HR BESTIES - HR Besties Happy Hour: What's Going on in SHRM's World?

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

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

It's happy hour, besties. We love a happy hour episode, don't we? Clink, clink. Cheers, cheers. Oh, what's not going on? Ashley, start us off with what's not going on? Boy, there's a lot. There's a lot. There's a lot in the world. There's a lot in HR's world. You know, there's a lot in a topic that we haven't talked about in a little bit, and that is Sherm's World. A dark, dirty world it is. Well, I remember Jamie said,

Jamie said her emotional support movie is Spice World. Is that Spice World? Is that right, Jamie? Yeah, Spice World. But I feel like one day you'll be executive producer of Sherm's World. On Netflix or the like, so. Oh, my God, please. I'll keep my subscription to watch that. Well, Sherm's world. Excellent. Party time. Excellent. Party time.

Excellent. So to catch those up. So Sherm, some of you are in HR, some of you are not, but like a lot of roles, like there's basically effectively a lobbying organization or a group. So Sherm is that for HR. It is the world's largest HR organization. They do a lot. People can get certifications and they have conferences.

I mean, probably the biggest HR conference, I think. But Sherm, despite. being like a best practices leader, they're also an employer and what can happen to employers. So sometimes you get sued for things that happen at work. And in this case, there's a now former employee of Sherm who had sued for racial discrimination. She'd sued a few years ago. And in the U.S. court system, it's very standard for these things to take years. What's not standard is for these things to actually go to trial. The vast majority of employment lawsuits like get settled before an EEOC charge or at different phases, or there's something

called a motion for summary judgment, which basically is a judge saying like, hey, you know, one side, often the employer, you win, we're not going to go to trial on this because despite whatever happened, even if it was awful, it's not illegal. But this case is very unusual in that, and we've talked about this, you can search HR Besties Sherm. But in this, to put it, succinctly, the federal judge in Colorado for this case had said at the beginning of his order, sending this to trial, said this is a messy employment discrimination case. And it's all about one person and all through it. And I've made even some longer videos on this on how there really are really important takeaways, like not just putting Sherman on blast, but important

takeaways for HR and managers about if someone has performance issues, clearly talking about that, considering their perspective performance plans. But so anyway, so this is now scheduled to go to trial in November in Colorado federal court. And Ashley and I are scheduled to go. Yeah, and I think Jamie now maybe. Maybe. I'm unemployed, so. Maybe. So, and I think my mom who was also a lawyer, went to law school late in life. I think she may come as well. So we have a contingent going. Now this week, there's a private mediation. And so if there's an update, then I'll insert it here. But because often this is what happens is people get closer to trial and things become real. There's a lot of pressure to settle. But also what the parties

start doing is you start preparing for trial. And so both sides, the employee side and Sherm's side, their lawyers are filing all this paperwork, like this is what we say. And it's all like, if you don't like workplace drama, don't go look at the pacer court docket for this, because for any case, it's pretty much always lawyers and other side that can't agree on anything. In this case is no exception. And so they're like, you know, we don't know what witnesses are going to be. Like, they won't respond to this. We won't respond to that. Like it's, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. One of the legal things that comes about is called a motion in limine. So I have a little law school class for all our listeners, which is a legal term to say, like, you can't bring that up because

that's not fair at trial effectively. And so each party. And so right now, Schirm has filed its motion and limine and is asking for a variety of things that they say that this employee's lawyers can't bring up because it would be unfair to Shirm or confusing to the jury or all these legal terms. And so I had pulled this up because, again, I love a good or bad pacer docket and you know, figure out, figure out what's going on. But Shirm filed its motion and liminey and filed for four things. Now, the first three things aren't that unusual. One is they don't want any alleged discrimination or retaliation about another employee who was terminated from employment very shortly around the same time as this employee. They don't want anything brought up

