HR BESTIES - HR Besties: Workhuman Live 2025 with KeyAnna Schmiedl

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

Today’s agenda:  Check your surroundings (and wait three more stops…) Cringe corporate speak: open the kimono (and special bonus: mowing someone else’s lawn) Hot topic: all things AI - being human in the age of AI at work with special meeting crasher KeyAnna Schmiedl, Chief Human Experience Officer at Workhuman How will AI impact the workplace? Feeling in control in our roles Keeping the unique human touch while benefiting from AI efficiency AI tools can allow HR professionals to focus on the human aspects of their jobs Predicting how the workplace will be reshaped with AI Applying transparency, humility and authenticity to every role in the AI space Questions/Comments Thank you, Workhuman, for sponsoring this podcast episode! If you're interested in attending Workhuman Live 2026, click the link HERE for more info and register. 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.  Subscribe to the HR Besties Newsletter - https://hr-besties.beehiiv.com/subscribe 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 Follow Workhuman! https://www.instagram.com/workhuman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/workhuman/ 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, 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

This episode is sponsored by Work Human. Hello, besties. Welcome to our recurring staff meeting. Are we excited, ladies? Now, I would be remiss if I didn't take note that we have a meeting crasher with us today. From the department down the hall.

Welcome Kiana Schmidl she is the chief human experience officer at work human and rocking it my opinion but everybody else is too welcome meeting crasher hello thank you so much for allowing me to crash said meeting of Of course. Thank you. Did you bring snacks? Well, in my pockets. Okay. But I was told that they would crinkle with the microphone. Okay. All right. We'll get them after. That's fine. That works. Oh, gosh. Well, it is so wonderful to have you crash our meeting today.

Can you give us a brief intro, a little elevator speech, anything you want to share about yourself? We'd love to hear it. Brad, girl, you've earned it. Okay, so, um, my mom says I'm a catch. And my husband says she's right. I am a wife times one, mom times two. I live with a menagerie of pets. I don't love them all. Which ones don't you love? I'm just curious. Life times one, mom times two. I live with a menagerie of pets. I don't love them all.

Which ones don't you love? I'm just curious. The ones that are creepy crawlies? Yeah, I don't love them either. Yeah, I see, right? We don't like that. Help me get them out of my house. Um, and then, you know,

I recently entered another decade, so Monday was my birthday. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. And I think one of the best things stated about me in this list of 40 things that people love about me was that I am often rude, but rarely wrong. Okay.

It's going on my tombstone. I like it. Know yourself, that is excellent. Same. I'd stop at that tombstone. I like it. Know yourself. That is excellent. Same. I'd stop at that tombstone and give you a nod. That's a good one. You'd be like, sup, dead girl.

Respect. Sup, dead girl. Love it. I said what I said. Oh, gosh. I love that. Well, Kiana, because you are crashing this meeting, guess what? You are on the hook for the agenda items.

You know how that goes. Oh gosh, so quick run through of the agenda, shall I? All right, you all ready? So we start every one of our recurring meetings with some water cooler talk. So we're gonna do a little hot goss for the elder millennials and above. That means hot gossip. And so, Kiana's gonna share a work story.

Maybe we'll learn from it, maybe we don't, I don't know, right? But I am very curious what hot gossip you have to share with all of us today, aren't y'all? Yes. Very, very curious what hot gossip you have to share with all of us today. Aren't y'all? Yes. Very, very curious. Again, since she's the meeting crasher, she is also responsible for cringe corporate speak. And so I cannot wait to see what cringe corporate speak you have for us today. I don't know if it's one you use, one you hate, I don't know, you know,

so we'll turn that inside out, right, very important subject, and we challenge you all to use that cringe corporate speak today and just annoy the hell out of people that are around you, okay, and we will try to incorporate it in our meeting. All right? You have no idea what you just signed up for and this is gonna be amazing. Ooh! And she is rarely wrong, so. Okay. Often rude, though.

