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{beacon} Workweek Newsletter

Hebba Youssef

Jul 31st, 2026

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Hi ya party people,

I'm OOO next week, so consider this Friday a going-away gift before I ✨disappear✨ for a little vacation time.

Enjoy me while you've got me, folks! 😉

Let’s see what this week's Q&A is serving up:

We’ve got somebody who's brand new to HR and desperate for real training, served with a side of someone else who's watching her company's parental leave policy get threatened the second it starts costing money.

So let’s get this party started!

P.S. Ready to submit a question? Send it in here, and you might be featured next Friday! 👀

💡trainings & policies

✍🏾 What are the best trainings a HR professional can take when they are just starting out in HR?

Context: Our Company is a total of 250 employees, we have a great Director of HR however, he is also over Facilitates, IT so he never has time to train us. We run Head Start Programs. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

📣 Sondra Norris, Founder @ Strategic Culture Partners:

Oh the irony of providing Head Start Programs and not doing the same internally.

It's not clear how many are on the team reporting to the Director of HR from your question, but pretty much everyone should be involved.

Steer clear of signing up for training and hoping it's the right one at the right time. Also, it's not necessarily his responsibility to teach everyone on his team everything they need to know. It is his his responsibility to have a plan that says "Here's what my team needs to be able to deliver and do based on the organization's needs over XYZ timeline. Here are the skills, knowledge, experience, and competencies required to deliver and do all that." (That's every manager's responsibility.)

Your Director is slammed and has many masters. Facilities and IT present "right now" problems that you can see - so they're naturally going to be more easily prioritized.

You're just starting out in HR, and I don't know exactly what that means - is this your first-ever HR job? Let's assume it is.

Here's how you can help your Director help you:

1. Get out your job description and cross-connect the Roles/Responsibilities with the Skills/Requirements - do your best to see what fits where. There will be overlap. Give yourself and honest evaluation: How confident are you about your current skill set? Where do you feel you need to know more or get more experience? This might be technical HR knowledge (if you're expected to handle benefits transactions right now on your job and you're only at 50% confidence, you need to ask for training.)

2. Look at the Roles/Responsibilities and Skills/Requirements. Using what you know right now, with however much time you've been there, and however much you understand about your company's annual and quarterly strategy and objectives - make connections between them. Answer the question, "How does my job help this company achieve its business?"

3. Look again at the Roles/Responsibilities and Skills/Requirements. Now you're trying to understand the company's intention of creating the role, the priorities of what they're asking for and why. Look at your company's mission and value statements to further understand how your role helps your company exist every day as it claims it wants to.

Schedule a meeting with your Director. "I want to make sure I'm delivering in this role. I've done some legwork and have some specific questions for you, and want to confirm we're in alignment."

Take the results of this exercise and share them with your Director. You're more in the driver's seat of this meeting. You're showing your Director that you're not going to come and ask big questions that add to their task list, their thinking list, but you're going to make a case and ask for a yes or a no or a if not now, when? Your questions are going to be specific so that you know what kind of training you should pursue that will help your Director and help your company.

📣 Alex White, Regional Director, HR @ Washington Duke Inn & Golf Club:

Sondra raises an important point about making professional development intentional rather than simply signing up for whatever HR webinar happens to appear next. That said, someone just beginning an HR career also needs a solid foundation before they will necessarily know where their knowledge gaps are.

I would prioritize training in roughly this order:

1. HR fundamentals. A broad introductory program such as SHRM Essentials of Human Resources or preparation for the HRCI PHR certification can provide a good overview of recruiting, employee relations, compensation, benefits, compliance and the overall role of HR. SHRM specifically positions its Essentials program for individuals who are new to HR, while the PHR is designed for people beginning their HR careers.

2. Employment-law basics. Focus on the laws and issues the team will encounter regularly: wage and hour, FMLA, ADA and accommodations, discrimination and harassment, pregnancy-related protections, leave administration, I-9 compliance and applicable state laws. The EEOC offers employer education and technical-assistance training that can be a helpful and credible resource.

3. Employee relations and workplace investigations. New HR professionals should learn how to receive a complaint, ask neutral questions, document facts, maintain appropriate confidentiality, evaluate consistency and recognize when something should be escalated. This is one of those areas where a checklist is helpful, but judgment develops through supervised practice.

4. Recruiting, onboarding and recordkeeping. Training should cover lawful interviewing, background-check procedures, personnel files, required documentation, onboarding responsibilities and the organization’s HRIS. These may sound like administrative basics, but they are often where preventable compliance problems begin.

5. Benefits, payroll and leave administration. Even when another team or vendor processes the transactions, HR needs to understand how the programs work well enough to explain them accurately and recognize when something does not look right.

6. Head Start-specific requirements. Because this is not simply a general business environment, the team should receive dedicated training on the Head Start Program Performance Standards, staff qualification requirements, background checks, training and professional-development requirements, employee health and wellness, and any state licensing obligations. headstart.gov provides HR resources as well as federal and regional training and technical assistance specifically for Head Start programs.

I would also recommend joining a local SHRM chapter or another HR professional network and finding an experienced HR mentor outside the organization. Formal courses build knowledge, but discussing real-life situations with experienced practitioners is where much of the judgment develops.

