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An illustration of a photo of HR Brew reporter Paige McGlauflin.

Paige McGlauflin

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When Jaylene Gonzalez joined online learning platform Skillshare as its people operations manager in November 2024, the company was in the midst of yet another reorganization.

So, while she was acclimating to her new role, Gonzalez embarked on a listening tour. Over the course of a few weeks, she scheduled 30-minute, one-on-one conversations with employees across different levels and functions. She asked about their roles, satisfaction, goals, priorities, and thoughts on what the company was and wasn’t doing well. From their feedback, she shared insights with Skillshare’s executive team and devised a strategy for improving the employee experience.

“With that listening tour, we were able to make some really positive changes for the employees and take their feedback and turn it into action,” she told HR Brew.

For other HR pros who may join a company during a similar period of change, Gonzalez recommends taking the time to listen to employees—all employees.

“Speak to people at all levels of the business. Don’t just start from the top or speak to middle management. Talk to any level of employee, because everyone has a different experience,” she said. “There’s so much information that you can get from the team, especially the team who has been there for a solid amount of time [and] understand the business through and through.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What’s the best change you’ve made at a place you’ve worked?

One of the most impactful changes was reimagining our company-wide engagement strategy post-reorg. I led a full pulse survey and listening tour initiative that gave employees a real voice, then turned that feedback into actionable programming around transparency, well-being, and culture-building. It was a moment that really shifted how we think about engagement—less as an HR “check-the-box” and more as an ongoing, two-way conversation.

What’s the biggest misconception people might have about your job?

That it’s all policies, hiring/firing, and paperwork. People ops is just as much about strategy and storytelling as it is about compliance. There’s a real human side to this work—whether you’re coaching a manager through a tough conversation, building a program to recognize employee contributions, or rolling out change in a way that actually lands. Every system or policy we create touches someone’s day-to-day, and I take that seriously.

What’s the most fulfilling aspect of your job?

Knowing that the work I do has a direct impact on how people feel about coming to work. When someone feels seen, supported, or excited to be part of something—we’ve done our job. That, and I genuinely love creating experiences that bring some levity, creativity, or connection into the workplace. The little wins (like a great intern kickoff or a team shoutout in Slack) really add up.

What trend in HR are you most optimistic about? Why?

I’m really excited about the shift toward employee experience being treated as a strategic function. It’s no longer just about engagement surveys—it’s about thoughtfully designing the full lifecycle experience with purpose, from onboarding to offboarding, and being more human-centered in how we lead. Especially in creative and mission-driven orgs like ours, there’s so much opportunity to build people strategies that energize teams and reflect the culture we want to nurture.

What trend in HR are you least optimistic about? Why?

I’m a little wary of the overreliance on AI in people decisions. Don’t get me wrong—tech should absolutely make our jobs easier (and it does!), but I think we have to be careful about where we automate versus where we need that human nuance. People ops work is deeply relational, and we can’t afford to let efficiency override empathy or context.

A portrait of Jaylene Gonzalez, people operations manager at the online learning platform SkillShare.

One HR leader’s advice for joining a company during a big transition

“Speak to people at all levels of the business.”

One HR leader shares her advice for joining a company undergoing big changes

The worst hiring practice Kasey Harboe Guentert has witnessed is lacking a clear hiring plan.

Harboe Guentert is an executive consultant at HR consultancy APTMetrics, where she helps employers make “smart, fair, and data-driven decisions when building their teams.” She is also the co-author of 

, which helps employers better recruit, assess, and select candidates.

“Every new requisition shows up and the hiring manager just does it all by themselves, without any support necessarily,” Harboe Guentert said. “The way they actually conduct the interview and the questions they ask and how they evaluate the capabilities of the candidate, it's just completely random.”

