HR Voices

Summary On HR Voices, host Rebecca Taylor sits down with Chad Thompson, Chief People Officer at LanzaTech, to work through a scenario every people leader will recognize: a manager discloses an employee's performance improvement plan in a team meeting, and a confidentiality complaint follows. The conversation opens into the bigger questions underneath it. Is HR confidentiality even real? How do you...

Summary On HR Voices, Rebecca Taylor and Kandi Gongora, Chief Transformation and People Officer at The Car Group, work through a forced ranking system that's falling apart: managers are required to put 10% of every team in the bottom tier each year, one manager refuses and certifies in writing that her whole team exceeds expectations, and discrimination complaints reveal the bottom tiers skew by r...

Summary On HR Voices, Rebecca Taylor and guest Stacy Winsett, Chief People Officer at RATP Dev USA, work through a termination scenario that collapses into a six-figure settlement. A manager fires an employee after a heated call, then backdates the performance notes, and metadata in discovery exposes it. Stacy argues the real failure runs deeper than the firing: a manager carrying two open headcou...

Summary On this episode of HR Voices, Rebecca Taylor and Julianne Galli, VP of People at Kindbody, work through a fabricated but painfully familiar scenario: a 61-year-old senior director is retitled "Director of Special Projects," stripped of his reports, and files an age discrimination complaint eight months before his pension vests. They argue the real risk isn't the age claim, it's that the de...

Summary On HR Voices, host Rebecca Taylor talks with Paul Yater, who holds the unusual dual role of Chief Information Officer and Head of Human Resources at 84 Lumber, a building materials supplier with 7,600 associates across 320 locations in 34 states. Paul explains how the company promotes 96% of its store leadership from within, hiring up to 4,000 people a year into entry-level manager-trainee...

Summary On HR Voices, Rebecca Taylor and Sara Birmingham, Chief People Officer at Shutterstock, work through a familiar trap: a manager wants to put a newly remote, recently accommodated employee on a PIP, and the request looks airtight. Sara makes the case that most performance problems are management problems in disguise, and that the first three months under an accommodation are a re-onboarding...

Summary On this episode of HR Voices, Rebecca Taylor talks with Alisa DiBeasi, CHRO at PHINIA, about a problem nearly every People team is facing: rising requests for flexibility and accommodations, and managers handling them inconsistently. Alisa makes the case that the usual fix, one uniform rule for everyone, is what actually breaks fairness, because the roles and lives underneath it were never...

Summary On HR Voices, host Rebecca Taylor sits down with Weston Fillman and Gabrielle Caron from 1Password to unpack the Meta firings over faked keyboard activity and what they reveal about how HR is supposed to roll out AI. Wes runs people operations and employee relations. Gab leads talent, culture, and growth. They argue Meta got the tool right and the rollout wrong, that change management in t...

Summary In this episode of HR Voices, Rebecca Taylor is joined by Margie Zyble, CHRO at UC Health Cincinnati, to work through a high-stakes scenario: a company's forced ranking system produces racially disparate outcomes, a manager refuses to rank her team in the bottom tier, and HR must advise on both. Margie draws on her experience to separate the two problems, explain why most manager defiance...

Summary HR Voices explores real and fabricated anonymized employee relations scenarios through the lens of experienced HR and People leaders. In this episode, Rebecca Taylor is joined by D'Mar Phillips, VP of People and Culture at RS Americas, to work through "The Social Media Outing": a manager discovers via personal social media that a direct report is gay, tries to signal inclusion without disc...

Summary On HR Voices, host Rebecca Taylor and Jeannie Virden, Chief People Officer at Central Health, work through a layered employee relations scenario: an employee with an approved work from home accommodation whose manager wants to move to a PIP three months later. They unpack why the accommodation is often a distraction from the real issue, how unstated remote expectations set people up to fai...

Summary In this episode of HR Voices, Rebecca Taylor is joined by Paul D. Brubaker, VP of HR for North America at KARL STORZ, to work through one of the most complex scenarios an HR leader can face: a confidential misconduct investigation has leaked from inside the function, and now HR must run two simultaneous inquiries without contaminating either one. Paul walks through his sequencing framework...

