What unexpected thing do both President Donald Trump and Google have in common? They both offered “buyouts” to current employees for the same reasons—to cut headcount and strengthen company and agency mission alignments. Trump’s “Fork” memo offered federal employees the chance to resign between January 28 and midnight, February
In addition to being an HR professional with 25-plus years of HR experience, I’m an improv comedian who performs at corporate events. While our improv ensemble likes to keep things clean in general, we know that if we are on a corporate stage, the humor tolerance is much lower.
I teach improv comedy classes. It’s just regular improv comedy–no HR included. (I also teach improv for leadership development, but this story isn’t about this.) Monday is my favorite class: The final performance. Classes are 4 weeks long, and on the last night, we set aside 30 minutes
A study by the UK advocacy group Age Without Limits found that it’s not just a few people who think older people aren’t worth hiring. Fully 24 percent believe this. And 22 percent of respondents think it’s a waste of time to train someone older than 50, and 32 percent
Last Week Was a DEI Whirlwind Trump promised to do away with DEI in his campaign, and by golly he’s keeping his promises. For HR people, our own opinions don’t matter at work when it comes to compliance. We must understand what is happening and translate that into
Unlimited paid time off sounds amazing to employees. They can take all the time they want! Go to the beach! Spent a week with their grandma! And no worries, they can still take the time they need to follow their favorite band around the world. In reality, it
President Trump has appointed Andrea Lucas (no relation of mine, I swear) to head the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC). She has served on the committee since 2020, when she was appointed by President Trump. Lucas has vowed to make big changes at the agency, which has a
I had fun talking with Tom Alexander at the Talent Show about improv and HR. If you prefer to listen, you can listen here: Diabolically Funny And I actually had a real improv performance the same night we recorded this. Here are some highlights! View this post
The day after the 2016 election, when everyone was freaking out about a Trump upset, I wrote this: “Look, the adrenaline is pumping today. It was an upset. But tomorrow everything will be back to a blissful non-election normal. You’ll go to work, drink your coffee, get a
Severance, AppleTV’s show about the workplace, launches a long-anticipated second season on Friday. While it’s a workplace show, it’s definitely about a different kind of workplace. Employees at Lumon, the company featured in the show, have their workplace memories separated from their outside memories. Their work selves (“innies”) don’t know