Often rude. But often rude, ooh, that's good. Makes for a good cringe, right? And then we are going to transition into the hot topic of today, which is all about AI. So being human at work in the age of AI. So we have some discussion starter questions for Kiana, for one another, things like,

when robots take over, will they make us their pets? And if they do, will they be kind? I don't know. That keeps me up at night. Only creepy-crawly. What do we think? So we'll turn some of those out. And then, as always, like every well-structured

and organized meeting, we will end with some questions and comments. And that's where we go around the horn and everybody proves their value. All right, so Kiana. Yes ma'am. What hot goss do you have for us today? I'm so excited.

Well, I'm gonna tell y'all a little story about baby Kiana, new to the workforce, thinking she's killing it, back when she was often rude and often wrong. And so there was a time where I worked at a very large organization and I was on public transportation and you know when you just had one of those days where you're like, everybody's annoying, nobody's good at their job. Yes, we work in HR. Yes, like daily. So it was one of those days, which was any given day,

and I happened to be that person on the bus, on the cell phone, being like, and you know so and so, I mean, like, they're fine, but they're just, you know, boring and miserable and blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah blah and I'm just talking away and then breaking myself and said person gets off said public transportation from directly behind me again this was baby Keiana. She's dead now. I killed her. Good.

May she rest in peace. And I had this moment of, there's no way that person heard me. And I also had that moment of, what I said wasn't that bad. It was terrible. And then I had this moment of, it's going to be real bad tomorrow.

Very, yes. Career killer, yes. And so I went to work the, it's going to be real bad tomorrow. Very, yes. Career killer. And so I went to work the next day and I went to grab breakfast and I saw said person and I said hi and they looked through me like I was a Pokemon in a shell. And I was like, this is not great. And from there on, it was not great. I could imagine. And so for me, it was not great.

And so for me, the lesson learned was like, I wasn't in HR at the time. I am now, I'm so much better. I'm a proper lady now. But the lesson for me then was just like, you've gotta be mindful that you represent yourself at work even when you are not at work. There are going to be people around and also do not talk about your co-workers when you have not even

left the vicinity of the workplace. Get at least three stops away before you start talking about people. But especially in HR I think it's a lesson for me now where being in this role, I am a personable person, I love to be authentic, I have a lot of humility, but there are often times where it's like, I just need to tell somebody else how miserable of an experience that is. But in HR, we are limited to who it is safe to share that information with and how easily that can be used against us in this role.

And so that for me was a huge lesson learned. I'm always just checking my six. The 360 review is looking around the bus to make sure there's no coworkers right behind you. Okay, that's fair. That was the original purpose of it. That's right. That's fair. And then other people took it and did their own random thing. So who's that person for you now that you can confide in? Because you're right. I mean,

it's lonely and isolating being an HR. We really can't do that hot goss, you know, we can listen in, but we really can't contribute, right? And we get so much of other people's hot goss. You get so much of other people's hot gossip. Oh, I love that part. The tea. And then you walk by the person that you heard the hot gossip about and you try not to be like, hello. Stupid. But I think for me, that person now who can be a safe person for me is my dog and my fish.

But at work, no, I think I actually confide in the chief of staff for the CEO because it's a special type of relationship that you have to have with a person like that. In order to feel like you can get the work done that is needed to get done, you can have those right conversations. But also, I don't know that there is anybody who you can fully, at work, say absolutely everything to

in an unfiltered way. And I'm a big proponent of you get 20 minutes of, can I curse on this podcast? Uh, yeah. Can she curse on the podcast? Yeah, Jamie. I do. I'm the bad mouth. I was just waiting for someone to say Jamie. Our producer consensus.

I'm going to give you 20 minutes of bitching and moaning, and then you have to give me double that time back of, so what are we doing about this? Exactly. That is awesome. I need that accountability for me, as opposed to the person who's just gonna take that and be like, the head of people was just bitching and moaning. And so it's a little bit of how can you let enough off the top with somebody at work that is safe enough,

but then where in your life do you have those people that you're like, I just need to tell you everything because you're not close enough to this, that you're also not necessarily gonna need to tell you everything because you're not close enough to this, that you're also not necessarily gonna try to solution it for me because that's not what I'm looking for in that moment. Yeah, like my husband. Right?

