HR BESTIES - HR Besties Happy Hour - National Work Besties Day

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

Welcome back to another Happy Hour, Besties! We’re sure as hell glad it’s Friday. In this Happy Hour: Call your work besties, besties! Hot SHRM gossip Knowing when to get HR involved What can organizations learn? Your To-Do List: Grab merch, submit Questions & Comments, and make sure that you’re the first to know about our In-Person Meetings (events!) at https://www.hrbesties.com. Follow your Besties across the socials and check out our resumes here: https://www.hrbesties.com/about.  We look forward to seeing you in our next meeting - don’t worry, we’ll have a hard stop! Yours in Business + Bullsh*t,  Leigh, Jamie & Ashley Follow Bestie Leigh! https://www.tiktok.com/@hrmanifesto https://www.instagram.com/hrmanifesto https://www.hrmanifesto.com Follow Bestie Ashley! https://www.tiktok.com/@managermethod  https://www.instagram.com/managermethod https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyherd/ https://managermethod.com Follow Bestie Jamie! https://www.millennialmisery.com/ Humorous Resources: Instagram • YouTube • Threads • Facebook • X Millennial Misery: Instagram • Threads • Facebook • X Horrendous HR: Instagram • Threads • Facebook Tune in to “HR Besties,” a business, work and management podcast hosted by Leigh Elena Henderson (HRManifesto), Ashley Herd (ManagerMethod) and Jamie Jackson (Humorous_Resources), where we navigate the labyrinth of corporate culture, from cringe corporate speak to toxic leadership. Whether you’re in Human Resources or not, corporate or small business, we offer sneak peeks into surviving work, hiring strategies, and making the employee experience better for all. Tune in for real talk on employee engagement, green flags in the workplace, and how to turn red flags into real change. Don't miss our chats about leadership, career coaching, and takes from work travel and watercooler gossip. Get new episodes every Wednesday and Friday, follow us on socials for the latest updates, and join us at our virtual happy hours to share your HR stories. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello besties. Happy Friday. Another week in the books. Check done. Check done. But today is a special Friday. Jamie, what is today? today. It is. So last year on October 18th, we celebrated the launch of HR Besties pod. But because I'm a little extra, you know, I had to do it big and I created a holiday for us. So if you actually Google National Work Besties Day, it's a real holiday today, October 18th, and it was created by the HR besties.

How cool is that? I love it, certificate and everything. Like all official, like Wizard of Oz, we got the official certificate. It is legit. Yes, so how do you do that? Like what was that? Was there is like a website like where you can submit

holidays like that. Oh, damn. Uh-huh. Yep. And essentially they approve it or don't approve it. And yeah. What'd you have to do to get it approved? I had to basically write like what our show was about and why we encouraged this day to celebrate work besties. And I wish I still had what I wrote, but it was good. It was like, you know, about how work besties help you get through the day and

we should have a day to celebrate our work besties and even though we may not work with them anymore they're still our bestie and yeah they approved it and they improved it like within less than 24 hours. I remember that because you're like I submitted this and then like the next text was, it was approved, basically. So it was absolutely wild because I don't know, I've never created a holiday before. I didn't know what this process was like. So yeah, and then I got a fancy certificate and now if you google, you know, national work bestie day, it pops up. It is so good. Shout out to those work besties. Give them some love.

Share. We'll make a little graphic as well. We'll have the certificate on our Instagram and we'll make a graphic that you can share with your work bestie. Yes. Text them today. Tell them you love them. You miss them maybe.

Or if you're still working with them, give them a shout. We need a petition like Microsoft to put that in the Outlook. It's like a real holiday. That's right. That would be cool. Do they have Boss's Day? Boss's Day was Wednesday. And so do they do they have that on there? I was going to say Jamie's like, it is not on my calendar. I just double check. I mean, I physically put it on my calendar, but it is not per. If you have a Hallmark, the Hallmark extension, Hallmark will be like, here are your seven holidays every single day. We come here, so a quick link to buy a card, all the things.

Buy the cards, buy the cards. Who's a work bestie that you'd be reaching out to today? I have a couple actually, and especially over the years. But yeah, I mean, I've got quite a few I'm going to have to text. Y'all. Yeah, everybody, you listening right here. You are our only work bestie. I'm going to give a shout out to my friend Dawn, who I worked with at KFC.

