HR BESTIES - Today's Your Last Day

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

TODAY'S AGENDA AND NOTES: Let's start out by discussing the joys of intense and surprising interview situations, such as being led into a room with 30 people for an interview and being asked to answer a packet of questions for two and a half hours. (Spoiler alert: There are no joys in that.) The big order of business today are layoffs, particularly the concept of "lazy layoffs". Leigh, Jamie, and Ashley all have personal experiences and stories about the process of layoffs, highlighting the emotional toll it takes on both the employees being let go and the HR professionals tasked with delivering the news. We'll talk through the CEOs who handle layoffs poorly, such as those who make insincere public displays of empathy or fail to provide adequate resources and support for outgoing employees. The Besties also discuss the importance of transparency and respect in the layoff process, and suggest ways to avoid layoffs, such as reevaluating and redesigning roles within the company. In conclusion: empathy and consideration in handling layoffs, please. Is that too much to ask? This week's sponsors are: Hello Fresh — use code 50HR to save 50% and get free shipping To learn more about the HR Besties, grab merch and reach out for partnerships, visit HRBesties.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oh, interviews, right? Boy, do we love an interview. And I'm sure the HR professionals here, we have those tragic, intense, insane interview stories where we're interviewing other people, right? Of course, of course. But what about yourself? Interviewing yourself?

No, no, no, not interviewing yourself. I mean, you know, I mean, I guess you could, right? But I don't know that's going to go anywhere. But when you yourself are the candidate, right? I mean, I've had probably hundreds. It sounds like I can't keep a job. Maybe I can't. I don't know if that's true,

but I've had hundreds of interviews, right? Because for whatever reason, for HR positions, you have to like 50,000 interviews. Okay, like, can you read the resume? Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Final step.

Literally, final step. My, I was just like eight months later. Make sure you're a cultural fit. Oh, exactly. Cultural fit. Okay, yeah. All right. You're welcome.

Oh my God. But anyway, so it's not about, I know. So it's not, it's not about that. But one of my craziest, get this shit. All right. You're welcome. Oh, my God. But anyway, so it's not about that. But one of my craziest, get this shit. All right. So I meet with the CEO and we hit it off. Everything's fine. And then he's like, okay, well, it's time for the next interview. And I'm like, oh, okay. So, you know, we stand up from his office and he escorts me to the boardroom, his boardroom. And I think I'm probably meeting with the COO, the CFO, whatever. You know, I'm meeting with like two people, one other person. He didn't tell me and I didn't ask. Which seems like, well, interesting. Stop, speak of it, surprise.

You know, so no formal agenda. So pro tip, you know, maybe let people know who they're going to be interviewing. And I had asked, I had asked, but okay, I didn't get that. They weren't prepared or whatever. No problem, no problem. Every place is different. You mentally noting it as the candidate, right?

You're always accepting, right. This is fine. This is all normal. Can't ask questions. Exactly. Cause then as an HR professional, I always think, well, I'll fix this. Like, you know, so I'm always like, oh, I'll just fix this. So let me see the, let me get the real, like experience. Yeah. Who am I really interviewing with? Yeah. So then I can go and change it and make it better. Duh. So anyways, he's like, well, let's, let's go to the next interview. I'm not even over-exaggerating. And I know I do that a lot, but I'm not even over-exaggerating. When he opens the boardroom and the boardroom was shaped like a U, right?

So like big, like a big U shaped, you know, sort of not the long table. But I walk in there. There's 30 people in that room. I am not kidding. I had a firing squad interview. Like's 30 people in that room. I am not kidding. I had a firing squad interview. Like Snow White. Oh, no. Literally.

Oh, my God. No, there was an auditorium that was set up like a freaking dissertation to be interviewed for something that obviously didn't pay enough for that bullshit. You know what I mean? Like a firing squad interview. So I'm like, okay. Like, you know, like I'm okay. I can pretend to be an extrovert, you know? So it's like, I walk in there and I have to do all the introductions. I'm going around acting all professional, you know, I'm shaking hands. Pleasure to be, you know, and I'm doing all

of that and I'm going out literally. I know. Oh yes. Hello. Hello. Pleasure to meet you all. They have me sit in the middle of the room. And I'm like, what is happening here? Like, I'm just like processing. It sounds like a bad porno. For real. That's how like every porno starts with her. Okay. So anyways, so that I'm processing everything, right? And I look and I notice in front of each person is a packet. There's a packet of interview questions over the next two and a half hours. Two and a half hours? No shit.

