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HR Voices is a scenario-based podcast for People Leaders who’ve actually had to make the call.
Each episode brings experienced HR and People leaders into realistic, anonymized workplace scenarios—the kind you recognize immediately. Performance issues. Messy conflicts. Investigations that don’t fit neatly into a policy box. Instead of talking about their own companies, guests react to outside cases and walk through how they’d think it through in real time.
There are no right answers here. What you’ll hear is judgment: how seasoned leaders balance risk, fairness, legal reality, and humanity when the stakes are high and the path isn’t obvious.
HR Voices is for HR, People Ops, legal, and leaders who want to hear how other smart humans actually handle employee relations—without confidentiality breaches, hypotheticals that feel fake, or a lecture on “best practices.”
Rebecca Taylor (00:17)
Hello and welcome to HR Voices. I'm your host Rebecca Taylor and I'm here with Lizzie Garner, Chief People Officer at ClearChoice Dental Implant Centers. Lizzie, thank you so much for being here.
Lizzie Garner (00:28)
Thank you for having me. you for even having a place to do this. When you say I have a lot of things to share, it's all those years of experience that you wish you could give someone so that they don't make those same mistakes.
Rebecca Taylor (00:30)
I'm so excited to have you here because I know we just chatted yesterday on our intro call. We were chatting a little bit before we started recording here. You have so many great pieces of wisdom to share. So I'm very excited to have you on this show and talk through things.
And for those who are new here, HR Voices is a podcast that explores real and fabricated anonymized employee relations scenarios through the lens of experienced HR and people leaders just like Lizzie. So we're going to evaluate a realistic workplace situation and demonstrate how we might assess risk, apply judgment, and then we're going to design practical responses.
The goal here is to reveal how strong HR leaders think when facing ambiguity and not to find a single correct answer because as we know in HR, that so rarely happens. So before we dive into your scenario, I think like one of the things that is that I want to kind of like call out is like within your experience. I think that you bring when we were talking about this, you bring a lot of sort of relatability to the way that you kind of talked about your approach when we were prepping for this. So.
This is why I'm very excited for this for everyone to listen to. yeah, are you ready for your scenario? Okay, so this one's called the layoff order. So during a reduction in force, HR is given a list of employees to terminate. HR analysis reveals the list is disproportionately skewed toward employees over 55 and women in senior roles. When HR raises the concern with the CFO, she's told the list was generated based on performance ratings.
Lizzie Garner (01:40)
I'm looking forward to it. ⁓ I'm ready. What are we going to do today?
Rebecca Taylor (02:04)
HR pulls the underlying performance data and finds significant rating inconsistencies. The CFO wants to proceed. HR must decide whether to escalate the concern over the CFO's head, document objection and proceed, halt the process or resign. Whatever it does, it will own part of the outcome. Whatever HR does, will own part of the outcome, just to clarify what that means. So in hearing this scenario, to start us off, what stands out to you as the most risky or unclear?
Lizzie Garner (02:33)
Wow, well, I think when I think about the scenario in its whole, risky and unclear, so many different things. What exactly is the cost of moving forward quickly? What could we save right away? How do we define performance? We start to talk about all of those risk things. I wanna just sort of take a half a step back for one second and remind everybody that...
Laying people off in a scenario like this is probably some of the least fun work or least fun things that HR does. But I will remind anyone listening that you have an opportunity to build tremendous trust and your own value within the organization when you help your colleagues with this, because they too, very few are good at this or able to do this flawlessly. So I think the overall like kind of risk or thoughts go to, there are so many places that
layoffs can go wrong, legally, reputationally, the trust you break, of course, with the teams that are going to remain employed. But it is a place where you can show up as a leader with some grace, also with a solid plan that will help keep kind of the least amount of risk, mitigate the risk as much as possible.
Rebecca Taylor (03:54)
Yeah, I love that the first thing you talk about is the opportunity too, because like, this is what I mean, where I was like, you have so many cool insights or just so many relevant pieces, because it's true. It's like in your HR career, you're likely going to be doing layoffs. It is probably, like you said, one of the least fun parts of the HR job, you know, and it's definitely on the bottom three of like things we don't want to have to do, right? And like you said, no one's really very good at it, but there are a lot of ways that you can do it.
better than others, right? And we're witnessing a lot of this kind of happening in real time too right now. And I think that's kind of the part that, like you said, like the opportunity for us to sort of step up and really use it as a chance to rebuild trust, not just with the people who stay, but also with the people who go and with the public, that's a big sort of thing, right?