Or like anybody else in the business who thinks that they might know how to do your job better. Never let that happen. Oh yeah, never. I'm curious, just in the audience, a raise of hands of who's found that person for you at work. That's your 20, 40 minute person. Who's still looking for that person at work.

That's important and it's important to keep looking and building those relationships, but it's a great outlet. I totally agree, but I love that 20, 40. I'm got that locked in now. Have you all faux pod like that at work where you totally destroyed someone's life? No offense. Life-ruiner.

No. I did. I wrote back. I meant to forward and instead I replied. Oh no. It was in writing? Yeah, it was in writing. Of course it was on the record. It was undeniable. And I was rationalizing my head saying, but I meant it, I did mean it, I really did mean it. And I was standing in my truth.

Yeah. I was on it. Radical, radical, but it was real radical. Kim Scott would have been that it was a little too ruinous empathy. But it was, but I also learned, sometimes you learn from those lessons. Like it was bad, but it wasn't the worst

because she deserved it. And so, but you do sometimes learn from those lessons. And so I generally will walk away before I go back and hit send. That's good. Jamie, are you? I think I've been pretty fortunate because like I fell into HR when I was actually in college

and I very early on had a supervisor that told me you HR you're always on stage you're never you have a certain reputation and so I've been lucky in that aspect because I can run my mouth and y'all know that so I know at work I have my one person that I can bitch to right I've had the same work bestie for 10 years. We've worked at several companies together and I know I can go to her and she's my trusted source and she's feeling it too because we work together, right? But I'm lucky that hasn't happened to me, but I'm going to caveat that and say, yet. Obviously, I have never done anything wrong in the workplace. Moving on, Cringe Corporate speak.

Okay. Kiana, you are up at bat again. You are accountable to this agenda item. She's buckling up here. I'm okay. What do you got? I'm curious. Okay. Well, I got two for you. Oh, a two-per.

You are a lovely meeting crasher. You are. Overachiever. No, above two for me. Meeting crash. You are a lovely meeting crasher. Okay. Overachiever. Above and beyond. Okay. I love the pants. So the first one, I feel certain

that many of us have heard of it, if not have actually heard it in the workplace. Are you ready? Yes. Bracing self. Open the kimono. We hate it. Yeah. And for those of you who have never heard it before and are

like, what the H did she just say? I'm not saying I've ever said that in the workplace because I was raised with sense. I'm saying that this is a phrase that has unfortunately not died. I know. I heard this last week on a call with an HR professional that I'm talking to about doing some manager training and they said, I'll go ahead and open the kimono.

And in my mind I thought, don't do that. Just tell me it's real deal. I said I'm gonna start a campaign for close all kimonos. All kimonos double up on your kimono Velcro. But the problem with it is that originally where the phrase comes from is this idea of, you know, like samurai and just like show that you have no weapon. But the way that it is used in workplaces is like geisha and open. Yeah. And I'm like stop it

Yeah, right now everybody keep on all your clothes Meeting take away always right in the meeting keep on your clothes. Yeah end of rules That one's pretty cringy. I don't want to, we don't need to whack a Willie out. Just don't anymore. And so I've got a second one for you. Okay, okay. And this one is very unique because I've only ever heard it

from one person but only in business context. And I tried to contextualize like where are they from, is this a common phrase there? And I tried to contextualize, like, where are they from? Is this a common phrase there? And I've never found anyone else that has heard anybody else say that. All right, we're into another poll's coming up.

What's up? Mowing someone else's lawn. I took it somewhere that I should have. I got a lot of imagery. I got a lot of imagery. I'm not the Brazilian one. I'm going to be honest. Now, is this the person on the bus? If this was the person on the bus, then they absolutely deserve that.

How do you hear this? Yeah. So the context for this one came in a meeting where it was everybody going around and giving their updates, and this person was giving an update, but the update that they were giving was all about the work someone else was doing. And they go, oh, look at me mowing so-and-so's lawn. And I was like, what? It was sexual harassment?