I answer the entire packet. There was like three pages of questions. And some were yes, no. I'm not even kidding. I was so embarrassed for them. I was so embarrassed. I was like, do you like to work? Yes. And I wanted to be so bad because I might want to coach them live, you know, I don't have the job yet. Would you like to follow up on that? Like, what do I love most about the workplace? Like any follow up question on that? What else would you like to ask me about that?

You know, is this even relevant? Should this be a question? Like so badly. I want to like make it better. But I'm like, you got to pay for that first. And already you're torturing me. And this dumb bitch pointing at myself, I took that job. Well, yes, of course I did.

Of course I did. How quickly did you give them feedback? That was weird. This was weird. My first day, I was like, literally, I walked into the CEO office. He's like, welcome. It's your first day. And I go, for the record, we're never doing a fire squad interview again.

Yeah, that was awful. That was ridiculous. So your first, you know, point of coaching is you suck. He's like, but we need buy-in. We got, I got to get everyone's buy-in. It's one of those. It's a family business. We're family here. Yep. It was terrible. Absolutely terrible. So anyways, if you are an interviewer and you're listening to this and you do firing squad interviews, you need to put yourself on the other end. Okay, I'll see you in hell.

So for the sake of time, let's go ahead and jump right in. Ashley, can you go ahead and go through the agenda for today's meeting? Why don't we go ahead and start off with the cringy corporate speak. Lee, if you want to tackle that one for us, and then we'll quickly jump to the main part of our meeting, which is our hot topic, which is going to be lazy layoffs. Jamie, if you're going to want to take point for that one. And then at the end, why don't we reserve some time for some questions or comments? Sounds fantastic. Lee, cringe us away.

Oh, gosh. Well, one that I always love hearing is parking lot. Do you all use this one? Let's put it in the parking lot. Do I use it? No. Have I heard it and cringed inside? Yes. Yeah. Sometimes I use this one because it's better than saying you are fucking stupid. And so it's like, well, why don't we parking lot that? Let's table it. Yeah, let's table that. Let's go ahead and put it in the parking lot. It's like such a thing that's used at like off sites or when you're facilitating. Oh, for sure. You always have to have the parking lot, right? The dry erase board. Oh, gosh. You hear it and you take it home and you chuckle about it when you look at all the random, you don't even

know what stuff, what does that mean? No, what does that even mean? Talk to Smith, what? But it's a way to cut people off, right off when they're going down these rabbit holes and they're like tangenting, tangentizing like crazy. Let's just put her in the parking lot. Yeah. The back parking lot that nobody ever goes to. You write it down, you give the wink and no one will ever whisper about it again. Respectful way to move on. Right. So there's a pro tip actually, if you need to cut people off at work, just put in the parking lot. So that's the corporate speaking you can use if someone is cringing you, especially at an off site to have a move on. Well, let's parking lot that.

Okay. I like it. If we can try to use that today in the meeting, that'll really hope to drive home that learning. Thank you, Lee. Absolutely. You're welcome. Now turning to the next item in our agenda to stay on pace, let's talk about layoffs. We hate layoffs, but why are they so much worse? Jamie? Yeah. I mean, I think we've seen with social media the uptick of these cringy CEOs, and thankfully people have filmed them for us. So, you know, I don't know if you, of course, remember Better.com's, that asshat. And then we have...

Tell what happened. Tell what that one, but for people that don't remember. So Better.com, he came on his Zoom and he basically was like, okay, I have to lay off X amount of employees. And did he cry? I can't remember. Was he the one who was like, this is harder for me than it is for you?

That's what it was. He was harder for me. Oh my God. And if I remember, tell me about my mortgage qualification and my checking that bank account. And didn't their severance, weren't their severance packets like awful for the exiting employees?

