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Hi there,

I almost started this newsletter hellooo my lovers and friends as a nod to one of my favorite Lil Jon songs but I figured that would be a tad bit weird…

But then decided to tell you anyway so um if this is weird let’s just pretend I didn’t do this. K cool.

ANYWAYS!!

It’s the first official Monday of Q2, I’m gonna try to make some BIG things happen this quarter. IDK why I always set these outrageous goals for myself but when the weather’s warm i’m a much more optimistic person. I can’t help myself.

So with that energy, here are some dope things to keep in your radar:

☕ I’m hosting a virtual Transform debrief THIS WEEK. Grab your coffee or your emotional support beverage and join us to discuss what went down at Transform, what were some key nuggets and what you need to know if you weren’t there.

📺 We’re sick of talking about AI too!!! This month’s HR Therapy digs into real research I did and breaks down what’s worth your time right now and what you can disregard. The incredible Dr. Ken is back and we’re getting into the thick of it all and sharing why we may also be sick of hearing about AI.

And with that let’s dig into a fresh new quarter of content featuring a new theme!

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

Join the Discussion

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

Apply for Free

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HR'S ROLE

The impossible job of HR:

Sometimes this job can feel like way tooooo much.

Yeah, I said it. I've been saying it. A LOT of HR people have been echoing this sentiment…

And I'm not bringing this up in a "ugh Mondays am I right" way but in a genuine, data-backed, I-have-looked-this-in-the-face-and-need-to-name-it way.

Every time I talk to an HR person, whether they're a one-person team at a 50-person startup or a CPO at a 10,000-person org, I hear some version of the same thing:

“This job has gotten too big.”

And I think that's because the job has changed. Almost quietly at first, then suddenly, dramatically. And nobody really asked us if we were okay with that????

(They did not ask me. I would have had notes.)

So this quarter, I'm going there. All the way there!!!!!

✨ Q2's theme is This Is Fine, yes, like the meme. ✨

The dog sitting at a table, coffee in hand, completely surrounded by flames, telling himself everything is okay. If you've never seen it, just picture every HR person on any given Monday. Or me because I whisper “this is fine” to myself several times a day.

The whole quarter is dedicated to naming what this job has actually become, how we got here, and what the hell we do about it. This week I want to start with the three things I think are behind all of it:

Scope
Pace
Interconnectedness.

Each edition this quarter is going to dig into one of these three buckets because I think if we can actually understand why this job has become what it is then we can start to figure out what to do about it.

The scope creep:

👀 Houston, we’ve got a scope problem.

Because when did HR become responsible for... everything?

I'm not being dramatic. I promise, I know when I am being.

Think about what HR touches now:

Hiring
Firing
Compensation
Benefits
Compliance
Onboarding
Culture
DEI
Manager development
Organizational design
Employee relations
Workforce planning
AI strategy
Change management
Mental health resources
Corporate Retreats
And, depending on your org, probably also the holiday party and whatever weird thing legal keeps sending over

Wow kinda wild seeing that all typed out in a list...

OH BUT don’t forget we’re also the first person everyone calls when something goes wrong.

In any department. For any reason.

The scope of this job has expanded enormously over the last decade, and it keeps expanding…

🔥 Every new organizational priority lands in HR's lap.

🔥🔥 Every crisis becomes an HR crisis.

🔥🔥🔥 Every trend (quiet quitting! the great resignation! RTO! AI!) generates a new set of expectations for HR to somehow address.

So the headcount, budget, and authority must have changed to match that scope, right???

LOL.

She's telling jokes todayyyy.

The top feedback I hear from HR teams? How hard it is to get headcount or budget approved.

📣 And in the age of AI, I predict teams will get even smaller. And okay, say that AI can help us automate a lot of tasks. We still have one of the most interdisciplinary teams!! Name another exec who touches this many parts of the business. (There isn't one. Quote me.)

This quarter I’m getting into how HR ended up in every room, the one-person team problem, what AI is doing to the pace of this job, the emotional labor nobody budgets for, and what actually has to give.

On the note of pace…

The unrelenting pace:

Okay so the scope is enormous. Fine.

