Hiii,

My hours of sleep are low, but the vibes are high this week!

(We do need to pour one out for Dolly Parton though 🥀)

We have plenty to talk about: the data has arrived to confirm that companies gutted their DEI programs and publicly folded like a lawn chair for…absolutely no financial benefit. A masterclass in standing for nothing and gaining nothing!

We’re also talking about why your job should not be your entire personality, and the million-plus people begging LinkedIn to stop drowning them in AI slop.

Let’s get into all the deets!

P.S. Are you coming to the next HR Therapy in a couple of weeks? It’d be kinda rad if you did, just saying. 😄

🗞️ Here's the Tea:Copy anchor linkCopied

👀 Companies that roll back DEI don’t perform better financially, study says

The TL;DR: New research from a UC Berkeley scholar found that S&P 500 companies who kept their DEI programs intact performed just as well (sometimes better) than the ones who caved and rolled them back. Companies like Apple, Costco, and Microsoft stayed the course and saw zero financial downside, while Target, Walmart, and IBM scaled back for what turned out to be nothing. The data says the "DEI is a legal and financial risk" narrative was never really about the money.

My POV: LOL @ soo many companies that made huge, public bets on cutting DEI as a necessary business decision, and now there's concrete data saying that decision didn't actually protect anyone's bottom line.

If you're an HR leader who's been asked to justify or dismantle your programs under the guise of market pressure, this gives you receipts.

It's also a good gut check on how much of the DEI rollback wave was actual strategy versus companies just folding because everyone else was folding!

🎙️Mic Drop Moment:Copy anchor linkCopied

“Every day of my life is unlearning bad work habits.”Copy anchor linkCopied

On the mic this week: Lauren Schneider is the Head of Brand and Comms at Compt, where she helps companies remember that employee benefits are about actual humans, instead of just policies. She’s a former TV reporter who traded local news for marketing and brand storytelling. She’s also a millennial mom and improv performer who believes a great career shouldn’t require losing yourself in the process.

Pin this:

• Having no clue what comes next doesn’t automatically mean leaving is the wrong move.
• A job can look impressive on paper and still make you absolutely miserable.
• You’re allowed to love your work without letting it eat your entire personality.
• If you can’t answer “Who are you?” without mentioning your job, it might be time to get reacquainted with yourself.

My H*ly Sh*t Moment: If I had to pick the top 5 most interesting things about myself…I don’t think any of them would include my job!

▶️ Press Play

📊 Data Is My Love Language:Copy anchor linkCopied

Stat: More than a million people have complained about ‘AI slop’ on LinkedIn

My spiral: Go ahead and add me to that list of people complaining about AI slop!

Your employees and candidates are getting way better at spotting AI-generated nonsense in real time, whether it's a thought leadership post or a decline email.

This should be a wake-up call for anyone leaning on AI to write employer branding or recruiting content without a human checking if it sounds like a person wrote it.

I think the moral of the story here is that authenticity is becoming the thing that determines whether people even engage with what your org puts out into the world. None of this stuff works without the human in the loop!

🗣️ UNMUTE YOURSELF

The opinions we hold about work tend to get a little spicier once reality has personally offended us enough times.

Now that we’ve all had a nice taste of it, it’s worth asking:

What’s one opinion about work you’ve become more radical about over the last year?

🛠️ TRY THIS TOMORROW:

Most performance convos feel like an interrogation to employees.

If you actually want to understand what makes someone tick, ask something that might get you a real answer:

Tomorrow, replace one performance question with: “What kind of work gives you energy?”

👂 OVERHEARD IN SAFE SPACE

Why use data when Brad from Finance has a gut feeling? 🤷‍♀️

See ya on Friday!