about that employee, and they kind of referred all these cases. Another one, any treatment of two other employees who were on this employee's team. Now, one funny thing for those that are lawyers are in HR, one thing that Sherm's lawyers say in this is they say, well, we concede that these two employees that they don't want things brought up about them, that they have the same position and not report to the same supervisor, they're not similarly situated to our employee. Excuse me? So they're the same, but they're not the same, is literally how that reads. Right. They're the same on LinkedIn, but they're not a same in PACER. You know, like those graphics that are like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Tinder, whatever, like they're the same on LinkedIn, but they're

not the same for our court case. And I say this, having been a lawyer, you are always, you know, like in life, You have to fill the... Getting creative. You have to fill the container that you're dealt with. You know, go back to listen to some of our stuff where we talk about. Like, there are things that, I mean, put the legalities aside, unquestionably. These would not show up as best practices on Sherm's own website. And it's like multiple things about performance and delegation and all of these things.

And I read through all of these transcripts and people, none of us would probably show up perfectly if all of our emails and things were said. But even who they picked to, like, investigate a claim who's like, yeah, I think she was like, yeah, I haven't actually investigated discrimination claim before. Like, you know, it's like the irony. It's unbelievable. It really is. Really baffling. But so I chuckled, like the things that I chuckled at this with a, but they're not similarly situated.

And they have these like kind of court things. But I chuckle that. And that matters because when people are of different races and if they're similar situated, that is like the legal standard. So that's the argument that they, I know, I guess. feel like they have to make those to go with. I chuckled with that one. I also not chuckled as much as the like big eyes emoji at the third, which is they say

that the court should prevent the employee from raising any evidence or things that Sherm's spoiled evidence or didn't comply with its discovery obligations. Basically, discovery is this thing, especially in U.S. litigation where like one party's like, give me this information and documents. The other side's like, no, yes, here you go. I don't know. So we haven't really seen this as far as I've seen. date in the docket. So this is a new one, which Sherm says, like, well, they haven't raised this

before. So they shouldn't make these arguments at trial. And so I don't know if this has come up, you know, what you don't always get to see are the emails and phone calls back and forth with lawyers. Yeah. And they're so nasty. Like, they're so awful and silly and nasty. And hopefully these haven't been that way. But they generally tend to be unnecessarily ridiculous and like, pump, pump, pump, like peacock feathers. But anyway, so I don't know if there's some issue of allegations that Sherm didn't turn something over in discovery. But I'll be, you know, waiting to see the employee's response to this. Yeah, that's a little suss. Yeah, they burn something out back. Yeah. Maybe they altered a couple emails. Remember the deal rippling trying to flush the phone

down the toilet? Oh, yeah. Where are our diagrams. Oh, my God. Desperate times, desperate measures. But that fourth one. The fourth one. Yeah, here's the juice. So the fourth one, The heading of it is, David and Goliath, evidence and arguments referencing the size and financial status of the party shall be excluded. And this is not unusual at all. And what Shirm is saying is that the employees shouldn't be able to say, like, David and Goliath, if you've ever gone to jury duty, that is something that frequently like, oh, this is, you got to take down, take down Goliath, like they have all the resources.

And this is frequently one that judges also are like, yeah, you can't make that because employees, like, you know, they can afford it. Why do you care? I'm feeling, okay, that's a good point. And so obviously the SHRM doesn't want people to say that. And so that is one that in my personal experience, I've seen judges say like, yeah, you can't refer to like ability to pay or the financial size. But in addition to saying, hey, we shouldn't bring up size and things like that.

And then all of the other like motions SHRM is raising, they have this like string of legal cases. And that's what you have to do to be like, see, see, this is like what supports us. One thing that they're asking for the employee not to be able to bring up, and there is no legal citation supporting this. So that's, that's one of those things that really stinks from the lawyer's side, because what happens is, especially when you're a junior associate, the partner's like, find me a case that supports this. And I guarantee you without having any connection personally, some poor associate on Sherm's side was told by a partner, find me a case that supports this. And obviously they have not been able to today because they would have included

that. But Scherm does not want their former employee to introduce evidence or argument about SHRM as a so-called model employer. They should not be any evidence allowed to present about SHRM's expertise in human resources. So do as I say, not as I do. Delusional. Delulu. Yeah. Ashley sent this to us yesterday via text and we were like, excuse me?

