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Hi there, 

It’s the first Monday of a new year and can you smell that in the air? 

Smells like the inspiration that comes with new beginnings. 

I loooove a new year. The feeling of something fresh always excites me. 

And I'm trying to keep that excitement this year as 2025 was low key hellish for so many of us.

So in the spirit of excitement, I have a very fun theme this quarter!!!!

It’ll make you question everything you know and hopefully give you the inspo to try a few new things this quarter…

☕ But before we get to that - Safe Space is meeting up this week to spill more tea and continue the discussion about SHRM and how we want to move forward. We broke Zoom the first time because so many folks wanted to join to listen in and share their takes. So we’re back with PART TWO!! The goal of the convo is to share experiences, talk about how to move forward and even share how you want to (or not) engage with SHRM moving forward.

This Wednesday at Noon EST - I’ll see you there?

Now onto today’s newsletter!

✨ Don't forget: You can always vent, celebrate a win, or find support in Safe Space

✨ Don't forget: You can always vent, celebrate a win, or find support in Safe Space

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FUTURE

The new year is here, and everywhere you look it’s new, new, new.

✨ New goals
✨✨ New priorities
✨✨✨ New strategies
✨✨✨✨ New tools

So much new!! 

But in HR, that pressure for NEW kinda hits different.

It feels like there’s always an expectation to react to whatever is “new.” 

And honestly? Some of the time, “new” in HR just means layering something shiny on top of systems that were never designed for this current reality of work.

I’m guilty of it too…

But what if it didn’t have to mean that?? 

What if it could mean more!! A gal can only dream…

While I was being bombarded with the new year, new you messaging, I started thinking about what was ACTUALLY new in HR right now.

Not what’s being marketed but our actual reality.

A few things immediately came to mind:

• New expectations of leaders
• New definitions of performance
• New risks HR is expected to manage
• New skills required to do the job well 
• New constraints like smaller teams, faster decisions, higher stakes

This is a lot of new that HR can’t ignore, opt out of, or even wait out. 

And it’s the kind of new that moves the needle, dramatically reshapes companies and maybe even redefines your career. 

It’s kinda thrilling and that folks is the inspo for this quarter! Without further ado: 

✨ Welcome to the quarter of new ✨

Where I’m going to cover all the things that are potentially reshaping HR and companies across the globe.

This quarter, I want to spend time unpacking the new in HR:
✅ What’s fundamentally different now?
✅ What expectations shifted without anyone naming them?
✅ How do HR leaders adapt without chasing trends or burning everything down?

Now, new as a topic is about as broad as it gets… but rest assured there is a method to my madness. A classification to the unclassified. You get what I mean.

When I say new, I don’t mean every shiny thing that crossed your LinkedIn feed. 

This quarter I want to lock in on the things that are actually going to make a difference. 

Core areas where HR feels different now, where the job has quietly shifted, the expectations have changed, or the old way of doing things just doesn’t hold the same weight it used to.

Here are some areas I'm thinking about: 

✨ The New Rules of HR: The role itself is changing. We can all feel it happening in real time. HR isn’t just about policies or programs, it’s about judgment, systems, credibility, and navigating change and complexity in real time. I’ll talk about what “modern HR” actually means and what maybeee needs to be left behind. I’ll even unpack the skills that actually make the difference now for HR folks now and how to actually develop them.

✨ The New Performance Reality: The way we’ve measured and managed performance hasn’t kept up to our modern expectations. Things like annual reviews, outdated metrics, and manager capability gaps are colliding with burnout and unclear expectations. I’ll explore what performance should look like now and what HR should stop pretending the annual review is the only thing that works. 

✨ The New Way HR Work Gets Done: Unfortunately, HR teams are leaner but expectations seem bigger. If I hear “do more with less” one more time… Tech is everywhere encouraging automation and efficiency but what does that mean for HR? I’ll dive into how HR work actually gets done today and how to design work that’s sustainable instead of heroic. Will 2026 be the year we finally shift from reactive to proactive? One can only hope. 

✨ The New Risk HR Is Holding: HR is sitting at the center of more risk than ever before from legal, reputational, people, and ethical. 2025 was the year HR and Coldplay were finally said in the same sentence. And honestly, it brought up a lot of interesting conversations. We all know reputational risk in our roles is very real. Now layer in the complexity of staying quiet or “neutral” which we all know doesn’t protect anyone anymore. I’ll talk about what risk HR is already managing and how to surface it earlier.

My goal is that by the end of this quarter, you’ve gained a fresh perspective on what’s really shaping our day-to-day in HR.

Not just what to think, but how to think about it.

Next week, I’ll  start with the first big shift: the new rules of HR.

This is the foundation of possibly everything that’s impacting you right now. 

It could be why sometimes you feel like the job you accepted isn’t really the job you’re doing anymore…

(HUMAN) RESOURCES

• Oil markets and the response and impacts to what happened in Venezuela
• Novo rolls out the first GLP-1 pill 
• US manufacturing shrinking
• US and the productivity lead   

WORK-LIFE BALANCE

• 📚 What I’m reading: Love at First Fright by Nadia El-Fassi. A paranormal rom com about a writer who is having her book turned into a movie but ghosts are somewhat getting in the way. Are you kidding me with this plot bc I was HOOKED. BTW this is 5/5 spice level. You’ve been warned. 
• 📺 What I’m watching: Industry rewatch. I’ve watched this show since S1, I’ve been obsessed since then. The peak moment for me was seeing the actor who played Rishi (Sagar Radia) IRL in a London restaurant last year and absolutely losing my mind as his performance in S3 E4 was nothing short of spectacular. He deserved ALL THE AWARDS but didn’t get any, rude. BTW the writing on this show, the acting, the quips, it is truly perfect. 
• 🪄 What I’m obsessing over: The Stranger Things finale. I watched it the second it aired and was confused. Everything seemed to be resolved so easily. TBH I mostly liked it but felt like something was really missing. The internet is convinced that wasn’t the real ending and it’s probably a conspiracy theory but it’s one I’m holding out hope could be real. What if there was another hidden episode and they were like SIKEE here’s the real ending!!  I mean, has any show ever done that? Would be epic, but probs not true. Instead I’ll find some fanfic to resolve that ending for me. 

SONG OF THE WEEK

I slept on DJO but Stranger Things pushed me to explore Joe’s band. 

This song caught me from the title but then I stuck around for the vibes & lyrics. 

The bridge sent me into a spiral, rah-rah, cheugy-phobe is something I cannot get out of my head. 

I hope you enjoyed this, please let me know what you think and what other topics you'd love for me to cover. I'm allll ears.

Reminder: Take care of yourself and know that I support you. 

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