From recruiting and retention to company culture and the latest in HR tech, HR Brew delivers up-to-date industry news and tips to help HR pros stay nimble in today’s fast-changing business environment.

HR Brew

Adam DeRose

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This anti-racist workplace guide can help HR meet the diverse needs of marginalized workers

A small group of professionals set out to ‘center the humanity in HR’ with the Anti-Racist HR Guidebook. 

How to start thinking about anti-racist workplaces policies

keyboard with a key that says survey with an arrow pointing to another key labeled feedback

Great Place to Work employee engagement surveys help businesses

 How employee engagement surveying can empower HR to help create better workplaces with better business outcomes.

Be a great place to work, see great business outcomes

Kristen Parisi

Lego business people standing at a water cooler made out of Legos

Water cooler talk at work

Inventor Luther Haws unknowingly changed the workplace forever.

A brief history of the water cooler

Two coworkers at a laptop with coffee mug and analytics graphics

Culture

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

Paige McGlauflin

, all manner of uncertainty is affecting the workplace.

HR pros preparing to navigate today’s myriad uncertainties may want to consider exercising their core (metaphorically). That’s according to Brené Brown, the bestselling author and researcher.

Brown said she came to this conclusion following a pickleball injury. During the Workday Rising conference in San Francisco last week (on the eve of her latest book release, 

), she told the crowd her trainer said her body had “no core, no lats, no glutes, no stomach,” leading her to overuse secondary muscles when playing the sport.

As she worked with her trainer to strengthen her core muscles and prevent future injury, she realized: “This is the work I do in organizations. Organizations have no core. They’re using inefficient muscle groups to do stuff, because they’ve got no glutes.”

Organizations, Brown said, are looking for “strong ground” to find stability and build their core. But finding that ground requires a new approach. Leaders will need to practice self-awareness, and embrace vulnerability, accountability, mindfulness, and systems thinking.

Another skill that Brown said leaders should embrace, especially with the advent of AI, is paradoxical thinking.

Humans aren’t “neurobiologically hardwired” for complexity and the tension it can create, Brown said. In the case of AI, multiple paradoxes exist, including a rapidly accelerating pace of technological changes while the need for human connection grows stronger. Many feel like they must choose a side between embracing AI, or disavowing it, according to Brown.

“We have to be able to learn to straddle the fact that, if you can hold on to the conflict long enough, something innovative and new will emerge,” she said. “If you give in and pick a side. I don’t think you’re going to win moving forward. I don’t think your team’s going to win, I don’t think you’re going to win. I don’t think organizations are going to win.”

However, she said, workplaces have seemingly also lost that understanding of what it means to be human.

“I’m going to be really honest and controversial, with the introduction of Welchian leadership, this kind of rank and game, ‘Everything that makes you human makes you a liability at work,’ that has set us back,’” Brown said, referencing Jack Welch, the longtime General Electric CEO whose controversial management practices have received a 

 in recent years. Organizations and leaders must embrace those human traits—connection, deep thinking, collaboration, empathy—as they also embrace AI.

“We have to return to that human wisdom and invest in the rekilling and upskilling of those things that are uniquely asked, in order to partner with AI,” Brown said.

Author and researcher Brené Brown speaks on stage at the Workday Rising conference in San Francisco.

Brené Brown: Organizations need to develop new ‘muscles’ to address uncertainty today

All leaders have weak cores when it comes to management.

Organizations are using the wrong ‘muscles’ to tackle uncertainty today, Brené Brown says

Mikaela Cohen

Ingrid Hu Dahl’s journey to becoming a great leader started when she noticed how different she was from her peers.

Sun Shining on Morning Snow: A Memoir of Identity, Loss, and Living Boldly

, the leadership coach and speaker shares how grappling with her identity impacted her career, and why she hopes other leaders and HR pros will approach leadership with empathy.

“This is a leadership book. It’s a book about how I came to become a leader, from the lens of identity, and choice, and choosing to learn every step of the way and to choose to connect with people despite all of the series of projections,” Dahl told HR Brew.

We chatted with Dahl about more insights from her book.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I absolutely wrote this book to lay bare my authentic journey and invite people to step into my shoes as I experienced xenophobia, and how I slowed down as a child being inquisitive about being asked the question, “What are you?” every day by typically white adults. And this search for identity and trying to fit in, but not belonging anywhere. I didn’t belong with the white kids or along with the Asian kids, and it continued throughout my life, and so I got really comfortable being an outsider. But I was very bold, and there’s been also a lot of rejection and loss in my life, which a lot of people can relate to. And, so, I’ve just been seeing a lot of people say, like, “Wow, I really saw myself in her story,” and this is a cis-white Jewish man down the street who’s in his 70s.