It’s a practice she says is “unfortunately still common,” and one that ultimately hurts hiring managers and their teams. Inarticulate hiring processes can be time consuming, Harboe Guentert said. Even if hiring managers ask good questions, without objective criteria to evaluate candidates, they can end up choosing candidates based on personal feelings (aka, 

Hiring managers typically have a good understanding of what success looks like in the job they’re hiring for, even if they haven’t formally communicated that. But encouraging them to focus on that “will get them away from the: “Can you sell me this pen?” or, “do I have a beer with this person?” of question,” Harboe Guentert said.

One of the most meaningful changes I led at Airbnb was building out structured, role-specific definitions of what success looks like for jobs like software engineers, machine learning engineers, customer support, or members of our trust team. These definitions, called competencies, helped us create a shared language for evaluating talent, making hiring and promotion decisions fairer, more transparent, and more consistent. It aligned teams around expectations and gave people a clearer path to grow.

That my work is just about writing job descriptions or checking boxes in the hiring process. In reality, it’s about shaping how companies define success, grow talent, and make decisions that affect real people’s careers. I use research, data, and deep collaboration to build systems that help organizations hire and develop fairly and strategically. It’s not just HR—it’s business-critical design.

I’m deeply curious about what people actually do at work. Not just their job titles or high-level responsibilities, but how they think, solve problems, and create value every day. When I’m learning about a role, I go deep below the surface. I ask about the moments that make someone’s work satisfying or frustrating, what decisions they have to make, who they rely on, and what great performance looks like in their context.

I’ve sat with software engineers walking me through code reviews, listened to customer service reps explain how they balance empathy with policy, and talked with trust and safety team members about the ethical choices baked into their daily work. I ask questions until I can picture myself in the role, not to do it, but to understand it well enough to build systems that reflect its complexity and value.

This kind of deep listening and analysis helps me design fairer, clearer talent practices. But more than that, it reflects what drives me: I care about people’s work. I think what people do every day matters. And I believe that understanding those details—really understanding them—is the first step to making work better.

The growing recognition that how we define, hire, and develop talent really matters, not just to companies, but to people’s lives. There’s a shift happening toward more intentional, evidence-based, and human-centered approaches to work. We’re seeing more organizations invest in clarity, fairness, and transparency—not as afterthoughts, but as core to good business.

I’m especially hopeful about the increasing collaboration between researchers, practitioners, and technologists. When we bring together data, design, and deep understanding of jobs, we can build systems that work better. That gives me hope for a future where people are seen more fully for what they bring, and where career paths are clearer and more inclusive.

I’m least optimistic about the decline in thoughtful, open discussion around diversity, equity, and inclusion. These conversations have become more politicized and, in some cases, more performative—making it harder to engage with the real, nuanced work that DEI requires. What concerns me most is the risk of losing momentum on efforts that are essential to building fair and effective workplaces. When we stop talking honestly about equity, we stop understanding how to create a better workforce.

A portrait of Kasey Harboe Guentert against a green background with dark green star graphics

The worst hiring practice employers follow, according to an expert

It’s a practice one consultant says is “unfortunately still common.”

The worst hiring practice employers follow

For HR pros inspired to author a book for fellow practitioners, Joey Price has some advice not too far off from Nora Ephron’s belief that everything is copy.

“Journal your wins and journal your losses, because they will help shape your story,” said Price, whose book, The Power of HR: How to Make an Organizational Impact as a People Professional, was published in March 2025. “The way that you write your book, and the stories that you tell in your book, should be based on experience and not just theory. That’s what’s going to help your book stand out from others.”

Price is president and CEO of Jumpstart HR, an HR outsourcing and consulting firm focused on supporting small businesses and startups. He founded Jumpstart HR at age 24 when he decided that he wanted to pursue outsourcing and have a “multiplier effect” working with multiple companies, versus pursuing HR leadership at one company internally. Today, the firm has grown to 15 employees (soon to be 16), after acquiring research firm Aspect43 in January.

