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

Sam Blum

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People exiting a crowded NYC subway station. 

A brief look at the issues befuddling RTO directives at some major employers.

 Getting workers back to the office is proving difficult for these large companies 

Kristen Parisi

an image of two people (a man and a woman) looking at a computer, smiling. overlayed are graphics including a bargraph and stars

how to conduct performance reviews

HR leaders say that more regular assessments are necessary for adequate performance analysis.

It’s not about whether you conduct performance reviews, it’s how many

Two people in an office sit on opposite sides of a desk.

Managers

Mikaela Cohen

The band is breaking up. Oh, wait, apologies for the typo. The 

 it’s splitting up nearly 10 years after it was created by a merger. Comcast’s NBCUniversal is going through a 

, spinning off brands including CNBC and MSNBC to form a new company named Versant.

Companies call it splits for a variety of reasons, said Karan Ferrell-Rhodes, CEO and founder of consulting firm Shockingly Different Leadership. “It can be because things are going well, and it can be because things aren’t going so well,” she told HR Brew. “The driving factor, especially for publicly-traded companies, is that they want to make sure they maintain or increase their total shareholder returns.”

Ferrell-Rhodes added she’s never seen a “totally smooth divestiture or carve out where no major issues happen,” and HR teams are oftentimes not brought into the planning early enough.

A spin-off can take a long time to execute, said Frank Breitling, senior partner and managing director in the people and organization practice at Boston Consulting Group.

“Companies, and boards, and executive teams are mulling over it, sometimes even for years,” Breitling told HR Brew. “But what you want to have on the other side of the deal is a fully functioning standalone company, so it needs a [new] board. It needs an executive team. It needs talent decisions. It needs full functional support for HR, finance, IT, etc.”

Spin-offs can present CHROs with an opportunity “to gain a seat at the table, or reinforce the seat at the table,” Breitling said. “They need to approach a deal like this with the mindset of, ‘My role is to make the CEO of the new entity, and their leadership team successful and, in turn, the overall spun-out company successful.’”

Whether a company’s internal HR team or an external HR consultant leads the spin-off, Ferrell-Rhodes said they will have to do their due diligence, strategize, and develop an implementation plan, because “the devil is in the details.”

She said this could include “assessing all talent, deciding who would stay with the parent company” as well as asking if or who would go “with the carve out” or if retention bonuses would need to be implemented. “An executive communications plan needs to be created. If there are going to be jobs impacted, [are there] outplacement services?”

HR is also responsible for the “mundane” or “transactional” tasks that can get overlooked, Breitling said, like figuring out how employees will continue getting paid, what internal platforms will continue to be used, how job titles or responsibilities will change, and how company policies will be altered.

“[It’s an] opportunity for CHROs and their teams to be really like the co-pilot and thought partner at every step of the journey for the CEO and the forming leadership team,” he said. “The need for flawless execution of lots of more tactical, but really, really important stuff that creates lots of hiccups.”

Employees will likely feel “angst and anxiety,” Ferrell-Rhodes said. HR could help mitigate these sentiments by encouraging employees to share anonymous feedback.

“You need to know where the angst is in the organization to be able to be proactive and address it,” she said. “A lot of carve outs don’t do that. They’re so bent on getting it done, and you can still do it fairly quickly, but you need to build in interventions to help make sure the process is as smooth as possible.”

HR should also share with employees the reasoning behind and value of the spin-off, Breitling said.

“This is another really important element where the CHROs and HR have a role to [be] in very close conjunction with the CEO,” he said. “Ultimately, purpose, and culture, and change should be a CEO message…It should come down from the overall strategic direction.”

What HR needs to know when overseeing a corporate spin-off

CHROs have an opportunity to “gain or reinforce” their seat at the table when going through a spin-off.

It’s time for some workplace rules to go—especially the unwritten ones.

That’s according to Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, founder and CEO of consulting firm Business M.O. and author of 

Seeking Fairness at Work: Cracking the New Code of Greater Employee Engagement, Retention and Satisfaction

. All too often, she said, they can create stress for employees.

Hasl-Kelchner shared with HR Brew insights from her book.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Anyone that’s experienced the workplace realizes you start, you’ve got great expectations in terms of opportunity…and you get in there, and then you start to discover things they didn’t tell you about in the interview, and about how things really work. And, those are what I call the unwritten rules of the workplace, and we kind of accept them, and we obey and conform, as a cost of our paycheck…but they take a toll, and they create a tremendous amount of stress.