Lizzie Garner (04:42)
⁓
Yeah, and especially amongst your executive team. know, when everyone shows up around a table talking about what they bring, what they ultimately own, people will be looking at HR. This is the moment when you can help guide things through and be the, you know.
the opportunity to ensure that you are the one that's leading your team through it. And there aren't always a lot of those. Often HR tells me and can feel like things are second chair or supporting to other things. This is a place where you really do have the opportunity to show up and use your expertise to help guide the company through it.
Rebecca Taylor (05:17)
Yeah.
Yeah. I think it's what makes this scenario probably kind of frustrating for folks that have been in this position too, because this HR person, and again, this is a fabricated scenario, so we have to take some of it with a grain of salt, right? But in this scenario, know, HR is raising a concern about how this layoff list was built. So they're coming in kind of showing their expertise. And this is sort of that moment where you can either sort of sit by the sidelines and
you know, if the CFO wants to move ahead, you're gonna own part of the outcome either way. And we could talk through what that could look like. But this is sort of your chance to sort of say, okay, I'm gonna use my expertise. might, you know, if not go over the CFO's head, we could talk about, you know, some of the approaches here. ⁓ But it is your chance to not just immediately agree just to keep the peace. Because that'll help you lose trust pretty quickly.
Lizzie Garner (06:05)
Yeah, it's
so true. if the scenario, of course, as you said, is what we were given, someone's facing this, someone listening has chosen this topic because it's something they're trying to navigate. And if I could also just in.
in the event that you are part of conversations where you are talking about reductions, I think it's also a really good place to partner to talk about selection criteria before lists are made. So if ideally I could have been a part of this scenario before I was the recipient of a list, it would have been at a table two weeks before then when we were talking about having to save money and unfortunately having to make the difficult decision to do that through employee reduction.
Rebecca Taylor (06:33)
Yes.
Lizzie Garner (06:50)
would have at that point inspired anyone at this point to stop and say, great, let's talk about what kind of selection criteria we could look at because this is a place where things can really go wrong. So if given the opportunity just two weeks before the list shows up on your desk, if that is there, please don't stay quiet at that table. Speak up and help lead through that conversation when it's just a conversation versus a list that's already been given.
Rebecca Taylor (07:16)
Yeah.
Yeah. And this is why it's so important to be very, very in tune with the business too, because you shouldn't be finding out that layoffs are happening. Like you said, when you get the list, you should be, you you can know, hey, the company might be struggling financially. There might be different decisions that, you know, the CFO and the CEO are trying to make. You know, you need to know that sooner than when they invite you into that information. You kind of need to be very curious. And I always say nosy. I'm just a nosy person. So.
I would always sort of ask, how's the business doing? What are some of the things that you're thinking about? Because if you're not inserting yourself into those conversations, you are just going to be sort of stuck with the reactive fallout, kind of like this scenario sort of displays.
Lizzie Garner (07:57)
Yeah, love that.
Stay curious, ask one more question. I think many of us who are leading with the business partners, even if you aren't part of that C level or kind of core team, let's hope that you're still part of financial review, business review, asking those questions at minimum monthly if you're not involved in throughout the month, knowing where the business is at will help you keep ahead of. Also helps me make hiring decisions. Even if everything's wonderful, how wonderful?
Rebecca Taylor (08:19)
Yeah.
Lizzie Garner (08:26)
Do I need to hire more? Like what exactly is going on? Being in tune with the business allows me to do so many different things to support the business better.
Rebecca Taylor (08:29)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think what's interesting about the way that this scenario is written out and the way that it's sort of displayed is that it looks like it's a data-driven decision. So you get your list of employees to terminate. It's the CFO sort of making this, seemingly driving this conversation with HR kind of next to them now because we have to execute. What's interesting is that the list is disproportionately skewed.
towards employees over 55 and women in senior roles. And they say that the list was based on performance ratings. To me, sure, you could say we're looking at performance data. This is how we're making the decisions. But I'm suspicious. So what do you want to try to dig into if you're the HR person? What are you trying to understand in this moment?