Summary A single counteroffer—a 22% raise to retain a valued analyst—triggered a pay equity crisis within weeks. Three teammates discovered the increase, demanded comparable raises citing discrimination, and two threatened to leave. The retained employee, furious her confidential salary became public knowledge, now distrusts leadership. HR must decide: conduct a broader compensation audit, address...

Summary A marketing manager files a pregnancy discrimination complaint after being passed over for a director promotion. The role went to a male peer with less tenure. The hiring committee's written notes cite "bandwidth" concerns three times — only for her candidacy. The company insists the decision was legitimate business planning. HR's investigation reveals a pattern that looks less like strate...

Summary According to a 2024 Society for Human Resource Management report, 67% of organizations now encourage pronoun sharing as part of workplace inclusion efforts — yet only 23% report zero employee objections. A company updates its inclusion policy to ask employees to share pronouns optionally in email signatures and during introductions. One employee refuses, stating that mandatory pronoun shar...

Summary In an exit interview, a departing employee discloses that her manager has been stealing several thousand dollars from petty cash over the past year. She estimates the total theft at thousands of dollars but admits she never reported it earlier due to fear of retaliation. HR must now investigate an allegation with a departing witness, limited evidence, and a manager who has no indication an...

Summary A hiring manager consistently rejects candidates over 50, citing "overqualification" as a retention risk—but never mentions age explicitly. HR notices the pattern and must now assess whether the business justification is legitimate or a cover for ADEA violations. In this episode, Natalie Breece, Chief People and Diversity Officer at thredUP, reveals how to separate genuine fit concerns fro...

Summary A departing employee drops a bombshell in her exit interview: she watched her manager steal from petty cash for over a year. She estimates several thousand dollars. She says she didn't report it sooner because she feared retaliation and needed her job. Now HR holds a disclosure it can't ignore—but the witness is walking out the door, the manager has a strong performance record, and the evi...

Summary A CFO hands HR a layoff list. HR runs the numbers and finds it disproportionately skews toward employees over 55 and women in senior roles. The CFO says it's based on performance ratings. HR pulls the data and finds significant rating inconsistencies. The CFO wants to proceed. Now what?  In this episode of HR Voices, host Rebecca Taylor sits down with Lizzie Garner, Chief People Officer at...

Summary A high-performing employee leaves voluntarily, makes complaints about her manager during the exit interview, and those complaints are noted informally but never investigated.  Eighteen months later, she applies to come back—to the same manager's team. Now HR is stuck: rehiring her means placing her back under the manager she complained about, but not hiring her could look retaliatory for p...

Summary A top candidate for a senior finance role is discovered to have misrepresented their MBA degree during a post-offer background check, having dropped out after two years. Despite 15 years of strong experience and excellent references, the hiring manager insists on making an exception, arguing the degree is irrelevant. This directly conflicts with the organization's HR policy, which mandates...

Summary Multiple employees witnessed harassment and said nothing. Some told their managers. Some figured it wasn't their place. Now HR is investigating—and the question isn't just what happened, it's what do you do with the people who saw it and stayed quiet?  In this episode of HR Voices, host Rebecca Taylor sits down with Robert C. Whitehouse, Chief People Officer at MiQ Digital, to work through...

Summary A company installs productivity monitoring software on remote employees' laptops. One employee discovers it, doesn't remove it, but starts staging his screen—working on a decoy window while handling personal matters. When HR confronts him with footage showing low productivity, he flips the script: the monitoring was never disclosed, it violates state surveillance law, and it constitutes an...

Summary An employee files a harassment complaint against her supervisor. HR investigates, finds it unsubstantiated, and reassigns her to a new manager. Three months later, she receives her first negative performance review in five years. Is it retaliation or real performance issues?  In this episode of HR Voices, host Rebecca Taylor sits down with Lisseth Zouhbi, Chief People and Culture Officer a...

Summary A state passes a pay transparency law. A company scrambles to comply by posting wide salary ranges like $60K–$120K "to preserve flexibility." Then employees see the ranges and start filing complaints. Sound familiar?  In this episode of HR Voices, host Rebecca Taylor sits down with Ami Graves, CHRO at Bell Techlogix, to work through exactly this scenario and uncover what a strong HR leader...