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 Hi ya party people, Happy If you’re off today, I hope you’re taking time to recharge. If you’re not off, at least you still have me to start your day…right??? Let’s jump right in with the Q&A for today + some upcoming events reminders. First up, what do you do when the workforce problem you're staring down is due to a broken industry, and the needle hasn't moved because the needle was never yours to move? Then, someone gave feedback on a new leader training program that HR put together, and the note was essentially "HR shouldn't be in the room." Which, respect for the honesty, truly. But also…now what? Aaaand for a couple of quick reminders: 🍽️ I'm coming for you, Chicago! I'm hosting a dinner, and yes, you're invited babe. Here are the deets! 📆 We're coming back with THE EVENT of the year, aka the Safe Space Summit, on Oct 13th-16th in Huntington Beach, CA! It's an application-style event because we're curating the room to include people with similar experiences, but go apply if you haven’t yet! And lastly, if you have any juicy questions of your own, send them here, and you might be featured next Friday! 👀 Okay, I know that was a lot. Let’s get into this week’s questions! Sponsored by Remote Wanna hear a crazy stat?? 87% of companies have HR departments with fewer than 10 people. The report covers AI automation, EOR playbooks, and the compliance risks costing companies an average of $42K per incident. ASK AWAY 😐 discomfort & dissatisfaction ✍🏾 At what point do we acknowledge that some workforce challenges are not talent problems, but industry design problems? In sectors such as childcare, event security, hospitality, retail, and long-term care, where turnover, staffing shortages, and employee dissatisfaction often persist despite years of HR-led initiatives, what are we realistically expected to do when we can clearly identify the root causes but lack the authority to change the leadership decisions, business models, or industry norms driving them- and what role should HR play when the system itself may be the barrier to meaningful change? Context: HR leader with experience across hospitality, retail, childcare, private security, and healthcare-adjacent services. Throughout my career, I've worked to improve retention, engagement, workforce stability, and organizational effectiveness in industries often characterized by high turnover, staffing shortages, thin margins, and demanding operational realities. Despite identifying opportunities for meaningful improvement and advocating for innovative approaches, I've frequently observed that the greatest barriers to sustainable change are not talent-related, but rooted in deeply entrenched industry norms. 📣 Sondra Norris, Founder @ Strategic Culture Partners: From the beginning! Denying the obvious reality that a system sucks is quickly labeled toxic behavior - blindness to the plight of the employee's reality and still requesting deep, enduring commitment. HR is in a tricky position because you answer to the people above you formally, and you answer to everyone else relationally. On the one hand, no one wants to stand behind something they don't believe in to stay in the bosses' good graces (industry problems and questionable leadership decisions) and on the other hand, no one wants to look someone in the face and say, "It's just how it is, we're here for you, please keep working hard." When it's terrible and you can't change it with innovation or streamlining or ANYthing tangible, you have to move the focus, goals, and vision of what we're doing and why elsewhere to provide what the humans doing the work need, without accidentally rewarding behavior that eventually burns everyone out. And it can't be the platitude-ridden slogans of how we're helping people, which still all translate to "Mindf*ck yourself into believing it's worth it to tolerate really hard conditions with this silly slogan." In any great company without all the systemic baggage, there can still be unskilled managers making their teams' day-to-day living hell. And in any horrible company, there can be great managers making their teams' day-to-day truly magical and fulfilling. And that's what you can deconstruct. You presented a long list of issues, impossible to address every one. In general, the approach would be to work any of the leaders and managers around to the notion that in spite of what's happening in the larger picture, they can still create microcosms of greatness by focusing on creating their own great environments that answer the human needs of their employees. It's no mystery to the employees that the system sucks and they're basically powerless to change it. But their manager can be a light in the dark, a planet worth orbiting around. HR-led initiatives don't usually work in these environments because you're another victim of the bad circumstances. To the employees, you don't have the power to change anything, not really. If there are HR-led initiatives, they should be focused on helping the managers find their lights, their reasons and ways to arrive at the conclusion that more often than not this job allows them to be human - if they can get there through lots of reframing to get them out of "it's impossible here" and "nothing will ever change" and generally defeated mindsets, they can start to shift their focus to showing up for their employees in a way that transcends what's happening in the organization. Yes, bad, hard, frustrating things will still happen - but you know those managers that people say, "I would follow them anywhere!" they're the managers that have figured this out in the whole range of industries - inherently complete cluster f*ck ones to the ones where as long as you're breathing it all seems to work out. And also do HR-led initiatives for the employees. General career development stuff has 100% of the time been an incredible booster with people never failing to ask, "Why hasn't anyone taught us this before?" and "Can we do this every week?" and "Can this be longer?" So, no, you're not changing the system. But you ARE helping the people IN the system have a whole hell of a better time while they're there. 