Lizzie Garner (09:13)
you
of course, and part of my partnership with the CFO, let's take the scenario as it is. You maybe didn't get that opportunity upfront, and now you're stuck with the list that has been chosen the way it is. So I certainly start to ask more questions. One of the other things I want to do is take that list and get a full census out, my impact analysis. I often have used outside counsel for those to be able to help provide just data that doesn't become...
Rebecca Taylor (09:47)
Mm-hmm.
Lizzie Garner (09:51)
you know, eye-catching, it could be really egregious and it could be something that you can catch in your own analysis, but I like to have a separate set of eyes in there. One of the tools in this place for me is bringing in someone for a legal perspective to ensure that we're, again, not intentionally, but are we disproportionately impacting some groups that we don't want to. So as I look through the impact analysis, and I'm pretty clear that this is the list, this is where they want, and this is disproportionately impacting these folks, it's time for me to start.
Rebecca Taylor (10:03)
Yeah.
Lizzie Garner (10:20)
some conversations about what performance means. And I find it most effective in those instances to likely expand my conversation from the CFO and I directly because neither of us likely manage all of these people or have direct knowledge of all of their performance. So using what's in the system, performance ratings, those things, great, get all the data that you can get. But now it's time to expand the circle a little and I get that we're all sensitive during a layoff. You don't want to expand the circle too largely. But we do need to have some folks who can provide a little additional color on
Rebecca Taylor (10:22)
Mmm.
Right.
Yeah.
Lizzie Garner (10:50)
what performance means, what exactly are we looking to accomplish here, where does that leave holes for us? I think there are two things that I start to think about, and I would explain to the CFO in the best possible way, our potential financial impact. The goal of a reduction is always, as a last resort, we're going to impact employees, but we don't have another choice because we need to save money.
Rebecca Taylor (11:07)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Lizzie Garner (11:16)
Helping them understand how costly employment litigation is, is one of those places where I want to bring some of my past expertise to say, these are things that could cause. And giving employees all of the necessary disclosures will in some instances provide them all that they need to be able to see what was impacted. So I think understanding the financial impact, and if I can get some more information on the performance, we can talk a little bit about how, what would our defendable position be? How would you explain?
Rebecca Taylor (11:20)
Yup.
Mm-hmm.
Lizzie Garner (11:46)
this? Not just to me, but now if you had to explain to an outside counsel jury, how would you explain how you came up with the selection for performance?
Rebecca Taylor (11:56)
Yeah,
yeah. Especially when you're doing a layoff and you're reducing positions, every single person who's getting laid off is getting some sort of termination letter, some sort of severance payment, you assume, right? And if you are in that bucket, you know, 40 and over, you get the list of everybody else who's laid off with you. And that opens you up to a lot because these employees are going to be rightfully upset, right? And if they see, like, you know, they're going to find this, they're going to see this
blatantly, they're going to say, so they're laying off all these senior people and everybody who's 55 and over. Like, all they have to do is go to one lawyer, that lawyer is going to be like, ooh, this is something for me here. So yeah, reminding the CFO of that, like, look, this isn't going to be a secret layoff. This is going to it's going to be out there. This is what we're going to be, the risk that we're signing ourselves up for if we allow this to happen without changing anything.
Lizzie Garner (12:35)
Yes.
Yeah, I love that. I'll tell you another kind of step I've gone because often you get to that table, you're having the conversation, the CFO has made a commitment to someone, the board, the CEO that we were gonna do this in a certain time and it's the end of the month and if we do this quickly, we can save for the, so there will be all of those pressures that are talked about. So one of the other things I've done is looked at another way to accomplish what the business is trying to do. So I have had instances where this was the list and I've said, let's try it.
two other ways. What if we took a look at last in first out? Something that kind of is universally agreed upon at the right way. In the event that you are still disproportionately impacting some groups, the defendable position was, but they were the last ones in and the first ones out. We were hiring folks that were diverse, that were older, that were all of the reasons, and so now that we have to unfortunately pull back, we are maybe disproportionately
Rebecca Taylor (13:29)
Mm-hmm.
