HR BESTIES - Holiday Bonus Time!

Episode Date: December 20, 2023

TODAY'S AGENDA AND NOTES: A recording of our live holiday party event Cringy corporate speak (sent in by a listener!) Holiday “traditions” - Mandatory holiday parties, time off, potlucks and everything that ends up in HR’s office Questions and comments - what we’ve seen and heard in our careers All this and more in our holiday party - if you missed this one (including the giveaway that we announced winners for last week after the event), join us for plenty more in 2024! To learn about your HR Besties and get merch, go to our HQ (our beautiful website): https://hrbesties.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ho, ho, ho, besties, and welcome to our HR besties holiday party. Now we recorded this live a week ago. But you know what, we absolutely wanted to share this with you as your special year in bonus because we know you're not getting one at work, are you? So enjoy besties. And thank you so much for joining us. We are so thankful that you are here. This is the season, right? For gratitude and appreciation. So just a small shout out to all y'all that have been listening. You're following. You're on with us tonight.

Thank you so, so much. We love doing this, right? So if you, if you can't hear it through the podcast, like I'll just like flat out say it, that we absolutely love doing this content and having these staff meetings and just sharing what we know and just talking business and bullshit, right? Hence the tagline, you know, so it's definitely appropriate. But again, so thankful. Cheers to you. Ashley was doing kind of a cheers. Cheers to all y'all, you know, that are with us tonight. Happy holidays. But thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Right. So just had to get that that thanks out of the way. But let's jump into the agenda because we do have a

hard stop, don't we? So our meetings, pretty typical. If you've heard one of the episodes, we're going to start with some cringy corporate speak. So Jamie's going to provide that to us. And then we are going to move into our meeting topic, which is everything and all things holidays in the workplace. right? So you can imagine everything from burnout to time off to all those work events, my God. So we're going to go into that a little bit, and then we're going to open up to questions and comments. And so many of you have provided some questions and tons of comments before this meeting, and you can do them live here in the chat as well. We can all see them, right? So welcome, welcome, welcome everyone that's joining and leaving comments. But we'll

move into some Qs and Cs. And then we're going to share some of our favorite things with several giveaways for you all. So we're super excited about that. So definitely hang in with us. E! And so we look forward to that because we love giving away stuff. And I love getting a bunch of free stuff myself. So that's always fun. College never leaves you mentally. You remember all those free meals and call? I don't know.

I don't know. Anyways, let's kick it off with Jamie. Turn it over to you for the cringe corporate speak. What do you got for us this meeting? So our corporate speak today is going to be piggyback. This was actually a listener that gave this as our idea. So everyone is going to try to sneak it in to tonight's holiday party. I actually, unfortunately, said piggyback in one of our episodes. So I'm already shamefully guilty of that. But yeah, piggyback. So Ashley, I mean, yeah, Ashley, I'm throwing it to you, I think,

for our meeting topics. Yeah, we appreciate that listener throwing in that cringy corporate speak. It's very true because now you're just envisioning one leader on, you know, hobnobbing on the back of another. That's what I think. Yeah. That's gross. Some of those. Yeah. And we've talked about, so if you can't see, Jamie and I are short.

Like we're, again, we've talked about this, that we're, if, if, if, if we were to get on top of each other, well, this doesn't, that didn't sound right. If we were to be, if we were to be like Mary-Kate and Ashley and the detective's coat, we would be about eye level with Lee. Like Lee is like for sure. She has an executive presence where I have the legs of a dachshund. Legs of a dachshund.

I haven't heard that one. I always say I have legs up to my ass. So feel free to drop in. Yes, I am fun size. Thank you. You're very, very fun size. And it's amazing seeing some of our friends, some of our favorite podcast hosts come in here. We have Legal Burnouts with Kate,

Corporate Gossip with Becca. I have Rosie down here, so you may see her popping up with her toy. I saw Justine's here. Hi, Justine. That's some awesome ones. I know, lots of friends. Love it.

So in our meeting topic, with some of the questions we got in, we will say this, that a lot of the questions and comments we got in advance, like over half of them, and there were, there were a lot of them, um, if we were to piggyback, we're, um, people writing into saying, um, like, just thank you. Just thank you. I feel seen. I'm a team of one and we appreciate that. And we literally read every review, all of those things. And we are very happy to be here and have people listen because we have a kick of it. And we've all been HR of different

teams, San Francisco, Australia, we've got an international crew. But so we appreciated those very much people that just wrote in to say things or to say funny things. And people that have been submitting some of these hilarious stories. So we'll get to that for season two. This is not, it's, I don't have a puppet. This is my dog. Um, but so the meeting, the meat of the meeting is a combination of some of the requests in part, which is all things holiday in the workplace. And so we thought we'd kick it off. We had a great suggestion from a listener, which is do's and don'ts of the holiday party. Or as they said, what can I do or at the holidays to not have a one-on-one with my boss on that next Monday morning? So yeah. So Lee, you want to kick us off? Absolutely. I do. Because for the HR professionals out there,

which I'm just going to make the assumption maybe is the majority of the crowd who knows right you work in the space of people oh my god I'm so sorry but I think we have all had that experience with some sort of repercussions from a holiday party at work I mean like I'm not not personally I'm just saying like with your workforce right like? Like we all have some stories to share. And so from a don't perspective, right? Just best practices is don't mandate attendance to your holiday events, right? Because then everyone's going to show up. And that means all those that don't behave within your workforce as well.