Right. Sherm's World. Cherms World Party on. excellent. They literally prop themselves up on the internet as the end-all be-all to HR professionals. Not only that is, you know what, like last week or so was HR Pros Day, they hijacked it and made it Shirm Day. Shirm Day. Well, it says literally it says any references to like Shirm being a so-called model employer, quote-unquote, that's irrelevant and only unfairly prejudicial to Shirm. But also this sentence, the fact that SHRM has expertise in human resources does not make it more or less likely that SHRM unlawfully discriminated or retaliated against plaintiff. They are supposed to be the standard.

They are creating the standards. They are literally creating the HR standards for all of us, like globally, and they can't follow them. For the vast majority of my legal career, when I was a law firm lawyer, which I was only a law firm lawyer for like four years, but I also worked in law school. I did work in law school for a plaintiff's personal injury firm, which is, you know, stories for another day, but also a law firm that did plaintiffs and employer side, both employment cases. But I always in court represented employers. I always kind of thought about being on the employee side of it because sometimes you see these cases, and I will say personally, in the SHRM case, you just read it. And it, again, like, whatever happens with the legality, you just read it. And you're like, this is not how you treat someone at work, especially if you're Sherm. And so if I were the plaintiff's employee lawyer in this, and I'm sure they don't need any help. But what I would probably start with is because I thought about this and I'm like, well, how does Sherm describe themselves? And on their careers page, so like when people are trying to work there, whatever, they describe themselves as the trusted authority on all things work and the foremost expert researcher advocate and thought leader on issues and innovations affecting today's.

evolving workplaces. And so to me, I would start out my intro, you know, welcome everyone. Hello. Hello. Hello. I'm Ashley Heard, lawyer and also H.R. Bessie's podcast, hoax, like and subscribe. And more relevantly, we are today here with Trump. Who declares themselves to be? Who declares themselves this? And then I'd say, and these are the things that this person did. And so what the judge, so now the employee will have to respond. And so I can't wait to read this response if it doesn't, if it doesn't settle. So they got a little delay. So if it settles, we won't see any of this. But if it doesn't settle, we will at least see the employee's response, but also how the judge decides. And this one is what stuck out to me because I could probably

personally guess how some of these things would get resolved. But there's no legal authority for this. And I can see a judge saying like, okay, you can't, you can't, it doesn't change the legal standard. But this is a question that's going to be in the jury's minds. And David me class who's on, who's on LinkedIn. I, like, post about this on LinkedIn. And he was like, even if the judge was like, you can't do this, if I'm the plaintiff's lawyer, I would be like the society for human resources, human resource management. Like, HR is in their name. And so this is going to be a very natural question in the eyes of jurors. And as candidly, it is going to be in it, and it should be. So we will see how, hopefully we'll see how the judge, the judge rules on this one. But I thought that

was so fascinating. Because, like, I mean, you go to the SHRM conference in addition to, like, the HR Diva materials. It's like SHRM. If it's work thing, it's a SHRM thing. I think that's their tagline. So they want to have their cake and eat it too. Stivalty. Remember last year when Lee and I went to the SHRM conference, Civility, we were all excited to go get some tea in the thing. And they're like, here's your socks. It looked like it was a tea thing. I was, and you know me, all direct. There's no tea. here? I don't want socks. I want tea. These aren't tea bags? They're like, no. I was like, y'all missed an opportunity. Yeah. You should have been passing out tea bags here. You should

have had a tea making station. This is stupid y'all. It really gets a civility cafe. Literally, a tea cafe. And stickers. I can't drink these. I can't drink stickers. Damn. Don't scan my badge for this, for this. Oh, I wouldn't let them, remember? Yeah, I remember. We're not sending me materials for this shit. I block my barcode on my badge. I don't want none of this. Leave here I am. They're skin and mine twice. Yeah, literally. Skin hers twice. Every day I get two emails. It's all right. Teamwork makes the dream work. Do you ever wish that you had an HR legal bestie in your pocket?