Lizzie Garner (13:49)
impacting them, but all with a defendable position of it was very fairly applied. I've also looked at things like making sure that you are, are there entire roles that we could eliminate? So there is no more selection criteria. Maybe there's a specific role that we don't need and there are three people that sit in that role. If you're getting rid of the entire role,
Rebecca Taylor (13:55)
Yeah.
Lizzie Garner (14:13)
There's another place where, again, selection didn't play a part. It's the role that we don't need. So what other ways can you bring opportunities to the CFO to say, how close can we get to what it is that you're attempting to do, cost-wise, to still support the business? We all understand the sort of tightrope you walk there, but come with a few solutions as well. Come with a few other, like what if we also look at it this way? Seems to go a little further when they're up against the timeline and the savings.
Rebecca Taylor (14:32)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, because especially when they feel like this decision is made, we need to act really, really quickly. It's like, you know, I love that you're offering solutions to and just sort of different methodologies to sort of figure out how to do this math or come up with this list, right? Because, you know, like you said, if you're looking at something that's a time-based, you know, scenario or a time-based decision criteria, like last in first out, that's much more defensible. When you look at something like performance.
Lizzie Garner (14:43)
The data. Quick fight.
Rebecca Taylor (15:09)
it's, you people think that it's objective or they're saying that it's objective, you know, it's just we're getting rid of low performers, quote unquote. And we've seen this come up in companies, you know, Facebook is famous for, you know, laying people off who are terminating people who are low performers. But I don't think any company does performance very well, even the great ones. I still think there's just still to, there's always going to be human error or bias or something in performance because it's all about how clear are your goals.
Lizzie Garner (15:35)
under.
Rebecca Taylor (15:37)
How much of that are you judging? Like, what is judging versus what is fact, right? That's just always gonna be a squishier criteria. ⁓
Lizzie Garner (15:44)
Thank
Yeah, I couldn't
agree with you more Rebecca. And part of, again, what makes HR professionals valuable are their ability to navigate these difficult situations. And if we were evaluating a set of machines and we could pull the tape from the machines and see what machines we're producing, what amount at what quality of what, guess what? They also don't need us because things like that then take care of themselves. There's always going to be the human element and performance. And I'm with you. I've worked for large and founder.
Rebecca Taylor (16:07)
Yeah.
Lizzie Garner (16:15)
led and very top public. At the end of the day, there are still human leader all the way down the chains who are helping to document what they believe stellar performance is or isn't. And that varies and is very difficult to defend.
Rebecca Taylor (16:32)
Yep, yeah. And it's also, you when you're looking at a company that just does performance reviews once a year, famously, they're also biased because, you know, it's like you're even if it's just recency bias, if it's like, I only remember what you did in the last month. So, you know, who knows, you could have been great for 10 months out of the year and had a rough month or two because of life or whatever the situation might be. And now you're making a decision about this person's performance review, which then impacts their, you know, their layoff.
It's interesting because in this scenario, there's sort of like, and we kind of laughed about this, like the approach that this fictional HR person is taking is sort of like, they're looking at, we escalate this concern over the CFO's head? So go to the CEO. Do we document the objection? Like, do you know, say, I don't agree with this, but we proceed anyway. Do we halt the process or do we resign? Which I think is, you know, we love a little drama, ⁓ but I also...
But also if you are gonna be partially accountable for the outcome, and if you do feel very strongly that you're facing the kind of resistance and you're like, I can't stamp this, I know many HR people who've put themselves on that list and they've said, you know what, I'm not gonna stand for this, put me on the list, I'm gonna leave, and then give my job to someone else or save someone else by me doing that. I have seen stuff like that happen.
Lizzie Garner (17:51)
Yeah, I'm with you. did in this scenario, I thought it was incredibly dramatic. I often think that HR and great HR leaders are there and better for the employees who are left behind even after the reduction to be able to advocate for people and someone who certainly feels this strongly is going to continue to find those places. And again, I hope next time they can get involved sooner. And I hope that the litigation doesn't become true, but unfortunately, sometimes that will be the lesson that is taught.