Like don't mandate it. Don't pressure people to show up. There are some businesses I've worked at them before where it's like you have to show up, you know, like the pressure from the boss or whatever. Everybody is different, right? There's neurodivergent folks out there. There's folks that are like extremely introverted like myself. Oh my God, please do not mandate the Christmas party. If I feel like the vibe is good, I'll be there. There's folks that are like extremely introverted like myself. Oh my God, please do not mandate the Christmas party. Like if I feel like the vibe is good, like I'll be there. But

if my vibes off for that day, like I'm out, you know, but please do not base my promotion on whether or not I can spend another five hours with folks on my Saturday. You know what I mean? So please like, don't, I think that's a, that's a, that's absolutely a don't, don't mandate attendance to a holiday party. I mean, are we in agreement on that? I agree. I think a lot of times too, HR is the people that have worked insanely hard to create the event, right? So in a lot of my career, I've been an HR department of one. So probably I've been planning for months, weeks, you know, and so I have to be there. And I'm busy. So I can't like enjoy, I can't even enjoy a glass of wine while I'm there because I'm running around making sure we have service awards or the boss knows the CEO speech or the drawing or the bonus or so. That's I mean, it

honestly the holiday I've never had fun at a holiday party simply because it's usually a stressful event for me. And can we not put it on HR? Thank you. Can we not put it on HR? I mean, because I've had to throw parties before myself. But what I did was I put a team together. Like I want representation from every function and make it like a team thing. So there's ownership and accountability with the business, you know? Uh, but man, it sucks always having to be the party planner. It's not a, it's, it should not, it really isn't a, a, a skillset. Like if just because you because you happen to be, you know, masochist as we've talked about and take on and try to navigate those things,

both the open enrollment, but also dealing with the people issues does not mean that you're necessarily good at talking to the people or showing up to the restaurant. And also the thing is some people have, you have kids and all of a sudden this night out, look at the going rate.

I don't know what happened in the pandemic, but the going rate for babysitters is quite significant. And so you're looking to people and I love, I see this note here, Callie, shout out Callie, that their boss used to hand out bonuses at the holiday party. And you like had to go and you felt like you had to go to get your bonus, right? Well, and that's also kind of, that's also, that's super, super awkward and that stuff happens, but it's also similar to what we talked about in the Dave Ramsey episode, which again, you know, we knew that would, that would

come up that topic, but was like to give out a referral bonus to somebody when their person starts, you give it out in front of the whole team. Well, let me tell you, everybody else on the other team has referred people and they're pissed. And the same thing, people are going to be gaining their bonuses and they're going to be trying to like peek at other people's. Also, who gets a physical check these days, unless it's a big giant check, that's enough money that people can retire.

So I would, yeah, like thinking about, thinking about dates and being inclusive. I say this, I am Jewish. I celebrate Hanukkah. And so a lot of people can feel like the other at work, whether you're a different religion or you have these things and just being mindful of those things. And when people get really defensive

and are like, I don't want to call it a holiday party. Like, okay, well, that tends to suggest some other things that are becoming my way from an employee relations standpoint. And I think that's why HR is usually put in charge of those because they're the ones that think about, oh, so-and-so is fasting. We can't have, you know, we need to make sure we have enough vegetarian options or fish options. I know at least for me, when I specifically, when I worked in hospitality is that a lot fell on me

because I knew that our population had, had different, you know, maybe not during Christmas time, but specifically for our Easter, there was a lot of fasting during that time on different religions and just being mindful of that. So it was always put on my plate because Lord knows if the CEO, you know, he would have just had steaks for everyone. No pun intended. You know, one of the best things I ever did was probably, like today I did like a video about different departments in the holiday party. You know, I worked in sales before I went to law school and we used to have this thing in sales, it was called in days. So it was like the end of the year, we'd have to be at work from seven to

seven. And it sounds like now that sounds like my worst nightmare when you're 22 and they give you free lunch and then you go to happy hour afterwards. It's, it's, it was absolutely a trap. It was absolutely a trap. It was absolutely a trap. Free beer. The call is coming from inside the house. The cash machine, you would like, if you got tickets for things, like you got to do a cash machine. Somebody won the little robot thing. Somebody else won a suitcase full of movies. And so everybody else on the team ended up getting a DVD for the holidays. But we did not really have a legal or HR department. And so I think the best thing I learned from an employment lawyer

perspective was being in sales before I went, I went to law school and seeing kind of the things that, that, that can happen at the holiday parties and having a good, having a good time. And so, yeah, we'll, we'll, anything you can share. I do. I mean, you say we we're on linkedin so we'll just say you know that's true do as do as i do as i say but i i will say that um you know sometimes having those we'll film something later and add it in that's right we'll add it we'll add it we'll get it to people to listen to season two we'll have some we have some tales from that time in my life. There's a good story. Couch cushion that went missing. You know, we'll have some, we'll have some, this is what's coming up in season two. But Lee, you want to, you want to flip us to the next, next do or don't?

Yes. Yes. Well, you know, one of the dues is that you should recognize that this isn't the happiest time of year for everybody, right? Like the three of us, we love the holidays, right? But for some, not so great. So again, I'm going to go back to don't mandate a holiday party. Don't believe everyone believes what you do, right? Really put that D-E-I-B hat on, but just be cognizant of that, that some people are really, really suffering at this time and do not feel like a party. And not to sound grinchy, because I love a party. And you all know that I do. Boy, we've seen your stories.

I'm just glad, like, the Internet wasn't really a thing. Like when I went to college, you know what I mean? Like, I can't be president. I already know that there's too much documentation. But thank God, like, I'm not a student now because that would have been oh my god that's horrific uh but uh yeah I can't there's no way I can be president sorry I just had like a thought about that like there's absolutely no way but anyway I've been on Facebook since 2004 like if you think about that no I was OG I, you know, but you had to

upload photos. You remember how hard that was? Like, no. Oh my God. And you just do that full download and there's like no resolution. Oh my God. I know. Yeah. You do the camera at the bar, but anyways, not to sound grinchy, but I would say don't even have a holiday party. Give the people what they want, which is either take that $250,000 you're spending on a holiday party, asterisk, depending on the size of your organization. I was about to say, hold on. I know, I've had some biggies.

