The HR Life Podcast

The guys record live from the Work Elevated Conference for the second year.  The discussion starts with a true live studio audience listening to the breaking news that SHRM national has cancelled it's annual conference as it is currently structured.  The guys discuss the change with the crowd that included Kate and Scott who had been on the podcast previously along with a few others.  Then Rachel...

Britt Davies is back, which on The HR Life Podcast officially makes her a repeat offender. She showed up on Labor Day morning with coffee in a BYU Yeti mug, while Steve drank apple cider straight from the jug.  Britt has spent 22 years in Utah HR, most recently as a CPO, and now runs Next Level HR, where she helps companies break up with their PEO. Fair warning: Tony opens with a disclaimer that t...

Rod Lacey joins the guys and discusses the reality of consulting work.  They discuss what it’s like to be a consultant, the difficulties, the necessity of sales as a consultant, and the drawbacks of having a seat at the table.   What is the future of consulting? And what it takes to make it as a consultant are answered here.  Learn more about Sunstone HR at: https://sunstonehr.com/ Learn more abou...

Scott Fielding has spent 33 years selling health insurance, survived a tree that reportedly reached out and personally assaulted him on a mountain bike trail, and somehow still has the patience to explain what a captive is to people who nod along and Google it later. He joins Tony and Steve to walk through the difference between fully insured, level-funded, self-funded, and captive health plans, w...

Sarah Olin and Elena Arecco Bridgmon join the guys to talk about the real impact of good leadership and the business case for treating employees well.  Steve tells us that he's worn the Chicago Bulls Championship rings, and Sarah marches a picture of Elena's head across the screen getting Tony to laugh out loud.  The discussion includes the importance of the integration of Work and Life into "Work...

Join us for some breaking news.   This episode contains information about the following Events 1. Podcast Adventure on the Via Ferrata.  Email the podcast or contact Dyno Outfitters and tell them you're with our group at: https://www.utahviaferrata.com/ Date: Sept 11th at 8:30am in Vernal.  2. The Utah SHRM Excellence Awards, get tickets at: https://utahshrm.org/utah-shrm-excellence-awards/ We'll...

Rebekah Bradford has hand-sharpened knife-thin blades, has fallen across an Olympic qualifying line in a torn skin suit, and still found the composure to ask for a do over.  Rebekah competed in long-track speed skating at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, which is a fancy way of saying she voluntarily strapped 17-inch blades to her feet and went very fast on purpose. Somewhere between Olympic trials, a...

Thien Nguyen showed up to the podcast having already peaked, by his own admission, since his only goal in life was apparently to be on a show famous enough that Johnny C. Taylor stalks the host's LinkedIn profile.  He says he spent years building an HR career the normal way, HR director, chief of staff, then a president role overseeing sales and operations, right up through his company going throu...

Mare, Raquel, Steve, and Tony laugh their heads off discussing perimenopause, menopause, and post menopause.  Menopause costs U.S. employers an estimated 26.6 billion dollars a year in absenteeism, presenteeism, disengagement, and unnecessary medical visits. Yet, most HR leaders have never had a single conversation about it, and most doctors received perhaps two chapters on it in medical school. T...

Theresa Hummel-Krallinger joins the guys for a more than an hour of laughs and great insight.  Theresa talks about what makes great HR, and reacts to Johnny C Taylor's recent speech.  She talks about winning two Emmy's, her list of what makes a good culture (including #31 no "A holes") and talks about why her book (Make Waves) is more than a fancy business card.  Strategic HR has never been so fun...

Steve and Tony react to Johnny C Taylor's SHRM 2026 speech about the state of HR. Johnny answered the question the guys ask all of their guests, What is the State of HR, and it isn't easy to hear.  What does it really mean? What needs to change? What is Johnny not saying because HR people don't want to hear it?  Are you an expert on people? Are you an expert on work itself?  Who called Tony during...

Claire Lazaire is back for round two, and this time she's traded corporate HR for something she calls the wild, wild west: running HR solo across fifteen entities and four owners in an industry so new it barely has a rulebook yet. She talks about the year she almost walked away from HR entirely, what changed her mind, and how rewriting an entire employee handbook in her first month (attorneys incl...