Rebecca Taylor (18:06)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lizzie Garner (18:21)
will come out and it will play itself out but let's go back to the beginning of the piece of to go over their heads. I would like to
use different terminology and say, let's bring in another brain. Let's talk through this with someone else. So there have definitely been very contentious conversations that I've been a part of that were making really difficult decisions for all based on the business and the timing and the savings needed and the future impact to the business. And I've definitely been in a scenario where I've said, let's pull in someone else. Let's pull in our, do we have an employment attorney? Do we have outside counsel? Is it just another member of the executive
Rebecca Taylor (18:33)
Mm.
Lizzie Garner (18:59)
team who can help you all see through what it is that you're looking for. That's sometimes faster. It can be accomplished this afternoon. Let's have another bit of a conversation. So the going over their head, I think can be, you know, let's get another brain in here. We both feel pretty strongly about where we are. Let's have someone else come and take a look. Let's just stay curious a little, little longer in this one. I also think that it's possible that you will be asked to execute something that you don't fully feel supportive of. And so you're still going to do your very
Rebecca Taylor (19:28)
Yeah.
Lizzie Garner (19:29)
best
work. There are those times where you would have felt differently about it and I've also seen that no suit is filed and there wasn't maybe this big dramatic kind of impact that you thought. So I've seen it work both ways and in my career I have layoffs are something that as we said at the beginning most people aren't good at. I unfortunately am fairly good at them. I've had to do quite a few of them and
being there to lead them and get the right employees and then help support those employees after did make all of the difference that I think people can take away and do as really great partners with their executive team. Hopefully, short of having to put your own livelihood on the line to do that decision.
Rebecca Taylor (20:06)
Yeah.
Yeah,
yeah. And it's so true because there's so many times in HR, we have to move forward with a decision that we wouldn't have made ourselves or that we disagree with. that's also just the job. I think that's the job in any field. just tends to be, it feels a little bit more personal in HR sometimes because it's usually a people decision. It's not a, we buy this product decision? Right? And it does make it feel a little bit, you know, a little bit more charged. you know, something you said ⁓ was about documentation too.
Lizzie Garner (20:34)
Yeah, it's people.
Rebecca Taylor (20:46)
because that's one of the approaches here. I would think that, you know, I like the way you're talking about it where, you know, it's almost like halt the process to provide, see if we could look at other ways. I still think you need to document your objection. I still think you need to be like, I don't agree with this and this is why I want to look at another way. And then if the CFO says no, you know, if the CFO is like, no, we're not going to stop this. We're not going to look at it another way, then at least you could say like, I
I called this out, I was ignored. you know, so then if you do get a suit, doesn't, you know, it's at least you have, at least you're covering yourself, which sometimes unfortunately that's what you also just have to do, just cover yourself.
Lizzie Garner (21:15)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
I shudder to think about the position that you're sitting in and having to, I will say I feel incredibly fortunate to not have to have that have been the reality. I think there is a, let's quickly pause and revisit in another couple of ways to still work to meet the timeline and still get it to a place where everyone can get on board because I think you're right. None of us get 100 % of what we want all of the time.
Rebecca Taylor (21:25)
I know.
Lizzie Garner (21:50)
CFOs often watch the business spend money when they're saying don't or overdo the budget when they're saying don't. I feel like my CFO partner is in the same position I am many times. Likely they stood up, maybe she sat at a different table, our CFO, and said, don't hire all these extra people. We are doing like there's there's likely some coming ground somewhere to find with someone who's
Rebecca Taylor (21:55)
Yup. Yup.
Yeah.
Lizzie Garner (22:13)
also making a decision that's probably less than optimal or something that they had mentioned sooner. I've been fortunate enough to find a place to, let's get to a place that works as well as it can for all of us versus feeling like you're at that kind of end of your rope place.
Rebecca Taylor (22:25)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I think that's such a key skill to learn too. It's almost like, I guess you could broadly call it collaboration, but it goes deeper than that. It's like executive partnership and partnering as co-executives and as co-peers and just kind of relating, empathizing, making it, grounding yourselves in the problem that you're trying to solve and coming at it with like, this is how I need to solve it, this is how you need to solve it, we have to find a way to do it together. And I think like,
One of the things that's really important in order to do that right is to stick to your gun sometimes, or just dig your heels in and just sort of say, no, you might find me frustrating in this moment. People are very used to HR being frustrating, right? The same way HR is used to finance being frustrating, or sales is used to customer success being frustrating, right? There's natural tension in certain roles that happen, and we can't do our jobs well if we avoid that type of tension or conflict.
because that is what our roles are designed to be like so that we can make the best decisions together.