That's what she said. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then I kind of cocked my head, and the other person was like, oh, no, it's fine, but you gave the update

and they're like, well, I just fully mowed your lawn. No, fully, no need for fully. Double down on. They double down, they weeded too? Yeah. Was they weed whacking? I went up to the person whose lawn was fully mowed at the end of feeding and I said,

I'm so sorry, are you comfortable with this? Do you feel safe? Because I've never heard this before and they were like, oh, this person says it all the time. And I was like, why? What, I don't, are you, how do I ask you if you feel like, safe in your body without projecting on you

what I think that means? And I found out, because I was sharing the story yesterday and somebody said, oh, I took it to mean like, a neighbor who's very particular about how their lawn is mowed and somebody else thinking they were helping them out. And I was like, that's adorable and wrong. Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. Yeah.

Can you write that down for exhibit A for the response to the EEOC charge down the road? Yeah. Well, you're thinking. Just FYI, I'm going to make a video about that on Monday. No, but a poll has anybody ever heard the term mowing someone else's lawn at work? I saw a little hand raised maybe here. Really?

Okay. Wow. What was that? Three people? Wow. That's shocking. We are all going to go into a trauma circle together, and we're just going to breathe it out.

Breathe it out. And my friend Nick up here, when I said open the kimono and he was like, oh no. Uh-uh. And then I said mow in the lawn and he's like, what? Oh, wow. Yeah. Mm.

Yeah. My head went to the gutter. Wow. All right. It's wild times out there. It is. We're gonna put up a fence and seam that kimono shut before we get into it.

I am gonna use me the lawn though today. So if you come up to me, I may try and fit that in. I told y'all you were signing up for some HR violations. That's right. So it just means like someone stole someone's thunder basically. They did their update for them. That's more appropriate, stealing someone's thunder. Sure.

If that's what, sure. Yes. If that's how you take it. I'm trying to make it make sense here. You know, please don't say that. I have stopped trying to make it make sense. And I've just said, we just don't say that as decent people. Yeah.

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Thank you. And sad. Shall we pivot? Shall we pivot to the hot topic of today? All things AI at work being human in the age of AI at work. You may know a thing or two about AI at work and humans, so I think we have the expert with us here, right? Ashley, do you want to kick us off with a discussion question? Yeah, I'll kick it off. And you know what it is? It is actually illegal in 2025 to have

a conference where the topic is not AI. It's not. It's not. So nobody's getting arrested today. We got it. Unless they mow someone's lawn. Well, that's my thing. I know I felt really good about it until that. But so Kiana, what's your first thought? When I say what will the impact of AI and the culture of work be? What is your gut of that impact? I think at the start it's gonna be a bit of turmoil because I think that people just don't know. And right now we're coming from a place of fear

of I just want to be able to control the thing. Right? And so it doesn't mean that we're not experimenting, that we're not playing around with it, but we are trying to do it in a fashion that says, I don't necessarily want this thing to grow in ways that I'm not ready for, that I can't predict, that I don't know that I will be able to pull back from.

And I don't know whether or not that's right or wrong, but I think it's just about being aware of it. Because I do think that there are some ways, like listen, I am an ideator at heart. If I'm the person in the meeting telling you, we gotta stop because we just came up with a bunch of ideas but we have no plan, then you know that we are at like DEF CON 3 and it's gone real bad. But for me getting into the details, getting into the weeds, can I do it? Yes. Do I love to spend my time there? Absolutely not.

So thinking about tools that can summarize for me what those things are, yes, all day, please, how many times in a meeting or in a one-on-one are you like, just give me the highlights, hit the key points, right? And so there, I think AI is great for somebody like me to be like, get me those key points so that I can take the big picture and then go, okay, so then this is probably the next thing that makes sense. So I want us to get to a place where we move from turmoil to, okay, I can get comfortable

with this and I can at least be willing to keep experimenting with it as it changes. I think that the other piece though that makes it hard is that the second you feel like you've wrapped your arms around something, it is all changed and morphed and now all of a sudden you're trying to like wrap your arms around Jello. And Jello has always creeped me out. There's a story about trauma as a kid. But I think, so I think for folks, it's just how do you hold on to the unstable and unsteady and seem like you are the one who is steadily leading through that?