I've had some biggies. And split it as bonuses to your people or holiday shutdown. Can we please have a break week? Just holiday shutdown it. Because even when you are off for the holidays, it sucks because like other people aren't. So they're still emailing, they're still calling,

you know, just give everyone just a mental wellness break, just time to reflect in the year, you know, and what, however your organization looks, that might not work for all industries. Obviously you have to close the year out, but then do it the first week of January and come back strong, right? But you know, something, do something, you know, else consider something else, you know, that's me again, Grinchy Grinchy. No, well, I think it's, I think it's just

thinking about the realities of things. Like I say, when I was 22 years old, having a holiday party was probably top on my, on my list. I, I lived in DC. I didn't, you know, I like lived with four, four girlfriends. Like it was like lean time. So I have a free event to go out and have like decent food and something other than like split a yingling. Like, absolutely. Um, but, but thinking about your, your, your workforce and what things are like, and especially right now, like read the room yeah read the room and so i i do think sometimes this is at like why it's asking team members and sometimes it can be either or you can do things that are celebratory like i love a good um

these comments coming hr besties for friends um i have present present something that's not a public office um but is is is to think about that. And that's what I think, making things optional. Like, so people that love, like that love a reindeer game, you want to do, like do things for each other. I've had situations or like, I talked about this last Thursday. I went to my mother's retirement. The people probably saw my video. My mother retired. She'd gone to law school later in life. And I will tell you, her state agency, I do not believe in the thing of like work as a family type of thing. This was like a jolly family. You've never met a public agency that's like so happy to be around each other. People are like so, so, so kind

and like they have all these like fun shenanigans. And so like what works in different workplaces matters. But recognizing for people, again, having like the bonus, like sometimes right now it's sometimes it is that bonus or it is like the time off, like right, right before Thanksgiving, I played in a tennis, a tennis match. I, I, I'm not as, I'm not as bougie as you think. I'm, uh, I, I'm, I'm out there hacking it, but I played against this against someone. And she was like, Oh, my workplace were actually shut down for this week of Thanksgiving. They took away our box access. So we can't even log in. Do you know how many people I've told about this? And she's like, it's actually great. We literally can because, you know, like I now have a little bit because I have my own business and I'm like working on things and just keeping

up with stuff. So like we're driving down from Atlanta to Florida and I, you know, I'm keeping up with stuff to think about that piece of time, being an employee and literally being able to check out and it not being like just socially acceptable, but like mandated, that is a gift that can, that can matter so much to people, no matter their family status, their friends anyway. So I think giving that aspect of time off when it's realistically, what's actually going to get done and then rewarding the people that have to work, your frontline workers, your skeleton crew, doing things like that, I think is important. Yeah.

So quickly on the holiday party do's and don'ts, do keep your pants on. Do keep your shirt on. Because I've had both of those. Not me, I'm just saying. No, not me. No, not me. No, not me. What about my hat? I'm just saying.

People get wild. They can. Right? And then there's always after parties. So maybe a don't is don't attend the after party, especially if you're a leader. Yes. That might be good, you know, because that can come to bite you. You don't tend to regret drinking too little or leaving too early.

But on the flip side, the others tend to lead to some things. I see James. Yeah, people love to get loose. People love to get loose over the holidays. Any other do's and don'ts? Any other do's and don'ts? Definitely drop them in the chat. Just love to hear them.

Recognize everyone's hard work for the year. Recognize your employees. Appreciation, thankfulness. I love it. Well, and one thing with recognition is I've talked a lot to organizations that think about recognizing sometimes people hear recognition or they hear terms like that and the people in business are like, oh, that's awkward. Like, I don't know what to do. So putting it in your language or one of the tools I talk about is

using ChatGPT. ChatGPT is not your diary and it's not an encyclopedia. So you don't want to put personal information in there. But if you're in leadership and we're saying, recognize your team members and you're thinking, how on earth do I do that? Going to ChatGPT to saying like,

this is my general role and what are the few different ways? Holiday your message. I mean it, but like, don't pop like, like Luke would absolutely copy and paste that. But thinking about ways to put that, you don't have to be so, so formal, but doing it in the ways that are authentic to you. I think it's important too about recognition is you need, you should already know how your

team wants to be recognized too. So for instance, I think that's something that you need to ask everyone on your team immediately to get to know them. Because what if I do not want to be publicly recognized and then you called me out in front of a room full of 500 people? I would be mortified, right? But I do love it. But on the flip side, you know what I mean? There could be someone who wants to be publicly and you instead privately recognize them.

So I think that's really important too, that sometimes it really is a simple, hey, thank you for going the extra mile. But someone's guilty of using chat PPT. I mean, it's helpful. That should be a whole season two episode about AI and EMR. Yeah. But anyway, that's all i wanted to say about recognition as just make sure you know what what kind of recognition that your team wants to

receive yeah no i love that and you know to kind of segue because this is all things holiday workplace right uh besides just the holiday party there's all the work events during work time, right? So the appreciation lunches, the team lunches, team dinners, the swag gifts, the potlucks, like all the things. I know the secret Santas in the office. Oh, I hate it. Like all of the things. I'm already having a reaction to all of the things that are happening. Yeah. Our thoughts on just all of those holiday activities in the workplace. You know, for me personally, like I love to celebrate. I really, really do. But what I have observed in my HR career is that I think that a lot of those activities make people more uncomfortable than they actually enjoy them. Does that make sense? Like, make that make sense. You know what I'm saying? especially even now versus earlier in my career, they have more boundaries with work. They try not to perhaps get too close to folks or they stay professional or whatever, you know?

And so for them, even I just have folks that hate recognizing their birthdays at work. They don't even want people to know their birthday month, right? So like, what's the boundary there, you know, between like, you know, team building and togetherness and belongingness and then, you know, doing all of these sorts of activities there. Like, how do we balance that in the workplace? Jamie, you want to kick us off? I would say, once again, that's one of the first questions that I typically ask, like intake, new hire, is do you want your birthday to be recognized, dietary restrictions? I mean, this is just being HR for the last 20 years. What kind of recognition? These are things that should be asked day one, actually before day one, before they even get in. So you as a manager knows what your team member needs, wants, and how you can react to that for

anything, not just team member dinners. But also too, I have young kids and I always feel guilty saying no to things like a night vent and I shouldn't have to because I have young children. Um, and, and so I think, you know, once again, when we were 20, I'll, I'll go to a happy hour and I'll sling back a couple, but I don't, I can't do that now. You know, I got to get home. I got to pick up kids, daycare closes at a certain time. Um, so it's just being mindful of your staff and who

they are and kind of meeting them in the middle and having those events at work. I prefer to have events at work because you're getting paid to have said events. And then you're not being told to be, you know, at, you know know happy hour down the street at 6 p.m when daycare closes at 6 p.m i mean i think and also i have so some of these new hire questionnaire i have a manager method.com if you go to um my free resources i have onboarding guides that's information to learn about the new employee and to teach them about the team so feel free to get those for free those are not um those are free on managermethod.com. So it's like, so I think, but I agree is in some of the comments about potlucks.