Finally, while the Director may not have time to personally teach every HR topic, the organization still needs a basic development and escalation structure. Even a 30-minute weekly or biweekly meeting to review current cases, priorities and questions would be valuable. The team should also clearly understand what they can decide independently, what must be escalated to the Director and what may require outside legal guidance.

At 250 employees, particularly in a regulated Head Start environment, leaving newer HR professionals to learn entirely through trial and error creates unnecessary risk. The goal does not need to be an elaborate training academy, but there should be an intentional plan combining foundational education, job-specific instruction, supervised experience and ongoing access to guidance.

Safe Space members can join this discussion here. Not a member yet? Apply to join here.

✍🏾 The owner of our company wants to change our parental leave policy because it is getting too expensive. How can I advocate for us to keep it with a compromise?

Context: 200 employees, Hospitality Industry

There's something in the water here, and many of our long-term leaders are getting pregnant right now. We changed our parental leave policy at the beginning of the year to a tenure-based leave policy that provides up to 6 weeks of 100% paid leave, and an additional 4 weeks of medical recovery leave for mothers who give birth. Because so many of our tenured employees are pregnant, the owner is worried about the expense to the company and wants to change the policy to offer less. He has compared our policy with others in the industry and determined that ours is too generous. I am concerned that he is only seeing the short-term expense and not acknowledging all the long-term benefits a robust parental leave policy provides. How can I advocate for us to keep it, or make adjustments that still reward tenured employees for their long-term commitment to the company? I'd like to recommend covering less than 100%, but I believe our robust policy is great for morale, low turnover, and for showing our team that personal lives don't have to pause for career success.

📣 Rosetta Williams, Sr. Director, People Talent & Culture @ Immigrant Justice Corps:

A few things I'd separate out before you go into this conversation.

First, figure out if this is a policy problem or a timing problem. If the cost spike is from several tenured employees being pregnant at once, that's a clustering effect, not proof the policy is unsustainable. Model what a typical year looks like with leaves spread normally, not concentrated like this year. Owners react to the number on this year's P&L — your job is to show him whether that number is representative or a blip.

Second, push back on the "industry comparison." In hospitality, turnover is one of your biggest costs — recruiting, onboarding, training, lost institutional knowledge every time a tenured person leaves. If this policy was built to be more competitive than the industry standard, that's not a flaw, that's the strategy working. Ask him directly: was this a deliberate retention bet, or did it just happen? If deliberate, cutting it the moment it's working — tenured people staying through pregnancy and coming back — undercuts the whole reason it exists.

On the compromise itself, don't touch duration — touch wage replacement. Drop from 100% to 80–90% base pay. That preserves the message ("we reward tenure with real time off") while getting him real savings. Duration is what people remember and talk about; percentage is where the money actually is.

Two more levers to bring to him:

Can the 4-week medical recovery leave run through short-term disability instead of straight payroll? That moves real cost off the P&L without changing what the employee experiences.

Has parental leave ever been budgeted as a reserve, like workers' comp, instead of a surprise line item each time someone goes out? That turns his anxiety into a forecasting fix, not a generosity cut.

If he still wants a structural cut after all that, make him get specific — which tier, by how much — and then model retention cost against the savings. Don't let "make it less generous" stay abstract. Force it into a number so the tradeoff is visible to him, not just felt.

📣 Anonymous Safe Space User:

I understand that the owner is strictly looking at the cost and not much else, so I would go to him with data showing how cutting a parental leave policy affects the company. Find data on turnover costs, loss in productivity, loss in revenue, etc. Whatever you can find that speaks the owner's language. Show him short-term and long-term data because the policy affects more than just those who can use it. Older employees, who probably won't have kids, will see it as a testament to how the company values them. They'll see it as good policy that could cost the company more money can get changed at the drop of a hat.

I would also proceed with caution since you changed the policy at the start of the year and now have several employees expecting to welcome children. I know this likely isn't the intention, but it feels almost retaliatory. You made an environment where your employees, male and female, feel comfortable growing their families, and now that they are doing what the policy is intended to do, you want to punish them for it by cutting their benefit. It begs the question: why did you create that policy if you didn't expect people to use it?

📣 Stephanie Salzano, HR Manager @ County Excellence Federal Credit Union:

The policy as is, is a great way to retain employees, something the owner is completely overlooking. If (s)he had to replace these employees, how much would that cost? It goes far beyond the recruiting costs, the training, the learning curve, team dynamics, etc. The employees currently on leave (or will shortly be on leave) are tenured leaders, and since they are tenured, I assume are at great value to the organization as a leader (I know you shouldn't assume....). They are familiar with the products/services, processes and teams - new hires will take time to get there. Therefore, the owner could lose out on some productivity that could translate into less revenue, upset customers (if those leaders are dealing with customers - sales, customer service, etc.), and more.

For all other employees, changing the policy yet again, will also set the wrong tone - one that could have an impact on the overall culture. Taking benefits away is never a good thing, especially multiple times during the year. I understand that sometimes changes need to be made, but you need to weigh the impact. Unless there is a State paid leave, I would not make a change.

Safe Space members can join this discussion here. Not a member yet? Apply to join here.