Melissa Yergensen has done HR at a two-hundred-person county government, an underground mine, a giant hospitality company, and back again, and she has an opinion about which one prepared her best. It is not the one you would guess. She joins Steve and Tony to explain why she thinks corporate HR, the version with the big titles and the bigger silos, might be quietly making the profession worse, and...

Britt Davies started her HR career before she graduated High School, and is most recently in the tech industry, which puts her right in the middle of the layoffs and AI anxiety everyone keeps talking about. She joins Tony and Steve for a real conversation this time, after her first appearance got lost to a technical glitch, and she comes with a historian's eye for how we got here. Britt walks thro...

What does a foreman burning a coworker with a cigarette have to do with a submarine imploding two and a half miles under the Atlantic? On this episode, Tony and Steve sit down with Bryan McCurdy, HR Director at Hughes General Contractors, to find out. Bryan didn't set out to work in HR (nobody really does, apparently), but nearly twenty years later he's running people operations for a seventy-year...

The guys sit down with Rhonda and Jacob from Weltrio and talk maximizing effective use of benefits.  Rhonda and Jacob give the history of Weltrio and how they are helping companies manage their plans.  What would happen if you didn't have a group open enrollment meeting this year and instead sat down and had a personal conversation with every employee?  Why are HR people so afraid of change or roc...

Ryan Kohler, founder of Applicant Pro, joins the guys and blows Tony's mind in the first minute of the podcast.  As Tony picks up pieces of his skull, Ryan unfolds the nature of AI, what it is really capable of, and the opportunity HR has to drive the AI bus in American business.  In this episode you'll learn the real impact AI will have on your company, what job searches will look like in the fut...

Joe Tate got into HR because his handwriting was better than the other guy's. He left one of his biggest roles because he refused to let his HRIS manager take the fall for a company-wide data breach. And somewhere in between, he built Boost HR, mentored hundreds of professionals through his six-week HR essentials course, and took a ski trip to Japan that ended up reshaping the way he thinks about...

Tony and Steve welcome Aric Bostick, keynote speaker, former classroom teacher, professional crowd-energizer, and the man Steve publicly credits for telling him to get on a stage when he was just some guy with a book idea and a lot of enthusiasm. Aric brings the science of attachment theory out of the therapy room and drops it straight into your org chart.  You'll learn why people leave companies...

Steve and Tony attended the Fuel HR conference on May 14, 2026.  They talked the EEOC's case against the NY Times, diversity, and interviewed several attendees. The most pertinent piece of advice they got from the conference is "If you're going to discriminate, don't advertise and document it."   Note: There were two interviews that were lost due to computer and sound issues.   We apologize to tho...

A CEO returns to his struggling startup, looks around at the wreckage, and decides the HR team is the problem. He fires them. All of them. Then tells the world about it at a conference. Tony and Steve have opinions. Surprising, nuanced, occasionally loud opinions, and they're not entirely on the side you'd expect.  In between the Star Wars tangents and Tony's deep philosophical feelings about perf...

Tony and Steve welcome Derik Clark — Army counterintelligence veteran, body language expert, and apparently a crowd favorite on par with Steve (high praise). Derik breaks down his HEED framework for reading nonverbal cues in HR investigations and job interviews, and why the thing you think you're seeing (lying) is almost never the thing you're actually seeing (discomfort). He also shares the true...

Tony and Steve kick off the show in full Star Wars mode — it's May the Fourth, Steve spent $19.77 on themed donuts from Lehi Bakery, and the great AT-AT pronunciation debate is finally settled (hint: Steve is wrong). The real guest of honor is Albert Foster, founder of Express Evaluations. The episode digs deep into one of HR's most stubbornly unsolved problems: why performance evaluations, invent...

We're not choked up, you're choked up.  Wow!  The guys spend an afternoon interviewing students at JAG's (Jobs for America's Graduates) National Career Development Conference (NCDC).  In this episode, you'll hear how lives changed, doors opened, and how a group of young people is making the most of their opportunities, all because of JAG. A list of Guests Interviewed:  Bailey, Jamarcus, Gabe, Madi...

Steve and Tony talk international remote workers and retention methods with Troy Blanchard from ZConnect.  Steve talks about implementing COVID early and often.  Tony talks about Ford Verses Ferrari and how the bureaucracy so prominent in that movie was real... and was probably the fault of the CEO.  And finally, Tony introduces everybody to the "Slug Line" in DC.  Learn more about Troy Blanchard:...