We could maybe survive that if things were at least... stable.

Spoiler alert: things are not stable!!!!

💡 The pace of change in organizations right now is genuinely unlike anything I've seen.

And to be clear: I’ve historically worked at startups where change moves faster than your average org, and could say I’ve seen massive changes in a short time. But right now?? It feels like we’re at light speed.

➡️ Reorgs that used to happen every few years are happening every few months.

➡️ AI is reshaping entire functions in real time. New titles, new workflows!

➡️ Regular layoffs are becoming part of the talent strategy. Ugh.

➡️ Economic uncertainty means headcount decisions flip overnight. Tariffs and wars are shaping our orgs in real time.

➡️ The news cycle alone is a full-time job to manage.

👀 HR is supposed to be the function that guides everyone else through change. We're supposed to be steady. Grounding. The calm in the storm!!! I always joke that you can call me in any crisis because I’m prepared.

But who is steadying us??? (cough no one cough)

Every org change, reorg, RIF, pivot, you name it, lands in HR's lap first.

We find out before everyone else. We carry it alone for a while. We help design the plan. We write the comms. We sit in the hard conversations. And then we come out the other side and everyone expects us to be fine.

Woof.

The pace isn't just exhausting.

It's actually structurally unsustainable. It’s breaking people in this function in ways orgs aren't paying nearly enough attention to.

❤️ I’ll get into all of it this quarter from the AI chaos, the constant reorgs, to what it actually costs the people absorbing all of it first.

The interconnection problem:

Here's something that doesn't get talked about enough…

🪢 HR isn't just big and fast now. It's tangled up in every other part of the business. We have our hands in all the pots and it’s beyond hard to unravel this problem.

What do I mean? Well, like how:

Finance wants a seat at the workforce planning table.

Legal needs HR on every sensitive conversation.

Comms pulls HR in for every company wide convo.

Operations needs HR to figure out why productivity is down.

The CEO wants HR to fix the culture.

The managers want HR to fix their employees.

The employees want HR to fix their managers.

📣 And not to mention, if you’re at a smaller org you may be doing the job of other departments because there is no one else to do that work. I wish I had a comms person but alas it is I, the comms queen.

Everyone across the org has a claim on HR's time, attention, and expertise.

And everyone thinks their thing is the most urgent. (btw: urgency is made up.)

What this creates, and I want to be really specific here, is a job that requires you to be fluent in the language of every other department, politically savvy enough to navigate all of their competing priorities, and somehow still get your actual work done.

It is A LOT.

And most HR people are doing it without enough acknowledgement or support to reflect what's actually being asked of them.

This quarter I’m getting into all of it, what it means to carry everyone else's decisions, the emotional labor nobody budgets for, and what HR's relationship with the business actually needs to look like.

What’s next:

🤓 Next week I’m donning my professor vibes and I’m delivering the lesson plan you’ve been waiting for…

One on the history of HR and how we ended up in every room solving every problem.

I may even include a few fun facts in there about our job.

Because who doesn’t love a fun fact???

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(HUMAN) RESOURCES

Women lag in stock market participation
Traliant is giving employment law training a whole new glow-up*
Women sports investment growing
Hollywood’s job market is struggling
Summer House drama explained

*This one is brought to you by one of my amazing brand partners

WORK-LIFE BALANCE

📚 What I’m reading: How to Kill A Guy in Ten Dates by Shailee Thompson. Okay, I’ll be for real this book had me by the title. A friend gifted me this and I had a good giggle about the title and premise. Slasher romcom sign me uppppp.
📺 What I’m watching: XO Kitty. I finished allll of S3 in 24 hours and now I’m about to rewatch. Things felt like they went slightly off the rails this season and I much preferred S2’s writing, pace and character development.
📱 What I’m hitting up the group text with: The Summer House drama. As someone who started watching last fall and caught up so I catch what it air live, I was ENGROSSED in the drama. I was on every social media platform acting like I was an investigative reporter. My friend even got me to join Threads claiming there was good convos happening there. So, i’m on another social media app for you to follow me.