Yeah. Well, I mean, just one on that. I think you're in your role, you have a role at the top of this people group. And so how do you, as you talk about ideating, and you mentioned a couple of times talking about it, and to me, that's one of the biggest gaps. Because I think there's a lot more doing with AI and experimenting with AI and not as much talking about,

what does that mean? And so as you think about it, whether it's with your team or others, how do you think about, how do you vary between asking questions about what people are doing and telling them what to do and how do you find that balance? Yeah, I think the only thing that you can tell people to do right now is experiment. If you try to give them any more specifics than that, they're just going to default to experiment but then also not telling you that they're doing it, right? So for me, at WorkHuman, it was looking at my CTO and saying, you and I need to partner on this.

We need to be the ones creating a council together so that we can identify those right lanes of work as we think of them right now. But so that as you're thinking about what technologies, what agentic AI solutions, that I can be right there alongside at the same time saying, technologies, what agentic AI solutions that I can be right there alongside at the same time saying well what are the ways in which we want people to use this? What are the ways in which we are saying people have to use this and it's become the default? What are those tools that we're saying they

can have access to? As opposed to that all being decided and then coming down the pipe and you're handed out like now go figure this out and make it work. And that was also how we kind of did everything, right? What we started with was we first surveyed the people and we said, how familiar do you feel with this topic? If we said to you, you know, what's the difference between straight up automation and AI? Would you feel like you can describe that? We asked them, you know, do you use any AI tools right now?

And like, this is, we had it be anonymous so that if people felt like I do but I don't want you to know that that's why I'm good at my job, that they felt safe and letting us know that. But the data that we got back was incredibly helpful and that is what shaped our trading plan, right? Because what we said was, we've got some people that right now are identifying great solutions that are just straight-up automation solutions. We should have been doing that all along and then we were able to say, okay, so this is level one learning, this is level two learning, this is level three learning.

Here's the baseline that the company needs to know about our stand on AI, but then from there, slot in where you feel like you fit. If you are knee-deep engineer, have been doing prompt engineering for a while, well, you don't need the basics, but we do want you to keep growing your skill set, right? It was also how we identified that we literally had a person in the business who's like, I teach a master's level course on AI and agentic AI. And we were like, could you come here, please? Thank you so much.

Can we have you teach that course here? So it allowed people to raise their hands, to feel like not shamed about it, but also to be able to see, oh, there are a lot of us who feel like we don't know enough about this to then take the conversation internally and say, with those folks who said that they do know a little more, there happens to be at least one on every team, let's make them the ambassador, let's have them go around and help,

so that everybody feels a little bit more comfortable, but with somebody who they work with often, who feels a little bit safer today. Well, and you touched on what we can use it for, right? So like the efficiency, automated processes, but how do we ensure that we keep the uniqueness of humans? Yeah. So I tell this story a lot and it's not because it's the only one I know, but it's because it's a good one. And so in our first AI hackathon that we had, we went out to the entire company and we said, what ideas do you have? And I'm going to cut out

all of the middle and cut to the, so the winning idea that we had came from our call center. And it was submitted by our call center employees. And they, what they said was, look, we're in a role that's high turnover because it's high stress. Because typically when people are calling us, it's not to tell us, we just wanted to share a moment of gratitude because you've done such a good job. They are the only people in the company

who only have people call them when something has gone wrong. And what they were saying was, for them, the frustration is the second that they have to tell somebody, I've got to put you on hold, is the moment that you've taken a frustrated customer and you've made them irate. Because they're, you know, they could be like, I've called three times about this, whatever it is. So the solution that we then had engineers and designers help them create is a tool, it's an AI tool that does the summary as soon as the phone number is recognized.

