One of my favorite LinkedIn games is bright-eyed people declaring their brilliant ideas that they've never once run by an expert in the field. The latest? A company where if you're 1 minute late to work, they make you stay an extra 2 hours! Wow! What a great motivator! If you have what seems like a fabulous idea that no one else has tried, ask yourself, "Is there a legal or moral reason no one has tried this?

“HR is the only department that gets a free pass for being completely useless.” Ahh, yes, it’s time for another rant about how awful HR is. This is from Amanda Goodall, who calls herself The Job Chick, posting on the social media platform X. She does corporate research. When people dismiss HR as worthless, or worse, damaging, it’s generally based on a very narrow view of what HR does.

The senior execs could argue that this doesn't matter. This woman was retiring--they'd never see her again, so they didn't need to recognize her upon her retirement. But everyone else saw that they weren't there. Everyone else saw that you put in 21 years with a company, and the bigwigs don't give a flying fig. My bet, unless this was a family-owned company, is that this employee was there longer than anyone in the corner offices.

The whole reason your employees work for you is to receive a paycheck. Yes, I know they said in their job interview it’s all about contributing to a better society and finding self-fulfillment, but if you stopped paying them, they’d walk. As they should. Pay isn’t as simple as agreeing on an amount; there are laws that govern how and when you pay people, and sometimes these rules can get a bit complicated.

Performance reviews have quietly lost credibility in today’s workplace. Leaders say they do not work. Employees fear them. HR teams use them to document risk. Difficult employees often exploit them. The problem is not the review itself.The problem is how it has been taught, used, and avoided. Over time, performance reviews have drifted from being a development tool into a rubber-stamp process.

Andrea Lucas, the head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), recently posted the following on LinkedIn:  “Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex? “You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws. Contact the EEOC as soon as possible. “The EEOC is committed to identifying, attacking, and eliminating ALL race and sex discrimination — including against white male employees and applicants.”

Schoolyard bullies grow into workplace bullies. A recent bullying incident in Louisiana, where teen boys created AI deepfake nudes of several girls at school, is actually an important case for businesses to draw crucial lessons. When the boys started disseminating deepfake nudes, the girls, and one in particular, complained and asked for help from the school. The school, according to an Associated Press story…

“I am racist, and I’ll say that to the whole entire world,” said former Cinnabon employee Crystal Wilsey, who also made obscene gestures and spouted racial epithets in a viral video. Cinnabon rightly fired her. Her behavior was absolutely inappropriate. Cinnabon issued a statement: We’ve seen the disturbing video from the Cinnabon bakery in Ashwaubenon, Wisconsin, and we do not condone this behavior.

Are your offices all decorated for the “holidays”? You may have left out any manger scenes, but it’s obvious that what you decorated for is Christmas. Fir trees, Santa Claus, and maybe an Elf on the shelf that your HR manager moves around. Christmas isn’t the only holiday in December. Jews around the world celebrate Hanukkah this year from December 14 to December 22.

The human resources group SHRM brands itself as “the voice of all things work.” But when sued for racial discrimination, the organization tried to keep its own HR expertise out of the courtroom — only to lose $11.5 million. The plaintiff, former SHRM instructional designer Rehab Mohamed, said she faced discrimination from a White supervisor between 2016 and 2020. The court sided with her.

Note: I should have published this before Thanksgiving, but I, quite frankly, forgot! Sorry! It’s officially no-fire season — that is, unless someone commits an egregious act— you don’t terminate employees from the week before Thanksgiving until January. That’s the rule from employment attorney Todd Stanton, and it’s a good one. (In the interest of full disclosure, I wrote the forward to Stanton’s book, 

It was a simple question: “What’s your favorite drink?” This is a nice question for a waiter or bartender to ask, or maybe your date. There is no wrong answer to this. If your favorite drink is RedBull mixed with prune juice, then you do you. But, as a job interview question, it’s weird. “Can I get you a drink?

Do you have suggestions for handling a shared bathroom where people aren’t washing their hands? We are not the only employer on this floor. I have had three gentlemen approach me saying that there are men on our floor who do not wash their hands, both from our office and the other office. The other office on our floor has guests visit regularly due to the nature of their business.