Lizzie Garner (23:24)
Yeah.
It's what often HR is, what often, what really great HR is going to do are force what feel like uncomfortable conversations that help get us all to the better, to the better result, to the better ending, to the less disruptive, more like, but having to have the finesse and the trust and all of the things that come with having that conversation are likely what again, make you most valuable as well.
Rebecca Taylor (23:56)
Yeah,
yeah. And do you have, know we've kind of talked about this a little bit, but more tangibly, how should HR leaders prepare managers for this kind of moment? So either the actual layoff itself, maybe it's something before the layoff, right? So how can HR leaders help managers prepare?
Lizzie Garner (23:58)
You know, I'm not talking about them.
Yeah, I think that having a reduction in force toolkit, having a separation toolkit is something that has benefited me. I have evolved it over the years. I created it with a number of great leaders that had sort of different inputs and insights. But once we embark in this, and again, as I said, this is one of the places where you can add the most amount of value. So when I have been at the table where we are talking about even discussing this, it is one of the places where I lean in and say, also, let me just project man.
this, my team and I will work through the helping you with the selection, going through this impact analysis, talking about how we can get exactly where we need to go. Then we will talk about the actual tactical execution of how exactly do we communicate into what groups in what time because almost no more sensitive discussions does HR have than ensuring that the person who's receiving this information as a direct impact of the reduction is told with all of the grace and information and
and tools that they are going to need in that moment than that one place. So preparing for that piece within my larger sort of toolkit is the idea of the executive team is clearly aware, it's the start of all of this kickoff, right? Then you get into selection criteria, finalize that, you start to get into the communication. So what leaders do we need to have informed so that they have the time necessary to work with the sample language, to get a plan together with their specific HR?
Rebecca Taylor (25:31)
Yeah.
Lizzie Garner (25:46)
person so that they can deliver information again with the way that makes sure that they are holding space for people to have some emotion with it, letting them know that.
Rebecca Taylor (25:54)
Yeah.
Lizzie Garner (25:56)
From everything I say from here out will be emailed to you because often after we talk about this, no words are going to make this easier and you don't hear another thing. It's Charlie Brown teacher from the moment that I say we've made the difficult decision and effective today, we've made the decision to separate from you. Your head goes blank. So our scripting typically starts with everything we discussed today will be emailed to you directly following this call and conversation. I want you to know that we're here to talk as much or as little as you'd like. Here's the information.
Rebecca Taylor (26:01)
Gone out of the brain.
Yup.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Lizzie Garner (26:25)
More often than not, people don't want any more discussion at this exact moment. They need a minute and kind of go through. But all of those steps, in my experience, have been best owned by myself, my team, to be able to see the entire organization through this. You're seen as...
Rebecca Taylor (26:30)
Yeah. Yeah.
Lizzie Garner (26:44)
the expert, even if you are listening to this and you're trying to do it for the first time, you are still likely more qualified to do it than many at your table who have never done it or have only ever seen poor examples of doing it. With some thoughtfulness, you can actually run it with more value than other disciplines.
Rebecca Taylor (26:48)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's so true. I mean, it's so true. And, you know, I like your suggestion to have sort of a reduction in force toolkit so that managers kind of have, you know, something they can look at to kind of remind them of how to have the discussions. And I would even say because, you know, ideally when you're doing a reduction in force, you have defensible decision criteria to make the list, like you mentioned. If this is, you know, if it is a scenario where you're laying people off who are quote, poor performers.
think as a manager, you kind of also need to be prepared to speak to that or not speak to that. Speak to it to HR, but probably not discuss it in the layoff conversation, right? Because then, especially if you're looking at it's, you're targeting people that are either senior positions, women, people over 55. are kind of the, that can get very, very hairy. And then I think it's like, you kind of also have to,
Lizzie Garner (27:36)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (27:52)
dial it back to performance best practices in a lot of other ways. That's the bigger problem to solve after the layoff, because it's like, somehow our performance reviews, our performance process has set these people up to not be good performers. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not, right? But I would need to find that out. Maybe it's because I love performance, but that's where I need to start to dig after all this.