His book focuses on demonstrating the importance of HR pros showing up as strategic partners to peers in other parts of the business. According to Price, the book has three audiences: mid-level HR professionals who aspire to leadership ranks but lack the mentor or network to help them learn how to get a seat at the table, HR leaders who may feel rusty in certain parts of their job and are looking for guidance, and for current students who aspire to HR leadership positions. It includes Price’s own learnings across a whole range of HR functions, from people analytics to DEI to recruitment.

“I always felt I had a book in me, but I didn’t know if it was the right time based on the experience that I had at that time,” Price said. “You have to go through some things before you write the book, so that you’re not just like a talking head, but you can say, ‘I’ve been there, I’ve done it. I got the T-shirt. Now I’m writing the book about it.’”

The best change I’ve made at a place I’ve worked is changing the norms and expectations of what people think it’s like to work with HR. People are used to HR being adversarial, risk-adverse and anti-employee. I believe that HR should be an empathetic diplomat who understands organizational culture well enough to know when to innovate and when to play it safe. As a consulting firm, our biggest compliments are referrals and repeat business. That happens often for us.

The biggest misconception about HR consultants is that we exist to come into organizations and fire people at scale. I understand that media and big box consulting firms may have a lot to do with that, but it’s not true for all of us!

The most fulfilling aspect of my job is seeing a business leader go from careful to confident when we strategize about key next steps. In my book, The Power of HR, I talk about how HR should be part-coach and part-cheerleader. It’s rewarding to develop leaders who become strategic analysts but also courageous executors. Sometimes they just need a little help and outside counsel.

I’m most optimistic about HR’s role in strategic governance of an organization. I say this because technology is forcing business leaders to reimagine—very quickly—what it means to “buy, borrow, or bot” their workforce. Meaning, workforce planning isn’t just about hiring employees and contractors. It now means incorporating AI agents and technology that can augment core tasks.

Also, I’m optimistic because the winds of legal compliance are as volatile as ever and no one is poised to lead in this arena like HR. From immigration to diversity to compensation, it’s important for businesses to respond to what the courts and legislators are saying. I’m confident we can do that!

I’m least optimistic about mass adoption of AI for HR leaders who refuse to acknowledge how important it is. The pace of AI innovation is far outpacing the pace of acceptance and awareness of what to do with it. For every HR leader at Big Tech, we can’t forget about the HR leaders who buy technology in rural areas and less tech savvy industries.

Joey Price for HR Brew's Coworking series

Read this HR leader’s advice for aspiring authors

“Journal your wins and journal your losses because they will help shape your story.”

HR leader and book author shares his advice for those with book-writing ambitions

 for working parents. And while some employers 

So, it’s probably no surprise that Denise Reeb, an HR generalist at Sauder Manufacturing, considers securing funding for a childcare subsidy pilot program to be one of her most rewarding achievements.

Reeb is the HR rep for some 150 employees at an Indiana-based plant for the company, which has 500 workers total. The subsidy perk, created in partnership with the Northeast Indiana Early Childhood Coalition, is similar to Michigan’s Tri-Care program, where the organization, Sauder Manufacturing, and the employee each pay one-third of the costs of childcare.

Reeb notes there are some restrictions to the program, like limits on earnings. But despite that, she’s already confirmed interest from at least five employees at her plant alone. If the pilot succeeds, she says the company may be able to roll out the program to more workers.

“We’re one of the first companies that can offer this to our employees. So we’re trying it out, getting funding and budgeting,” she said. “We’re really excited about it. There’s a lot of buzz in the whole area. That’s one of my proudest accomplishments here so far.”

When I started my current job in 2022, we had sky-high turnover and very low morale. They were using temp workers that had no intention of building a good product or staying with the company. When I raised awareness of our employee referral program and started hiring only direct employees, we quickly saw a major improvement in stability, quality, and morale. We are currently at around 2% monthly turnover and employee stay interviews have almost no action items that haven't already been addressed.