I ultimately wanted this to be a couple of different things. One was, how do we help, through my story and my lens, bring us closer to humanity?...There’s also such a huge reconciliation story between a mother/daughter anchored in sexuality. I absolutely struggled with my mother, who did not want me to be gay, and I’m absolutely a lesbian, and she struggled with that…It’s also this painful connective point around coming out, coming of age, losing my mom, because I’ve chosen myself, not what she wants, but what I who I am, and before she ultimately passes from cancer, which is a really beautiful, dramatic part of the book. She has, and we have, this beautiful, transformational experience together of forgiveness and healing, and intergenerational healing.

How did those experiences impact the work you do?

Being somebody who’s been in learning and development for about 20 years, and leadership development for the more recent five years being an executive coach, I have connected with a lot of people and have experimented with a lot of different learning solutions around behavior, and around what does good leadership, or empathetic/high emotional intelligence, high self-awareness, look like in the workplace. How do leaders actually create conditions for people to thrive?

People were like, “Why didn’t you write a leadership book, or a book around inclusive leadership, or something that reflected your expertise?”...All of the vignettes that make us who we are continue to shape how we lead, and how we choose to belong, and how we model to our teams, how to interact with one another.

What are some HR takeaways from the book?

When I work in these corporate settings and run teams, I tend to be known for my empathetic leadership and people want to follow and be in my teams…We choose to believe in one another, and I recognize and value that that is a choice every day that you’re making, and sometimes you’re going to have a day where you’re like, “I feel like shit. I don’t like the company, or I just am cranky.” And, that’s okay. But to be seen and to be able to show up full of your fallibility, or mistakes you might make, not knowing how to do something and need to ask for help—those things are important to feel safe.

For people who are curious about this particular way of leading from somebody’s perspective who grew up as, “the outsider, the other,” is a very telling example of transformational leadership from this point of view, and to lay there and understand all of these things that made me who I am, that shaped my lens. I hope it will be inspiring to people who are leading differently, and have come up, from growing up, multiracial, multicultural, bilingual…I felt like sharing that story from the beginning to present was more important than writing a straight up leadership book.

Two hands holding on opened book with text highlighted

An interview with Ingrid Hu Dahl, author ‘Sun Shining on Morning Snow’

“All of the vignettes that make us who we are continue to shape how we lead, and how we choose to belong, and how we model to our teams, how to interact with one another.”

Growing up as an outsider made this leadership coach a better leader

Have you ever gotten into a Soho House? Neither have we.

This week, though, Lauren Goodman, regional director of people and development at Soho House, gave us an inside look at her job at the 

Goodman handles HR for two of the private club’s largest operations: California and New York. She joined in 2022, about a year after the company went public during a period of transition, she said. (Last month, it reached 

 after a multi-year streak of poor stock performance.)

While the company still thinks of itself as a “30-year-old startup,” its public offering necessitated establishing structured HR processes, which were either non-existent or inconsistent, according to Goodman. She was tasked with formalizing processes and policies for background checks, employee form storage, interview guidelines, performance management, and terminations.

Another focus was ensuring that frontline staffers understood the culture and history of Soho House and its importance for long-tenured members.

“Our frontline hourly employees, they make or break our culture. So we have to take so much care of them and listen to them, but also make sure we’re setting them up for success and saying on the first day, ‘These are our values. This is why these are our values,’” she said. “Because, if not, we’re walking them in and we’re setting them to fail, which isn’t fair for anybody.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

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

Changing the perception of HR from being purely administrative to being a partner.

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

That HR just hires and fires people and is there for admin support.

It’s way more than that. Employee engagement, to me, is a big piece…especially knowing that our servers don’t want to be career servers…We know this is a job, and they’re working at Soho House to, hopefully, meet the right connection…[However,] how do we keep them as engaged as possible when they’re at work?

What’s the most fulfilling aspect of your job?

Taking care of my team and the employees.

At the beginning of the year in LA, we had the wildfires, and it was a really hard time for a lot of our team…We have Soho Home, which is our retail space, and our head of Soho Home reached out and said, “Hey, we’re able to provide $10,000 to each employee who lost a home once they’re ready to purchase new furniture, and we’ll do it at an employee discount.”

