That success, however, can mean facing some hard truths. Seeing things as they really are, rather than with the rose colored glasses that many people wear, can be a benefit to your company.

Here are five things that your HR person is probably doing, which may seem annoying but are a blessing to your business. Take these warnings seriously.

Naming Reality. This is harder than it seems. What is really going on—not what you wish would be happening or what the ideal reality looks like. So your HR manager may say something like this:

To keep reading, click here: Your HR Person Isn’t Slowing You Down. They’re Telling You the Truth Nobody Else Will

And the answer for your company could be yes.

What is career catfishing?

While definitions vary (as it appears to be a fairly new term), it boils down to employers misrepresenting the job they are offering.

Right now, remote work is a big area where companies catfish. They advertise a position as remote or hybrid when it is not.

But it can come in many forms. For instance:

To keep reading, click here: Why 80 Percent of Workers Claim They Were ‘Catfished’ (and How it Costs You $50,000)

And yet, not only did Sawe break the 2-hour barrier for a marathon win, but the second-place runner, Yomif Kejelcha, also broke that barrier with a time of 1:59:41–in his marathon debut. A first-time marathoner managed to run one of the two fastest marathons in history, likely because of who he happened to be running next to.

Sawe’s pace was helpful to Kejelcha, and Kejelcha’s pace was helpful to Sawe’s. Both are highly skilled runners, and together, they pushed each other to success. The concept is simple: If we know someone else can do something, then we can too.

It’s why I purposely seek out ambitious and skilled friends, and you should too.

To keep reading, click here: Two Men Broke a Barrier No Human Had Ever Broken. Neither Did It Alone.

Deloitte is slashing its employee benefits, according to Business Insider. Things like parental leave, IVF support payments, and even vacation will all be reduced as of January 2027.

Every business should take note. When a big firm known for its top-tier benefits starts to pull some of those platinum benefits back, and big companies such as Oracle, Meta, and Amazon all lay off thousands,  it’s bad for employees in general.

But it’s great for your business. Where you could never match Deloitte’s $50,000 IVF reimbursement or their 16 weeks of paid parental leave, you can probably offer benefits that attract people that the big players aren’t focusing on. Things like remote work, four-day work weeks, and flexibility are much easier to introduce on a small scale.

To keep reading, click here: Deloitte Is Cutting Perks. Your Small Business Just Got More Competitive

“I’m just a bit confused. When I auto-applied through Sprout with a tailored cover letter and resume for this role, there was no mention of my camera being on as a requirement. So, I just want to clarify, does the productivity of the meeting depend on whether you can see me, and if there’s been a change in expectations since the application? I’m happy to loop in HR so we can align.”

The boss says, “Okay, let’s just move on.”

And the employee nods her head and says in a self-satisfied tone, “That’s what I thought.”

To keep reading, click here: Why This Startup CEO is Using Rage-Bait to Grow His Business

While you may think free is an ideal price, a recent Mets giveaway shows the big problem with free: People don’t value what they don’t pay for, and many people will say they want free things when they have little to no intention of following through with those.

The same thing happens with hiring. Make it too easy to apply for a job, and you’ll get applicants who do not match your job description. These spray-and-pray applicants clog up the system and make it harder for qualified applicants to be heard.

Here’s what happened with the Mets.

To keep reading, click here: The Problem With Free: What the Mets—and Hiring Managers—Got Wrong

The boss wanted a correction. The employee insisted that the word should remain “hampster” because that was how she spelled hamster. And that was what mattered.

The young woman kept saying, “I don’t know why you corrected that because I spell it with the P in it.” The boss said (calmly), “But that’s not how the word is spelled. There is no P in hamster.”

— Carol Blymire (@CarolBlymire) July 12, 2019

Young woman: “But you don’t know that! I learned to spell it with a P in it so that’s how I spell it.”

The boss (remaining very calm and professional), let’s go to https://t.co/n2ZU5Uuuy3 and look it up together.

(mind you, this is a woman in her late 20s, not a 5th grader)

— Carol Blymire (@CarolBlymire) July 12, 2019

The young woman insists she doesn’t need to look it up because it’s FINE to spell it with a P because that’s HOW SHE WANTED TO SPELL IT.

— Carol Blymire (@CarolBlymire) July 12, 2019

The boss, according to Blymire, continued calmly, bringing the employee almost to tears.

We could dismiss this as someone who just can’t take feedback at all, but then we’d have to ask how you make it into your 20s without wanting to trust a dictionary, but the saga continues with the employee going back to her desk and texting her mom. Mom calls her and the employee puts her on speakerphone where mom proceeds to tell her that she should report the boss.

The mother tells her that her boss is an idiot and she doesn’t have to listen to her and she should go to the boss’ boss to file a complaint about not allowing creativity in her writing.

— Carol Blymire (@CarolBlymire) July 12, 2019

OK. Now we know the problem. This woman has received so much support and validation from her mother that she couldn’t fathom that she could be wrong about something. What she wanted was more important than what the actual truth was.

Now, you can certainly argue that language evolves, and maybe in 100 years we’ll all spell hamster as hampster, but your boss gets to decide what evolves and what doesn’t in the workplace. (And I seriously doubt this is where English is going.)

Learning how to take negative feedback is a critical part of being an adult. Learning how to say, “Oops, you’re right. I was wrong,” is a valuable life skill. There are times when you should stand your ground, but not when it comes to spelling. The dictionary wins every time. And if the dictionary says there are multiple correct spellings, the boss gets to choose which one you use in the office.

This mother, in trying to help and support her daughter, made her very difficult to work with. And as Blymire points out, teachers and professors undoubtedly bowed to the mother’s whims rather than do battle. All of them did her no favors. Hopefully, she’ll figure it out soon enough, but until then, her poor boss.

This originally appeared at Inc.

The quick summary is that Ackman discovered his family office, Table, had become bloated and inefficient after years of minimal oversight, so he brought in his nephew to investigate and ultimately laid off about 30 percent of staff, including a highly paid in-house lawyer. That lawyer, known only as Ronda, rejected a standard severance package, demanded roughly $2 million, and alleged gender discrimination and harassment tied to the nephew’s conduct. Ackman denies the claims, believes they are a tactic to force a larger payout, and says he plans to fight rather than settle.

Normally in employment lawsuits, we get only the plaintiff’s side of the case, as companies usually remain quiet. This time, we have an opposite situation—we have only Ackman’s version. Ronda hasn’t come forward publicly (as far as I know).

Writing at the subreddit, r/employeesofOracle, one former employee wrote:

“I was with Oracle for 26 years, and got the email at 6am. That they didn’t bother to do a phone call is disgusting, cowardly, and just plain ugly.”

It does seem disgusting, cowardly, and just plain ugly to not even have the compassion to tell employees face-to-face that their livelihood was being yanked out from underneath them. It removes human interaction at a time that is emotionally and financially devastating. But terminations at this scale are a logistics problem just as much as they are a human problem. These technical and coordination issues change what good looks like.

To keep reading, click here: Oracle Laid Off Thousands by Email—and That May Have Been the Right Call

In real life, there should be a clear, professional wall between a manager and an employee.

What is a friend?

Social media messed up our definition of “friend.” Someone who is your Facebook friend may or may not be a “friend.” Friends should be people who you are close to and with whom you share personal information.

Your employees (and, frankly, the vast majority of coworkers) should be “acquaintances” or “colleagues.” These are people with whom you are warm and friendly, but keep appropriate boundaries.

To keep reading, click here: Your Employees Want to Be Your Friend—Mostly Because It Helps Their Careers