That my job is to hire, discipline, and fire people. That is only a small portion of a generalist's role.

There’s a lot more. [There’s] the strategic part, working alongside the executives and the other managers here to make sure they're making the right decisions and being there for advice. [And] taking on these pet projects and making sure that we have a nice, safe, comfortable workplace here. I’m not just here to be a cop, good or bad. There’s just so many things that HR touches, and a lot of people just don’t understand that.

Getting positive feedback from employees about a project or program I’ve set in place. When I see employees that use resources, either here or in their personal lives, that I’ve given them, I get warm and fuzzy. Is that a normal HR feeling? :-)

The trend towards more strategic roles. When I started (a long time ago), HR was seen as administrative party planners. Now I get a seat at the table and am asked for input on business and operations matters.

AI. Although I use AI frequently as a helper, using it as a replacement for tasks without human oversight is very risky. I look forward to a future where AI has boundaries and is more functional. But until then, its use should be kept to a minimum.

Denise Reeb for HR Brew's Coworking series

One HR pro shares how she launched a childcare subsidy at her manufacturing company

Childcare benefits can be out of reach for many employers. This HR pro landed funding for a pilot program at a manufacturing facility.

How one HR pro at a manufacturing company landed funding for a childcare benefit

Navigating benefits strategy is tough for any HR pro in today’s business environment.

 and niche, organizations must juggle providing a competitive total rewards package while managing challenges like 

. For Kate Phillips, Bank of America’s global head of benefits, one key part of her team’s multi-pronged approach to crafting offerings for the bank’s over 200,000 employees is simply through feedback.

“An important part of my job is making sure I’m staying connected to: What are our teammates’ needs? What do they want? How are those needs and priorities evolving for them?” Phillips told HR Brew.

For example, her team sources feedback via an enterprise-wide employee survey. They parse through the comments to gauge what workers’ needs or wants are, how priorities are changing, and incorporate that into their strategy planning. Last year, employees responded with more than 40,000 benefits-related comments on the survey.

One example of a successful offering coming from this approach is the firm’s sabbatical program, launched in 2023, which is eligible to employees after 15 years of service.

“We were listening to our teammates, looking for a way to recognize them,” Phillips said. “It’s been incredibly rewarding to hear and see the feedback from our teammates. I get letters, notes, emails all the time from teammates who go on sabbaticals, talking about what a really life-changing experience, for some of them, it has been to take time away really focused on whatever it is that they want to do.”

In 2023, we launched our sabbatical program which has become one of our most popular benefits. The program provides four-to-six weeks away from work after 15 or more years of service. By the end of 2024, more than 21,000 employees had taken a sabbatical, including me! We expect an additional 14,000 teammates to take their sabbatical by the end of 2025.

People may think of HR as a department that’s siloed off from the rest of the organization, but our team can’t and doesn’t work that way. We’re embedded across the company with an ear to the ground and a seat at the table because being a great place to work isn’t just something we like to say, it is core to our business strategy.

The most fulfilling part of my job is the ability to speak daily with teammates about their experiences working here. I love being able to connect with them individually and understand what their needs are, while gathering feedback on programs that are working well. That is extremely rewarding.

One of the best parts of my job is receiving notes from people when they come back from a sabbatical telling me about the amazing things they were able to do with their time off. It ranges from “I went on the trip of a lifetime” to “I paved my driveway and reorganized my closets” or “I got to spend more time with my grandchildren.” It’s pretty special to lead a program that’s enabling wonderful experiences and creating lifelong memories for tens of thousands of people at the company.

We’re at an interesting inflection point in the industry right now, but I think one trend that I’m excited about is more personalization for teammates. As consumers, we’re used to having incredibly personalized experiences. We’ve been trained to want things to look good, to feel good, to be easy to navigate—and our teammates want the same things from their benefits. Figuring out how we can personalize our offerings and adapt to what our teammates need is something I spend a lot of time thinking about. Another trend I would be remiss not to mention is AI and HR automation. Evaluating ways in which AI can enhance and support us as HR professionals— see a lot of opportunity here, and that is exciting.