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never seen anything like that. And they're asking this of the judge who already described this as messy. So, you see. Heavens. So that's a stretch, right? I mean, you haven't seen that like if someone was suing the Dental Association or the American Heart Association or, you know, something like that. I mean, who would say that? Then there's not a lot of organizations like Sherm, but there are, like law firms are a huge example of, again, do as I say, not as I do. Those working in law firms have worked in any capacity, especially if you've worked in in HR roles. We'll see that. It's, you know, that's not uncommon. But anyway, we shall see. Yeah, just for some context, you know, I just Googled real quick. Sherm has around 400 employees. Wow. That's less than I thought.

Wow. And 340,000 members. Chew. Wow. People that are paying dues with the revenue, this is a nonprofit, with the revenue of $131 million dollars last year. Are they a nonprofit? Uh-huh. And they are selling expertise in the workplace to organizations and to people. But you do get a free canvas tote bag. With your membership, that ain't free.

Yeah, no. Memberships hundreds and hundreds of bucks a year. I mean, I haven't been a member for years and years. I mean, probably eight to nine years. But I mean, I think it's like $300 something dollars now. like it's a lot yeah it's a lot and there's certifications and things like that and a lot of time we get these questions to be like oh is it is it useless and it's it's a little chicken and egg because there are plenty of hr jobs that will say in the job description like shirm required shirm certification prefer yes we've said this like a degree in hr none of that should be absolutely necessary so we encourage generally not just for shirm but and when i have people approach me and ask because i obviously do a lot of trolling shirm videos are like well if not shirm who i'm there was shirm did not have a certification program when I got out of college. It was the PHR. And there was no such thing as, there was SHR, the organization, but there was no certification. So I'm like, look at, do research. This is still

relatively new their certification program. Oh, wow. Wow. Our fearless HR leaders. Every time I've gone to jury duty, I've kind of wanted to get on the case. Sometimes, sometimes not. You hear the description. You're like, I don't want to be part of that. Last year, I talked about I was in jury duty. And all of a sudden they were like, who's done a employment investigation, and I perked up quite a bit, and it was unfortunately a pretty awful case involving police officers in my town of Dunwoody, Georgia. But I haven't sat through that many trials because things don't tend to get to it. And so I'd be so fascinated separately from everything else. But, you know, things can settle at this mediation. Things can settle

at any time when I was, I had jury duty a couple months ago, and the case settled literally while we were waiting in the hallway, the jury waiting to sit down. And so it can even settle after the trial while the jury is deliberating. It's all kind of crazy how those things work. They tend to settle in individual mediations. But so I will be watching and we'll have an update in here if we've heard anything before this airs. It's disappointing. Yeah, but also not shocking. No, not at this point. Yeah. I mean, they've been so out of touch for a while that just knowing the little bit that I know about Johnny C. Taylor, I can only imagine the culture at Sher. like in the offices.

We've heard in our DMs from Anonymous, we won't. Yeah. We've heard some things. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's not good. The one thing I will say, having worked on that employer's side, is like frequently, when people don't have the information, they assume the worst case scenario.