Yeah, well, that was the one where I don't think it was agreed upon, right, that they were going to communicate that way. Because you remember like the chief communications officer, the CHR, they were all like, what? Like, you know, like he went rogue and just was like, I'm just going to fire half y'all. Stick to the script, jackass. Oh my gosh, you know? Yeah. Or the other CEO of HyperSocial, Braden, posted a crying fucking selfie on the internet. Now, was that right? Like, have sympathy for me. Because that wasn't a live call.

It wasn't like he cried. He intentionally was like, this is it. This is the post. The picture. Like, this is what I want people to know. I'm crying in a selfie. I'm a servant leader. Oh, you're so vulnerable. Oh, gosh. You had to lay off 100 people. Now those people don't know where they're going to get their, I'm not sure, but I would just hope that it would affect a leader that way, right? Absolutely. But to then be like trying to get likes and attention, win points with like a really cringy cry selfie. That was super viral on LinkedIn.

I mean, you could just Google that. I'm pretty sure on TikTok they made a filter of his face. Oh, no, they didn't. Yes. Oh, gosh. I didn't. Yes. Oh, gosh. I believe that though. Literally, I have to imagine some of his former employees probably leveraged that. I exactly, I know.

For sure. I would have. Oh, gosh. I mean, yeah, I think it's when the CEOs in particular do it. First of all, layoffs are absolutely terrible. They're the worst. And the problem is it's a bit like a Rolling Stone where Better.com started. And then I remember, you know, it was probably just a year and a half, year and a change ago.

It was the Mom Project. And so leaders at the time, they're thinking about their statement. What are we going to say? And they're trying to thread this needle between projecting empathy for the people let go, but they don't want to call it that. They want to call it anything but. Of course. Also then they're like,

but we have all these other people that are still here or some number of people still here. We got to motivate the troops. And so first of all, people put out these proactive statements and rarely does that end up being a good thing. Because oftentimes what that means then is someone has let go

and your CEO's put out a statement. Then that person's bombarded by their people, their family. Oh my God, did you get laid off? Like, God, let me like take a second. And so the CEO, every CEO thinks that they are like Microsoft or Google having all these people. Sometimes it's fairly small and they put this message out. But when people try to thread the needle, one, it's like this game of what can we call employees that are laid off without saying layoff. And so I remember the mom project because that one, I read it. And that one really was a doozy. I mean, unfortunately now there have been so many and so many with multiple rounds, but that one that used the language that said that for employees, we let the employees know

they would not have go forward roles at our, at our organization, which we could use as a cringy corporate speak because it just, it dehumanizes people. And again, you're trying, you're trying to take this, this spin and take the focus off this layoff. But in that same communication, they talk about how we're still so confident. And we have, you know, in, in our economy, or we project that these will be needed. And you read these things. And my rule of thumb that I say, and I swear by, is that every CEO and PR team and lawyer, again, I've been a lawyer, I've been in HR, I know the number of people whose eyes look at it. The problem is most of those people have chief or director or VP or are thinking about all these

optics and how do we, how do we hide this sort of truth? The people that need to be looking at these statements have the, have the title assistant, like executive assistant. And if you are a CEO, have your executive assistant read it. And you need to have a real trust with that person. And if you have that relationship, you probably are going to be making better employment decisions anyway, but have that person read it. And if they read it and they're like, this is weird. Yeah, this is terrible. This is terrible.

Let us all start over. Because you have these like PR teams that come in and it all of a sudden reads like mumbo jumbo. Yeah, it's just BS, right? There's no clarity. It's BS. Total disregard for the employee experience. Respect for a human.