And to me, things like- Y'all know how I feel about potlucks. Things like Secret Santa, White Elephant. And I've gotten some questions like, what is White Elephant? And so, and for those that, especially outside, it seems like a uniquely US thing, like Secret Santa being like, you know,

I have Lee, you know, I have, I have Lee, you know, I'm getting her secret things. And some people will go all out and they're like Elfie. And, you know, they leave like notes. Other people are like, oh God, like, I could just forget. There's a $25 gift card. Yeah, there's like a disparity. Or they forget and they're like, I don't want to,

there's like a disparity. Or the white elephant, which is like where we go and we have all of us in a room. And, you know, you go and pick out. It's like Dirty Santa. Yeah, which is like where we go and we have all of us in a room. And you know, you go and pick out... It's like Dirty Santa. Yeah. I don't like that phrase. I don't know why. But you go and unwrap a gift. And I was talking to a friend that went to a work thing. And she's like, oh my God, I got like a funny thing. And she's like, people started unwrapping. And she's like, I was like crawling in my chair because people are unwrapping like serious, like a beautiful ornament. And she's like, people started unwrapping. And she's like, I was like crawling in my chair because people are unwrapping like serious, like a beautiful ornament. And she's like,

oh my God, mine's like vaguely inappropriate. And she's like, I literally was like, couldn't even pay attention because I was like shaking. I wanted to like run out of the room because she's like, mine was the only funny one. And I'm like, well, that sounds like a sad, sad team. But so, but it's, it's like the same thing with a potluck where, you know, if you do a white elephant, no one picks your gift. No one steals your gift. People's feelings get hurt. The potluck, I can tell you, is ripe for the food poisoning.

And it's also the judging. People are like, who made this? And then someone says and they skip over it. Yeah. Nope. Yeah. Well, you know, Jamie, I love that concept of including some of these personal questions, you know, you can or cannot answer. Right. One of those through your onboarding process, because it really does create this feeling of belonging, like right from the jump, because research says that people decide whether they're going to leave a job within the first two weeks of starting it. Right. I mean, wow. Look what we're up against.

And reflect back. Like when you start a job, you already get kind of like weird vibes or nobody cares about me. No one even showed me where the bathroom was. Like nobody like, you know what I mean? So that's a fair point, you know, to kind of do that. But I think, again, for me, it returns back to don't mandate anybody to do anything that's like elective at work and that, you know, like respect people's authentic whole selves in the workplace, who they are, their differences. And if you are a leader or if you're coaching leaders, better said, even, you know, encourage them to lean in and actually

care and understand who they're leading. Get to know who they're leading. And some of the folks they're leading may not even want to share about themselves. But then, hey, that's a cue to the leader. Oh, OK, they're private. And I'm going to respect that. You know what I mean? So maybe I won't do the open recognition or the bonus or whatever the case may be.

But again, I think the onus is on the leader to flex to each and every person on their team and not the opposite. Some of the worst leaders I've had, man, it's always everyone flexes to them. And it is just like, wait, what? You know, to me, it doesn't work that way, but you know, whatever. What do I know? I think one thing to keep in mind as well

is as leaders is thinking about succession planning. And what I really mean by that is does your job look like one that people would ever want to have? And as you think about who's, you know, who in your wizardry might go through the org chart, it's important to be able to have internal promotions because if you're only hiring externally, that creates a lot of, a lot of issues. And so you should be working on that, but it's a two-way street. And so some of those things

that people are going to keep in mind are those things of, does my leader, like, is their job to be planning these after hours events? And is that something that I see them doing? Like every night they're going out with members, even they're coming home, they're coming to the office or on calls and complaining about, oh, I had all these client dinners and I'm thinking, I can't possibly do this. So I'm never going to even put myself out there. But also those in-office events, if you've ever seen those where you go to a luncheon and it may be a luncheon and you're like, okay, well, this is our thing. We're doing it together. And you look around and like some of the employees are there and others are like outside on the phone the whole time. And in your mind, you're thinking this, it's, it's, this is not like a surgeon or this is like a life, life and death. This is like

something into being able as a leader to think about how is this looking to my team? And am I like, this is our like annual thing. And is this like just some people like, okay, just more of the same and being able to really take that time and focus and show up. Sometimes you may think that that's the easiest time to skip over, but that's actually often the most important time to invest and be able to show that you can also take time. I just think that that's a thing that a lot of, a lot of leaders aren't thinking about the, like what they're portraying. And then they end up surprised when people want to leave because they think to themselves, like, I don't see myself in that position. Yeah.

Because, you know, whatever you're doing as a leader, whatever you're hosting as an organization, you know, people are going to make judgments on their own cultural fit within that company, organization, team, department, whatever the case may be, you know. So I love that. I think that's just something to recognize. There's no right answer, right? But again, I think it is about understanding, listening, flexing, you know, figuring out what works best for your organization, you know, so anyways, can't wait for more work events in the office. But I think that the consensus is, should we be doing potlucks?

Probably not. No. Just cater. Cater that shit. Cater. Some people have some amazing recipes. There may be people that are, sometimes everyone's awesome.

Oh yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure they do. I just don't want to try them and get sick. I mean, really, it does. It ends up being like this comment, Sarah and here, stress of making something perfect for the potluck and wanting other people to like it.

People pleaser here is so stressful. I talked about this in a video. We're very real. I once made a muffin and not lux. That's amazing. I had, I literally saw someone, senior leader, take a bite out of my muffin, look at it, make a face and throw it away.

Oh my God. Yeah, no, no, face and throw it away. Oh my God. Yeah, no, no, no. That image is burned in my head. That's hilarious. Yeah, no. For the record, everything I've ever made has been a hit. She has. She's made nothing, by the way.

She's made nothing. I have because my, like in my culture, like, you know, here and I'm in San Antonio, it's like, it's very, it's very, it's pretty communal. Like we love making stuff and swapping food and all of that. You know what I mean? And so, but I still. It's gotta be a trusted source for me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It, like I would eat your food, Lee. I would eat your food, Ashley. Like. You made me real nervous when you said leave, leave. No, no, no. I'm cause I'm. I'm not eating your muffins, Ashley. I'll tell you that.