She was like, when I was interviewing, I was interviewing to be a lawyer. And on my resume, it had said like law firm, like top 10 associate, hours billed, you know, whatever. Like I worked a lot. And she read my resume. She was like laughing. She's like, you know that when you're in-house and you're working here, this team, there's moms on the team, there's people.

They have real lives. So don't come in here and feel like you need to be the workhorse and midnight hour, you know, all the stuff you want to hear. And then we would constantly, like, you know, back and forth. Like, I. And then she, we would constantly like, you know, back and forth. Like, I can still think of belly laughs. We share texts to this day. So I'm going to give a little shout out text on today. I say shout out to my corporate horse. I've talked about that before. I have a text group, corporate horse, you know, some friends from

Caterpillar and then shout out to Lisa from Lockheed Martin. Oh my God, boy, Lisa Harden and I, man, I mean, cried laughing every day. I mean, it was so inappropriate really and unprofessional when you think about it, you know what I mean? But just all the circumstances, we work in labor relations and you got to laugh to get through that. If you don't, you'll cry. Exactly. Oh, we had so much fun though. So many inside jokes, right? That's my favorite thing with the work besties are all the inside jokes.

You kind of just do the look at the meeting and they know exactly who you're making fun of. You know what I mean? I love it. Sign language. Yes, sign language. My problem is, and my guess is, Lee, that you're better at being stoic in this. My problem is I start shaking violently. Like I have tears coming out of my eyes. I can't take it.

So I'm like in the meeting like, oh my God, oh my God, trying not to. And then I'm making noises and like coughing, you know, whatever it is to cover it up. I call that the dumb and dumber laugh. Remember that when they're laughing, you know, at the diner, oh, where you can't handle it, you know? I just love that. I love that. Well, thank God we're remote because I like I have to go off camera sometimes. Like, yes, I have to go off camera. Yeah, that is that is a very, very strong benefit that more people should be thinking about

because there's going to be those times. And when you're in person, you just can't do it. You're shaken violently and like what you put a dark piece of paper in front of your face. So just don't mind me. I'm going off live for a minute. Just don't. I got to excuse myself.

Oh, kitchens on fire. Be right back. And you're just like covering it up. Exactly. That's why return to office is dangerous. It's dangerous for employment. Yeah. Just for the record.

That's my official stance. That's a great stance. We're going to make a holiday about that official work remotely for fear of completely ruining your corporate career day.com. Yes, I've done that a few times. I've celebrated that a few times. Introducing TD Insurance for Business with customized coverage options for your business. Because at TD Insurance, we understand that your business is unique, so your business

insurance should be too. Whether you're a shop owner, a pet groomer, a contractor, or a consultant, you can get customized coverage for your business. Contact a licensed TD Insurance advisor to learn more. Speaking of ruining corporate career, I know of a certain organization that ruined their corporate career. Do tell, Ashley. It's a hot HR news week, isn't it?

It is. It is. And I actually had not seen this when even the lawsuit was initially filed. And ooh, lawsuit, that word will perk you up at a happy hour. Excuse me. So this week, the news came in at the decision was last week. So SHRM, which is the Society for Human Resource Management, which is according to it, the world's largest HR association that has members, it does certifications, all these things.

So they also employ people. They have real people that come and work for them, including a former employee that had sued them for racial discrimination based on her termination from employment. The unusual piece of this is one, it's sherm. There we are. A lot of the deposition testimony, which I went because I, having been an employment lawyer, I don't practice anymore, but my hobbies are golf, tennis, and going in deep on federal court filings. Literally.

Like hours worth. Literally, and I'm like, oh my gosh. So what's unusual is one, it's sherm. And so there's a lot of talk in there and the depositions about whether sherm should be held to a higher standard. And of course, no one wants to admit to things on record, like, ugh, ugh, ugh.

Like there's a lot of word salads, which if you've read depositions, you see those. There are more of those in the sherm lawsuit than I have probably almost ever seen. like, there's a lot of word salads, which if you've read depositions, you see those. There are more of those in the Sherham lawsuit than I have probably almost ever seen, and I've seen a lot of depositions. But also notably is this case is now going to trial. That very rarely happens. So in the US, those outside are like, oh, US, you're so litigious, which is true.