There are all these workplace surveys [about], “Why do people change jobs?” And the majority of the time, it’s not about the pay—it’s about the manager. They leave the manager more than they leave the organization. And, so the reason is it’s because of the relationship they have, or really don’t have, with the manager, and that’s what these unwritten rules really erode.

What are examples of those unwritten rules?

Approachability. Some people are just never available…Ignoring employees, not demonstrating any kind of empathy, leaves [leaders] unapproachable, and then employees may be afraid to approach them, because there just doesn’t seem to be a good time. “Oh, he’s in a bad mood. Oh, he’s not here. She’s not here. I have to move on”...Managers and leaders at all levels of the organization really need to be available or let their employees know when they can be available to answer questions in order to keep work moving.

Lack of recognition is another one. Too often people take things for granted, and they’re quick to point out, “Well, you didn’t do this. You didn’t do that.” Yeah, but what about the things that went right? I think sometimes people need to have that feedback to have the recognition that: “Yeah, I appreciate what you did do. We got it done on time. Maybe we could have done a little bit better here. Let’s focus on that the next time.” Focus on also the positive things…That’s one thing Gen Z has a real issue with because some managers take it for granted.

Do you think Gen Z workers are less likely to abide by these unwritten workplace rules?

That’s exactly right…One HR professional told me that one of the most effective things she heard a CEO do during Covid was to personally call employees to ask them how they were doing and what can I do to help? When was the last time a manager or someone anywhere in the hierarchy asked you that question? I was working for more than 30 years, and I never had a manager ask me that. It was all a one-way street. What can you do for me? How high can you jump?

To know that somebody is listening and willing to help, and even if what you ask for, they can’t give you. Just to know that they hear you. They see you, and if the opportunity arises, well maybe now they can help you. They couldn’t before, but it puts it on their radar screen. But, I think that’s something that a lot of managers miss out on, and it creates that distance where now people are afraid to ask unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Two hands holding on opened book with text highlighted

An interview with Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, author of ‘Seeking Fairness at Work’

Unwritten rules can create friction in the workplace, especially for Gen Z employees, author Hanna Hasl-Kelchner tells HR Brew.

Why managers need to ditch unwritten rules in the workplace

Move over, Boomers and Gen Xers. Millennials and Gen Zers are ready to take over.

Nearly 80% of the global workforce will be made up of millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha by 2034, according to 

. And this year, millennials surpassed Gen X as the largest share of managers for the first time in the US, Glassdoor 

“Every time there’s a new generation that enters the workforce, there’s always this shift of style,” said Matt Poepsel, VP and godfather of talent optimization at talent software company the Predictive Index. “Even when Boomers entered…They were saying, ‘What do we do about this manager who’s showing up with bell-bottom jeans and mutton chops?’”

Now that millennials have transitioned into leadership and managerial roles, and Gen Zers are right on their heels, people leaders will need to adjust strategies to cater to their differences and preferences.

 Every generation faces similar challenges entering the workplace and advancing their careers, Poepsel told HR Brew, but they also have distinct characteristics and experiences.

“About every 15 years, you have this interesting dynamic where people have a similar set of lived experiences. They’re contemporaries, but they’re also a reaction against what came before,” he said, later adding, “When Gen Z showed up, they said, ‘We want to be heard’...and ‘We want you to change some things around here.’’”

Gen Z leaders will likely be more accountable and authentic than those from generations prior, Olivia Meyer, a member of the Gen Z networking group The Z Suite, told HR Brew. “We are a generation that, I think, is known for holding each other accountable,” she said. “We call out things that we don’t like, or different campaigns or different companies where we can clearly tell that they’re not being authentic.”

Poepsel agrees with Meyer. Gen Zers want the workplace to be real, authentic, and honest, he said, because they don’t want to pretend there aren’t issues. “They’re talking to each other about their diagnoses, and their dosages, and everything else, and they come to work, and we’re supposed to pretend like we don’t have any mental health issues at all?” Poepsel said.

Gen Z and millennials will lead differently, and it’s evident in their approach to work, said Tara Salinas, a professor of business ethics at the University of San Diego. Millennials, for instance, are known for their openness to new ideas, according to Salinas, while Gen Zers are more tech-savvy and adaptable.

But Salinas warned that Gen Z leaders, specifically, may need more learning and development (L&D) at work to unlock their potential.

Gen Z’s interpersonal skills have been stunted due to the pandemic and social media, Salinas said, so she said HR teams need to develop training programs for “seemingly basic” workplace conduct, like how to connect with coworkers and have thoughtful conversations.