Also, we worked closely with the team on furloughing. We had to do some furloughs for several months for our Malibu location, because there was no way in or out, and a lot of our members lost their homes, too…Just being there and listening and offering our employee assistance programs and our mental health resources through Aetna. And then we also protected our employee hours, so we made sure that everyone would stay at a full-time status for those months, even if their hours weren’t there, so with our ACA audit, so that way it wouldn’t become a detriment to them to lose benefits.

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

I am most optimistic for HR to be a strategic player, have a seat at the table and be part of key decisions. I think HR is integral in an organization and provides an insight on how to motivate the team while minimizing legal risk.

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

I am currently least optimistic about the increasing complexity and pace of employment law changes. In states like California, we’ve been trained to continuously keep an eye out for changes. However, there seems to be pace increasing for local jurisdictions and it can be tough to access the information. In tandem with the employment law changes, the growing polarization in workplace culture—including political, social, and generational divides—is putting a lot of pressure on human resources and the employee’s manager to be culturally sensitive and legally sound. Leading with integrity, empathy, and innovation is going to be key, coupled with understanding how different groups define and will respond to this type of leadership.

A portrait of Lauren Goodman, an HR Director at Soho House, an international private members' club.

How this Soho House HR director created processes while staying true to the company’s culture

The members-only club is still thought of as a “30-year-old startup,” but its public offering in 2021 necessitated structured HR processes.

The HR director who established culture-friendly policies for the exclusive Soho House

Employees want work-life balance, but it might be a fool’s errand.

A majority of employees (83%) view work-life balance as the top motivator for staying with their current job or finding a new one, according to 

 from staffing agency Randstad earlier this year. It’s the first time employees reported work-life balance as a bigger job motivator than compensation in the 22 years since the report was first published.

But some workplace experts caution HR pros against pushing work-life balance too strongly on employees because that balance might be impossible to achieve. Shark Tank entrepreneur and business leader Barbara Corcoran, for instance, 

Work-life balance emerged in the ‘70s and ‘80s as employees sought both professional and personal success, especially women who wanted careers without sacrificing personal goals like starting a family. Work-life balance then gained traction into the 21st century as more employers offered maternity leave and wellness benefits, and established norms around a 40-hour workweek.

But, since the pandemic, the lines between work and life have blurred, said Jennifer Moss, workplace strategist and author of 

, and employees now have “a persistent, constant inability to bifurcate” the two.

While Covid-19 prompted more flexibility in the workplace, Moss told HR Brew there’s also been a corrosion in how employees view their work and personal lives.

“We’re finding this increase in…pajama hours, where people can’t get work done in the day, and so they look at this as this ‘fun’ work in the evening,” she said. “When we think about that as harmonious, then it’s dangerous because we’re not actually doing fun work. We’re still working.”

Before the pandemic, and especially now with return-to-office mandates, Moss said there are more “unrealized hours” lost to the workplace. From commuting, taking kids to and from childcare, waking up earlier, and getting ready in the morning, she said it takes time away from living.

Work-life balance might not be working because many employees see their personal and professional lives as a “contrast” or in “competition” with one another, Moss said. She recommends instead focusing on work-life harmony.

“Harmony, which means that both things are working in a way that is healthy, and fluid, and supporting each other and with an approach to well-being,” she said. “When I see people that really have that healthy harmony between work and life, they’re so high performing…They don’t feel like one is stealing from the other.”

Adam Grant, organizational psychologist, author, and Glassdoor’s chief worklife expert, agrees with Moss that there’s a need for a harmonious relationship between work and life. He suggests HR pros learn the differences and benefits between work-life integration and segmentation.

Work-life integration, Grant told HR Brew, is often demonstrated by employees who don’t mind work being a larger part of their lives. “They tend to have pictures of their kids at their desk. They talk about their work at home. They invite their colleagues over for dinner,” he said. “Segmenters want none of that.”

Employees who want work-life segmentation value strict boundaries, reserve relationships and emotions for outside of work, and tend to be more task-focused while at work, he said. By contrast, segmenters are typically more satisfied with their jobs, report higher well-being, feel less stressed, and are less likely to burnout, Grant said.

While there are benefits to work-life integration, like happy hour with coworkers and work friendships, Grant said most US companies lean too far into work-life integration, so HR could help promote more segmentation.