Lizzie Garner (27:53)
So I hope that that practice is still alive. So, thank you so listening.
and I'm what?
Yeah, yeah,
I actually have to say, and again, I have already said I've done more of these than many people will hopefully do in their careers. But I have never done one that was based on performance as the only selection criteria. Reductions in force are a business problem. I'm solving for a business problem. If this person was even your version of needs improvement or your nine box lowest.
But it was OK for them to continue to work here after that point. So the idea that what has caused this change in our invite wasn't their performance changing. As you said, if I had done this performance review in January, if I chose not in January to have made that decision, I am making it now based on a business condition. So to your point, our conversations are typically not.
Rebecca Taylor (29:05)
Mm-hmm.
Lizzie Garner (29:11)
on performance criteria. Or if there were some that were chosen, I think that for those, you know, we're talking to HR leaders here, when you have people on performance improvement plans, 30-day warnings, like things that are more severe, those certainly have a clear, defendable, documented position, and those may be part of a selection criteria. But using that as the broad brush for more than a small handful of employees is likely not the...
Rebecca Taylor (29:29)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lizzie Garner (29:41)
the approach I've seen.
Rebecca Taylor (29:43)
Yeah,
yeah, I agree. And it almost makes me wonder, this would probably be a whole other topic that I could, like, could mull over, but like, at what point is it considered a layoff versus a culling, right? Or like a mass firing? Because layoff usually implies this role is eliminated, we're not replacing this role. One of the points you said earlier is like, if you're making a decision based on certain, not needing certain roles anymore, that's also more defensible. But I think that's also traditionally what a layoff is. I think the term layoff has just gotten a lot more
broad lately because companies don't want to call it mass firings or culling the herd or anything else like that. Okay, I have one final question for you because I know we could keep going for a long time. I already know this about us. But what is one assumption about HR that you think needs to be challenged?
Lizzie Garner (30:14)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, no, you're, you're,
I that is a...
Great question. I don't come from a traditional HR background and I will say that the assumption coming into the HR space was that people treated HR a bit like they think of compliance, a bit of a necessary evil versus this enabler of all of the people that were going to help your business get to the places that it needed to go. And if you are a business leader
listening and sort of challenging the real role at the table that HR talks about. If you can think about it in the fact that this group provides the expertise and finesse that are outside of all of those other places that have subject matter expertise within your org that you invite to the table, that HR is going to help enable you to actually reach those goals. It isn't a bit of a necessary evil or something that you have to have. It's something that you should want to have to help
you lead your people to ensure that you're able to do all of the things that the business could dream of it accomplishing or doing at some point and often for me that's come from a place of staying curious a little longer understanding the business understanding the people understanding employees asking just one more question what about what is that how about that the kind of curiosity piece I think we laughed earlier called it nosiness curiosity that piece that like what exactly are all of the things we're dealing with so that you have someone who wakes
Rebecca Taylor (31:54)
Yeah.
Lizzie Garner (32:00)
up on your team every day worried about the way that your people perform, how do you attract and retain top talent, whose job is it every day on your executive team to wake up and think about that employee experience to help you get? Because you're sure, it's been said many times, your end customer, end user, and patient experience is never going to exceed that of your employee base.
Rebecca Taylor (32:24)
Yep, yep. I love that. So well said. And Lizzie, thank you so much for being here and for chatting through this scenario with me. I think that there's like, there's so many good nuggets out of this that I think, you know, is going to be really, really valuable to anybody listening to this. And, you know, I just really appreciate you being here and sharing your expertise.
Lizzie Garner (32:41)
Thank you so much for having me. And Larger, thank you so much for providing a platform for HR people to get on and find some expertise. Often leading people can feel lonely and it shouldn't, right? You shouldn't be the only one with any answers. So the community you create allows people to then find some of those answers that they may be starving for within their own organization. So thank you.
Rebecca Taylor (33:00)
Yeah, thank you. It's so true. It's like we're all in this together. We just got to keep trying. Thank you everybody for listening to and I hope everybody has a great rest of your day. Bye.