Evil HR Lady

Let’s face it, a lot of life can feel like Groundhogs Day (if you subscribe to the Bill Murray theory of the day). We do the same things over and over, and it can get repetitive. Especially in HR–while there are always unexpected things there is a lot of

I try to handle employee problems face-to-face and one-on-one. That’s what I was always taught — praise in public, punish in private. But the problem with this is that each of my employees feels singled out for their bad behavior. In their eyes, their coworkers never “get in trouble.” No

Google, along with other big tech companies, chose to use email to notify employees that they were terminated. As I noted last week, this is the wrong way to terminate people, and your employees deserve better.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this impersonal form of termination is

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai just laid off a bunch of employees at Google, with plans to lay off more–bringing the total to 12,000 roles. Pichai sent the following email to staff (emphasis added):

I have some difficult news to share. We’ve decided to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000

It may feel like the current rash of tech layoffs started with Twitter, but they did not. Twitter was just loud about it.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement firm, track terminations, and in 2022 tech led the way, with 97,171 job cuts, up 649% from 2021. So Twitter’s 3,000 to 4,000

I sat down with Tracy Scherk at Talent Optimization about mentoring! It was a fun conversation. You can learn a bit about using improv comedy to do mentoring and leadership training.

Hop over and take a listen here: Mentoring with Impact with Suzanne Lucas

The post Mentoring with Impact with

This morning I got sucked into watching Facebook reels. The offspring inform me that these are just old TikToks, and I should go straight to TikTok, but I’m an old lady who likes Facebook and always regrets clicking on reels, and yet I still do it.

Anyway, a lovely woman

A couple of weeks ago, I had a transatlantic flight–Las Vegas to London. I wore cat slippers.

This may seem in direct conflict with my general praise of dress codes, but they aren’t contradictory.

The purpose of a dress code is to do two things:

I have an employee, Heidi, who continually asks others for their salary info. Some people don’t want to discuss it and tell her that, but she won’t stop asking! I want to give her a supervisory directive to quit bugging people, but I also know she has the right to

Sometimes it might feel good to call a coworker a “soul-less [sic] and morally bankrupt ” person. And if that person is a lawyer, you might think that the jokes just write themselves. But nothing good can come out of attacking a lawyer via text for the crime of

Are you thinking about finding a new job and want to get your resume updated, but you feel stuck? This two-hour workshop will get your resume where it needs to be to land your next job!

Dates:

Thursday, January 19 at 1:00 Eastern

Monday, January 30 at 5:00 Eastern

Francesca Di Meglio interviewed me over at HR Exchange. It was a fun conversation where I shared some ideas about

Why daycare benefits don’t have desired long-term retention effects Why you need to think outside the box when targeting moms Why working at home isn’t for everyone

Hop

I’m a professional writer, but I’m not a professional copy editor. Typos happen. Genuine errors happen. And I truly appreciate it when someone messages me and tells me about my errors so I can correct them.

But as a general rule, unless you are someone’s editor or English teacher, it’s

I have an employee, Bill, who’s been with us for four months. A couple of weeks ago, his manager called me to say that Bill had anxiety, clocked out, and was in the break room. The manager checked on him, and Bill said he was okay and needed a few

When your boss is horrible, or customers have unreasonable and rude requests, or you just can’t take it anymore, you may wish to “rage quit” your job–walk out in a dramatic fashion. Quitting without notice makes for some sweet revenge.

Who can blame you? It makes for dramatic movie