But in the US, most of the time what happens is when there's employment claims, like either no one ever does anything formal about it and it's resolved internally, or then someone files an EEOC charge, which is like a federal agency or state agency thing, and maybe nobody files a lawsuit after that. But going to file a lawsuit and then the lawsuit actually making it through what's called summary judgment, which is where judge is like, yeah, this goes to trial or no, it doesn't. That is very, very rare. And I tried to look up, I don't see the like reliable percentages. Isn't like 3% or so? I mean, it's like really low.

It's so tiny. It's so tiny. But it is very unusual. And so for like the legal standards in the US, like it's wild, the stuff that happens that the judge is like, nope, employer still wins. And like you read it and you're like, God, this is a workplace. I wouldn't subject my worst enemy to. But the judge is still like, I hear you. This is awful, but it's not illegal. But here this judge, ooh, among the first words are,

from this federal court judge are, this is a messy employment discrimination case. And he just comes in hot and goes in hot from there. And so it's there. a messy employment discrimination case. And he just comes in hot and goes in in hot from there. And so it's there. Yeah. Oh, well, tell us a little bit about, because I haven't read it. I haven't spent 14 hours reading it like you have or however long. I don't know. Can you share some of it? I

was waiting for this happy hour to get the... Get the tea. Give her the tea. Yeah. Get the tea, right. Yeah. I know nothing. Lee's a good delegator. She's like, I'm not spending that time going through, as most of you all should not. So basically, it starts out, and so it's an instructional designer. She was promoted to senior instructional designer.

She worked at Chum for like four and a half years. She was an Egyptian, in her complaints, Egyptian non-white, her deposition said black woman. She'd been promoted into senior instructional designer, and we'll get to the notable part. She was promoted at the beginning of 2020. In May 2020, her supervisor submitted her performance review and all of her ratings were the top two categories. Like I think it was like a strong, solid performer and role model. I hate role model. Like, Shurm, really? I hate role model. Like, Sherm, really? Role model?

Are you? Oh, my. Yeah. 5% probably of the org. I mean. We'll do this in one of our stories, in our Instagram stories. We like to get input. Say, like, what are some of the things you've seen of, like, performance categories and

performance reviews? Because I've definitely seen ones that are, like, five stars. And number two is, like, you're doing great. And then someone goes to get fired and then they're like, no, but that means like we don't we want to motivate people. And I'm like, well, you're motivating a jury to give you an extra couple, couple dollar, you know, commas or whatever afterwards, because it makes you sound like objectively. So anyway, but so she had great performance reviews objectively.

And then it was like this issue of these two programs she was putting together. She made an internal complaint of racial discrimination. And it's like wild because in part she made the complaint to her boss's boss. And there's some, it's like to be clear, Sherm denies any liability. They've said they will vigorously defend, which here means they'll appeal or maybe settle. We'll see. Don't know. We're not attorneys.

I'm not an attorney for sure. We're anybody now. But she made this complaint. And so there's some dispute about whether in this initial complaint and a call to her boss's boss, whether she made said race or not. But she did say her boss was micromanaging her, identified individuals she felt were treated more favorably than her. They were both white.

She was black. Her boss's boss's response was like, let's set up a call with your boss. So the three of them the next day get on a Zoom call. So she has, it's like me and it's like a surprise that they wouldn't, the boss's boss wouldn't tell the boss what involved. And so it's like the equivalent of the three of us getting on a call and Jamie being like, Ashley tell Lee what you have to tell her. And I would be like, Oh my God.

This is an HR organization, just by the way. Yes. And so you age, like, this is like me being like, Lee, I find that you micromanage me. And so that, how do you think that call went? Not well. Oh, man, that went shitty. And then she had a big target on her back. And she was probably terrified. Yeah. I mean, again, I can tell you not well, because there's

pages of very expensive testimony that have gotten to this point. But so the boss cries, and according to her own boss gets defensive. And, you know, they have a plan like it, and there's emails after the fact, like, you know, the employees like, thanks, like, hopefully we can collaborate, like, you know, which the defense insurance like, oh, hopefully we can collaborate, which the defense I'm sure is like, oh, but she was, the call went well. When you send those emails and you're like, okay, I mean, hopefully. But anyway, shortly after that, she did make a complaint of race discrimination, including to her boss, and also brought it up in a meeting about employee engagement survey results.

