S12 E10: A Few of My Own First-time F*ckups + Some Jaw-Dropping HR Horror Stories

Speaker A: Isn't hiring hard enough without guessing who's actually going to work out? The Predictive Index uses behavioral data to help you hire the right people and keep them thriving before things go sideways. Stop winging it and visit try.proictiveindex.com and figure out what actually drives your people. Welcome, um, to I Hate It Here, the podcast for HR and people professionals making the hardest job in the world just a little bit easier. I'm Hiba Youssef. It was a Friday, and my CPO came to me and said, hey, I have a termination later today. I can't handle it. Can you do it? And I was like, sure. I've never terminated anyone before. I don't even know if I told her I'd never terminated anyone before, but I just said, sure. That was the kind of team we were. Welcome back to another episode of your favorite podcast, I Hate It Here. I'm Hiba, your host and resident hater. And today might be a little different. I do this every now and then. It's a solo episode, meaning you'll have to listen to my voice for the next few minutes. And I hope you're ready for that. Cause I have some interesting things I want to talk to you about today. The whole season has been a season of first, where I've asked every single person the first time they've done this, what they've learned, what they would do differently, uh, and how they experienced it. Because I think, you know, sometimes you get so advanced in your career that you don't get to have as many firsts as you used to have. Like, I feel like sometimes I'm doing things, um, on autopilot some days. And so last episode, I talked with my direct report, Madison, about the first time we implemented a system together. And it was the first first I've had in a very long time. And it led me to think about the season finale of this episode and if I wanted to bring one more person on to talk about a first that they were having, or if I kind of wanted to give you more insight into my firsts, because I don't really get to have as many as I wish I had or as many as I had earlier in my career. And I think I've learned a lot from a lot of the firsts I've done. And so I wanted to take this episode to kind of share with you three firsts that I have had and what I would do differently if I was encountering them for the first time now. Wow. How many times in this episode do you think I'm going to say first? Okay. But before I get to all of that, I have some exciting things to tell you all about. Like, uh, in the theme, in the vein of firsts, um, we are having the first ever Safe Space Summit. Just kidding. It's actually our second Safe Space Summit, uh, later this year in October in Huntington, California. It's our first time on the west coast for an I Hated Here event. And if you are interested in attending, I would love to have you attend. You can check it out at safespacesummit. Com. We're looking for senior HR leaders that want to join us. It's about a 200 person event and we're going to be in Huntington Beach, California in October. And I hope it's going to be sunny. There's going to be a ton of fun activities from book club to beach trips to cooking classes. And it's a chance to really invest in yourself, hear from people who are experiencing these things, and meet with sponsors. Overall, it's going to be a great time and I can't wait for it. It's one of my big firsts this year. First time on the west coast for an I Hate it Here event. Okay, now let me get into the meat of this episode. I want to talk to you about three things that if I did differently again, like what it would look like. So the first is performance. One of the, um, very first newsletters I wrote was about performance. It was performance reviews. Don't actually assess your performance. Uh, it actually trended on Hacker News, a fact I've shared on a few podcast episodes, which was really the highlight of my I think I made it career. Like the engineers are on hacker News and they're reading the newsletter saying, hey, this HR person's kind of telling the truth. Like it really doesn't measure your performance. And that was just such a moment milestone in my creating career. And I'm coming up on four years of writing the newsletter and I still think of that as one of my highlights. But the reason also that it was big for me was that I got to write about performance. Something that, uh, a hill I will die on quite regularly around performance and performance reviews is that they don't actually give you the best outcomes. A lot of times they're designed with the intent to get information on your employees rather than what are our real areas of opportunity. So if I was going to do performance reviews for the first time ever, what would I do differently? One, I might not actually do them. I think performance reviews are something that you can build up to. It doesn't need to be a V1. In fact, if you want your performance reviews in the future to actually be successful, my advice would be to start with building the habit of giving feedback. Feedback is not something we do naturally. Think about your personal life. Maybe a little different because we're in hr, but like, think about your personal life. How often do you, do you stop and tell your friends or your family, like, hey, I didn't like that, or let me give you feedback on this thing. It's, it's not something we instinctively do, so why would it be something we instinctively do at work where the, the cost is almost more intense than telling your friend, hey, I didn't really appreciate this one thing you said. Um, and so I