🗞️ Here’s the Tea:

🔍 Rippling’s Lawsuit Hits a ‘Global Hide & Seek’ Roadblock. 

The TL;DR: If you don’t know the story, Rippling is suing rival HR tech company Deel for alleged corporate espionage, claiming they planted an employee who snooped through 6,000+ Slack messages before getting caught hiding in a bathroom. Now, they literally can’t find Deel’s CEO. It’s quite wild.

My POV: 

• If only the HRIS was correct: This is why we bug employees to update their addresses: So we can find y’all when we need to! But also for tax purposes…
• Rippling & Deel have been beefing for a bit: this isn’t the first time these two have gone up against each other – there was some back and forth earlier this year featuring a snake game. I’m curious to see how this will play out long term.
• The timing of the lawsuit: the lawsuit news broke the first day of Transform… everyone on the conference floor was buzzing about the news and how close their booths were to each other. Now, more than a month later the story continues! I really do wonder what the end game is here and how much we’ll learn about the inner workings of both companies. 

What do you think… is this a headline or a headache?

🎙️ Mic Drop Moment:

“AI is like the internet or electricity; it just fuses into everything we need to get done.”

Setting the scene:  Jeet Mukerji and I discussed how AI is revolutionizing the HR landscape, making processes more efficient and allowing HR professionals to focus on more important work on an episode of the I Hate it Here pod. Jeet shares his journey with Kinfolk, his AI-driven venture aimed at transforming HR operations by handling mundane tasks so the human side of HR can flourish!

On the line this week: Jeet Mukerji is the CEO and co-founder of Kinfolk, an innovative AI HR assistant designed for 24/7 employee support. His work focuses on leveraging AI to streamline HR processes, allowing teams to focus more on strategic, human-centric activities.

Episode takeaways: 

• AI can significantly reduce the administrative burden on HR, automating up to 70% of routine queries and tasks!
• Start small with AI integration, focusing on high-impact areas to demonstrate value.
• While AI handles the logistics, HR Leaders can engage more deeply in employee development and strategic decision-making, fostering a more human-centric workplace. 
• AI agents can make it feel like a 1:1 employee / HR ratio. 

My H*ly Sh*t Moment:  In the next few years, everything will be AI-infused. BRB still processing…  🤯

▶️ Press Play 

📊 Data Is My Love Language:

Stat: 92% of companies plan to increase their AI investments over the next three years. However, only 1% of leaders consider their organizations to be at an AI maturity level where AI is fully integrated into workflows and drives substantial business outcomes.

My spiral: It’s AI this and AI that every other day. But this stat made me really think if leaders don’t think their organizations are ready – what will it take? 

I think this probably needs a deeper exploration and newsletter but my hunch on getting to AI maturity level where orgs are actively seeing business outcomes will require:

• Strategy: someone’s gotta set goals + align them with the biz strategy 
• Skills: people need to learn to use AI – I think curiosity will be a gamechanger here. Are you employees actively trying to learn more about leveraging AI?
• Systems: do you have the right tech stack in place to support? Almost every HR system I know is incorporating AI somewhere – start by looking at your current systems. 

📚 Read more in this report. 

🛠️ In Your Toolkit 

Every week I’ll feature fun little gems to store in your personal HR Toolkit! 

📣 This week it’s a CEO Decoder – WTF is your CEO actually saying?

CEO: “Let’s not get too caught up in process.”

(Me silently screaming) 

Decoding that: I’m about to derail your thoughtful [insert anything like hiring, comp, or performance plan] with a vibes-based decisions rooted in my preference for how things get done.