So that for them, they have right there under the script, this person has called, this is the third call, they might be calling about order number this, here's where it is, and here are some options that you can offer to them. And so what we have found is that it's not only impacted our customer satisfaction score going up, but it's also impacted a very high turnover, high stress role, where we're seeing a bit more stickiness. And to me, that whole solution coming from them meant

that they could do the thing that they do best, which is being that empathetic human on the phone, as opposed to them being reduced to the robot that's like, can I place you on hold? Can you please give me your order number? Can you please tell me this? Let me go get the manager, right? Now they're actually having full sentence conversations

and that changes your experience of your job. Let's say I'm on that team and it's high stress and I've seen people come and go, my work besties have gone, and you have a great open door policy. And so I'm on that team and I think, oh my gosh, I'm getting time with Kiana. And I asked you the question of,

I'm afraid that now this technology is all designed to take my job. Does my job, how do I still matter as a person? How would you respond to that question? So I would say first and foremost, we are work human and our mission is making work more human. So there will never be an experience that any customers of ours has, any employee of ours has, that there

is not a human involved in that experience. So we will always have people in our call centers, we will always have people in our roles, but it's that mix of can we get you the tools that allow you to use more of your humaneness in your role. More of that creative thinking, more of that solutioning, more of that time that we all look for of like, can we do that postmortem or after action review or whatever other terminology that you have that we never have time for because we're always just trying to get all of those little small things done, right? And so I really think it's important, as people are thinking about this, there are just as

many stories of AI gone wrong. I forget who it was, but they had a call center where they said, we are going AI first and AI only. They fired all the call center employees. And all of a sudden, AI was giving people advice that was triggering their eating disorders from before, that was sending them down a bad path. And then they quickly realized, oh, no, we can't just let AI do this.

We need humans there. And I think that that is what is so important about this, is not thinking first about how many humans should this technology replace. It's thinking about what is the right partnership between the technology and the humans that you have right now? Yeah, I mean, to me, AI is really about doing the what,

but the humans are determining the why, you know, and the how, I mean, the deeper meaning there. I'm curious to hear, you know, kind of fast forward, what are your bold predictions on how the workplace is going to be reshaped here with the introduction of AI and some of the things you're doing here at WorkHuman, which sound fantastic? Yeah, I think, look, not to brag, WorkHuman is amazing.

And if you haven't had access to the tool, I'm sorry. But you can also demo it right now. But now that that's over, what I would say is, look, I am a systems thinker at heart. And the reason why I got into people work is because organizations are just groups of people that have come together under one goal. And once you get groups of people together, you start to realize things can go in many different directions, right? And so what I love about some of the solutions that we have now landed on at WorkHuman and some of the things that we're putting forward is bringing together those dots and those

points of information to say these are the patterns that are happening in your organization. Like, how many times have you said, I want like a whole data and analytics team for my people, but we're not necessarily big enough or You know I can't just have them for me because we have to have them dedicated to customers and being able to have that not just at Your fingertips but at your people leader finger So that they're not asking you for the report on the patterns of their team But you can actually hold them accountable now to all the things that you want them to do because you have empowered them with the technology,

with the tools, with the access to the information. I think it's going to shift not just how we think about people leaders, but I think this will be the thing that actually gets us over that hurdle of people are still coming to HR for what feels like the transactional stuff because they don't have access to it themselves and empowering them by saying nope you have this now and we now expect you to know this and having a clearer definition of how much of your time is actually around leading your people thinking strategically partnering on org design and all of those things where I

think it's still so amorphous right now, and there's so much of a, well HR picks this bucket up, that we don't have a clear definition or set expectations of people leaders. This percentage of your time should be spent here, and here's how we empower you to do that. And I never believe in holding anybody

to account for things that we haven't, one, told them, two, facilitated some sort of training or learning on, B, allowed them to test and pilot, play around with, and then C, said okay now you have everything, now I can hold you accountable. Yeah, I think communication and equipping them, right? My goodness. So what came to mind when you were speaking is, you know, what would you say to those HR professionals that like to be that point person? Like it's a security blanket to them. I'm looking at Jamie when I said that, you know, people come to them in that way. They find a lot

of value in that. It's all they've ever known. And I think it's even more than that. I think there's others as well. I think recognizing across the organization being needed is a very real... I love that. Yeah. What do you think? I would say... So there are a couple of things. One, I would say it depends on the culture in your organization.