think feedback itself is just like a muscle that is underutilized at work and not really trained correctly. So back to performance reviews. If I were to do them again for the first time this year, I would honestly not do them. I would start with how do we want to give feedback at this organization? What does it look like to give each other feedback? And some facts to keep in mind. Textio reports on this, um, and it's a report I reference quite frequently that a lot of women in underrepresented groups actually don't get feedback on their performance. They get feedback more on things like personality. And uh, that should just tell you everything about the muscle that it takes to build feedback. It is something that people actively have to do and have to be aware of their blind spots to do it well. So I would start with there. What's our feedback model? I love sbi, which is a, uh, situation, behavior, impact. And it's a way to write feedback in a way that basically brings the situation together and shows the person like your behavior had this impact. Um, it's a great model. I teach it to a lot of my managers because I'm like, you cannot just go give half baked feedback. Like, I didn't like the way you presented that in a meeting. Okay, great. Well, how am I going to change that? How is it, how is the director port going to change that? They're not. They need to understand the impact and what it actually looks like to do it while moving forward. So I would start with defining what, how do we want to give feedback as an organization? Sometimes it's good to lean on frameworks like sbi. Some people really like radical candor. There's a lot to be said, but I think starting your performance with that then can actually build the foundation you need to eventually launch performance reviews. So if I were to do performance reviews now, let's say we set the foundation of feedback. We have it built. It's really robust, it's really great. What would I do for that first time running performance reviews? I would not under any circumstances overcomplicate it. I think you could simplify it as much as you could to do a self review and a manager downward review. And that just gets people in the habit of writing feedback about themselves and the manager writing feedback about their direct report. A version 2, honestly should include an upward manager feedback. I really like that employees have the opportunity to tell their manager, hey, this is not working for me. That I think is really critical when it comes to performance. So to recap, if I was to do performance all over again from the very first time, one, I would build the muscle and foundation of giving feedback. I would not under any circumstances just launch a review. Now let's say I've done that. When would I actually launch the review? I would simplify it and keep it as easy as possible. No more than five to seven questions. And really make the questions around what kind of behaviors do we want to have at this organization? Ours are really simple. It talks about one achievement that you have, that added impact to the company and one area of opportunity. These should also encompass like growth and some sort of growth feedback in them as well. Um, that is really how I would think about feedback for the first time. I wouldn't rush to pick a system. I would try to see what works for you. We're in this weird age of AI where like everything has AI AI feedback isn't everything. When you're thinking about reviews and performance at your company and you're trying to find a system that works for you, make sure it's something that can grow and scale with you so that you're not constantly changing the system and having to reimplement something every year that is more closely aligned with what you want. The last thing I will add on doing performance for the first time, what is your performance philosophy? So few organizations, I have actually have it documented what their performance philosophy is. And your performance philosophy should be how do we think about performance? What does good look like, what does great look like? And how do we reward that performance? All of that should be somewhere that you could share with your executives, with your managers, and with your employees so they understand, how do I actually perform well at this company? Okay, that's like one first. I actually think I could turn a whole episode into me ranting about performance reviews like Maybe I should consider doing that for a future episode. It is really weird. I'll probably say this five more times to talk to myself and also talk to you. So. What a concept. I wonder if everyone tried this, what it would make them feel and how they would articulate their views on what our work is. Uh, what a. What a wild concept. Anyways, uh, a second thing that if I was doing for the first time, what I would do differently. Um, I have to talk about it. I had Jen Laurie on earlier this season. We talked about terminations. Terminations are really interesting to me. I will tell you why you have to be so empathetic and so put together and so prepared to terminate someone. Well, so let me tell you about the first time I terminated someone. It was a Friday. I don't know if I shared this story on Jen's episode, but it was a Friday. And my CPO came to me and said, hey, I have a termination later today. I can't handle it. Can you do it? And I was like, sure. I've never terminated anyone before. I don't even know if I told her I'd never terminated anyone before, but I just said, sure. That was the kind of team we were. And so I dig into the termination and the