The first question Aubrey Blanche, CultureAmp’s senior director of equitable design, product, and people, has for leaders who say they’re committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, yet don’t audit their performance review process is, “How dare you?”

“You’re not actually doing DE&I if you’re not auditing that, because so much of someone’s opportunity and experience hangs on that one process,” Blanche told HR Brew.

According to CultureAmp’s 2022 Workplace DEI Report, while 89% of companies globally have conducted a pay-equity analysis at least once, and 55% of companies conduct such studies annually, only 43% of companies have ever audited their performance review processes. Blanche conceded the analyses are not a “flashy thing to do,” but said, “As leaders, you have both a legal and an ethical obligation to protect people from harm and from discrimination. And you cannot stand up and say that you are doing that if you have not looked under the hood.”

There’s also a sound business case, according to Blanche, for auditing additional metrics beyond pay. A 2019 Advances in Economics, Business, and Management Research journal article found that perceptions of promotion injustice led to increased turnover intention among employees.

“We know that people who are engaged in [work]...are highly valuable to the business, and we know that human beings are exquisitely sensitive to being treated fairly and equitably. And so even if all you care about is driving workforce performance, [understand] that this is a crucial driver of that,” Blanche said.

Blanche walked HR Brew through how CultureAmp puts this philosophy into practice internally, applying data analysis to audit a broad array of employment decisions across the company for statistical inequity against underrepresented employee groups.

Roll up your sleeves. Blanche said the choice to expand equity audits came from a “strategic and a structural perspective.” The employee experience, performance, and development management platform started by auditing performance reviews for their 700+ employees: a process Blanche knew could drive pay discrepancies because companies often claim to pay for performance.

Then the company began analyzing promotions to ensure CultureAmp didn’t observe problematic patterns; for example, “performance ratings might be fair, but they’re not translating into that growth equitably for different groups,” Blanche said. Keep reading here.—SV

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @SusannaVogel1 on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Susanna for her number on Signal.

Gen Z, the “digital native” generation, aren’t just using their phones for TikTok and listening to Doja Cat with wired headphones; earlier this year, some of them put out a call to flood the Starbucks job portal as part of a protest against the coffee giant.

Gen-Z for Change, a nonprofit organization that uses social media for social activism, claimed responsibility for more than 140,000 false applications that were submitted to Starbucks locations where the company had been accused of retaliating against employees who were attempting to unionize.

Catch me up. Gen-Z for Change also claimed responsibility for a similar action in March, after 48,000 Kroger employees went on strike. According to Teen Vogue, when Kroger tried to hire temporary workers to fill in for the workers on strike, Gen-Z for Change digital strategy associate Sean Wiggs reportedly created a website that flooded Kroger’s job portal, leading the company to remove the job postings.

Gen-Z for Change’s operations director Elise Joshi explained to Teen Vogue, “We can at least support [employees] by taking down applications that are meant to replace them.”

In a statement to Teen Vogue, Kroger said that “it was disappointing to see that these failed attempts were aimed at disrupting the community’s access to fresh food and essential items.” And while Kroger ended up taking down the job postings, a Starbucks spokesperson told Newsweek that no job postings had been taken down outside of its normal hiring processes.

Big picture. Rick McElroy, principal cybersecurity strategist at VMware, a cloud computing company, told HR Brew that these forms of protest can impact real people. “As you can imagine, if there are legitimate people applying for those positions, it would be really hard to actually figure out who’s legitimate from non-legitimate…it has an absolute cost to the organization.” Keep reading here.—KP

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @Kris10Parisi on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Kristen for her number on Signal.

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Kirstyn Rigdon, director of HR at Tri Pointe Homes construction, says she got her start in HR almost by chance. Rigdon told HR Brew she was working as an underwriter at a mortgage company when she started taking on HR functions and found her calling. “I was really passionate about the interactions with people: how they work, why they work, how can we serve them best in the workplace?” she recalled. Rigdon now oversees HR operations for the Carolinas, and tells HR Brew she is responsible for upwards of 200 employees.

How would you describe your specific job to someone who doesn’t work in HR? If you grew up watching Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang, you should be familiar with Lucy. She always had a pop-up stand offering services including therapy and many other life services. She was always wearing many different hats—that’s how I would describe HR!

Ultimately, HR is all about people and how we can best support them from our leaders to our employees. Sometimes, that’s an ear to listen, guidance on a situation, résumé building, employee growth, talent assessment, benefits, payroll, employee relations, succession planning, and the list goes on and on. In HR, we’re always wearing many different hats, but it’s all to serve the people and organizations we support.

What’s the best change you’ve made at a place you’ve worked? Shifting that perspective that people generally have about HR. Leaders and employees historically think HR is like going to the principal’s office, or we’re only around when someone is in trouble. When, in fact, we are here as a true resource and partner to provide guidance for employees and leaders to develop themselves, find ways to help increase engagement within all lines of business, create career paths for employees, and to strategically partner with leaders to help them reach goals within their groups. The employees and leaders I support are my job and I’ve been lucky to be part of a team that is making sure they know that.

What’s the biggest misconception people might have about your job? Keep reading here.—KP

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Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: An Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) woman “starting her career today stands to lose $120,000 over the next 40 years,” if the pay gap between white men and Asian women persists in its current form. (National Women’s Law Center)

Quote: “Propaganda! Propaganda!”—one skeptical audience member during a private Lizzo concert presented by Google to welcome employees back to the office (CNBC)

Read: Scrawling “whore board” across an overtime sign-up sheet is undeniably crass, but is it a free speech-protected act of protest or a fireable offense? (Bloomberg Law)

Got perks? Because workplace benefits are one of the *top 3* things millennials consider when choosing an employer. Robin polled 576 full-time employees to learn more about their views on company benefits in a hybrid world. Read the full report.*

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