I Hate It Here

It goes without saying, but most of your employees are just thinking about money. That’s why they have stock options they don’t understand, and benefits built for a household they may or may not even live in. Soooo, yeah, we need to talk about finances! I’m joined by AJ Ayers, co-founder and CEO of BKFi (https://www.brooklynfi.com) and author of Creative Money, to unpack expensive equity mistakes,...

You know I love a good HR horror story…there are PLENTY of them!  I would just prefer fewer of them to involve me personally.  I’m back with more workplace terrors, including the employee who made me rethink my Instagram follow requests and the company after-after-party that becomes HR’s Monday morning investigation.  Consider this another installment of somebody did something, and...

Your manager has avoided giving feedback for six months, and now they want someone fired by Friday. Guess whose problem that becomes??? This week, I’m joined by Ashley Herd, founder of Manager Method (https://www.managermethod.com), to talk about the managers keeping HR busy and questioning everything!  We get into performance improvement plans, the beloved HR made me do it excuse, and what S...

I invited RyanMae McAvoy Pepin and Josiah Hernández back to talk HR, and somehow we ended up recruiting for a hypothetical cult and debating whether Michael Scott deserves a little credit.  I also made them play a quote guessing game, because we’re determined to have a little fun around here! But between the questionable impressions and pop culture detours, we get into invasive interview ques...

We’re back in action, and I gave this season one rule: anything but AI.  Naturally, Jessica Winder and I immediately tested that boundary, but trust me, we have plenty to say about how this year has turned out so far! My fellow Cackle Queen is back to revisit our HR ins and outs, unpack why “job hugging” sounds suspiciously cute for being terrified to quit, and discuss the managers getting pr...

I started this solo episode planning to talk about the evolution of HR, and ended up using one of my fav shows, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to explain why this job can be emotionally unhinged, and suspiciously dependent on one exhausted woman saving everybody.  We’re getting into the mental-health toll of HR, the workplace chaos currently entering the group chat, and why being the chosen one is...

HR keeps getting handed the mop after someone else’s AI strategy floods the building, and frankly, I’m pretty sure you’re already over it!  I sat down with the wonderful Shirley Baumer, co-founder and CPO at Shapes (https://shapes.co/), to talk about why people leaders should be the ones driving AI transformation, how to develop a builder mindset, and why you don’t need to know how to code to...

AI is already crashing the workplace party, but apparently, the humans were left off the guest list!  Today, I’m joined by attorney and human-centered leadership strategist Val Jensen to talk about biased tools, performative people-first promises, and why letting AI make decisions about employees is a legal and ethical dumpster fire waiting to happen.  We’re also getting into who’s actua...

Change is inevitable, but apparently at some orgs, explaining it to people is optional!  In this episode, I’m joined by Kaity Jacobsen (Director, Talent Engagement at Xactly) to talk about why leaders keep obsessing over all these sexy strategies while treating change management like HR’s annoying little side quest. We get into AI agents, broken trust, typical corporate chaos, and why no robo...

AI conversations are everywhere right now, but confidence and competence aren't actually moving together, and that gap should worry you more than it does. I'm joined by Theresa Fesinstine, founder of PeoplePower.ai and creator of the AI Fluency Compass, an assessment that over 850 HR leaders have now taken. Turns out about 40% of people who take it present way more confidently than they actually p...

Featured Guest: Allison Howell (CEO, Hogan Assessments) This is The Leadership Divide, a special series with Hogan Assessments in partnership with I Hate It Here!  --- We spent this entire series proving that leadership fails because orgs KEEP choosing leaders using criteria held together by bias and outdated tactics! In this finale, I’m bringing back Hogan Assessments CEO Allison Howell to t...

Welcome to the first-ever HR Glow Up Awards! The trophies are fake, but the workplace trauma is real. I’m joined by RyanMae McAvoy Pepin and Josiah Hernández to celebrate HR’s biggest improvements, drag the practices that refuse to die, reaffirm my love for Mariah Carey, and debate everything from four-day workweeks to AI-powered layoffs.  Today’s episode is a little different, but naturally,...