first thing I realize is that this person is in California, which, if you've ever terminated someone in California, you know, there are very, uh, strict laws around how you have to process their last paycheck. The second thing was that the employee was over the age of 40, which we all know means they have a different timeline when they are, um, set to their separation agreement. They get a standard amount of time to review it. So you always have to know if they're over 40. And in the state of California, there's some complications to it. So this is me, uh, never having terminated someone before now terminating somebody in a state that has a lot of laws and regulations around it. And there's an age situation at, uh, Play too, which means it changes how the separation agreement even comes together. And I was just not prepared to do it, to be honest. Like, not prepared. I went in, I had a script. This is pre AI, so I wrote my own script and I handled the termination. And thankfully, he pretty much saw it coming. He was in sales, so he knew, like, yeah, I have not been mean goal. I'm, I'm not being terminated. Um, um, and I was able to bridge the gap between that last day paycheck. So in California, you have to make sure you process their final day of pay where we Set like, we were able to process it and get it over to him in the same day and then give him longer to review his separation agreement, um, um, and then process that payment as well in an effective manner. But really, it just showed me how unprepared I was to do that. And I mean, your first time doing something, you're never gonna do it perfectly. But I think I was also, like, really resentful to my CPO at the time for, like, not setting me up for better success. And candidly, I don't think that was her area of expertise was terminations either. So I learned a lot in that first termination. And so when I think about terminations today, things I would absolutely do differently is like, you have to be prepared. You have to have all of the details at, uh, play. You do not want to walk into a termination and be surprised about anything happening from where the person is located to how old they are. Like, you need to know these things before you even think about what is the plan for termination. And then I think the next piece of it is what's the follow up. Oftentimes like, the lead up is the termination conversation. And then you're like, stressing about, oh, my God, I have to do something that feels really terrible and really tragic and really scary because you are impacting someone's livelihood. And you and I both know this is, uh, an expensive world to live in. Terminating somebody doesn't come without a sense of responsibility and empathy towards the experience not only they're having the termination, but that the job market is not great, the experience they're going to have in that job market. So preparing as much as you can, like, we know that a lot of the lead up is that actual conversation. Okay, but now what does it look like after? And so just me now, terminations. I know what the view is. From the second we make the decision, everything is documented to when the conversation happens, to every single thing that has to happen after the termination is clearly documented and aligned on with all parties before I even go into that termination conversation. And that has really been what has kept me sane, um, throughout. Having to do so many terminations in my life like that having a plan and knowing clearly all the parts and pieces that go into the termination has been a game changer for me. Um, and there are certain circumstances that I still walk into regularly, not for the first time anymore, because I do feel like once you've seen a few circumstances, you basically know what to expect for other ones. Like where the employee was not expecting it. That doesn't happen as much at Workweek now because we have a very clear like performance improvement plan process where they have to have clearly documented conversations so that I never walk into a termination and the employee says, oh my God, I didn't think this was, this was going to happen. I was unaware that this was a situation that could come to be. So I think really making sure that you have clear guidelines around what does it look like to terminate someone, what kind of conversations your manager having with them? Well, I feel like I'm getting super serious on this solo podcast episode. Just talking to myself. Can't believe that, um, I just. Terminations are hard. I have a lot of empathy for people who have to terminate people and the people who are terminated and it's just tough. And I think the way you balance that is you try to be as prepared and as respectful as possible. The areas where I've seen it go sideways is when people aren't prepared. I've also seen some like mass layoffs that have been done and executed so poorly. It genuinely makes me wonder, like, what was your planning process that you thought this was appropriate? Like, did no one stop and say, hey, that doesn't feel like a good idea for our employees to wake up at 6am and suddenly not be able to access anything and not have an email explaining what's going on? Like, what? Maybe I, maybe I'm just an over planner. It's funny. Um, we talk about this. My CEO and I have talked about this, um, about how type A, I'm like the not very much a type A person, but I am when it comes to certain things at work where I'm like meticulous and I'm like, this is how it has to be done and this, this, this, this, and I plan everything. But then in my life I'm very much like a