You can't even like translate it into, you know, like real people speak, like go forward role. What does that mean as the employee? Oh, that means I no longer have a job here or I'm switching jobs because my, my, this, you know, what does that mean? Right. Can we not just be transparent? We laid people off and you know what, it's really shitty and it's far, far worse for you than it is for us. And for the rest of employees, you don't need to talk about them in that public statement at that point in time. And you can talk to them privately. I mean, I remember talking to a number of organizations and saying, we're going to do these layoffs. How do we communicate? We're going to have, we're going to have this two hour meeting with everyone. And then we're going to let them know that, you know, hours later, they'll get a meeting invite. What are you talking about? You start a two-hour meeting. People have a whiff of a layoff. Let me know this freaking second. Am I let go or not? No one wants to hear your rationale or see any sort of PowerPoint. Get people the information they need and then provide it accordingly. All the employees that are staying, you have your projection. Tell them that. The

people being let go do not need to hear about how confident you are in Q4. So we launched HR Besties and have been busy trying to make it fun, funny, even informational. So when we heard we got our very first sponsor, we were literally all jumping up and down. And when our sponsor, HelloFresh, said, hey, we'll also send you some meals in addition to sponsoring you. We were like, what? Also making our lives easier? Thank you. Because if we ever make it look easy, then we're doing magic because it is not. So I actually run my own business where I spend my day literally trying to help make managers better. And I make a lot of decisions during the day. So at night, I just want someone to tell me what to do. HelloFresh does that. At the end of a busy day, just give me some fall foods and I'm good, like the mini pumpkin cheesecake, or have me look like

I have my stuff together with some barbecue pulled pork nachos that I can then take to a friend's house instead of my sad standard bag of pita chips. Now, I know you want me to fulfill my promise of making your life easier, saving you money, and then you can go back to hearing the rest of our episode. Okay, so I'll do that. To try meals yourself, go to HelloFresh.com slash 50HR and use code 50HR for 50% off plus free shipping. I know, lots of 50s. Now, I'm going to repeat that because I still repeat phone numbers when I leave a voicemail because I don't know why, but go to HelloFresh.com slash 50HR and use code 50HR and you will save 50% off plus free shipping to your doorstep. So please support HelloFresh, America's number one meal kit, and support

yourself in the process by making your life easier and telling your family, HR Besties isn't just my favorite podcast. They saved me money. And if they don't care about that, they will care about that pumpkin cheesecake. I'm someone that absolutely preaches. There's all this research and I'm this industrial organizational psychology org behavior nerd, just for the record. But there's all this research that says it is so detrimental doing a layoff, so detrimental to an organization, not just from a brand perspective, but to the value, the connection of the employee with the organization. I mean, those folks are lost for a generation, basically, right? Like, they can't get beyond that fear. So that should be, I mean, literally, the absolute last resort. And what

I do see a lot in headlines is that that's an easy button, right? That is something quick to the bottom line financially for people to do. And please, I beg you, if you are a business leader, do not make that decision. Oh my gosh, if you do not have to, it should be the absolute last thing. Get creative. Literally Google, I'm not even kidding, what else to do besides laying off your workforce. You know what I mean? How to make my workforce lean, like not people. Right size. I hate the term right size.

Yeah, let's right size. Because that means that you are wrong sizing people that are no longer or saying or the language that you use saying, oh, we chose on the performance based. And these people that are let go that say, nobody told me. That's funny because I got a 4.5 out of 5 on my last review. So no one could have that conversation with me. Feedback should never be a surprise. It's kicking. It should never be a surprise.

And that's the easy way out, right? Yeah. But what I do hate, though, is that, and maybe you all have received these comments before or have heard it anecdotally or seen it as when they say like things like, you know, it's so easy for HR to do these things, right? They enjoy laying people off, right? Oh, it is so gut-wrenching and heart-wrenching. And I have been in so many meetings where I am doing all I can, literally putting my employment on the line, trying to convince leaders, do not do this.

Oh, I beg you, literally like, oh my God, and here's all the reasons why, and here's all the other things we could do beyond doing this. And I've won the majority of those, right? So I've only, thank goodness, knock on wood, right? I've only had to participate in layoffs where I am supporting another organization and their layoff communications, right?

Like they've pulled me in as an HR resource in a broader corporation to help them have those conversations. And I'll tell you, I've seen them done well in the sense that it is one-on-one conversations, even though there's hundreds of them. It was personal packets, resources for outplace. I mean, all of the things and really a lot of money there, right? To try as much as you can to make this person whole for enough time for them to transition to the next thing. So I have not, thank goodness, have experienced personally a lazy layoff. But is it enjoyable for anybody?