“If we moved a little bit more in the segmentation direction and said, ‘Yeah, harmony is maybe a better way to talk about it because what that signals to me is my job is not going to interfere with my family, my friends, my health or my hobbies,’” he explained.

Another way HR pros can promote harmony, Grant said, is by offering benefits that align with both work-life integration and segmentation, so segmenters can still thrive in a more integrated workplace and vice versa. For instance, he said if your company has an on-site gym for employees, they could offer stipends for off-site gym memberships, too.

“When we use the term harmony,” Moss said, “It’s about not just integrating both [work and life], but actually striving for something better.”

Animated gif of a laptop showing a notification and a woman relaxing on a chair, both on a balancing beam.

Work-life balance isn’t working. Here’s what HR needs to know

HR can stop pushing balance and instead help employees form a harmonious relationship with work.

Has the traditional workday gone the way of the Edsel?

For many employees, the workday stretches beyond a nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday schedule, according to a Microsoft 

 from last month, as the average employee gets 50 work messages outside of business hours. That’s on top of 29% of employees checking their emails after 10:00pm and 20% of employees reading emails on Saturday and Sunday.

Working off-hours is nothing new for many corporate roles, according to Kim Seals, senior partner at consulting firm West Monroe, especially in industries like sales, accounting, or consulting where employees are often “rewarded” for working off-hours, she said.

But what’s evident in Microsoft’s findings, Seals told HR Brew, is that working off-hours has seeped into roles where it may not be required or rewarded to work late nights or early mornings.

“What Covid did was really just normalize [working off-hours] for other jobs where that was not always the case,” she said. “When we went to these hybrid jobs or remote-first jobs, then the trade-off that folks expected was, ‘Look, if you’re at home and you have more flexibility, then you don’t need to be tied to a core set of working hours.’”

Working outside normal hours can also be fueled by return-to-office mandates and fear from employees to appear more productive, Seals said.

“[It’s a] concern that I have to be visible online for people to see that I am working, and I am productive,” she said. “Did that drive some folks to say, ‘Let me show them that I’m still willing to work different hours, so that I don’t lose my privilege, if you will, to work from home or to work remotely?’”

Other employees might be working off-hours, Seals said, because they’re overwhelmed with meetings and in-person interactions in the office to complete tasks and working in the office means more time is spent commuting.

“If you put all that together, the commute, the caregiving, the meetings during the core working hours…the only time I have quiet time to actually answer emails and do the work is after dinner,” she said. “After all the other obligations are dealt with, now I have time to actually do my job.”

People leaders can use screen time monitoring tools, Seals said, in the same way that people use screen time monitoring on their phones to track how long they’ve spent on certain apps or social media. If HR notices employees spending consecutive late nights or early mornings working, she said, then there’s an opportunity for them or their managers to flag it and have a check-in conversation.

“We need to use the tech tools to flag for people leaders like, ‘Hey, Kim has been online four out of five nights this week. She’s been working eight to midnight in addition to her regular work schedule,” Seals said. “Give [their] manager some talking points to come to [them] and say, ‘Hey, Kim, I’ve noticed a lot of long nights like, what can we be doing? Can I help you prioritize? How can I help you set healthy boundaries?’”

HR pros should be aware that working off-hours is primarily a concern when it’s in addition to the eight-hour workday, Seals said, but if employees are taking time during the workday to pick up kids from school or take a parent to a doctor’s appointment, then working late hours might be the time to catch up.

“When you have that balance, and it’s not a true infinite workday where I don’t ever switch off, it’s not always a bad thing,” she said. “To give workers flexibility to say, ‘We’re not just going to tie you to a core set of hours of nine to five’...That way it benefits both parties.”

The nine-to-five workday is dead, a recent study finds

More employees are increasingly working at any time of day or night.

HRB VE: When Everything is Urgent-Namely 8.5.25 video embed

Speakers

Questions?

Burnout today extends beyond workload, fueled by the constant pressure of both personal and professional stress. Join HR Brew to explore the psychological effects of always being in crisis mode and the strategies HR leaders are using to build resilient teams.

When Everything is Urgent: HR Strategies for Workforce Resilience During Turbulent Times

HR pros seem to have hard feelings about “soft skills.”

Soft skills are generally understood to encompass non-technical, interpersonal job skills, including communication, critical thinking, and collaboration competencies. HR leaders say these capabilities are more important than ever as technological changes like AI or remote work reshape how jobs are performed.