Good news! Several of you reached out to AIHR about their Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale and pointed out you needed a bit more time get your boss to sign off, and they heard you! AIHR has opened its Cyber Monday Extended sale until December 5th . All HR Certificate Programs will continue to come with an additional 25% discount for the next 4 days!

It’s Black Friday and I’m working. It’s not that I have to work — I’m self-employed and can choose my own schedule — it’s that I find this a great day to get things done. Now, to be fair, I’m an American in Switzerland so it’s a regular day (as was Thanksgiving) here. But almost all my HR clients are in the U.S., so they aren’t working. 

AIHR is having a Black Friday sale all week. Which means it's not really a Black Friday, but a Black Week Sale, but whatever. You should take it. The Black Friday Promotion runs from November 21st to December 1st. During this time, an additional 25% discount is available on all our plans: Certificate Programs, Full Academy Licenses, and Team Licenses.

There is a panic spreading across social media about the reclassification of many graduate degrees as non-professional, and how that could affect pay scales, as well as the amount people can borrow to pay for those degrees). If you’re an employer, the two questions you actually need answered are: “Do I have to reclassify anyone?” (no), and ‘Will this make it harder or more expensive to hire in certain professions?” Probably.

What if I told you one trick that could increase your LinkedIn reach by 400 percent! You’d do it, right? Well, this trick only works for the ladies, because men do it automatically. That’s right, one woman, Megan Cornish, changed her gender on LinkedIn to Male and asked ChatGPT to rewrite her posts in a male, agentic voice, and voila!

An employee didn’t get their paycheck on the last cycle. Mistakes happen, for sure, but according to their recent Reddit post, the reason was that an AI-powered payroll tool decided that their timecard was “irregular” and halted the deposit. AI can do a lot of cool things for you. It can help with scheduling, answer simple questions, and tell you what code you need to copy and paste into your Excel file to parse your data correctly.

Hiring is hard at any time, and it’s getting even harder. Why? Because you get literally thousands of applicants, many of whom are not qualified. It makes sifting through resumes difficult. And, arguably, one of the most important jobs in a company is the sales rep. Even if your product or service is amazing, if you can’t sell it, you won’t earn any money.

I started a new role a few months ago, and several of the senior leaders I work with are neurodiverse. My direct manager, who is in an executive role, told us she has ADHD, and I’ve never worked closely with someone who communicates in this way before. I’m really struggling to keep up with her communication style. She sends frequent, rapid-fire messages across multiple platforms, and the pace feels overwhelming.

Caution: oversharing and bragging to come. Last Friday, I was in divorce court. I shall spare you the details other than to say that my beloved ex rejected a proposed settlement, which meant an extra three hours in court and possibly continued months of waiting and paying attorneys. When we were all done, I was chatting with my lawyer, and she gave me the biggest compliment ever: "How can you be so funny when this is so difficult?"

Today, you feel awesome. You got an extra hour of sleep Sunday (unless you have small children or pets), and today you feel like a million bucks. But, deep down, you know that the politicians will never end the back and forth between standard time and daylight savings' time. Which means, come March, you'll have to spring forward. While others are whining about how much they hate it, Spring Forward HR is the opportunity to connect with other HR professionals, increase your skills, laugh, and maybe even win a prize or two. While all the details havent' been worked out yet, you can get your name on the list by registering here: Spring Forward HR

It’s the spookiest day of the year, and often a nightmare for HR professionals who have to handle people who show up to work costumed as terrorists, wearing blackface, or dressed as Adolf Hitler. But it’s not only costumes that can be spooky. Sometimes the scary thing isn’t a bad choice by an employee but something that seems genuinely unexplainable.

One of my friends shared the absolute worst paid time off plan I have ever seen. The plan is “unlimited” PTO, but there’s a catch. To get your PTO approved, you have to explain what you are doing, how much time you need, and the whole department votes on whether or not you can take it or not. The logic is—and I did ask—that because the co-workers have to pick up your slack while you’re gone, it’s only fair that they have a say.