I saw these things, it checks all the bingo cards in this. There's performance reviews, employee engagement, an exit survey that another white colleague had said in her exit survey. She said that she had brought up the issue of this colleague. And so it was like all this, like, you know, in this case, she said, she said, and they said, the sherm said, so when you get a complaint of race discrimination, so the boss, the employee makes the complaint to her and is like, would you treat me like this as white man? So she thankfully calls HR, so right step to have it investigated. So shirm has to decide who investigates this claim.

So some options, like somebody external, sure, right? Possibly. And you can tell it's because shirm on their best practices for workplace investigations gives you all these options. Well, the SHRM CHRO is like, I reached out to somebody based on the recommendation from somebody they couldn't investigate until like the fall. So, and another person in HR is like, we couldn't, yeah, we couldn't identify an external resource that could do an investigation timely. SHRM couldn't. Sure.

They couldn't even Google how to do investigation from their own website. Oh, this is like secondhand embarrassment. Oh, it is. It's so cringe. It's the ick. Like, I'm always mindful, like anything you do in life, anyone, like if I make a peanut butter sandwich, someone might walk behind me and be like, you didn't do that properly. Like rarely in life do we do things perfectly, fair enough. But there are so many missteps that you're just like, oh my God, like this.

So they're like, okay, can't find someone externally despite the fact of being a certification provider, okay. So they're like, who do we pick internally? We will pick this manager of employee experience who admits that he is not actually like a race discrimination expert. He has never investigated a complaint of racial discrimination. Oh, my God.

Has he investigated anything? I can't remember in it if he's done, had done investigations, but in, in SHRM's best practices for workplace investigations under internal, it says you should have someone that is, like, experienced and knowledgeable of employment laws. Not an expert. Okay. So this person, so he starts like investigating and there's a lot of kind of criticisms about what this

investigation looked like but we'll get to the point of along the way another colleague on this same team is a small team, another black colleague complained of race discrimination and what did Sherm do about that against the same boss? Did they have that phone call? I would say nothing. That cringe phone call. Jamie would be right. They did nothing regarding the complaint, but they fired her two weeks

later. The second employee? The second employee. And so in his deposition testimony, Sherm's CHRO, again, all the things that you're like, oh, phrase deposition testimony. He's's CHRO, again, all the things they're like, oh, phrase deposition testimony. He's like, well, okay, I would have expected this investigator to investigate it. And then they're like, ask the investigator, like, what'd you do? And he's basically like, him, huh, him, huh, him, huh.

They did not do an investigation of the second complaint. Another investigation they didn't do is that as this was going along, the crux of this of this and why Sherm says that they eventually fired this person again three and a half months after her great performance reviews was that she missed two deadlines for two courses. One of the courses was called like digital HR and I haven't looked to see if it's actually up on Sherm or anything like that, but nobody had signed up for it. So they like a D listed it. So I guess they were kind of like, we're figuring it out. So they'd like a delisted it. So I guess they were kind of like refiguring it out. So at the point that like that was her deadline, there were three people signed up for this course. And that was like such an urgent deadline that they needed to have it done. And so they terminated her. But she had reached out to her boss and had said there were issues with like vendors and delays. And she's like, can you work with me on this? Well, she during this time, based on an email from her

boss, ended up making a retaliation complaint as well and said, you know, I already made this claim of discrimination since that micromanagement. And this is very common when you have employment, when someone's raised a concern and they're still working. And so they raised it. So what did Sherm do about the retaliation complaint? Okay, nothing. Nothing.

So they, they do not like circle back to use corporate cringe speak and be like, okay, so what's this? In that same day that she raised the retaliation complaint, this HR investigator whose job, so even if you're internal, these things should be neutral. As the judge savagely points out in his order, this person was not neutral. He was involved in things like when this employee had sent a note to her supervisor that an executive had said, reach out to the HR investigator to help you craft a response. So he's helping to craft a response.

