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 Hi ya party people, Happy Friday! I have a 3 day weekend ahead of me because we are OOO for Labor Day. ✨ It will probably take way more than one extra day off to recover from our jobs, but hey, it’s a start. ✨ IDK if you caught all the incredible creators launching newsletters in Safe Space but we've got sooo many cool people sharing critical perspectives and tips on navigating our role. ✍🏽 Have you ever thought of launching a newsletter? I'm hosting a coffee chat with an incredible content strategist who has coached me since I launched my own newsletter! She's talked me off the ledge sooo many times and I figured she'd be the best resource to bring y'all. JOIN US PLS!! Now, onto Q&A... one reader is stuck under an HR Director who steals her work while leadership acknowledges the problem and courageously does absolutely nothing. Our other reader has spent more than 2 decades in HR and is wondering how to find motivation when the career spark has started giving flickering fluorescent office light. So let’s talk about surviving a workplace that’s draining you and finding purpose after decades in the trenches…right after we set our OOO messages! P.S. Ready to submit a question? Send it in here, and you might be featured next Friday! 👀 Sponsored by EasyLlama 🧠 POP QUIZ: Is your company compliant, or has nobody important asked yet? Requirements change based on location, headcount, industry, revenue, employee roles, and data practices because apparently compliance has a dozen difficulty settings. 😒 EasyLlama’s free Compliance Grader sorts through the chaos in under two minutes! Take the free assessment, and you'll know what’s mandatory and where to act first! 💡 ASK AWAY 💡burnout & qualifications ✍🏾 My company hired an HR Director in secret after I ran the department alone for two years. On paper, she's more qualified, but I have 22 years in HR, compared to her 12 years and updated/current certifications. I am actually smarter (she misquotes legislation loudly and wrongly all the time), and I am a good person. She told me she doesn't care about being a good person and that my being "soft" makes her look bad. She's silencing me, stealing my work, and now restricts every movement I'm allowed to make to the point of having to ask permission to exist at work. The market is not favorable for women of color, and I'm actually pretty depressed. What can I do to improve my working conditions since I'm stuck? P.S. I have shared her conduct with our senior leadership, and they agree that they see she's doing it... Others have told them she's doing it, but no one will help. Context: Just over 200 employees in the govcon industry. 📣 Alex White, Regional Director, HR @ Washington Duke Inn & Golf Club: I’m really sorry you’re dealing with this. Twenty-two years in HR means something, and someone coming in with newer certifications doesn’t erase the experience, judgment, and relationships you’ve built over your career. And I wouldn’t accept the idea that being a good person somehow makes you “soft.” You can be kind, compassionate, and fair while still being direct and holding people accountable. Some of the strongest HR leaders I’ve worked with know how to do both. The part that concerns me most is that senior leadership sees what is happening and still isn’t stepping in. Unfortunately, that tells you something about the organization too. For now, protect yourself. Keep good, factual documentation of changes in your responsibilities, conversations, decisions, and your work product. Stay professional and don’t let yourself get pulled into battles that won’t change the outcome. At the same time, keep building your network and looking for the right opportunity, even if the market makes that process slower than you’d like. And please don’t overlook what you said about feeling depressed. No job is worth allowing this situation to consume you. Lean on the people and resources you trust and take care of yourself while you figure out what comes next. Most importantly, don’t let one person, or one organization’s failure to address the situation, make you question the value you’ve built over 22 years. 📣 Gennie Bartley, HR Manager @ Lightning Electric Inc: I’m sorry you’re experiencing this. Being closely monitored and feeling that your work is being taken can be frustrating and demoralizing. Document specific incidents, responsibilities, and outcomes, then request a meeting to clarify your role, authority, and expectations. Keep the conversation focused on observable conduct rather than assumptions about intent. If conditions do not improve, continue escalating through the appropriate channels while quietly exploring other opportunities. Most importantly, protect your well-being—you deserve a workplace where your experience and contributions are respected. 📣 Sondra Norris, Founder @ Strategic Culture Partners: Can I be blunt? Change your thinking. I hear all the pain, the confusion, the feelings of being overlooked, the injustice and unfairness. I also hear the defensiveness, the judgment, the defiance that's coming from all the pain. Carrying all that around is changing who you are. You're right, the job market is shit right now for all the reasons we all know. Until you're able to materially make the move to a new environment, or until the system you're in ejects this person - refuse to let this have all this power over you. Turn all that "good person" energy inwards. Maybe your fuel is your defiance and anger at the start - "No one gets this access, access that makes me question who I am." You're in a fabricated place, running on power, politics, and perception. There are precious few systems where people are truly seen for the full humans they are, not just the "human resource." You get to choose how you play in that system. You could turn this new person into an ally of sorts. Who and how she is is repellant to you right now, but there's a story there. A story of who she was, is, and wants to be. Connecting on that level may be the move that unlocks a lot for her, and therefore for you because you cared enough to ask and you understand how to engage. You could also put this time in this system into a little box - disconnect it from your personal value, and make it only what makes your life outside the job possible. Do what's yours on the job irrefutably well, including how you're showing up. Safe Space members can join this discussion here. Not a member yet? Apply to join here.  ✍🏾 How do you find motivation when you're a senior people leader whose been doing this for over 20 years. It's difficult to find joy and purpose when you're starting the backend of your career years. Would love advice from those who've been in the trenches for this period of time. Context: Company size has varied but predominately under 300. Primarily been in for profit technology and most recently nonprofit technology. 📣 Mhyrynde Noa, Director, Compliance & Benefits @ Sojitz Corporation of America: I could have written this myself. After more than 20 years in HR, particularly in smaller organizations where senior People leaders are expected to be both strategic and deeply hands-on, it can be difficult to summon the same enthusiasm for rebuilding systems, managing another crisis, or solving familiar problems all over again. I’m beginning to think the answer may not be finding renewed passion for the work exactly as we’ve always done it, but redefining what we want the next chapter to look like. For me, that may mean more consulting and project-based work—using the experience I’ve accumulated to solve meaningful problems without having to carry the entire function on my back. And with generous helpings of “self nurture”. “Always nourish the trunk of the tree”—(that’s me)—lest the branches will whither and die (personally and professionally). I don’t have the answer yet, but I deeply understand the question. 📣 Heather Stewart, Director of Learning & Development @ College of the Canyons: First of all, congratulations on a long and successful career. I don't know about you, but I find joy and purpose in training my replacement, mentoring the next generation and helping others grow. I also find purpose outside my work. Find something that substains you, lights your fire and supports your personal values and commit some time to that. Hope this helps! Safe Space members can join this discussion here. Not a member yet? Apply to join here. Sponsored by SurveyMonkey Delete your employee survey. Okay, not literally, but if it takes six months to act on the results, you basically already did! 🤷♀️ Today’s SurveyMonkey isn’t the tool you vaguely remember from college. Employees can absolutely tell when their feedback enters the corporate Bermuda Triangle, and SurveyMonkey helps HR prove listening wasn’t just another engagement theater production. Ask better, act faster, and keep your people! 💪 🚨 ON YOUR RADAR 🎧 Your company bought an AI tool and thought employees would just figure it out on their own lol. Val Jensen came by to talk about what happens when companies let biased technology influence employee decisions without stopping to ask who’s responsible when it causes harm. Check it out on Spotify or Apple Podcasts! 🩺 Your benefits budget can't catch a break, huh? Employees want choice, costs keep climbing, and apparently HR is supposed to manifest a solution! Justworks’ Small Business “Bene-Fit” Gap Report digs into the disconnect between what employers can offer and what employees need, and what that means for hiring and retention.* ⚖️ If running HR across multiple states has turned you into an unpaid, wildly unqualified paralegal, HR Therapy on Sept 9th is for you! Join us for Compliance Roulette: Multi-State Edition, where Kara Govro (an actual lawyer) will help untangle all the regulations keeping us awake at night. 💰Pay Transparency matters (but it's also difficult). That's why I created this course. Join the Safe Space community to access it, plus everything else you need to stay ahead of the curve. *This one is brought to you by Justworks 📝 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. Today, we’ve got a structured interview process template. Check it out HERE ⬇️  🫂 COMMUNITY HAPPENINGS In-person Meet-ups 🍾 NYC, it’s time to hang! Join Safe Space members Mhyrynde Noa and Evelyn Tsai at Mad Dog & Beans Mexican Cantina on Sep 29 at 5:00 PM EDT for food, drinks and great convo. No forced ice breakers, just people who get it. Grab your spot 👉 here! Asheville, Charlotte, Philly - your fall in-person meetups are in the works! Stay tuned 👀 🍿 Virtual Masterclass: Mastering the Sneak Attack, Sept 17th, at 10am PDT! HR always gets the "seat at the table" runaround, so Safe Space Ambassador Sondra Norris is showing you how to reframe the people problem as an execution problem so leadership actually listens. Grab your spot 👉 here! ☕ September’s Virtual Coffee + Cowork is in two weeks on Sep 16, at 1:00 PM EDT! 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 your your ppl, secure your spot 👉 here! FRIDAY FUN 😴 I'm tired.png?sig=8b0bea79343f9b491dd014c97bb1c9684c2b96677cd1c117fd4dd7b01689465d&size=email-body&dpr=2) I HOPE EVERYONE HAS A CHILL AND COOL WEEKEND AND YOU GET TO RELAX AND SUN ON YOUR FACE AND ALL YOUR FAVORITE THINGS. sry for yelling. 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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