You can make me your muffins when I stay. Thank you. I will. You can come and stay and stay at my house again. And I will make them for you. I will eat your muffins. And you will make a face. All right.

Actually, there was a comment. And I think this would be a great question. But there was a comment that someone took their gift very seriously in White Elephant or Dirty Santa. And they received a rubber chicken. you received, but what was the worst dirty Santa or a white elephant gift that, that you were received from, um, whoa, from, uh, work specifically work. I actually, this was a couple of years back had someone receive a hamster. No shit. Like a live hamster? A live hamster. Yeah. What a dead one, Ashley. What in the... Oh, my God. No, well, okay.

You're just saying like a real... Hold on. No, no. She couldn't take it back to the pet store. She couldn't take it back. And of course, the person that received it didn't want it. So what, do you flush it? So no.

Luckily, another employee took it home to her child. But I'm not telling... Like like this was like the hit of the office everyone thought it was so hilarious but it was not funny like the person that received it was horrified and and then the person that gave it thought she thought she was being like cheeky but she was mortified a live hamster y'all man like i've even seen fish before but that's not you know it's a fish as it was a main but a live freaking hamster it was in like a box and had a wheel like like it unwrapped and we were all like all right i'm gonna have to deal with this oh it was amazing like that's just giving someone a chore for Christmas, you know, $2 tortilla chips.

How long did you say you like Mexican food? But how long do hamsters live? Like, I don't know. Honestly, if you were to tell me they lived for two months, I'd be like, okay. Or if you were to say 20 years, I'd be like, also, I mean, I think that if you take good care of them, I think they live a while. I don't know. I've never had a hamster. I'll tell you. No, like it was a big deal. People still like talked about it years later. Like the next year that we did, it was white elephant that we did. The next year they were like, I hope no one gives. And of course the poor girl is mortified.

Yeah. I would have shut that shit down. We're never playing this game again. People don't know how to be. Even away souls, creatures. No live animals in the rules. But have you seen, but you know what I'm talking about? To clarify, to clarify, because I feel like I need to, I need to.

Circling back to piggyback. In the key of soul. You know the thing, a cracker barrel or wherever, where it's like a, it's like a battery, a battery operated and you put it in a thing. They live two to three years. Oh no, this was live. Oh geez. That's a lot of coming. I'll tell you put it in a thing. They live two to three years. This was live. Oh, geez. That's a lot of.

I'll tell you. I'll tell you. I'll tell you a holiday, a holiday, a holiday one. It was, it was my husband's. So my husband and I, you know, we worked together. We met at when we were 22 working together. And we, you know, we may have had a kiss at our team holiday party. So we're going to start through there. So then a couple of days later was our secret Santa.

And our boss was about a year older than us. Again, we were 22. She was a very wise 23. And so everyone gave everyone presents. And then we process of elimination. The last, she was like, I'm going last. And so the last person to go is, is, is my husband and Dan. And so she gives him two presents and she opens it up and it's a little airplane bottle, um, of, of vodka. And then she gives another thing.

And it's a framed copy of my intranet picture. And she said, because now clearly the two go together. And I was very, very, you know, embarrassed, but you know, 20 plus years later, it was almost exactly probably 20 years ago. And so, yeah, it worked out, but let me tell you from, that's what I say from the HR legal standpoint, you know, I'm trying to think of the worst gift I've received. I've received actually some really sweet things. I mean, we're like, I've like cried, you know, all dumb, like things that are like monogrammed or meaningful or whatever. You're such a good cook, Lee. Oh, exactly. So you will, you shall be rewarded for your cookies. Did you cry when you received my gift? Have you received my gift? Yes, I did. Yeah.

Did you cry when you received my gift? Have you received my gift? Yes, I did. Yeah. Yeah. I have it up too. But yeah, because I'm like that. HSP, highly sensitive person. But I remember one gift that really sucked.

And I hope they are listening. Is that someone gave me a perfume sample from the freaking mall. Like where it's just a little bottle. Like the teeny tiny. mall. Like, you know, like where it's just the little bottle, like, like the teeny tiny, like, yeah, like, yeah, I don't have, yeah, not even that big, like a third of that size. You know, I bought someone something all, you know, nice, of course, you know, to the point, which is fine. Right. I mean, that's fine, but you know, a little reciprocity would have been more fine than a free perfume sample but anyways yeah it was like that you know what i mean but it was like hey thanks a lot for it yeah that's

kind of ridiculous but uh but that's okay so basically i smell that's how i took that right obviously i stink uh so i'm sure it was something meaningful like that that they were you know sending me a low-key high-key message there so that was lovely you know we've gotten monogram oven mitts we got a meat box for two people we're family of five thanks thank you thank you i love a good box i actually just thought of one that i'm insanely mortified we did darty santa and it was it it was, this is when I worked for a nonprofit guys. And so just the exec level did it. And I think our limit was like 30 bucks.

And so I bought $30 worth of lottery tickets because I thought that was a great gift. I thought anyone, men or women could enjoy that. And our CEO got my box and she was like, I've never played the lotto. What do I do? What am I supposed to do? And I was literally mortified. Like she made me feel like utter shit. And I thought that was like a great gift because what if she won? Did she want a couple of free tickets? But I mean, she was like, so what do I do with these? Do I have to go to the gas station?

I'm pretty sure she sent her executive assistant to go get them. Oh my gosh. You basically gifted her hope. I was mortified. I thought that was such a good gift. I mean, I will never get lottery tickets ever again for anyone. But I thought that was a great gift. Well, you can give that to me. That is something that we do in my family.

We love giving people hope and the chance for money. I mean, yeah. She was not impressed. Oh, God. All right. All right. So I'm looking at the time. I know that we do have a hard stop, and we absolutely want to save time for questions and comments. So drop some questions here in the chat. I know we received one. Yeah, we've received some. But just a couple things that I had on the list for the meeting topic is terms and layoffs over the holidays. Rude, super rude. Terrible. Please do not do that. That is so freaking rude. Okay, gosh, I hope there's finance people here on this call. Stop with that shit.