And in his deposition, they're like, did you help? And he's like, I don't remember. And they're like, well, that's interesting because here's a draft of it and it has your initials at the end of the file name. Like, you know, like we do, if you're like Jamie, if you're doing something, you'll be like JJ, like JJ, whatever. So, and he's like, yeah, I guess I just don't remember. I just don't remember. And so, so he's a neutral, quote unquote, investigator. He's also getting involved in writing, like writing these responses in the complaint. And then, so the same day that she'd made her retaliation,

the same HR investigator, he was getting ready to go out on medical leave. And so he starts writing up termination paperwork for her. And this was a week and a half before, even the deadlines, they were told you have these deadlines, they are non-negotiable. That was some of the writing that HR helped us say. Which when you say things to someone of like, this is non-negotiable, it just doesn't tend to come up.

But also there's nothing in it that says like, if you don't meet these, consider your employment terminated or performance improvement plan, anything like that. And so also the employee did submit both projects before the deadline, though she showed that she submitted these, but the organization had said, well, they weren't complete enough. And according to an affidavit, employees were like, well, I took it over. I took it over after she left. I just had to work on it a week more. It didn't need much more.

So even if it wasn't, also part of the crux of, so is it submitting it final final to our approval? Why does this matter so much? And it just, especially if you're in the midst of a complaint. And so, yeah, so this guy who'd been investigating her drafted the separation paperwork and he's like, well, I just did it just in case, just to be helpful. It was a cluster. And so in this, in the HR bestie stories, I'll include some snippets from the filings

and I'll show if it came from like a filing or like, and so what happens at this point from like the legal perspective is when you file a motion for summary judgment. So like, Shurm is saying to this judge, this shouldn't go to a jury because you can decide everything. Even if you assume everything, she's sworn and everything, everybody in favor of her is saying is true, we should still win. The judge is like, that is not true because in addition to this employee's testimony, you have this sworn statement from this white colleague that had said that she missed deadlines. And I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. to Johnny C. Taylor, who is the CEO of Shurm, that's kind of, you've seen him talk about like, changing DE&I to IND and all the things. He's a very notable face. So she complained to him.

She's like, he had an open door policy. And so they're like, okay, okay. It's like, how did that go? And there's not, that I've seen on the record, like a deposition from Johnny Taylor. Like, often organizations will fight to like not have their CEO to post. And I don't know if that happened or not, but like, the record a deposition from Johnny Taylor. Often organizations will fight to not have their CEO to post. I don't know if that happened or not, but there's no deposition from him. The employee's testimony, she's like, I told him about this and he's like, is HR involved?

She's like, yes, HR is involved. She says Johnny's response was, I know we have a managerial problem at Shurm. I know we have a diversity problem at Shurm. We're working on it. We have lots of initiatives in the work to address these issues. He was not shocked at all that I was experiencing such behavior from my manager. That is so gross. It is, right?

And then he goes and removes E. This is like... Like what a fucking idiot. What I say about this is, again, people, people aren't perfect. And God knows anything people have in a work. People would be like, you should have done this better, including in investigations. But there's certain just absolutely, absolutely core, core things. And even like the H.R. investigator that had been involved, they're like, so why was she terminated from employment?

And he's like, well, I was on medical leave at the time, but it's like the deadlines, the communication, the performance. So he's naming this like, you know, multiple things. He's like, that's what I understood. Sherm's response is like, no, no, it was just the deadlines. And like, so the, just like the shift in the things of, of what is it? And so in its motion for summary judgment, like Sherm's like, they're not only should this not go to trial, but also we shouldn't have punitive damages, because it's a pretty high standard

you have to show, like malicious, whatever. The judge is like, not only is this going to trial, but a jury could reasonably infer that your actions were malicious because of HR, because of the way HR handled this whole thing. And so I say that, that sometimes it takes things like a very costly lawsuit. And she was terminated from employment four years ago, four plus years ago. This has been going on. These tend to be very, very expensive.

And so sometimes it takes things like this for leaders to be like, oh, we should probably do better. But just knowing from the human lens and what I've said before, what I always hated about employment cases, in particular where the employee wins, which has not happened here, but it's someone that just feels like they're treated unfairly. You may not always get a lawsuit, but hearing someone's... You can always pause and hear their concerns and look into things properly and every type of... Whether it's investigation, like, you can always pause and hear their concerns and look into things properly and every type of, you know, whether it's investigation, review, we just did the

episode a couple weeks ago on that, but it should be and appear as neutral along the way. It was just, yeah. It's so gross. And by sure. Yeah. Damn. Circus of Follies there. I mean, that, I could just go down the list, you know, but what really takes me back, and to your point, Ashley, you're like, hey, no one's perfect. And I mean, I think that this just shows like how hard HR really is.