If you have the type of culture or the type of individuals in your organization who think information is currency and tend to hoard it so that people can only come to them for job security, that has never been good has never been good. And so you should be stopping that but if that's not the type of culture that you have and it's just because like this person is really good at that thing then I want that person to be leading the project of how should this look to help design the reports to help partner with those folks and then to be the ones that are pulling together the bigger picture, right? So that they're getting more exposure to,

maybe they were that point person or that, you know, in that business partner role or strategy partner role or whatever you call it for one particular team or part of the business. But now that you've empowered them with the right tools, they can actually pull out and look across the business. And those are the people that I want in strategy partner roles because those are the people who can pull into the data, pull out of the data, and come

up with the right plans. And those are the folks who are best equipped to have that conversation about translating data to people, people to roles, and impact. Empowerment, go figure. Valuing people, Oh, wow. Wow. That's not a new concept. I know kind of a mic drop moment there. I mean, I'm done. I'm on my thing right now. So any final words you'd like to share on this hot topic? I think, listen, there are three rules that I live by, transparency, humility, and authenticity. And so I would tell you, like, literally take that and apply it to whatever you are doing in this space. I tell people all the time, I

don't know, but I have a good idea of who does. And my purpose is to go find the right people and make the connections to the right work so that we get it done better. It's not necessarily for me to be the one who says I know everything, and that is a very different role than some of us have experienced of HR professionals in the past. But I think that that shifts that responsibility and that accountability for doing back into the organization, back into our teams, and says that we should be supported in these ways to get the job done better.

Gosh, that's a strong final note. Impressed. Well, we do have a hard stop, so shall we go ahead and transition to some questions and comments? I think so. Anybody? Questions? Comments? I have a question. Yes, please. So we've talked previously to Canada just getting to know each other, but so I'm curious for each of you all,

what do you think is the attribute that has helped you most be successful in your career? I would say it's insatiable curiosity. I would also caveat that like a little asterisk with being a black woman, because I think especially when I was younger and earlier in my career, people did not have the expectation of me

that I would know as much, or that I would be as prepared, or have the right background. So they expected me to ask a lot of questions. They also underestimated my ability to do something with those answers. And it allowed me to just hone in on the ability in setting the expectation of I ask a lot of questions.

I think now how that shifted a bit is I will let people know a lot of times now I ask questions in the form of statements and it's merely me trying to play out I'm thinking this is the thing and the implied at the end is is that right? And I don't think people are always prepared to be asked or like interrogated some may say to within an inch of their life on the thing that they're talking about. I think a lot of leaders in business are used to coming in, saying a thing, and walking

around like Ramsey's, so let it be written, so let it be done. And so I think it just makes them a little bit kind of shifty, just enough for you to come in there and show them, I'm asking because I want to understand so that I can help to either make it better or help you to get in there and show them, I'm asking because I want to understand so that I can help to either make it better or help you to get this thing done. And then it shifts the dynamic of the relationship from, well, I'm the business owner and I'm telling you how it has to be

to, oh, I hadn't necessarily considered that. Can I get 30 minutes on your calendar? And then I say yes, but we're meeting in my office. What's next? Jamie, what do you got? Question, comment? Wait, no, I wanted to know from you guys, your category. What do you think's made you successful? Oh.

