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PODCAST

HR Voices

HR Voices is a scenario-based podcast for People Leaders who’ve actually had to make the call. Each episode brings experienced HR and People leaders into realistic, anonymized workplace scenarios—the kind you recognize immediately. Performance issues. Messy conflicts. Investigations that don’t fit neatly into a policy box. Instead of talking about their own companies, guests react to outside cases and walk through how they’d think it through in real time. There are no right answers here. What you’ll

business management

All Episodes

00:38:29

Illegal Recordings, Valid Complaint: How HR...

HR Voices ·

2026/10/02

(with guest Jeremy Edmonds, EVP of People & Culture at Snooze)An employee under a performance investigation has been secretly recording every one-on-one with his manager for eight months, in a two-party consent state where that's illegal without disclosure. Now, he wants HR to treat the recordings as proof that his manager set him up to fail. The evidence may be both illegally obtained and true, and choosing to use it or ignore it each carries risk. Jeremy, who has spent 25 years in HR, explains

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01:02:04

The Whistleblower Who Was Also the Problem

HR Voices ·

2026/09/24

(with guest Chris Corneen, CHRO at MSI)An employee reports financial irregularities in her department. The investigation confirms she was right, and also finds that she went along with some of the irregularities before she decided to speak up. Now HR has to protect her from retaliation and hold her accountable for her own part, at the same time. And everyone who's thinking about reporting something someday is watching to see how it plays out.What you'll hear in this episode:Why Chris assumes the

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00:31:29

Weaponized PIPs: Why Timing Is Not the Real HR Problem

HR Voices ·

2026/09/24

(with guest Alissa Horn, Senior Director of Global Investigations and Employee Relations at Mattel)An employee files an ethics complaint about their manager's expense reports. One week later, that same manager puts them on a PIP. The performance concerns are real, but nobody ever documented them or raised them with the employee. Now HR has to figure out whether this is a legitimate performance conversation with terrible timing or retaliation dressed up as process, knowing that from the outside the

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00:33:28

Why Managers Should Never Diagnose Employees

HR Voices ·

2026/09/17

(with guest Michelle Spencer Fourney, Global Director of Employee Relations at Zscaler)A manager tells HR she's "pretty sure" an employee has undiagnosed ADHD — based on nothing but his disorganization — and asks whether she can require a psych evaluation before granting more deadline extensions. He's never disclosed a condition or asked for an accommodation. In this episode, host Rebecca Taylor and Michelle Spencer Fourney dig into what happens when good intentions turn into an amateur diagnosis,

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00:36:16

The Exit Interview That Exposes a Toxic Top Performer

HR Voices ·

2026/09/16

(with guest Maggie Lansdale, Global VP of People at Cannondale)An employee walks out the door and finally tells the truth: a director has been verbally abusive to junior staff for years. She never reported it while employed because she didn't trust the process, and now she won't put her name on it. HR has credible detail, a witness who won't go on record, and a director who's otherwise a top performer that leadership doesn't want to lose. Rebecca and Maggie dig into what happens next — and why the

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00:35:07

The Two-Weeks Notice Mistake That Creates...

HR Voices ·

2026/09/15

(with guest Earlieen Bethel, VP of Human Resources at Comcast)An employee resigns with two weeks' notice. Her manager, annoyed, tells her to leave that day — but never processes it as a termination, so she's paid through her notice period as agreed. Weeks later, she files for unemployment, and the same manager disputes it, claiming she quit. Now HR has to reconstruct what actually happened, defend a decision with almost no documentation, and manage a manager who doesn't seem to realize he can't have

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00:29:14

How to Stop a Dashboard from Replacing Human Judgement

HR Voices ·

2026/09/09

with Ben Martin, VP of HR Strategy and Workforce Planning at CengageAn ops lead spends a year building the case management infrastructure a VP now uses to justify cutting a manager training budget — except the dashboard doesn't capture the side-channel complaints that would tell a different story. The data isn't wrong. It's just incomplete, and nobody in the room knows that but him. Ben Martin gets into what you actually do in that moment, and how HR ends up here in the first place.What you'll hear

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00:34:49

When HR Is the Problem: How to Investigate the...