No. But would I ever say this is harder for me? Oh, hell no. Because it's not. Did I go home at night and cry? I cried driving home. You bet. It is so not enjoyable.

It is absolutely freaking heartbreaking, right? When you get to that position that you have to do that. You know what I mean? So, you know, kind of an F you to those who think that, you know, HR is heartless. No, we're the messengers of hard, hard decisions from our leadership. And it sucks being that monkey in the middle. It sure does. Having to pass a message like that, you know, it's the last thing I'd ever want to do. It's the absolute worst. And I don't think anyone realizes like, yes, did we sign up for this? Sure. But did we really think we were going to have to do it? Yeah. But did I really

know? It's never in the job. It is a part of the job. You will have to communicate horrible messages with empathy. People are going to cry all the time. That's the smallest print at the bottom of everything. They didn't teach me this in business school. You get that a lot. I know like HR makes this decision and you've talked about that. Yeah. So unfortunately, at my most recent job, I was the person that handled all of the Grim Reaper. Yeah.

You had a nickname probably. Yeah, the Terminator. Which, FYI, I did not give myself that. Thank you. I'm sure Glassdoor probably gave you that. And it was also me being like, is this absolutely vital? Did we take all the steps prior to? Did we, you know, what, how could we have done this differently?

Because I'm like, not only am I thinking about this employee or employees, but what are we going to do in the future to make sure this doesn't happen again? Because that's awful. And, and, and yeah, sure. Yeah. It's hard on me, but like, who fucking cares about me? I'm the one that still has the job, the shitty job that calls you the Terminator. And it's, I don't know, I just, it's funny that these male CEOs and their faked, you know, alligator tails, like, yeah, it's hard, but like, deliver the message, you know, make sure you're providing adequate resources, severance, assistance, finding a job, take care of these people on their way out. Because if you take care of them, I guarantee you they're going to have good things to say rather than putting your Zoom message on TikTok for the entire world to see.

Well, we think it's like easy, right? Like it's like, why can't you just do this right? And then you look at like data that says like a third of leaders are narcissists. Right. Yeah. So it's not so easy for someone that's that self-absorbed. Yeah. They don't even have the ability to feel.

Well, that's why sometimes it's showing those headlines and showing this is how this went. This headline. This will hurt you. This will hurt you. Exactly. And so I think at times it's people at the top. You know, people frequently will say, well, HR, HR. I mean, again, HR is generally not making these decisions. Oftentimes HR gets us and is told to execute this. Or what I think are the lazy layoffs is, again, I think all of our message is this is absolutely a measure of last resort. And because there are people in the organization, and the worst, and so the, I don't know what number we're going to get, because I haven't thought about this in advance. Let's say there's five things, may end up being six. But like things for a lazy layoff

are again, thinking about severance. So again, in the rest of the world, there's generally formulas set up. In the U.S., unless it is a large enough, and again, depends on state, federal, those things, oftentimes the amount of severance is completely voluntary. Yeah. But sometimes people have it baked into their contract. Often they don't. And so it's this question, what's severance going to be? What's, what's market? What's everybody else doing? And that's, that's the same. So, so thinking about what that's like and understanding what that experience, and so an understanding that, that cost, because, because otherwise you're going to have this whole group of people that truly, because unemployment is not very much.

Nope. And so, yes, can people get unemployment? It is often does not pay, certainly now does not pay the rent. And so thinking about the severance amounts you can provide, thinking about who is having the communications. Again, as a CEO, you need to be owning this message. And so the lazy part of these layoffs often is having it cascaded, in my quotes, by managers who are not trained in having these conversations

either. And so frequently managers will say, I've never had this conversation and I have gotten no training. And so this is having robust training in advance, having talking points and explaining and to managers saying, it is incredibly important that you do certain key things by, if you have a script, everyone is likely going to have it. Do not read from it. You can glance at it. And again, but using it and looking people in the eye, if that's in person, if that is by Zoom, but having this and treating people like humans. And if HR is being part of this conversation, then stay in the room. Don't duck out. I mean, it is unbelievable. I am sure there are people listening who have had this experience like, oh my God, literally like my manager, or I heard about it entirely from an HR company.