I wouldn’t say there’s any one thing right now that leaves me lacking a sense of optimism. In fact, I view a core part of my role as being intellectually curious and ensuring I understand what is happening in the marketplace. But like some things in life, there are times when trends or focus areas can feel like a phase—or everyone is just using the same buzzword.

I try to look at each phase or trend and find the opportunity to learn something and hopefully grow or be better. Whether that’s skills-based hiring, people analytics, holistic wellbeing, workplace flexibility, or AI, I am always optimistic about potential opportunities.

Kate Phillips, Bank of America's global head of benefits

Bank of America HR leader on crafting a benefits strategy for 200,000 workers

Kate Phillips shares a key approach to figuring out the benefits most sought after by the firm’s 200,000 employees.

What workers actually want, according to Bank of America’s global head of benefits

. That’s the case for Stacey Richey, who currently is global VP of people at Smartcat, a Series C AI translation company.

She’s worked at companies during hyper-growth periods. What first gave Richey the startup bug, she told HR Brew, was a formative early career experience working at a private equity firm, and consulting its portfolio companies on their talent strategies.

Richey spent 10 years at a boutique staffing agency before joining the private equity firm Vista Equity Partners, which primarily invests in software companies, as global talent manager and global consulting manager. There, she helped develop HR processes that enabled Vista’s portfolio companies to scale their annual recurring revenue (ARR) by 40% to 60% year-over-year.

“That was my first foray into HR, and I loved that job. I was so blessed because I got to work with the best and brightest minds of the industry,” she said.

At the time, the firm had more than 27 companies in its portfolio, and Richey was responsible for nearly half. On top of that, Vista was acquiring new companies at least once per month, with valuations running from $20 million to $4 billion, with Richey’s team expected to guide them through expansion.

What was most exciting about her role, was getting exposure “to different industries, to different people, locations everything was different,” she said, adding that no two companies were the same. “That allowed you to really identify: What are the best practices when growing a company, and how do you actually not only just grow, but sustain and retain, whatever your growth goals are?”

One of the most meaningful changes we’ve made is adopting an AI-first approach to all our internal operations. Before we backfill a role, we evaluate whether an AI agent can do the work. Every single employee has at least one license to an AI tool or is using agentic AI in their daily operations. This shift is helping us scale more effectively and focus human talent where it has the greatest impact. We are already on our way to increasing ARR per employee by 10x, 100x and eventually 1,000x as we continue to optimize how people and AI work together.

Culture is not carried by HR. Culture building is a team sport. HR can help shape and support it, but it’s built every day through how teams work together, how leaders show up, and how decisions get made across the company. As organizations increasingly adopt AI into their day-to-day, it’s easy to assume that culture will stay intact. But when how we work changes, how we build connection and trust has to evolve, too. That’s why everyone, not just HR, plays a role in shaping the culture we want to keep.

Getting to watch people succeed. Whether it’s a promotion they worked hard for, a new skill they mastered, or a creative new way they’ve found to use technology, those individual wins matter. They’re a reflection of growth, both for the person and for the company. Celebrating these special moments and getting the opportunity to be on this journey with them is by far the best part of being in HR.

I’m thrilled about the adoption and applicability of AI within people operations! Not only will AI lead to exponentially higher productivity, but it will also enhance the human experience of being an employee by allowing people to spend more time on creative problem solving, strategic thinking, and the most meaningful parts of our work.

At Smartcat, we’ve used AI to accelerate foundational programs like our Career Ladders with greater consistency and speed. This kind of time savings has allowed us to reinvest in the work that drives real growth and connection.