It is hard, right? Because it's just there's so many dynamics, human dynamics in the workplace and structures in the workplace and processes in the workplace and processes in the workplace. It just all mixes in with people. It is very, very difficult. But from what you shared with me, again, I haven't read anything. This is like 101 shit. That's what's so disgusting about it is that it's 101 shit. It's basic human dignity shit. That's what's so disgusting about it is that it's 101 shit. It's basic human dignity shit coming from, air quotes, the leader of HR advice and counsel. Please. You know what I mean? If you're working at an organization like that, you should be held to a higher standard. You

should have your ducks in a row internal if you're going to be preaching and selling shit external that have to do with that. You know what I mean? You gave the example of making the sandwich and someone comes up and is like, hey, you know, there's better ways to do it. Except if you're the peanut farmer and the jelly person and the bread, you know what I mean? Or you own a sandwich shop shit. You know what I mean? Or you own a sandwich shop, shit. You know what I mean? You should know how to do that stuff. That's where I really hope that if they did wrong, I hope they're held to that. I really, really do. I hope that that's exposed for the sake of the employees that are there. Because they're hurting. That're hurting. I mean, that sounds like a cluster. You don't even have an investigations process in your organization.

Are you kidding me? You don't have any experts that do that? You know, I mean, what? Go third party. Well, but I do think to think about, okay, if someone were to make a complaint, what do our managers know what to do? Like in this situation of like the boss's boss, even if she says like no one brought up race, but this employee is saying,

I feel like I'm being micromanaged. I feel like, you know, naming two other people, I'm treated differently than these people. Do our managers know to think to that, maybe I should get HR involved and then tell them, you know what, I want to have this looked into, let me reach out, they may reach out to you directly, it's really important to me.

And so I get it, there are disputes or things at work that you'd be like, okay, let's have a conversation and talk about this. But when someone's talking about that, like micromanaging and identifying other comparators, it at least invites me to be like, okay, don't check them. They try to do managers, leaders know what to do, including your senior leaders. Do you have things like, do you have internal people that are trained? And do you understand how important that is? That if you have someone in HR, designated as the investigator, then that person then should not be involved in, you know,

HR generalist type duties in being what the judge calls the ghostwriter of emails for other people. I like, I actually, I like when people rely on HR to do those things and help. It can be like a playwright, but do you know what to do? Well, and you know, for me, I've been in HR Department 01 many times. And so all of this would have came to me. But I can't tell you how many times in my career I had to call

outside counsel, or maybe we had internal counsel and I could go to our general counsel and ask for assistance because I am a Department of Wine. And I have been, and actually we have an episode coming up about being an HR Department of Wine. But like Lee, like you said, it's literally this is 101 shit. I mean, if you are in HR, these are some basic things you should know. Yeah. Like this is embarrassing and this is why people feel let down by HR. And of course they had one bad experience, hopefully just one, if any, hopefully no bad experiences, you know what I mean? But they have one bad experience and then look, the entire field, right? Ugh, like freaking HR, it's like, fuck, you know? Well, and for context, I mean, this is this is summer of 2020. This is and this comes up

in the depositions. This is you know, this is COVID. This is times of various risks. This is also right after George Floyd. So part, for example, of this employee, why she's like, I called my boss's boss, she was like, she was like my safe person, because she'd reached out to different members of our team about George Floyd. And that's, that's, that's important. That's that support that a lot of people need. But in addition to having things like support or social media posts or being like, we're in favor of these things, it's how do you treat people when it's hard? And if your team, even despite working for SHRM,

doesn't know what to do, then ask yourself, do you know what to do in the moment? It's 101 shit. For manager 101, this is why I have a toolkit for organizations and I'm not intending to make this a thing, but a toolkit for organizations with their managers and part of the sessions to be like, do you know what to do? What would you do if someone raised this concern? Do you know what to do?