I hope there's finance people here on this call. Stop with that shit. Time off and overworking, PTO, all of those things. If you're taking the time, please take the time, disconnect, take care of yourself as much as possible. That's so important. And then just burnout in general, right? Like this is the time of year to just be totally maxed out, especially if you're an HR professional,

because why do we shove every single HR activity into the last month of the year? Like people aren't working around here trying to close out the year or anything. Oh my gosh. So take care of yourself, you know, do all the self-care, all of that. We're thinking of you as we think of ourselves trying to survive, trying to survive this month. We're in the exact same boat, just like treading water, trying to make it through. But holidays in the workplace, any closing thoughts, Ashley and Jamie, any comments, anything profound to share? anything profound to share profound well you know well you you guys know i took i texted y'all last week i think it was when we were

in our little text chat and i was saying how this this season's particularly i am i'm always very high stress not only do i have the holidays but i also have a couple of kids' birthdays. Lee and I both are December babies. We're Sagittarius Queens. And so I was joking with them and I'm not kidding. I literally have a spreadsheet that I have to keep. And they were like, you should sell that. You should make that a digital thing. Because in 2024, I got the shingles. And so I think- Do you call it the shingles? Because of the- I think you just got the shingles. And so I think... Did you call it the shingles? Because of the...

I think you just said the shingles. The shingles in 2024. 2014, I got the shingles. Anyway, long story short is we don't... Not only do we have the added work stress of like closing out the year, holiday parties, et cetera. Just be mindful that your employees have so much outside of work as well. Maybe they have 800 birthdays like me in their family or

whatever it is. So just be mindful as employees aren't going to be 100% in December. And guess what? That's okay. Yeah. I think recognizing people again during the holidays need things. And sometimes it's, it's kid things and then adds other things to your employees that don't have children. And so just, they have their personal needs as well and everything is as valid. But a lot of times I think recognizing the things people have during the day, and I've seen situations or heard of situations where people show up to a school event and they're like, I got to go. My boss is, you know, my boss doesn't know I'm here. And I think that's, that's just such a, it's so sad, especially when you look at situations where people talk about like, oh, parental involvement

in schools. Well, in the workplace is a huge enabler of how people can show up, whether they show up for their children elsewhere in their community for themselves, you have those really strong ripple effects. And so if you think about like, are you kidding me? Like an hour away, an hour and a half away. So someone doesn't have to sneak out to go to their mental health appointment or to go to see their children's holiday activity to stop that aspect. And especially as you look at for hourly employees as well, thinking of ways that organizations can support, because frequently they're thinking to themselves two things. One is I don't want to ask my boss for the time off

and two, I can't afford it. So that hour and a half level, if you can give that to your employees and give generous enough PTO plans so you're not cutting out of someone's vacation to try to take time away and just letting them go out and come back, that can be a difference that people literally remember

for their whole lives. And it's a real privilege of leadership to be able to give, give people that time and give it to them without shame or fear. Oh, mic drop right there. Are there any questions or comments or not a question, but a quick comment? Are there any questions and comments? What do we have? Ashley? We got some in our chat. We have some in our chat.

I love it. These Sagittarius Queens. I'm a Pisces, which I don't know what that means about me. You bake shit muffins. No, it's fine. No, it's fine. You can redeem yourself. I'm going to say I will.

Oh, don't worry. I can't wait to eat your muffin i can't i can't wait till lee comes lee comes to stay at my house jamie will willingly take it lee's gonna wake up and i'm gonna be in her face with a muffin in front of her in front of her mouth like a hot cranberry almond muffin it's exactly what it was yes it was a cranberry almond bran muffin which i know know sounds disgusting. It does kind of. But so we got some questions in advance. And these are real questions. These weren't ones that we made up to be like, oh, we got some planted. We're not planting quite.

Yeah. Like in every all hands. Every all. Oh, yeah, I know. Shocking. How did the CEO get so handsome? Like, oh, my God, who said that? So winding up some of the questions and comments is one had asked, hey, hold on.

Do managers and leaders that you work with, did they know about things like the podcast? And so let me flip it and say, how do you think about balancing social media and work? And I'll say for myself, so I've been in legal and HR, I have my own business. And so everybody I work with right now has all found me on social media or word of mouth or I've known. And so that helps me tremendously as a sieve so people know kind of my style and things like that. But I do take that as... I do take that very seriously. And I think about things. I like to get jokey jokey. And I like to be funny. I like to do things I think are funny. But I also, things that I talk about with like manager training,

like I take that very seriously. And so, but the thing that I love the most is when we launched the podcast, how many people, and I mean like, like of all levels of, including like chief people officers reached out and they were like toe sucking. And I just, like, I just think in so many,

and I think part of this is HR, but every profession, a lot of times you're just trying to be human and just show your real personality. And so for me, I've appreciated that. Every time I work with people, we end up laughing on a call. And so that's been really, really helpful for me.

And I take that seriously. But there's definitely situations where I've been an employee where you never would have heard me pop up on a podcast or do any social media because that was verboten. Yeah. Let the record show that the first phrase of this entire podcast was toe-sucking. And you're welcome. But, you know, I'll tell you that I'm an HR executive, right? So I do work full-time. And I've been in HR, I don't know, 18 years, but it feels like 80, whatever the dog years are, HR years, right? You have to, I have to do the

conversion. But going into this, to this role, I negotiated HR manifesto in to say, Hey, that's, manifesto in to say, Hey, that's, you know, that's, that's me, right. This is something that needs, um, it's going to, I just literally want to accept the job without HR manifesto coming along. Uh, but you know, of course I'm never going to use my current employer name or any moments from anything I share has nothing to do with my, employer. And I don't name drop companies, right? Or people, right? I protect the guilty and the innocent when I share stories, you know? But I'll tell you, I've had a lot of employees email me globally, like, oh, my gosh, you know, it's I didn't realize I worked with you and, and whatever else and a lot of my colleagues are in my DMS. And they're enjoying, you know, and so they they found out about it, and they reach out. And that's, that's kind of neat.