The facial expressions? That is, probably. Yeah. I'm pretty expressive. My voice. I am gritty as fuck. Like I do not give up. I'm a Hispanic female and what you said resonated in the boardrooms that I've been in and in my you know chief HR roles and whatnot I was always the only female. Always the only female. The majority of the rooms I've been in have been with white older males, significantly older than me, much whiter than me. And it was

the same thing. There wasn't a high expectation and you could feel that and I didn't care. I did not care. I did not give a fuck because I was 5'11", almost 6 foot in elementary school and sixth grade. So I've always been the freak and I'm always used to people staring at me and standing out. So it didn't bother me at all. I've been just relentless in that sense and just gritty. And so that's really what's driven me is that I'm just going to show up and be my best and do all I can for the people. Thank you. And I'm going to look exotic. They call me exotic in corporate. I've been told I'm a triple or a threefer or whatever they want to label me because of the diversity boxes and all of this. I mean, I've just heard the craziest

shit. But hey, no problem. You know what I mean? I'm going to be me and it is what it is. That's all the only person I know how to be. But I've actually am thankful growing up with a deep voice being called sir on the phone my whole life and being just a weirdo from the start because it just helped me with my resilience and my grittiness as I moved into corporate and just trail blazed the hell out of it. So that's kind of-

One thing I talk about me being five, eight in the sixth grade and people calling me an Amazon woman. Amazonian. Yes, that too. Yep. And I was like, fine. You are all so small. Why? I said, who said that? Other who said that? Jamie and I are like, here, here, here.

Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, with the deep voice, Kathleen Turner built an entire career off of having a deep voice. So Okay, I'm sorry there there younger folks here look at Miley Cyrus and her deep voice Yeah, all right, Jamie, what are you and your success? I think my authenticity I'm a hundred percent me a hundred percent of the time and That's also got me in trouble because I've been in HR for 21 years. But it's also I've had a lot of employees be able to approach me and say, I feel comfortable with you. I feel safe. And so I will never stop being 100% me all the time. And I think that's truly what has helped me.

I mean, it gives permission to others to do the same. And that is such a gift to the world. It really is. Personality higher. I know my shit too. She does. Yeah. Did you do yours?

Well, I just say, I think I have always liked taking hard concepts and breaking them down into real talk. And I use that in my experiences that I worked at top law firms and got the job as head of North American HR, the largest consulting firm in the world. And I turned it down because at my heart I was still the subway sandwich maker or the electronics associate at Kmart. And I found those people need training just as much as these consulting people.

And so I like to take complex topics but talk to people in real terms and I think that's worked out well for me. It's what I like to do. And you do it really well. Yeah. Well, thank you, Jamie. I'll give you that 10 or 20. How much was it?

Any other questions or comments before we close? I have a comment. I wrote it on the plane. I didn't use AI. Maybe I should have considering that's what this whole meeting is about. But I'm a writer FYI. All right. So I said here AI is a mirror not a magic wand. If your systems are biased or broken or discriminatory, AI will just scale that dysfunction tenfold and shame on you, I just added that. It's our job to make sure what we're feeding into AI is ethical, inclusive, and human first at all times. That is our responsibility and obligation to this

world, to the workforce that we support, and to our responsibility and obligation to this world, to the workforce that we support, and to our people and ourselves. So. Oh, so you wanted to end on a whole word. Okay. I can't help myself. I can't help myself. Mic drop. Please do a mic drop for real. Oh, for real, can I? Okay. And human first always. Fuck yes. Okay. And human first always. Fuck yes. I love people.

Even though they suck sometimes, it's okay. They do. Oh my God, so bad. People be people. They suck so hard. Oh my God. Anyways, love. People that mow your lawn.

That's, oh yes. I got the ultimate mic drop. Well done. Love it. Bravo, you're dropping. On that note, gosh, Kiana, we are so grateful and thankful that you crashed our meeting today. What a gift you are to work human, to us.

Oh gosh, loved it. Thank you so much, HR Besties. Woo! Bye, y'all. Katherine Edwards is our go-to for calm, smart takes on the economy. She joined us on a recent episode of the Her Money podcast to remind us that if we end up going into a recession or if we're already in one right now and yeah that might be possible that yeah your investments might dip but they always bounce back so if you need clarity rather than chaos

around today's headlines tune into her money listen wherever you get your podcasts