“Instead of having them floundering and frustrated, from an organizational perspective, if you give them the tools, they’re in a better position, and your organization is in a better position,” she said.

Poepsel recalled a similar experience, when a Gen Z employee told him, “I don’t get email.”

“I thought it was entertaining at first, but then she said, ‘It really stresses me out.’ I thought, ‘Oh no, I don’t want you to be stressed out about email, something as silly as email’...That was a real opportunity to check my preconceived notions about, ‘Of course, everyone understands email or likes email.’ No, that’s not true,” Poepsel said.

HR teams can help Gen Z workers in situations like this by offering email etiquette training, Poepsel said. They can also train older generations to communicate via platforms that come more naturally to Gen Z, like Slack. But this isn’t the only L&D strategy that could use a revamp, he added.

“Is it mobile friendly? Is it unpolished? Because if not, it’s not trustworthy in Gen Z,” he said. “And how often do we see other Gen Z people in our training videos?”

If organizations don’t help younger workers, then “what are our organizations going to look like in 10 years?” Salinas said. She recommended HR pros help millennials avoid falling into the old-school mindset of, “I had to figure it out, so you have to figure it out.”

“It’s not a useful attitude for developing an organizational culture that is supportive and that makes employees want to stick around,” Salinas said. “There’s always a risk when you say, ‘Oh, Gen Z is this. Millennials are that.’ Obviously there always could be outliers, but I think HR needs to take the line that this is what is good for the organization.”

Cutout of a man working on his laptop contained in a shape collaged next to a close up of stars on a desk name plate.

How HR can adapt to the up and coming generation of leaders

People leaders should focus on change management strategies as millennials, and eventually Gen Zers, take on managerial and leadership roles.

More and more companies are putting managers on the chopping block.

Between May 2022 and May 2025, the number of managers and executives at public companies fell by 6.1% and 4.6%, respectively, 

 from Live Data Technologies, reported on by the Wall Street Journal. Google, for instance, reduced its management headcount by 35% between 2024 and 2025, 

“What they’ve done is taken a hard look at that middle layer of management and are trying to determine what is more efficient for their business models and make cuts there,” said Karan Ferrell-Rhodes, CEO and founder of consulting firm Shockingly Different Leadership. “That was an area that…over the last three to four years, has been ripe for reevaluation for companies.”

 Susan Leger Ferraro, CEO of consulting firm G3 Works, told HR Brew that companies may be scaling back middle management to cut costs, ineffective managers, and layers of corporate bureaucracy.

“There is this lack of communication that happens, and breakdown in communication, based on there being too many cooks in the kitchen, there being too many leaders, mid-level managers between executives, and the information not being passed properly,” Ferraro said. “If I was a CEO, me doing this and downsizing my middle-level managers would resolve for those things.”

While many managers are effective at leading people and hitting KPIs, some are not, Ferraro said, so it might make sense for a large company to reduce its managers by 20% to 30%. From an operational and financial standpoint, a ratio of one manager to five to eight direct reports is reasonable, she added.

If people leaders are presented with a plan to reduce managers, Ferrell-Rhodes said they can either counter with alternative cost-cutting measures, or prepare by prioritizing employee engagement and morale efforts.

“You have to balance the financial pressures with the realization of what is needing to be done,” Ferrell-Rhodes said. “They’ve got to be change agents with that, either be innovative in finding a better alternative…or they’ve got to find a way to make it happen with the least negative impact possible.”

Before moving forward with a reduction in headcount, Ferraro said HR pros should ask employees for feedback about their managers, because they work most closely with them. And since middle managers are often an organization’s “wisdom point,” she recommended strategic consideration be given before any eliminations.

“Before I made the decision, I would be working with them. If you gave me six months to do that, I would be working with them closely,” she said. “So that I had my finger on the pulse of who was actually performing consistently that we wanted to keep on the team.”

Middle managers are getting exorcised from org charts

And HR pros should take some careful consideration before reducing management headcount.

 didn’t age well…for many reasons. But, despite the obvious HR violations in the 2011 movie, some might need a refresher on how to 

Mita Mallick, a workplace strategist, highlights the circumstances that can lead any manager to become a bad boss—and how to avoid them—in her book, 

The Devil Emails at Midnight: What Good Leaders Can Learn From Bad Bosses

Mallick shared more with HR Brew about her forthcoming book.

What will HR leaders learn from your book?