type B person where I'm like, ooh, go with the flow. Like I'll go do this thing and then maybe I'll do that and I guess we'll meet up with each other around 6ish. Oh, it's actually like 6:30 we're meeting up. I'm like that kind of person in my personal life and I'm not that kind of person at work because specifics are very important when we do this job. And having a plan and knowing when things are happening is like critical to make sure things don't go sideways. Like performance, like performance conversations, like terminations. It's just, yeah, you can't be doing that. Um, last note on terminations, if I were again doing it for the first time. Document everything. Document what you want your ideal process to be. I even document wild scenarios I think could happen to prepare myself to handle them. So what if the employee screams at you? What if the employee refuses to do this? What if the employee starts screaming at the manager? When do I intervene and do these things? I genuinely, like, will write myself little notes in my plan to prepare for those things because I don't want to be caught off guard. And I'm really good in a, uh, chaos situation. I think a lot of HR people are. My theory is, like, we are all good in crisis. Like, none of us would freeze. There would be a bear, and we would figure it out. Like, I genuinely think for HR people, we are so good in crisis that, like, because we have to, a lot of our stuff is undefined sometimes. So, um, even though that's the case, I still sit down and write all the ways something could go sideways to prepare myself. Also, it really helps to have, in every documentation, I write, like, a Q and A. Like, what if the employee does this? What if the employee, during a performance conversation, asks for a raise and we're not in our merit cycle? How do I respond from, like, an HR perspective? And a manager perspective is super helpful. Okay, last thing. And then maybe I'll sum up this episode with some fun stories. I have some actually HR horror stories. Maybe I'll read for you at the end of this episode. I should have teased that at the beginning. Wow. I really chose chaos for the season finale. Right? I went. I went for it. Um, the last thing I want to talk about, and Madison and I touched on it last, last episode about implementation. But I actually want to go one step before implementation. The prologue to an implementation is actually choosing the right system. And I think this is such a hard decision to make if you do not have a good plan. Wait, so is, like, the moral of dealing with everything just, like, is the moral of the story for this episode, like, have a plan maybe? Um, but choosing a system. I want to walk you all through what I do to actually choose an HR tech system. Because I think it could be helpful for you to understand what I'm thinking through, and maybe it can help you as you're picking new systems. Right. I am one of those people who. I didn't start my career in hr. I thought I was going to be, like, a product manager, and I want to be in tech. So I got used to writing user stories very easily or early, very early in my career. I got used to Writing user stories. And a user story is basically like, as this user, this is the behavior I want to do. And so when I'm picking a new HRIS system, I actually sit down and I write. Like, as a manager, I need to be able to do this. As a manager, I need to be able to read a performance review, blah, blah, blah. As a manager, I need to be able to submit feedback on my direct report. As hr, I need a dashboard where I can see X, Y and Z. And I don't spend a lot of time doing that. I probably spend like 30 minutes just thinking through different user behaviors from admin to HR to employee to manager. And I try to get a clear picture of like how they're going to use the system. Then if I have a system already that does it, I need to know every single requirement, like every single thing my system does so that when I'm picking a new system, I can actually benchmark it against everything my current system does and all the user behaviors I'm looking for. If there are any gaps in my current system, I also make sure to document them so that I know if I'm picking a system. Here's what I'm getting. That was actually a gap in my previous system. It can also really help when you're in vendor conversations. I truly tell the vendor every single time on the first call and I will just send you my requirements documents so that you can read all of this. And then they have clear visibility into what I want. They can tell me if their product does that, yes or no, and then I can actually get myself to make a good decision on the product I've chosen. Because I have in the past. My first time picking a new H R I S, my first time picking a new performance system, my first time picking a, uh, new ats. I guarantee those were not good decisions. I'm looking back on them right now and remembering them. And I actually don't think they were good decisions. Cause I didn't build this muscle and this practice of being really clear about what it is I need the system to do and how my users, my main users, my employees, my managers, my execs are going to be using it. And that is truly the only way a system is successful. Because you and I both know how hard it is to get an employee to do anything. Well, we need to have a system that makes it easy for them to do the anything we're telling them to do for this to be successful. Anyways, those are kind of my three areas that I thought would Be fun to cover. I touched on them lightly throughout the season, but I wanted to give