That's weird. I showed up, my badge didn't work. Yeah, my badge didn't work. And also letting managers know who on their team is affected. And these recently I've seen many companies. I've talked to people that said, I had no idea until someone on my team reached out and was let go. And so planning this. So a lot of this is this aspect of basic care and communication, to the point I think Lee said, of having resources.

So employees, you know, medical benefits in the U.S. in particular are incredibly complex. I've been in, and again, HR people aren't wizards. The laws can be varied. It can be really tricky. So talking and putting together as much as you can packets of this is how things work. This is why you will not have COBRA paperwork today. You will get it in a few weeks if you need medical care between now and then. Here are the resource numbers for insurance. So you're not, oh, go on our, go on our login. Well, my login doesn't fucking work anymore. Excuse my language. But so, but have, have the,

think about the questions that people will have. And if people have additional questions saying, I don't know the answer, I will get back to you. Because again, as a manager, you may not know, do not guess, oh, maybe I can, maybe I can get you some more, some more severance. Don't set these expectations if you don't know it. But so having that and getting back, getting back to those employees, putting more thought into it. That's the, that's the biggest issue I've seen is a leader making the decision, maybe a leader in finance, mapping out, you know, faceless names on an Excel spreadsheet and then telling everybody else to go and execute it. Just looking at salaries. That's it. Yeah. Not even they filter those out. Yeah.

What I mean? They're just running the numbers there. But that's what really, again, layoffs are terrible, but a lot of people listen to this podcast, don't have the decisions about, about how to do it, but you can think about, okay. And even if you're phrasing that internally to say, what if my people ask this, can we make sure that we have the information that people are going to need and humanizing the process? Sometimes that's the step that you, that you can help with, but being that resource, because then people have questions. Can I leave them a recommendation on LinkedIn? Can I call them individually? What can I do? What can I do to support them? Because even managers sometimes will have fear and say, well, I don't want, I'm afraid, I don't want to be next. So giving those

guidelines to help to support people because job loss is a very real trauma for employees, for their families, and for even the remaining organization. Talk to the rest of the team. Because, or you'll have like the CNN situation where it's like, oh, there's not going to be any more layoffs. Then you get down the, like, again, not making these promises that you cannot keep. But then as HR professionals, right, like I reflect on how can you help and contribute and support an organization to not get into a layoff situation, right? And so I think about, you know, not easy buttoning resources, right? So I'm constantly having the conversation, do we need to backfill that position? You know, like, let's just actually

ask the question before automatically doing it. I'm not trying to burn anyone out, right? But, you know, in some organizations, groups, teams, departments, where literally, like, someone's responsible for, like, 5% of, you know, it's not a robust, challenging job enough. The person isn't developing. They're just throwing headcount at it. I do that with air quotes, right? We see that a lot, you know, and all of a sudden things do get ballooned out of control, you know? And so as an HR professional, you should know the jobs in your organization. You should know the structures and the teams and the hierarchy. And does it even make sense, right? You don't want things to get too, you know, overinflated. You want people to have challenging, awesome jobs that they can grow and develop from, not someone just, you know,

doing one menial task and that's their whole day. They do it for five minutes and then they're bored the rest of the day, right? Because then you're going to get into a situation financially, potentially. And of course, you don't as an HR professional, you don't all of that, right? But you can influence those decisions, right? You see that happening. You want to make sure that, hey, you're coaching your leaders, right? That, hey, just be mindful because X, Y, and Z, you know. Do you have any other tips for that, like as an HR professional on how you signal back to leaders or managers, you know, to help stay out of a potential layoff situation? I think, you know, in previous jobs, I was a lot of the times I was in HR department one.

So being involved in like ops just in general. Yeah, everything. But like being involved in ops, but also like asking those clarifying questions and understanding the roles. and understanding the roles. And if we're looking to eliminate roles, why, what's the cost benefit? But what's the even benefit?

Can we- Pros and cons, right? Yeah, what about, what if we redesign those roles into something different? Maybe it's something else is lacking in the organization. And so like being thoughtful about the process and not just going, oh, well, he said. I'm assuming it's a he, but it could be a she. But you know what I mean?