And there's always sides to stories. But as you really do read through this, to me, it's just not one of those cases where it's like, you know, people aren't perfect. Things happen. Like, absolutely. Like, nobody's, certainly nobody's perfect. That's why there's HR. But there really are really common worst practices in this about how you communicate.

with people. I mean, looking at people's emails, like the way that they're communicating with someone and talking about performance, when your employment is at stake, absolutely. And so regardless of how this gets decided legally, we'll relink it. And I have a video with timestamps, so you don't have to just sit and listen to all of it. But it is a really, really instructive one, because you don't tend to get this many peaks behind things and you don't need to go through the thousands of pages of legal files like I did. So please, if you can just listen to the ads in this episode so I can pay my pacer docket bills because you have to end their page for those. And so every quarter when I get my pacer bill, it's a little shocking. So thank you, thank you all for the

support. That is a perfect segue into me wanting to bitch about something. Because you're talking about respect at work, really, respecting people. All right. I get a lot of DMs, just generally full stop. Sorry if I haven't replied to you. I can't keep up. And then there's too many mailboxes and shit. And Instagram has like 20 mailboxes. I don't understand it. Somebody explained to me what all these hidden mailboxes are on Instagram one day. I need to Google that. But I got this one DM recently that really just pissed me off. All right. And so I would like to read it to you all. I haven't shared this with you too. So it's new for everybody. But it's just a prime example on employers being assholes when they don't need to be.

It's like going the extra mile to be jerks. Like, why? Right? Like, let me read this to you, okay? I wanted to share this with you. I started a new job and trigger warning for eating disorders. Let me just say that, okay? So please, you know, fast forward or skip to the end here if this may be triggering.

It's not in depth, but I'm just high level, okay? I wanted to share this with you. I started a new job, and we have unpaid lunch hours. And on Fridays, they offer free pizza lunch. I was never advised it was mandatory. I have an eating disorder. I'm really struggling with it every day, but I'm high functioning and it doesn't interfere with work, but I don't attend the pizza lunches on Friday.

I was reprimanded for not attending the mandatory lunches. HR said it won't look good for me at my evaluation. This is such a tricky situation. For me, lunches are very difficult. And also, I'm not paid during this time. I'm also already giving an extra five to six hours unpaid time every week. When will workplaces stop trying to make employees perfect? I'm already a very good employee.

I work hard. I'm friendly. I help others. extra hours, employers need to learn that we are not machines. They can't control every aspect of the work environment. They don't realize also that sometimes employees might be struggling with very big battles, and they don't bring them to work with them. And forcing someone with an eating disorder to participate in pizza lunches is a very wrong thing. I mean, just absorb that for a second. Like if you're a leader, you're a worker, I mean, you're in HR. I mean, we think so.

sometimes that, hey, you know, we're doing the good thing here, you know, mandating something that we see as an award or reward or recognition. And everyone should be cool with that. And this is team building. So you must participate. This is an engagement activity we're investing in. And look, it's not seen that way by everyone. And that's okay. Yeah, that infuriates me. What the fuck? Mandating something on someone's unpaid lunch, fuck you. Anything mandatory should be paid within working hours. The end. Yeah. And this person shouldn't have to say I'm struggling with an ED to be opted out. Like it shouldn't, that shouldn't even have to come up. And the fact that this person might feel like they have to, because they've already been reprimanded, to justify it, that makes me ill.

Like, that makes me sick to my stomach. I know, me too. Like, my eyes are watering. I feel for them. Yeah. Feeling trapped in that challenge. This is something we've said over the last two years. Flexibility.

Flexibility, we say it almost in every episode. Managers, leaders have to be flexible and allow flexibility. In this particular case, it's an unpaid lunch. Who the fuck cares? Nobody. Yeah. It's, you know, it's not like it's a team building activity. she's, I just said she, I don't even know if it's a woman or a man. But this is why being in

HR can be so exhausting because I felt like that's all I ever did with leaders was coached them about being flexible, that our employees are humans. And shit happens. They have shit outside of work. And are they still showing up and doing their job and they're doing their job well? Who the fuck cares? It's so hard because some people will say, well, you can't do anything. You can't do anything without people griping. And there's a huge difference between people saying, oh, this is pizza. I wanted Chinese food. And making people, right, give up their unpaid time and things, putting people in a situation

that is so personal to them and so difficult. It's similar to the happy hours where you have people that choose not to drink and don't want the questions or people that really struggle and that's a part of their life. And you're putting them in that environment. And so it's this wholesale idea of, you know, you know, You know, often people, everybody, you know, we talk about what's in it for me, Lee's with them. Everybody's going to look through things in life, what's in it for me.

