How to work at home with cats.

These are my tips to work at home with your cats. If you have something important to do, save it for later. Cats are your priority. Before you start a Skype meeting, warn everybody that you have cats and they like to jump up and watch the screen like it’s TV. If you’re on a…

Work Friends Endure!

I barely ever make work-related friends, but I’m lucky to have 4-5 people in my life who have known me forever. One of those guys is Jeff. Jeff and I shouldn’t be friends. We are political opposites. We don’t live near one another or work together, anymore. But there was this one time when I…

Financial Wellness and HR

I’ve worked in the HR industry since I was a kid. If there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that a lot of HR ladies are broke. This observation is sweeping and obnoxious. It’s also accurate. It’s true across all ethnicities. Across all orientations. Children or not. Married or single. Young. Old. Somewhere in-between. Nobody…

Pre-Mortem Assessments of Life

I’m not interested in doing a post-mortem on projects, policies or relationships. In theory, it makes sense to take stock of an event when it’s over. It sounds healthy to compile a list of “lessons learned.” But you know what happens with a post-mortem? Not much. You make a list, file it away, and forget…

compassion fatigue

Compassion Fatigue Is Real

I have friends who work deep in the trenches of animal rescue groups. They rescue pit bulls from fighting rings. They rehome unwanted cats and move them to barns in the countryside. They save bunnies and chinchillas from the most disgusting and repugnant breeding facilities. Several of them suffer from compassion fatigue, but many do…

Too Busy to Write

Hello, everybody. Just a quick note to tell you that I’m behind on blogging. It assumes two things: you read my blog and give a shit. Thank you. Here’s the deal. I had to run up a skyscraper on Sunday morning. Later that night, I attended a memorial service. It was terrible and troublesome and…

The Future of HR

People ask me about the future of HR. Am I an optimist? Am I a cynic? I think you have to look at the past to understand the future. Business leaders brazenly defrocked HR between 2009-2014 and invested in software, which has largely failed. Meanwhile, a talented cohort of HR professionals became disenfranchised and moved…

17 Truths About Working in HR

Here are 17 truths about working in HR. Create core values like birthdays and puppies. The rest is overrated. Communicate candidly, kindly, without pretension, and directly via text. Fine, okay, use the phone. Avoid email. Never send an email more than five sentences long. Give feedback kindly, with specificity, directly to the person who needs…