Featured Guest: Jackie Sahm (Vice President of Integrated Solutions, Hogan Assessments) --- We've built a world where the people who get promoted aren't always the people who should be leading, and we have enough data to stop this madness and do something about it!  In this latest episode of The Leadership Divide, Hogan Assessment's Jackie Sahm and I get into why orgs keep confusing performan...

I swear every company says culture matters... right up until someone has to make an actual decision.  The reason decisions don’t get made quickly enough is because of the whole "culture is everyone's job" mentality, and I think it’s time for a little more nuance! Dani Herrera and I get into why culture isn't your values page or your CEO's favorite buzzword, but instead, the behaviors your pol...

Featured Guest: Jocelyn Hays (Director of Hogan Applications, Hogan Assessments) --- You know that coworker who was perfectly lovely until they got promoted and suddenly became a completely different person?  Yeahhhh….I think we’ve all been there. There’s a reason for that, though!  I’m joined by Jocelyn Hays to unpack the dark side of leadership, the 11 derailers hiding inside basically...

I feel like every AI conversation somehow ends up in one of two places: either "AI is taking all our jobs!" or "Just use ChatGPT for everything!"  Honestly... I hate both of those convos.  So instead, I wanted to ask some much more interesting questions! Who's actually making the decisions about how AI gets used at work?  Who decided AI should be ranking candidates, or helping deter...

Featured Guest: Allison Howell, CEO of Hogan Assessments --- This is The Leadership Divide, a special series with Hogan Assessments in partnership with I Hate It Here!  Across four episodes, we're saying the thing out loud: leadership often fails because companies pick and develop leaders based solely on vibes and tenure, then act SHOCKED when everyone's miserable.  Today, I Hate It Here...

Apparently, we can’t simply leave our trauma at the door and transform into perfectly functioning corporate robots every morning.  Who would’ve thought?! Stephanie Lemek joins me to unpack what a trauma-informed workplace actually looks like, why HR needs some damn boundaries, and how something as simple as giving people more choice can completely change the way we work. Here’s what we got in...

Guess what? The Cackle Queens are back!  My unofficial co-host and forever hype woman Jess Winder joined me to kick off this season, and we did something new.  We hit record and just let the convo happen with no notes, because who needs prep when you’ve been doing this job for way too long? We're diving into where HR has been, where it's headed, and why "defund HR" isn't as controversial...

Okay, so as we wrap up this podcast season, we’re gonna make this final episode a little different…featuring Hebba and her thoughts, and apparently zero filter! This season of I Hate It Here was all about firsts and for the season finale, Hebba makes personal!  Listen as she walks you through three of her own HR firsts, performance reviews, terminations, and picking the right system, followed by w...

Madison Montgomery is back, and in this episode, we did what Paul Downs and Meg Stalter inspired us to do…turned our 1:1 into a podcast episode. The result is a session of unfiltered chaos covering our first ATS implementation together (which is going exactly as well as you'd imagine when two non-detail-oriented people configure a system while actively recruiting on it), Summer House drama through...

55% of orgs expect AI tool experience to be their most in-demand skill within two years!  Honestly, most of us are still figuring out what to have for lunch, so the timeline feels…a little aggressive.  In this final episode of the four-part AI Readiness Gap series, presented in partnership with TriNet, DeAnn Alcantar, Learning and Development Manager at TriNet, and Kelly Pacatte, Lead HR Complianc...

Geography shouldn't be the reason you can't hire your next best person.  And yet, that’s the reality for hundreds of orgs at the moment! I sat down with Sagar Khatri, co-founder and CEO of Multiplier, who literally built a company because opening a bank account in Japan took him 12 months.  We got into all of it: why compliance is a zero-or-one problem (and why so many companies are getting it ver...

There is a lot to say about joining a startup, and I’m saying that as somebody who has been a part of four of them. Nothing prepares you for the first time, because you truly have no idea what you’re walking into! Not even the offer letter or the job description paints the full picture, so Christine Song, founder of the 5 to 9 Society and former CPO at Knix, is here to give you her expertise. We'r...

37% of HR leaders are already saying that evaluating AI skills in candidates is going to be a real challenge. Hiring has always required us to assess things that are hard to measure, but AI is moving so fast that what you're looking for this week might be completely different next month!  In this episode, I sat down with Kristin Russum, Director of Organizational Development at TriNet, to get into...