📣 Rosetta Williams, Sr. Director, People Talent & Culture @ Immigrant Justice Corps: @Sondra Norris This is one of the most honest and well-articulated takes on the HR practitioner's dilemma I've seen in a long time — and you've essentially answered your own question, which tells me you already know what needs to happen. You just needed to think it through out loud. The dual accountability you described — formal upward, relational outward — is the permanent condition of HR work, and the sooner we stop pretending there's a clean resolution to that tension, the more effective we become. Trying to resolve it usually just makes you look like you're either a management mouthpiece or a troublemaker. Living in it, with eyes open, is the actual job. Your instinct to focus on the manager layer is exactly right, and here's why it works: employees already know the system is broken. You're not revealing anything by acknowledging it. What they're watching for is whether their manager sees them, advocates for them, and creates something worth showing up to within the walls of their immediate experience. That's the micro-environment you can actually influence. HR-led initiatives land differently in dysfunctional systems — not because the ideas are bad, but because HR is perceived (accurately, in many cases) as lacking the organizational power to change what's actually making people miserable. So when we show up with engagement surveys and wellness programs, employees clock it immediately as deflection. The ones that do work, as you've noted, are the ones that give people something genuinely useful that belongs to them — career development, skill-building, tools they take with them regardless of whether they stay. That's not a consolation prize; that's a real investment in a real person's real future, and people feel the difference. The manager work is harder and slower, but it's the highest-leverage play in a broken system. Helping a manager find their reason to show up — their sense of what they can control, what they can create, who they can be for their team — is the kind of reframe that doesn't require organizational buy-in. It just requires that the manager be willing and that someone takes the time to help them get there. You're not fixing the company. But you're building pockets of something worth being part of. That's not nothing — for a lot of people, it's everything. 📣 Jess Tannenbaum, Head of People @ Brass Taxes: I'd also add: working within a broken system is the norm for most of business and life, not unique to our industry. So I agree that the answer isn't pretending the system isn't broken. You can name it without being hopeless or deflating about it, and call it out as a condition to design within, not a barrier or a self-fulfilling prophecy. From there it's about finding the leverage points- the small number of places where action makes the most difference. Manager development is one. A couple others: - Communication/information flows. A lot of dissatisfaction isn't as much the conditions themselves, it's not knowing what's coming. - Feedback loops, like review and feedback processes that actually shorten the gap between a problem happening and someone hearing about it, or someone getting feedback about their performance and support for development. I'd also build out a framework of things you can fix, and things you can't because they're rooted in the system. For that second category, you address it by naming what you're doing instead. That can go a long way for trust, even when the actual system doesn't change.  ✍🏾 How do I follow up on this feedback on a training program I initiated with the company for our new leaders as an HR team of 2 with 20+ years experience? "I'd recommend not having HR as a part of these discussions. I didn't feel comfortable speaking in front of hr on some of the subjects" Context: 12 new leaders who had issues with employee relations/development before and were supervising staff. small company of 100 employees 📣 Anonymous Safe Space Member: Aw lawd......where to start. So where I would start is to address the massive elephant in the room of the why!? Then follow up by the lets fix this. HR needs to be involved in these conversations because of......list the risk of not having HR involved as someone who may not know the laws in it's intimacy like those who navigate them daily. Here is the risk you'll face for the company...oh....any if you handle this very poorly...it can be personal risk too.....so......best of luck to you. 📣 Sondra Norris, Founder @ Strategic Culture Partners: This isn't a reflection on you personally. It's more likely indicative of a population carrying hereditary mistrust, and the best response is to identify 1-2 things that can be fixed within 30 days that came up in the workshop. Tell them you heard them. Fix the things. Go back and tell them you fixed them. Keep doing that to start feeding the system positive data to give trust a chance to build. Your first positive action won't generate any or much appreciation or recognition, more likely it will be silent as the population waits to see if it was real, if it will keep happening. If it doesn't keep happening, the trust debt will deepen as it will be perceived as a broken promise. Don't declare you're trustworthy, but do acknowledge the reasonable nature of their mistrust, and tell them you want to earn their trust. Appreciate that they were able to name the mistrust instead of just sitting there silent. Safe Space members can join this discussion here. Not a member yet? Apply to join here. 🚨 ON YOUR RADAR 🎧 Madison Montgomery is back and we basically turned our 1:1 into a podcast episode, which means you're getting ATS implementation horror stories and Summer House drama analyzed through an HR lens. Check it out on Spotify or Apple Podcasts! 📊 We're halfway through 2026 and I know I'm not the only one who needs a moment to process. Join me June 24th for HR Therapy, where we're tackling the three challenges that have been wrecking HR this year, with actual data from Checkr's CHRO Insights Report. ❤️ From ‘I Hate it Here’ to ‘I Love it Here’: Your Culture Transformation Roadmap. HR can influence culture change in any organization, and this course teaches you how. Join the Safe Space community to access it! 📋 Applicant volume is waaay up, and most of the advice out there still assumes you have a full recruiting team to deal with it. Spark Hire's free Lean Teams Hiring Playbook gives you the frameworks to fix what's actually broken in your process, without blowing everything up and starting over. Get started today! Sponsored by Headspace Your workforce might be running on fumes right now...have you noticed anything? 👀 📝 RESOURCE OF THE WEEK Each week I feature a resource I love from the Safe Space library that I believe would be relatable to this week's newsletter topic.
 {/if}{if contains(profile.lists,"Safe Space -- all active members")} 🫂 COMMUNITY CORNER ☕ July’s Virtual Coffee + Cowork is up - Hosted by Kat. HR team of 1? In need of body doubling? Simply want to hang out listening to lofi beats with your fav community? Trust, it’s always a vibe. Come hang with some of the best ppl ever here! In-person Meet-ups: 🔔 Philly and BEYOND!! - Dawn is hosting an IRL meetup on July 8th @ PHS Pop Up Garden At South Street. Now's the time to hang with your people, plus the Pop Up Garden is a total VIBE. Grab your spot here! 🏔️ Denver front range area - We’re meeting up on July 16th!! Half day of co-working followed by carbs from one of the best bakeries in Denver at Denver Central Market. Can’t come for the co-working sesh? No probs - meet up with us between 4-6pm at DCM for carbs, vibes and to hang with your ppl. Grab your spot here! Want to host your own in-person event, shoot Kat a DM here! {/if}{if contains(profile.lists,"Safe Space -- all active members")}{/if} FRIDAY FUN 😂 um okay sure i'm listening I've been in this situation too many times to count!!!! I will always listen. Will I do what you want me to do? Possibly not... That's all for this week! I hope you enjoyed! If you have any thoughts, please let me know. I'm allll ears. Reminder: Today is FRIDAY. 🙏 | |||||||||||
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