I’m not excited to see so many DEIB initiatives being rolled back or placed under legislative scrutiny. Celebrating our cultural differences allows us to build our intercultural intelligence, which is one of the strongest predictors of success in the workforce. Our cultural differences also allow us to build a greater appreciation for one another, both at work and beyond. It’s a pity that something so foundational to connection, empathy, and performance has been reframed as negative.

HR Brew Coworking series featuring Stacey Richey.

How an early-career gig in private equity influenced this HR leader’s career

“I loved that job. I was so blessed because I got to work with the best and brightest minds of the industry.”

How working in private equity helped shape this HR leader’s career

Kim Seals knows HR consulting like the back of her hand.

Currently a senior partner at management consulting firm West Monroe, Seals has over 30 years of HR experience, including a decade in corporate roles followed by a consulting career at firms like PwC and Mercer.

In her current role, one of Seals’s responsibilities is developing the firm’s next generation of leaders—which she believes is most important.

“We have a very people-first mentality. We want to have a well-rounded experience for our consultants,” she told HR Brew. “As we think about that next generation of talent…they want development, they want to move fast with their careers. And so I think by doing that, I am helping the firm grow.”

When identifying and developing consultants, Seals says these two skills are critical: Active listening, and relationship-building. Often, she’s noticed consultants will pitch solutions to clients, often during their first meetings, without first asking or trying to understand what the customer’s problem is.

“The best thing you can do is listen. Listen to learn and listen to understand what the client is really facing and what is our unique ability to solve their problem,” she said.

Secondly, Seals says consulting at its core is a relationship-based business; Her team often works with clients from planning to execution and must build trust and demonstrate their expertise. Forming and sustaining those relationships is critical.

“Most consulting firms all have the same kinds of services and solutions, but it really comes down to the people that we have on our teams and how they consult with our clients,” she said.

Over a 30-year career, that’s a tough one—but I’d say it’s when we’ve helped clients truly transform their HR operating model. It’s rewarding to help organizations shift from delivering HR programs that just check a box to delivering in a way that actually drives impact for the business. When a client says, “This is exactly what we needed to take our business to the next level,” that’s the kind of change that sticks with me.

That consulting is this glamorous, jet-setting lifestyle. Over the past 25+ years, I’ve traveled to nearly every region of the world for work. People hear that and say, “Wow, that must be amazing!” But the truth is, I’ve seen most of these places from a taxi window. I once spotted the Eiffel Tower while heading from the airport straight to a client meeting. In Germany, I had 10 minutes to walk through a stunning church next to my hotel before diving back into work. Most trips are nonstop days with back-to-back meetings, catching up on work at night in hotel rooms, and trying to make the first flight home to see my family. It’s rewarding—but it’s not exactly the vacation people picture when they hear I’ve been around the world.

Aside from developing our people, (which I really enjoy) it’s when a client takes our recommendations, implements them, and we get to see the real impact. Sometimes that means helping them through the implementation phase, and other times it’s checking back in to see how things went and what we might tweak.

One recent example stands out: We worked with a client last year on a large HR operating model transformation. Not long ago, I saw that same client presenting the work at a conference talking about how it helped them move their organization forward. That was incredibly fulfilling. It’s one thing to deliver good work, but seeing a client proud enough to present it to their peers? That’s the best part.

Generative AI. I’m incredibly optimistic about how it can transform HR—making our work faster, more accurate, and more impactful. We’ve been trying to streamline and modernize HR processes for decades, and I think AI finally gives us the tools to do it right. It can take care of repetitive, transactional work—like benefits enrollment or basic policy questions—so HR can focus on the strategic initiatives that really move the needle.

[Generative AI is] also where my concern lies. I worry that too many organizations will stop at the basics and never make it to the more transformative possibilities. Things like predictive, strategic, workforce planning or using AI to analyze talent data in a way that shapes long-term business strategy—that’s where the real value is. I want to see our clients think bigger and bolder and not miss the opportunity to fundamentally rethink how HR operates.

Kim Seals, a senior parter at West Monroe