You know what I mean? So that's, that's been, that's been different. That's new, but I enjoy it for sure. Yeah, so for me, I keep it on the DL. I think at my current job, I'm pretty new. I don't think a lot of people know, and that's okay. I would prefer it that way. If they found out, they haven't said anything to me, which is fine too. Now at my last company, no one knew until I left. And it's actually been great because one, that company was amazing and they were supportive, but I knew they were not going to be

super fond of the podcast. So that is why I choose to leave. But everyone from my old company reaches out and tells me what huge fans they are of the podcast. And it really makes my day. And I wish that every company was, you know, because we're able to do these things. We're able to run not only our social media accounts, but to have a podcast and still work full-time jobs and be moms or wives or sisters or brothers, you know, not brothers. But you know what I mean?

We're all able to- Whatever. Don't call me out. You know, we're all able to be these things and still be successful in our careers. We're all able to be these things and still be successful in our careers. So I will say, I will dread the day, though, that I'm in a meeting and someone goes, hey, wait, aren't you Humorous Resources?

And I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. Well, we did get that. We did get this. And I'll say this as one thing to circle back. So I back is, so I started, so as a lawyer, my first in-house job, meaning not working for a law firm, working directly for a company, I went to work for a client and that is Cumulus Media, so radio station. And so they have, but they have podcasts. And so a lot of what I did was like work on, I was part of a lean legal team. We had so much fun. Like I, I'm happy to talk positively. We worked eight to five. We'd like watch YouTubes. We had so many laughs as our legal department and just had amazing relationships with our colleagues across it. And a lot of those colleagues in radio haven't, don't have advanced degrees. And so it was like very, a lot of salt of the earth people that have moved on up and they're looking for you for advice. And it was just really great relationships that we had with legal. But I used to edit all the time, like

radio agreements and talent agreements and podcasts. And so if you would have told me, you know, 12, whatever years ago, 11, 12, 12 years ago, that I would ever be on this side of the mic, it is like the craziest dream come true. And it's amazing. These people I worked with, including one I was very close with that passed away at the beginning of the year, who used to respond. He used to DM me almost every day on LinkedIn. And he kept saying, you need a podcast. You need a podcast. I'll do your audio because he's like an audio wizard. And so for me, it's been a real... The highlight of my career has been people I worked with or being on this side and letting go of my... I'm a lawyer. This is it. And so I hope as people listen, you think about ways that you can leverage that creative aspect or things that you had in your mind. Like I always wanted to be

a playwright. And so bringing this in different ways that we do as we talk about episodes, like it is such, it is a pleasure and it is both validating and horrifying that so many people have can relate to our experiences. But so for like, I literally lived on like the boring side of this for years and years and years. And so it's been amazing to like unleash, unleash, you know, my, my thoughts on the world with, with my, my two besties. But one of the questions we got as well, one is have you ever been recognized in, in public? And I know the answer to Lee.

I have not. Yeah. Lee was recognized when we were filming. I mean, we'll recording season one. Lee was recognized when we were filming. I mean, well, recording season one. It was hilarious. Yeah, we went out to dinner. Yeah. And the way that guy just walked by. It was amazing. What did he say?

I love your comedy skit. I love your comedy account. I love your comedy account. Oh, thank you. We could not. None of us could hold it in. Yeah. yeah well i think the coolest thing is i get bought drinks people buy me drinks like i've had platters of shots like to the table and stuff i maybe that's an overshare but i do i do appreciate that when you shoot me and you do that versus

people that like will take photos of me like which, which is fine. You can take a photo, but you don't have to be like weird about it. Like just come up. I know I have, you know what I mean? I know I look scary as hell cause I'm like 5'11 and all like RBF. Well, you, I wouldn't call it RBF. You have a no face and Jamie and I have yes faces.

And that's, and that's what makes us mesh. It's expressive, but when it's not on, it's just like rbfe but yeah yeah so that just happened you could tell he would have been thinking about it and she was like yeah his wife was like bro really yeah i was i was i got recognized at the taylor swift concert with my daughter but i was in and we were in the second to top row, um, nose, literal nose blades.

And this, I, I went to take a picture to the people next door as we were taking parents, taking pictures of each other. And I was taking a picture and these people gave me a funny look. And I thought I was like putting my like rear end in their face. And I was so embarrassed.

And this man said, like, yeah, he's like, do you make HR videos on social media? And my daughter was whipping out her phone. It was the, the,

the, like the only thing cool is when your kids see it and they think you're not a complete weirdo. Yeah. If you ever see me out and I'm with my husband or my children, please. Because they don't think I'm cool at all. So specifically my almost 11-year-old. Please, for the love of God. I don't know if you have 700 million followers on Instagram.

It's pretty cool. Oh gosh, I'm cognizant of time. Of course, we're not going to have a hard stop. Look at us. We suck at time management. But that's okay. It's the holidays. Any other questions? Any other questions we have, Ashley, that we want to hit real quick before we do the giveaways, of course, and favorite things? I mean, someone, so, so to hit real quick before we do the giveaways, of course, and favorite things. I mean, so two things we'll talk about in season two. And so we'll have to leave it at that a little bit because one is the craziest thing we've seen at work. But we have to put, I mean, you will hear our stories. We have many crazy things we've heard.

And so we will put them, many of them involve, well, I mean, we started off the season, but so we'll, with the toe sucking and the bodily functions, but we will, we promise you, we will bring you every single week, some wild stories from the field. I was going to say, I mean, just please go check out HR Manifesto, but go back like a year or two. I used to like really share like anything and everything.

I mean, it's a lot and it's all true. You know, so people are like, you're making this crap up. No, I'm not. Like these are these are real things that have happened in my work career. And that's why it's hard for me to sleep at night. But that's okay. You know, happy holidays. Lots of crazy stories, though. you know, happy holidays. Lots of crazy stories though. Lots of crazy stories. Any other questions, Ashley? The last, well, another one is going to be how to find a mentor at work. And that's a subject we're actually gonna be tackling on season two, which is, which is how, how to have those. So we will, we will, we will tackle that because that's longer than we can get into in a quick Q&A. I know. These questions are deep.

I love it. In fact, we should just do like a Q&A podcast episode, right? I think we're going to. We'll solicit for questions and then just be like, hey, this is a viewer's question. Viewer's choice. Choose your own adventure. That would be good. Yeah.