One of the number one DMs I get is, “Here’s a horrible situation at work that I’m going through. How do I survive this situation? What do I do?” I, as I was crafting this book, thought to myself, “Well, what if we are the bad boss? What if we’re the person that’s contributing to the environment?” Our behaviors can swing from bad boss to good leader to bad boss.

I hope HR leaders look in the mirror and think [about] how are they acting and behaving, and then also, how can they coach other leaders, versus saying, “Let me coach the team on how to work around this person, try to survive this person, try to manage up to them.” What if we actually said, “No, we actually have to go to the person who’s behaving badly and work with them.”

Why is bad leadership a problem in today’s workplace?

Loyalty is dead in the workplace…There used to be this employee-employer contract, like, I will take care of you. You take care of me. You’re going to get a pension, and so people knew there was job security, and a lot of times, generations before us endured abuse because they were guaranteed a paycheck.

We know in this market that’s no longer guaranteed. I could lose my job tomorrow. You could lose your job tomorrow…What’s happening more and more is that people, especially with social media having changed our world over the last decade, people are voicing and people are saying, “I’m actually not going to stay. You can tell me to put up with this, but I’m going to craft an exit plan, and I’m going to leave.”

Do you share any personal experiences with bad leadership in the book?

, I nicknamed her Medusa, I had never had anyone in my life, not my parents, not my brother, not my husband, not my friends, ever shout and scream at me. And, then I entered the workplace, and this woman would shout and scream at us. She would drop an excessive amount of F-bombs. She would publicly and privately humiliate us.

She had 12 people leave, and then she goes to manage another team, which I’m forced to join, and guess what happened? A year and a half later, those entire 12 people were gone. And, so the question is, employers and people who are in leadership power, aren’t actually thinking about the cost of replacing the employee, and they’ll do everything they can to protect this one person when it’s actually costing the company quite a lot.

How do you think AI will affect employee-manager relationships?

I hope that AI doesn’t breed a generation of lazy bosses…There are going to be things that are problematic with AI, and there are. But if AI is actually being implemented correctly in organizations, it’s the opportunity to do more work at scale. Take it off managers’ plates. So, then managers actually have time to do what they’re supposed to do, which is coach, and teach, and train, and lead.

The way I’m going to compete against AI agents is to be human, and to lean into a lot of the things, like dealing with conflict, teaching people how to go through mistakes, how to bounce back, resilience, a lot of these things we need. Some of the best leaders I worked for, they taught me these things on the job…People will argue, “Well, there’s no time during the day, and then I have meetings back to back, and that’s why I have to send emails at night”...Okay, if you actually scaled AI appropriately, and a lot of the things that can be automated are taken off your plate, you actually now have time to be with your teams.

An interview with Mita Mallick, author of ‘The Devil Emails at Midnight’

Employees may have tolerated bad behavior from bosses before, but those days are over, Mita Mallick, author and workplace strategist, tells HR Brew.

Are you a bad boss? Ask yourself these questions

Is getting promoted always the best thing to happen? There’s little doubt that many employees wouldn’t turn down a pay bump, but one author suggests that promotions aren’t always positive.

More companies are reconsidering promotion structures to include both non-management and management role tracks, 

, so employees can advance their careers without necessarily jumping into people management.

But even when employees decide to take on a people management role, some of those “superpower skills” that got them promoted might work against them, according to Sabina Nawaz, executive coach, speaker, and author of 

You’re The Boss: Become the Manager You Want to Be (and Others Need)

Nawaz shared with HR Brew how people pros can help employees be aware of some adverse effects of stepping into leadership.

What will HR pros learn after reading your book?

This book, for HR professionals, is a two-fold resource. One is for themselves, and the other is for the clients that they support. There are three key things in the book that reshape our thinking about power, pressure, and leadership, and particularly leading in these times. The first one is that getting promoted is often the riskiest time in your career.

The second is that it is not power, but pressure that corrupts us. Under pressure, we act out, we get shorter, we get snippier, and then power comes in, and isolates us from the impact of those actions under pressure. So, we are often the last ones to find out that we’re actually doing damage and becoming innocent saboteurs for our teams, as well as our business results, because nobody wants to tell someone in a position of power what they don’t want to hear.

To the first point, what do you mean by promotions are risky?

When we get promoted, of course, it’s obviously an occasion for great celebration. At the same time, we haven’t changed, but our position has changed. We’re in a new level, and we have new rules. If people are not aware of that, it comes [back] to bite them.