HR Voices ·

2026/09/09

with Sophia Sanchez, Employee Relations Leader at InfosysAn employee says HR botched her harassment complaint — too slow, no updates, sided with her manager with no real explanation. She's not wrong about the process. But now the same team accused of dropping the ball has to investigate itself, credibly, without torching the trust that's already cracked. Sophia Sanchez walks through what happens when the complaint isn't about the incident anymore — it's about HR.What you'll hear in this episode:Why

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00:31:51

The Deepfake Voicemail: When AI Makes Evidence a Liar

HR Voices ·

2026/09/01

An employee submits a voicemail as proof her manager threatened her job over a weekend shift. It sounds exactly like him. He swears he never left it. Forensic voice analysis can't settle it either way — and both sides have already lawyered up. Fabienne Lopez joins HR Voices to walk through what happens when HR has no playbook for evidence that might not even be real, and has to build the investigation in real time.What you'll hear in this episode:Why jumping straight to "did the manager do it or

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00:35:06

How a Saks HR Exec Cracked a Favoritism Tip With Zero...

HR Voices ·

2026/08/19

An anonymous ethics hotline report lands on your desk. Widespread favoritism on the sales team. No names. No dates. No incidents. Nothing you can act on.The VP of sales wants it closed as unactionable. So you pull comp and promotion data just to be thorough, and the pattern lines up with the complaint almost perfectly.Now what?Rebecca Taylor hands this scenario to John Mezzo, a C-suite HR executive, with no prep and no warning. What follows is a working session on how to move on a claim with no

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00:33:04

When Managers Push Employees Out, the Risk Lands on HR

HR Voices ·

2026/08/05

A high performer goes quiet, and her manager decides she's quiet quitting and starts pushing her toward the door. What he doesn't know: she's caring for a parent with a terminal diagnosis. Host Rebecca Taylor and Cindy Williams, VP of HR at CAL's Convenience, break down why the real risk isn't the employee's silence, it's a manager who tried to engineer an exit instead of asking one honest question.Cindy runs HR for 2,500 employees across 210 frontline locations, and her take flips the script on

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00:26:52

No Moonlighting Policy, No Violation, Still a Problem...

HR Voices ·

2026/07/14

An HR analyst builds a $400/hour AI consulting practice on evenings and weekends. She never tells her employer. There's no moonlighting policy. Then her manager finds it on LinkedIn and raises concerns about loyalty, distraction, and whether she's using the company's AI tools for personal gain. So what can HR actually restrict?Rebecca Taylor sits down with Miriam Chan, Head of Global People Operations at Marrow, to unpack one of the most current employee relations scenarios in HR: moonlighting in

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00:34:39

When Off-Duty Expression Collides with Workplace Safety

HR Voices ·

2026/07/14

The conversation delves into the complexities of workplace tensions arising from off-duty political expression and employee concerns. It explores the impact on company culture, the importance of employee dialogue, and the need to challenge assumptions about HR's role. The discussion provides valuable insights into navigating workplace challenges and fostering a supportive employee experience.TakeawaysNavigating workplace tensionsImpact of off-duty political expressionChapters00:00 The Political Yard

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00:32:35

The Assumption That HR Needs to Solve

HR Voices ·

2026/06/25

SummaryOn 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 balance being an employee advocate and a business partner at the same time? And why does HR keep getting

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00:30:36

The Manager Who Broke the Rule and Was Right

HR Voices ·

2026/06/23

SummaryOn 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 race. Kandi makes the case that the bottom 10% is a leadership failure, not an employee verdict, and that

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28:59

When the Data Tells a Different Story Than the Manager

HR Voices ·

2026/06/18

SummaryOn 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 headcount gaps and fourteen direct reports was never flagged as a risk. The conversation moves from

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26:34

The Four Words That Keep HR in the Room

HR Voices ·

2026/06/16

SummaryOn 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 decision was made with no HR in the room. Julianne shares the four-word tactic she uses to insert

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20:55

The Talent Engine No Software Can Replicate

HR Voices ·

2026/06/11

SummaryOn 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 roles. He breaks down the machinery behind that pipeline, the training facility, the learning

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30:14

Tend Your Team Like a Garden

HR Voices ·

2026/06/09

SummaryOn 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, not a fair sample. They get into why managers who go quiet on anxious employees create the

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17:55

The Case Against Treating Everyone the Same

HR Voices ·

2026/06/04

SummaryOn 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 the same. She lays out a different model built on reciprocity, employee-led wellbeing councils,

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104 results

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