And so you're a leader. You're trying to do something well. You're going to get pissed if someone doesn't want to do it. But leadership, including leadership in HR, because HR is saying, oh, well, this isn't going to look good. Like, on one hand, you're giving them the keys to the kingdom in their environment. On the flip side, HR needs to be having those conversations and think about that. And you may not, you may not think about a happy hour in alcoholism.

you may not think about a pizza lunch and how that affects those that really have struggles with eating and in publicly eating or what they're eating. And so this is why sometimes it's literally, I mean, I have no idea. If you go to a chat GPT, I bet saying if we were thinking about doing this, what are the considerations? But put in there also an unpaid lunch hour for pizza hours. I bet chat GPT would give you the advice that eventually this employer is going to learn from like Page Sparks or Attorney Ryan to plaintiff's employment firms, especially talking about, you know, additional unpaid work in those things.

But think about this. There is someone in a workplace. They don't have anyone to turn to. And so they are coming to someone that they see on social media or those questions. And that's why we take that again. We can't just volume-wise or sometimes professional limitations. We really can't give specific advice. But so knowing how important it is and to think about what are the stories that people in your organization are telling? Because they can be actually really positive ones to the people they're telling in their lives. But you may also be running risks as well and really hurting people unintentionally. Oh, please. Do not mandate anything outside of the work, my opinion, and definitely not on unpaid time. That's egregious. That is insane to me. That's cruel. Like, does that overreach and wanting to control, like, every aspect of someone's day just because they work for you? I mean, that's crazy to me. That's beyond. I hate that. And I mean, even in my career, I remember being reprimanded, scolded by my boss for something similar. They were doing a lot of afterwork happy hours for people's promotions or people leaving the company or just various things that I never went. And she was like, you know, I know you want to grow in your career. And I know

you want to, but you being HR not showing up, it's a big deal. And what she didn't know was I lived a good hour and a half away from where I worked. I commuted every day. And my son was in daycare close to my work for the very purpose that if anything ever happened to him, I could get to him quickly. So me staying after work wasn't an option, daycare closes. So you could take a baby to the bar? Yeah. I had to get my child. And I wasn't going to go to a happy hour, even if let's say I did mysteriously have a babysitter. I wasn't going to a happy hour, having a drink, and then driving my child an hour and a half home. At the time, my mom had breast cancer, so that wasn't an option to, you know, have her watch my child. But it's like

these things that I should not be reprimanded for something. These aren't mandatory. I, you know, I would be there if I could. Actually, probably not. Like, it's ridiculous. And I really do feel like that affected me growing with company at that particular place. That boss was from hell anyway, but I got out of there. But like, I really think it did. She wasn't going to promote me because I wasn't showing up. 100%. You look at retention, engagement. Those are not just words on a wall. Those are based on human choices and actions. And so you see someone like this. It's like, I can't take this environment. Or you have things like happy hours, these expectations. We've just gotten through in the Jewish

religion, the high holidays. There are plenty of people in different workplaces who, just work through the day because they don't want to ask for it off, or they are worried about what will be said, the same thing you have during Ramadan. You have Muslim colleagues that come. They're fasting. No food, no water. Yes, that is the reality for so many people. And nobody should ever feel like compelled to share very personal aspects to them. But when you create environment, if you feel welcome and supported, they can come and do their work and be a very real person and not have that emotional baggage, that is the workplace that has the retention and engagement that your CFO and CEO are looking for.

Mike drop. Mike drop. Don't be jerks. Just attend our happy hour. This one is mandatory. We'll pay you. You send us a note. Jamie will send you a sticker.

You get a, that's our compensation. Don't have a pizza party. Just free stickers. Cheers, ladies. We need more happy hours, don't we? That felt good. Yeah. I love talking about some of these.

hot topics.