Let’s say somebody is really attentive to details. It’s a superpower of theirs. That is what got them noticed and promoted up the ranks. Now, suddenly, as a manager, they’re going to be viewed as a micromanager because while we haven’t changed, the necks that are craning up to look at us, their view of us becomes less charitable, and also, sometimes people feel a sense of threat when somebody is in a position of power because they have so much control over our lives.

What does a good or effective manager look like from your perspective?

I don’t know that there is such a thing as a purely good manager or bad manager. They both reside under us, and it goes back to one of the earlier points I mentioned around pressure, that pressure actually changes how we act. 

There were times in my career where people told me I was the best boss they’d ever had, and there were times in my career where people told me I was the worst boss they ever had. Actually, they didn’t tell me that, they told other people.

Did I have a personality transplant? No. Did I act differently? Yes. Did those actions change because of the amount of pressure I was under? Absolutely. 

I’m not saying we should use that as an excuse, but to recognize that we’re capable of both types of behaviors we just have to be mindful of how we manage pressure. Because, if you think about it, pressure is also great. Diamonds are forged under pressure. It’s like an invitation to grow. We don’t realize the brilliance, the resilience, the creativity that we have unless we’re under pressure. So it doesn’t have to define you, it can refine you.

An interview with Sabina Nawaz, author of ‘You’re The Boss: Become the Manager You Want to Be (and Others Need)’

“When we get promoted, of course, it’s obviously an occasion for great celebration. At the same time, we haven’t changed, but our position has changed. We’re in a new level, and we have new rules. If people are not aware of that, it comes [back] to bite them.”

How having promotable skills can have adverse effects on employees

You probably have a boss, who has a boss, who has a bigger boss, who has a boss in the C-suite. And, the thought of actually managing all or even one of those bosses, as an individual employee, might feel rather daunting.

But every employee can “manage up” to their boss and leadership teams in order to take the reins of their career and gain influence within the company, says Melody Wilding, author of 

Managing Up: How to Get What You Need from the People in Charge

Wilding shared more with HR Brew from her book.

I very simply define managing up as how do you navigate your relationship with the people that have more positional power or positional authority than you. Primarily, that’s going to be your boss, but not always…and I think the mistake people make is that they think managing up is just something they do for their manager’s benefit, to get on their good side, to make them happy, to make them look good. It tends to be very much about the other person.

When, in actuality, managing up…is really about creating the conditions you need to be successful, whether that’s negotiating your workload, giving feedback and actually having it be heard, advocating for the resources you need or the advancement you want. It’s actually something you should do for your own benefit.

How can employees manage up when they may have conflicting interests or goals from their managers?

It’s ironic that mostly managing up starts with yourself. Managing yourself, your own psychology, understanding your own frame of reference, because, yes, you may value flexibility and making sure you have enough energy for your work and you’re engaged, and you or your team have high morale, and that’s why work-life balance is important to you. 

But, you may be dealing with a manager who is much more efficient [and] results-oriented. The people side of it is not as top of mind or convincing for them, and that’s really crucial to know because that influences how you frame your message, so that it actually gets through to them.

And, if you can say something along the lines of, “After 6pm, I do log off to spend time with my family, because I want to make sure that when I show up here, I can deliver the best results. I don’t make mistakes, which means that we can get deliverables to our clients faster,” you’re contextualizing it in a way that your manager is actually going to hear, care more about, and that will convince them to take action or say yes. You’re not fundamentally changing the content of your message. You’re just tweaking it, so that ultimately it’s more effective for you.

What role does HR play in helping employees manage up?

Everything from communicating and helping facilitate some of these conversations around alignment…It’s something that we all kind of overlook, because we’re just busy getting the work done. We very rarely zoom out or up to think about, 

Why are we doing this, and are we actually on the same page?

Especially now, as things are changing so quickly. Every day, every hour, it sounds like priorities are changing. You need to make sure your manager and the people who are reporting to them are aligned and understand, “What does success look like?” And, I think HR plays an important role in normalizing that those conversations should even be happening and helping people understand what’s the utility of them to you, as the manager.

This should be something that’s coming up in your one-on-ones, where managers, you are giving your employees line of sight into things you’re thinking about, or what’s happening at the leadership level. So, they can anticipate, they can ask questions. They have an opportunity to step up and say, “Actually, I would love to be part of that meeting. That’s something I could handle on your behalf.” So, they have development opportunities.

An interview with Melody Wilding, author of ‘Managing Up: How to Get What You Need From the People in Charge’

“Managing up…is really about creating the conditions you need to be successful, whether that’s negotiating your workload, giving feedback and actually having it be heard.”