some line of sight into the first time I've done a few of these things and how I think about them and just what I'm navigating through on a daily basis and how my brain works. And I just want to recognize that, like, we all have different brains, we all have different ways of working. Just because I say this works really well for me, I'm not going to make a broad generalization and say it will work really well. For every single person who listened to this episode. I want you to go and think about, what does my organization need from me and what kind of HR leader do I want to be. I pride myself on being very thoughtful and very strategic and my way of doing both of those things and actually living that thing that I'm so prideful of is that I always have a plan and I always make sure that I'm documenting things and writing things down for myself so that I know that we are moving in the right direction. Okay, that's like the serious stuff of the episode. Now, are you ready for some HR horror stories? I'm going to read some. All of us want to know what makes people work at work. Like, how will they handle feedback or make decisions or work with the team without causing chaos. The predictive index uses behavioral assessments to show you how people actually think and work, so you're not guessing and hoping for the best. Maybe Mike needs structure to thrive or Margot desires more collaboration. When you understand your people, work actually works. Take the behavioral assessment today@try.proictiveindex.com and finally get some real answers. Okay, and now onto, uh, the part of the episode that you're probably the most excited about. I'm going to read you some HR horror stories. You know, this is like a classic thing I do, and I just thought maybe we could make the season finale even more fun with some horror. Mhm. All right, are y' all ready for this? I have some few juicy ones. Um, here is my first horror story. I'm not going to give these names, we're just going to call them horror stories. Okay, my first horror story. Here it goes. I'm going to try to read this in the most dramatic fashion. We're going to pretend this is my audition to be a voice actor. Okay, I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. Okay. A few years ago, I consulted in the midst of a messy employee relations situation. At the point in which I came in, there was an employee on a pipe and while on the pip, they had been caught lying about when they were and weren't in the office. The manager was working with HR on, um, speaking points for a termination conversation. The manager wanted to do it immediately. The head of HR insisted it be done on a Friday. In the meantime, a junior level HR person shared the job description for the soon to be open position with a temp agency who in turn posted the job publicly. The employee saw the job posting for their job and emailed HR and the manager to ask why the job they had been in for many years had been posted. Because. What the fuck. HR advised the manager to ignore the email, cancel all the meetings with the employee and still wait until Friday, three days later to tell the employee they are being let go. So messy and at that point. Also unkind. You heard me talk about terminations earlier. Why do we think that happened? Like I. This is just a series of badly planned termination in a nutshell, all the things that you should not be doing and be mindful of posting a job before you actually terminate the person. Also, hot take. I don't think a, uh, termination just needs to happen on a Friday. I think it can happen on any day of the week if it's the time to do it. You don't need to wait until a special day. It's not more humane for you to do it on a Friday. In fact, I feel like it probably ruins more people's weekends that way. But I don't know if you have a standard for when you do these, please let me know. Please write in. I'm so curious to know. Okay, my next horror story. I really collected some of the. Some good ones for you all. I was a newly promoted manager in a workplace with over 400 employees. I wanted to get into HR and my mentor suggested I become a manager first for my development. I jumped at the opportunity. There was an STI outbreak at the location in which the state Department of Health came in. There were about 30% of cases reported there. I was tasked with contact tracing and arranging for the Department of Health coming in to talk to people. Of course, I was not prepared to be accused of starting rumors, breaking up relationships and keeping secrets because I wouldn't give details. It was truly horrific. However, I learned a lot about people and delivering a difficult message. It also forced me to become an expert on what we offered for employee benefits and prepared me for the contact tracing and HR time investment for Covid. Oh boy, I could not imagine. I, uh. The woman's too stunned to speak like I, uh, contact tracing was bad enough during COVID but imagine now you're dealing with an STI outbreak that is so bad that the state department of health had to come in to tell people that 30% of cases are being reported from this one workplace location. And then you had to just arrange for them to come in and you had nothing to do with you're not telling anybody anything. And to suddenly be accused of starting rumors and breaking up relationships. Truly wild work. What a workplace horror story. My God. Okay, I didn't think these were going to be as bad as I. I picked them, so obviously I know how bad they are. Okay, here's another one. I worked for a global natural skincare brand and the horror stories honestly