Well, they said, so, you know, this is what we're going to do. We have to eliminate 10% of the company. I'm like, no, like there really could be some sort of maybe a reorg. They're looking for cost. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah. So let's know.

We don't have to easy button it with people all the time. Being thoughtful means, okay, what are people going to think about? So sometimes that's looking at the careers page and having that. And you always tell people, make sure your careers page is updated. Because if people get let go and all of a sudden they look, there's 35 open positions on your careers page. Oh, well, none of those. Yeah. Oh, none of these.

None of these. No, none of these. Oh, these, none of those. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, none of these, none of these. No, none of these. Oh, these, these aren't. Well, having actual processes to make sure that that's an open position or not is important for a variety of reasons, but in particular, because people let go and say, well, this is an open position. Can I apply for it? I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. Like sometimes people get let go and part of their severance agreement will be agree not to, agree not to reapply. In situations when it's, it's, it's mass. Oh, well, that's just part of our standard language.

Well, also you have individuals who, you know, think about recruiting costs. Those are people that have been at your organization and they do have different skills. So sometimes it's printing the careers page, getting the screenshots. What are these in advance? And saying, because people are going to look at this,

look at this and see here are all these, all of these open positions. And so sometimes it is absolutely, and thinking about aspects like that. But in, in those positions, again, thinking about, are we doing 10%? Okay. What's the why? What's the why behind it? And another is another lazy layoffs. That's, that's not even group layoffs. It's when you have an individual being terminated from employment and they said, we're going to do a position elimination for this person. But it's based off of performance. And they say, we're going to do a position elimination. Yeah. For this person. But it's based off of performance.

And they say, we're going to do a position elimination. Make it make sense. And then we're going to, but then we're going to hire this other, this, then we're going to. Yeah. The hell you are for at least 24 months. I'm like, no, no, we're going to parking lot that. Thank you. I said, you're okay. You're letting this person go. But the new person, we're going to change the, we're going to change the title.

Absolutely. But when you let Greg go, when Jane starts, is everyone going to call Jane the new Greg? Because it's really the real person. And then there's, oh my God, are there legal issues to that? Lawyer, actually, take off your hat. The old bait and switch. It's weird. Can you hear me?

This is my literal comment. I have said this multiple times in executive level meetings and said, because that is very weird. And if things feel weird to a person, then they often feel weird to everybody, including those current employees who were like, that's weird. And they go and tell Greg, they go and tell Greg, they go and tell Jane and Jane's like, what is this place I have joined? And so the lazy laugh sometimes is the broader, but at times also can be that individual that you're trying to address something. Position elimination. But really, we just don't like Greg anymore. Yeah, using thought and having conversations. So it's a big parking lot.

I was going to say, we may have to parking lot that one, job eliminations. God, that's probably like 10 podcasts, isn't it? Yeah, Steve is very excited for Steve. Oh, my gosh. But, you know, I know, again, hard stop, right? We run efficient meetings here, right? I know our staff is incredibly efficient. And so I did want to make sure we save time for any questions or comments. So do we have any questions or comments before we close this meeting? I do. Oh, yes. I have a comment is to think about the experience. Well, in some hand,

it can feel very, very cruel to shut someone out automatically of employment, also think about the situation when you're giving people, oh, we need you to stay on for a knowledge transfer for two weeks, a month, 60 days, 90 days, especially if you're transferring and saying, oh, we're building this new service, and we need you to knowledge transfer. And think about what that experience is like every day you wake up and you are training somebody else to take over your job and what that is like. And that could be an incredibly, incredibly cruel thing to do to people. So that is my comment

on top of the Lacey laughs. Love it. Jamie, anything from you? No questions or comments. Whoa. No questions. I knew she had a hard stop. Oh, she does. Yeah. I gotta wrap this. Well, I'm so sorry because not a question, but a comment. To quote a meme from Facebook circa 2014, please recall that every dead body at the top of Mount Everest was once a highly motivated person.

All right? So why don't we just chill out a little bit in the office with the early meetings? Park and lot that shit. Okay. Let's park and lot that. But thank you so much for joining our staff meeting today and this episode of HR Besties, where we talk a little business and BS.