And also, we are collecting stories as well. So if you have a crazy HR story, send it to us. I put it in the chat. You can send it either through our HR Besties page or you can send it horrendoushr at gmail.com. I'm collecting them there as well. And not only are the three of us going to have our crazy HR stories, but we're going to read anonymously y'all's as well. So we'll do, we have, so in our last minute, we'll do some giveaways and the way we're going to do it is I think the first people to email hello at HR besties, which is our

email address. And so we will do it in that order. And so we will let you know if you want something or not, but we have a few things to give away. And that felt like the most fair way to do it. And you can also, while you're there, you can send things again. We will do things anonymously, but I will kick it off and show you, because we have our favorite things. One of my favorite things is a puffin. And so puffins sent these to us. So full disclosure, I had to see, but I love puffin. And I talked about how much I love Puffin

and Puffin was very nice and said, hey, we will give you a couple. So Puffin are koozies that look like other things. Love a good shrunken thing. It is a koozie that looks like a parka. And there we go. So this is one of the things that we will be giving away different things.

So email hello at hrbesties.com. And we will, again, let you know what you have won for those that won. And if you did not, we will still, again, let you know what you have won for those that won. And if you did not, we will still, we will let you know. We always, in fact, so yes, I will give two different people away these puffins and they're a blast. And we'll put it in our stories too, right? So, you know, so, you know, we're just not making this up, right? Like it's like, for real, we have stuff. I have a couple giveaways myself. If you all have seen WTF notebooks, we the three of us freaking love them.

But they they gave a shout out to WT notebooks, a couple of things. And so two separate prizes. The first is this hard back notebook here. Oh, I know. Did you see that instantly do that? Uh, but this one is entitled shit. HR wants me to stop saying, uh, so definitely thought that that was appropriate. Uh, and then this one, it's like an eight by 10 spiral bound, whatever notebook. It's a notebook.

It's a whatever, like, what is that? Uh, employees I'm thinking about firing. it's a notebook. It's a whatever, like, what is that? Employees, I'm thinking about firing. That's so cute. Like, tis the season for HR. So those are two of the gifts there. And I'll mail those to you. I'll put a little, I was going to say love letter, but that's probably inappropriate from an HR perspective, but that's okay. I'll still do it. from an HR perspective, but that's okay. I'll still do it. And then I am working with a company, again, shout out, another shout out, brand shout out, Aura, which is a mental wellness app. And I don't know if anyone is using that, but they reached out to me and offered me a trial and I have just fallen in love with it or else I wouldn't recommend it to you

all. But they have given us a three-month premium subscription to that app and they have everything on that app. And so we're going to give one of those away like tis the season for self-care and mental wellness. Am I right? But definitely check out my stories now. I've got something up on them if you want to link because they're offering all of you all a week of premium as well as 40% off any subscription, right? So definitely check that out. And that's one of the gifts there. Jamie, what do you got? We have 111 candles they are um a hand-poured soy candles and um they smell amazing but they also have crystals in them and i'm a crystal girly um but i want you know that whoever wins that you get to pick out your candle um so i'm not to pick your scent for you. And then we have PB Forever, which is

a t-shirt brand that I'm obsessed with. And they're really cute. But once again, you have to pick it out yourself and then tell me what you want and I will send it to you. And we have, don't forget, HR Besties merch. I do. Yes. So we will be... Yes. I have this. I opened it to show you, but it's new. But I'm going to mail it to you. I have not used this. Unless you want me to use it and then mail it to you, that's kind of weird. That's like an OF thing. But anyways, we have this mug that went down a weird place. I apologize. Show your feet. Yeah, exactly. That's not one of the gifts, but we have this incredible mug here. Absolutely love. And so that is one of the gifts there. And then also a gift certificate for HR Besties merch. And so we'll send you a special code so you can pick something out. So that's another one of the gifts. So we're so excited to share with you all. And I see the question in the chat. What is the email address again? Hello at HRBesties.com. I put it in and I tried to type in speak. So my sentence doesn't even make sense. Is the email to send an email to enter? Blah, blah, blah. But hello at HRBesties.com. I didn't use that because I think that might attract spam. Maybe that's an urban legend, but yes.

Yeah. Send us a note and just be like, hey, I'd like to enter. I'm trying to do it too in the chat. So yes, we, but we're super excited. Thank you all for season one. I mean, it's, this is, you know, we hit the top 10 business on Apple and Spotify, which is very exciting. And, but altogether,

like when we get these notes, we get the submissions to our website. Um, it literally, like this is, this is the feedback that like we've lived our entire professional lives for. And we just, we really enjoy it. We love, we love being together. We have a good time together and we're about to get together and do season two. Um, so we have anything, anything exciting to tease in season two, Lee and Jamie? Well, what I'll say is I think for season two, we may have some special guests. So I know, so that'll be cool. We'll probably do some, like we said here, some question and comments sort of seasons there. So excited about that. So we're going to mix it up a little bit. It was still, you know, joining our staff meeting and whatnot, but it'll definitely have,

you know, some new flavor and some hard hitting content there. So we cannot wait to share that with you. And Jamie, 2024. I just, I just want to say thank you guys so much. You know, I created humorous resources when I was a department of one and this podcast has really made me feel like I'm not alone. And I just, every comment, every like, every share, every review means the world to us. And I'm not kidding. Our chats, our little text back and forth to each other are always filled with them. And we're always crying because it really does mean the world to us that you guys appreciate this. And I'm glad we're able to put HR on the map finally.

Yes. Thank you so much for spending a December Monday with us. I know we added an extra meeting on your calendar, but we so appreciate you all. And we look forward to season two with you all as well. So thank you so much. We'll announce the winners and our stories and we will definitely get back to everybody and get those gifts out to you. Crossing fingers that you win. But thank you so much again, everybody for joining us tonight. Thank you all so much.

We can't wait. In 2024, we have a few events. We will announce them in the future that we will be at. And so if you'd like to see us at your event or in your city, let us know, because if you think we're fun on video or in your ears, wait till you see us in real life with Lee's platter of shots. And I'll piggyback off of Ashley. Exactly. I always get the word.

I always get the word. You're good at that. Happy holidays. See, I have my Hanukkah tie. There we go. But happy holidays, everybody. Cheers. Enjoy your celebrations.

Keep your pants on at work. And every other article. I know. Cheers, everybody.