never end. It was honestly the most toxic environment I have ever experienced and the founders did absolutely not care about employee well being. So it was super fun to be in hr. I imagine the person is saying that sarcastically. It's honestly hard to just pick one horror story. It could be the time that we had to fire someone for doing ketamine in the bathroom during a holiday party and for groping other guests. Or it could be the time that one of the co founders sent an email to the newest marketing employee in all caps asking what is wrong with you? When she made a small mistake. Or when the same co founder asked a different employee if he could provide her with drugs. Or when the supply chain director dated his direct report, took a trip to Europe and used the company UPS account to ship their luggage back home. It could be that in the four years I worked there, we had four different company precedents. There's a dozen more instances, but those are the ones I haven't blocked out. Who that is. Horror Capital H. Wow. I, I like that I picked these. I pre read them and I knew I was gonna read them. And I'm still surprised as I'm reading them to all of you when I actually read them out loud. There's gotta be something about me reading it in my head and it being received one way and then me reading it out loud and then feeling a different way about it. But that is truly wild. And I've worked at a lot of startups for four venture backed startups. Like wild things do happen at small companies, actually. Wild things, big companies. Wild things happen everywhere. I'm m not about to do the Goldilocks. Small companies, medium companies, big companies. But wild stuff happens everywhere. I just think sometimes we think we're the only ones experiencing it. And then I read these horror stories and I Remember? Oh, I'm, um, not alone. I am not alone. Okay, I think I have, like one or two more for you. Here we go. I was supporting a leader on my team in terminating an employee for consistent poor performance. We gave this remote employee a call and he must have known it was coming. And they answered the video call holding their baby and with their toddler on their lap. Truly the most uncomfortable situation and threw us for such a loop. When we were ready to begin the termination discussion, we ended up asking to regroup when we could have a distraction free conversation. But it actually felt like it was becoming a nightmare situation. Oh, my God. I talked about terminating people earlier in the episode. Like it, you have to plan for it. And I guess nobody plans to terminate employee and then have them pick up the call when they're with their children. I have like a ton of empathy for this HR person and the person being terminated. The part of the story that gave me some sort of light hope was that it's had consistent poor performance and that they weren't surprising this employee because it seems like they were prepared to be terminated. That's it for the stories that I have prepared for you. I really dug out some truly horrific stories to round out this season of, uh, first, it's a good reminder, I think, like, I wanted to do something fun at the end of the solo episode because you've just been stuck listening to me this whole time, which might have been really fun for you or might have been really terrible. And if you hated this again, I'm always open to your feedback. Um, but I took out these horror stories because it just a good reminder that we're not alone in the wildness of this job. And a lot of times it can feel like we are alone dealing with kind of the most chaotic and wild things. Uh, but then I realized that we're not and we have each other and community is really important. It's honestly what led me to start Safe Space. And I really am, um, so excited for Safe Space Summit this year. We're bringing together 200 of those leaders. Please. If you're interested, there'll be a link in the show notes, but also look it up. Safe Space Summit. We'd love to have you there. It's a moment to remember, like, we're never truly alone doing this and that we've all experienced some genuinely wild scenarios and we can help each other through them. And I think that's the part of, ah, HR and building community that brings me so much joy. The reminder that we have each other through these times, and you don't have to do this alone and suffer in silence. So that's all for this season. I hope you enjoyed it next season. To give you a little spoiler alert, if you're listening to this episode all the way to the end, you're going to be in the know before everybody else next season. I'm covering the HR Evolution. What will HR look like in the future? I'm touching on a lot of really interesting topics, from fractional to what current leaders are looking for to what it looks like in the future to deal with fraud and compliance. So many interesting topics. My big ask for you is if you're a fan of this podcast, obviously, please rate it. I don't even know whatever platform you listen on, please rate it. But also please write in if you have people that you think should be on the podcast. People you want me to interview. If you want to be interviewed, I'm more than happy to talk to any and all of you, and booking guests and meeting new people is truly the joy of my life. Anyways, with that, this season is over and I will see you again in the summer. Thanks for tuning in. Keep up with all the latest HR resources by subscribing on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you listen. And if you love I hate it here, tell an HR friend friend I'll see you next time.