The reason I did that is because I'd been in organizations where I had a different role and it was cyber security, data breach, and we do what do you do? It was so humbling in the true sense because people are like, oh my god, hold on. And it was in consulting firms and things that help run those. They're like, it's totally OK to not know what to do. You don't know until you know. But you've got to work to get yourself educated. And so for organizations and HR teams,

using internal resources, external ones, especially like SHRM, to get everybody educated on these basics. But so I actually was shocked that this case went even to summer judgment. It was not settled at the outset. Oh, yeah, me too. Me too. Me too. Yeah. Yeah. They're so prideful. That's my feel. They're so pompously prideful. I did nothing wrong. They don't even know what they don't know. That's my just gut the last 20 years in HR. Knowing about Sherm, I'm not a member, I haven't been.

But I always get that vibe that they're just sitting on top of a mountain sort of thing and invincible and all this, and they're just so prideful. That's why karma's a bitch. Things get exposed. Well, that's a bitch. Things get exposed. Well, that's my thing. I've seen, I definitely, especially back in law firm days, being new and just having a very high volume of things, I've seen things. People are people. Things can happen at work where somebody just completely, they do the absolute wrong thing and they make either a careless decision or a horrible, horrible,

horrible decision. And so I've seen that people would never be privy to situations where people are like, we have to do the right thing. And sometimes they're like sending apologies immediately and sometimes you're like, oh, the lawyers will be like, oh, hold off, don't do that. But from a human perspective, who knows what's in the heart of this manager and what was happening and all of the things, but not to even do really a robust best practices investigation to give the opportunity and to hear some of these perspectives where people were saying they had the same type of concerns.

And so- They're like doubling down on sucking. They're tripling down. You know what I mean? On sucking. Double suckagepling down. You know what I mean? I'm sucking double suckage. It was there's times that we may dunk on an organization like shurm to be like, you know, this like it's, you know, oh, whatever.

But but here, I think that there are lessons and hopefully they've learned these lessons and other organizations should learn these lessons. It's always best to learn them from other people before you learn them yourselves. So I think having a real gut check, especially for HR teams listening to this and lean HR teams are like, God, how do we do that? If we have an HR team of one, how do we or a lean HR team and how do we do this? So anyway, I literally poured through. I mean, I poured through these depositions and was like gaping.

Total nerd. Oh yeah. Love that legal shit. I love it. I love it. But Ashley created a 21 minute video on this on YouTube on her manager method account. So go watch it. It's great.

I did just a three minute TikTok. Go watch Ashley. Seriously, it's very insightful. No, I'm being honest, it's very insightful. No, I'm being honest. It's very insightful and you'll learn something. Yeah. I'll tell you what, I'm not a business dunker. Y'all know me. I don't call out businesses. That's really not my thing. I call out behaviors. I'm very empathetic. I understand. Ashley, I think you said it really well. People

fuck up. We do all the time. The three of us mess up all the time. People are messing up all the time. That's okay, as long as we're learning from it and we're moving on and we're trying to focus on doing the right thing. But man, where this gets personal for me on Shurm is the fact that they're representing our field and function. And it seems like a continuous cluster. It just does. You know what I mean? Like it's just always something. And it's just, ah, we're trying to, you know, be pro-employee over here. We're trying to be progressive over here. We're trying to do the right thing over here. And then we have this, you know, organization, the largest international one, you know, kind of pulling us back, you know, organization, the largest international one, you know, kind of pulling us back, you know, and keeping us in the dark ages. That's my feeling. And that just really pisses me

off because I have to fight that every day the way you all do, you know, on the internet and personal relationships and whatever else, right? People want to rag on HR. So it's just disappointing to me. I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed. Oh my God. That's like a mom. My mom. That's like mommy. Mommy Lee. Exactly. HR mommy. It's disappointing. And that's why I continue to, when I see these pop up, these headlines pop up, I continue to cover them. I have a whole playlist on my TikTok about trolling sherm. And it's because, you know, and I still get surprised at the comments of HR professionals being like,

well, if not sherm, who? And we get that question a lot, and we can't, I like literally cannot get into all the places, but do research, I promise you, there's other organizations, there's other places to get reliable information. Frankly, I have felt, I mean, I haven't been a member of SHRM for quite a while now, but even when I was using SHRM, it was very outdated, the information that I was receiving, so I didn't find it helpful anyway.

So just be mindful of that. There are other places and other organizations to get information. Like here. Yeah, like the HR freaking besties on work bestie day. Exactly. Gosh. On that note, should we have a drink at happy hour? Yes. Gotta drink up to that, you know. Enjoy the weekend, besties!