But it’s hard to miss that HR leaders seldom 

 say the words “soft skills.” In fact, some want the people profession to stop using the term altogether.

The term “soft skills” first appeared in military training documents (created by the now-defunct United States Continental Army Command) in the early 1970s, initially describing any skills not involving using machinery or weapons. It emerged in the corporate lexicon in subsequent decades. Today, these skills are generally understood to encompass non-technical, interpersonal job skills, including communication, critical thinking, and collaboration competencies.

In recent years, interest in the term has skyrocketed, driven in part by the Covid-19 pandemic, when the corporate world quickly adopted remote work and suddenly the only human-to-human interactions were happening over Zoom. Leaders worried that workers, Gen Zers in particular, 

weren’t developing interpersonal competencies

 because they were missing out on social learning that occurs naturally in-person.

“There is that need for these skills, especially with the new generation that’s coming into the workforce,” said Carina Cortez, chief people officer at the talent experience platform Cornerstone.

“The Gen Z group did enter with video as their main interaction point. And there is something to be gained by entering into an office environment that’s very different than entering through a Zoom environment,” she told HR Brew.

With AI now poised to take over many of workers’ day-to-day tasks in certain jobs, leaders realize that 

these interpersonal skills are even more important

 because technology can’t replace them.

“The pace of change is so fast that we need to bring people along. And as we think about the role that AI is playing, it’s even more critical to engage, lead, help support, the people that are around us,” Sara Morales, SVP, people partner sales & marketing, country, and employee relations at Cisco, told HR Brew. “And there’s data that shows that employees who believe their managers care about them, have higher engagement and performance. We need them to help balance out everything we’re seeing from a technology and AI standpoint.”

That said, HR leaders interviewed by HR Brew say they dislike the term “soft skills.” And, as these competencies attract a greater focus amid several shifts in the nature of work, they think it’s time to retire the term.

“I’ve been doing talent management for 30 years, and I’'ve probably slipped once or twice, but I’ve never intentionally used the word soft skills in my career,” Chris Ernst, Workday’s chief learning officer, told HR Brew. “It’s time to put the soft skills, hard skills, completely to rest, I feel, because fundamentally the term soft skills unintentionally diminishes the perceived value of the essential skills that are needed, especially in the AI era.”

One large reason given for the pushback against the term is that “soft” often has a “negative perception,” as Morales said, in the business world. Just consider “soft market,” “softening demand,” or “soft management,” as a few examples.

“It mistakenly gives the appearance of diminished value in comparison to ‘hard skills,’ those skills commonly viewed as more technical and quantifiable,” Patricia Bravo, a leadership development consultant and former HR manager, said. “Soft skills have a perception problem. Their return on investment can be equitable, yet more hidden. Because their return is less visible, they are more easily discounted.”

Not all HR leaders dislike the term. While Ty Beasley, chief talent officer at audit, tax, and consulting firm RSM US, prefers to say “durable skills,” he doesn’t have a problem with “soft skills.”

“Maybe it’s because we’ve been saying it for so long, when I think of soft skills, I don’t look at the negative side of it,” he said.

Numerous terms have emerged as substitutes in place of “soft.” Common examples given by HR leaders interviewed by HR Brew include “core,” “durable,” “human,” or “interpersonal” skills.

But are there downsides to using a myriad of alternatives instead of "soft skills," which, despite its flaws, might be better recognized?

“While alternatives like ‘human skills’ or ‘real skills’ attempt to elevate the perception of soft skills, they can introduce ambiguity or perpetuate the same undervaluation issue,” Jelena Djordjevic, CPO at home services company Thumbtack, told HR Brew via email.

“I think language is important, so I’m hopeful we will land on a common term,” Cortez said. But what’s most important, she noted, is building up the skill sets that these terms actually encompass.

“What’s good, I think, is that the skill sets that make up this group, whatever you choose to call it… they’re the same group of skills, and I think people are understanding that,” she said. “So just to use the terminology consistently within your own organization will be the key.”

Other leaders echoed that sentiment. Workday, for example, uses “core skills,” and further defines the term as relating to the company’s six core values, Ernst said.

“There may be some risk of having different nomenclature, but the most important thing I would advise an organization to do is to organize your skills around your business strategy and your culture, and in a way that makes sense for your organization.”

Keyboard keys spelling "soft," with a mouse cursor placing the "T" key into a trash can, while a paper in front reads "skills." (Credit: Anna Kim)