin (01:31:26.998)
Yeah, and you know, we'll start opening the door to some of those authors and stuff who want to talk to us as well. So, but.

Steve-o (01:31:32.608)
Yeah, we that is a door that they've been pounding for a while. That's true. It is very true.

Tony Benjamin (01:31:36.118)
Yes, yes. And that's, that's, need to, I need to get back with them. Anyways, but check us out and, and, and stay in touch with all of us. And again, send us some emails and let us know, give us feedback, ideas, whatever.

Steve-o (01:31:51.032)
Well, and if you have a favorite episode, share it with a friend. know, we had multiple people share certain episodes. In fact, I've even found when I was talking to clients, I was like, you know what, there's an episode I think you should probably listen to. I think this would be beneficial to you. And so please share the episode that stands out to you that might answer a question or help somebody.

Tony Benjamin (01:31:54.135)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:32:03.648)
Yes.

Tony Benjamin (01:32:10.336)
Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do that quite frequently now. So I give I give referrals back to clients. Hey, if you want to know this, we touched on this in this episode, you can dive in. If matter of fact, I tell potential clients, if you want to know who I am, listen to this, some episodes of the podcast, then you can, you can get to know me better. So. But anyways, I just thanks to everybody and all you do. This is one of the most fun things I've ever done. And

And I really appreciate chatting with everybody. It's cool. It's fun. So, and even though

Steve-o (01:32:43.342)
Yeah, yeah, it is fun. I can't wait for the conferences coming up that we're going to be at because then we get to see some of our listeners live and it's just it's just fun. It's fun to interact and just the camaraderie. So if you're going to be at the FuelHR conference, if you're going to be the JAG conference, you're coming soon. Please, please, please come say hi. Work elevated in September, absolutely. And if you're having a conference and you'd like us to come, let us know. So there you go. Yeah, yep.

Tony Benjamin (01:32:48.567)
That's right.

Tony Benjamin (01:33:01.216)
And of course, work elevated. If you're going to be there, we want to talk to you there. We will be there. Yeah. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:33:09.698)
Yes, we would love to. We can figure that out for sure. All right, Steve, I guess this means that we're headed out the same way we came in. Thank you for listening to today's podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a five star review. That's a five star review on your favorite podcast app comments or questions for us. Email the podcast at the H.R. Live podcast that gmail dot com. We'll talk again soon.

Steve-o (01:33:16.172)
Yeah, the same movie came in.