Hi ya party people,

Happy Friday, and welcome back to the one corner of your inbox that always keeps it real with you!

Memorial Day weekend is in sight, and this week lowkey felt like 2 weeks smashed into one. 😐

The folks behind this week’s Q&A submissions probably felt the same way dealing with their dilemmas.

This week, we've got a fully remote team where "output" is basically vibes and a leadership team that doesn't want to be creepy about tracking but also needs something to hold onto. 

Then we've got a construction company whose AI texting system is out here impersonating employees and collecting bad reviews on behalf of people who have never even heard of these customers, so that's fun.

Let's discuss, and if you have questions of your own to submit, submit them here!

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ASK AWAY

🤖 automations & managementCopy anchor linkCopied

✍🏽 How do you best manage remote employees when "output" is hard to measure - ie, not creating "widgets" that can be counted. It's all well and good to lean into "trust your team", but when the company is struggling - performance gets a close look.

Context: Small company - 50-60 employees in B2B media. We have ZERO interest in those crazy tracking systems that are out there. Fully agree that sends the worst message to the team. We are incredibly flexible with people - don't closely track hours, unlimited PTO, etc. In return, knowing when/how long people are "online" doesn't seem unreasonable to me. I realize "online" doesn't equal productive work time, but it's at least A data point in the black hole that is remote work. 

📣 Ashley Browne, HR Specialist @ Looking for my next team:

“Online time” is a data point, sure — but it’s a weak one, and not very useful. Remote performance issues are almost always rooted in a lack of clarity, not a lack of green‑dot availability in Slack or Teams.

And honestly, this is part of a bigger shift we’re seeing. Remote work is the segue into shorter workweeks and reduced hours without reducing pay. Once you decouple productivity from physical presence, you start to see that most knowledge work doesn’t require 40 hours of linear, synchronous time. It happens in waves — bursts of creativity, periods of deep focus, and asynchronous collaboration.

So instead of tracking “online time,” I’d focus on systems that create clarity and visibility without surveillance, like team working agreements, pulse‑based performance reads, and role clarity matrices. These give managers real signals without pretending that presence equals performance.

📣 Rachel Diskin, HR and Operations Consultant @ Big Change Consulting:

@Ashley Browne I agree! My best tool for this is a work plan. I keep it very simple- a spreadsheet. The first tab is the year at a glance, and then each tab is project-based, with deliverables and deadlines. I treat it as a living document, and we reference it at weekly 1:1's.

I managed a team of 8 who had unlimited PTO. The work plan was my saving grace. Someone requests a week off? Go take a look at the work plan and see what's happening around that date. From a higher level, you can plan within your department, see how workloads compare across staff, and learn when you can ask staff to support one another during busy/slow time periods.

 📣 Erin Seymour-Dye, Founder @ sipsi:

Strong opinions here. Recent data is showing that traditional performance management is doing the opposite of what it's intended to do. It's actually demotivating employees and, tying ratings to pay increases actually activates the threat response. 

In the orgs I've worked for, we instead elevate manager capability to have clear, organic, regular conversations about what's needed, what's working, how to collaborate, etc. We embed these conversations naturally into workflows (this is where AI can help a lot - some systems will nudge managers to have these conversations to drive performance and engagement - Perceptyx is one that will integrate with systems you already use while using your company's survey metrics for specifics). 

Marcus Buckingham has some great info on this. 

Here's a short vid on his approach.

One of my favorite things he says about performance is to identify someone's strengths to motivate them - he calls this "investigating excellence" so that you can get MORE of that excellence out of someone. At the same time, focusing on strengths is hugely motivating for employees and leads to more job satisfaction and productivity (I mean, imagine if someone told Caitlin Clark that she's too good at basketball...so should focus on dancing instead). Rambling, but I hope this is helpful :) 

📣 Jessie Fields, Sr Director, People Strategy & Ops @ C2FO:

I agree with the great advice provided here. Further surveilling employees will backfire. Poor company performance is rarely the result of "unproductive" employees (and if there are a few folks not performing, that needs to be addressed personally). I imagine it's more likely a signal of poor strategy. 

Do employees know where the company is trying to go? Are senior leaders aligned on the path forward? Is it clear what success looks like? Can everyone articulate what they should stop, start, and continue doing to help turn company performance around? Clarity of strategic priorities and a vision of a more inspiring future is going to help way more than arbitrary productivity metrics.

Safe Space members can join this discussion here. Not a member yet? Apply to join here.

✍🏽 Our company is starting to use a more automated AI assisted texting system that is automatically sending texts with an employee's name as employee, not the company. Most employees have not consented to letting the company use their names for AI use and are getting upset. Do employees need to give the company consent to use their names in this way? (W2 and 1099 employees)

Context: Construction company, $30+ Million per year, Multi state coverage. @100 w2 employees all others are 1099

I am a supervisor not HR but as supervisor part of my job is coming up with job descriptions and policy suggestions for my departments. Company representatives are coming to me from my departments and others to complain about this. We are finding out from "customers" that we have never heard of that call in to complain about us to a supervisor that our names are on info we never sent. 

This new system they are using is sending texts out to customers that W2 employees or our 1099's have not even contacted or have had anything to do with. 

Example, text will go out:

*This is (name here) I would like to get you set up for your appointment can you tell me more about what you are looking for. 

*Customer will respond back 

*Bot will give an answer that is sometime relevant

*Customer goes back and forth then gets upset and blames that employee for not listening to them. Sometimes going as far as giving that employee a bad review online. 

📣 Erin Seymour-Dye, Founder @ sipsi:

I can definitely understand the frustration especially when the blame lands squarely on the employee who's name is in the text. I'm sure you've considered this, but why not use a chatbot name with an AI disclaimer? (ex. "Hi! This is Jenna, your friendly AI chatbot...I can answer [x questions]." Then, if the human user has an easy way to indicate that they'd like to communicate with a real human, they can request to do so if "Jenna" isn't able to help).

I regularly use AI...and I do see tons of positive uses for it...and...100% of the time, it tells me something incorrect. Scouring the good information for the incorrect thing is tough / sometimes overwhelming. AI also doesn't have the ability to use judgement which can cause even more frustration for the person using it. I do believe the pendulum will swing the other way at some point because humans are going to crave human to human connection, judgement, and creativity. AI just can't do that. 

📣 Anonymous Safe Space Member:

This feels like an issue around communication and trust.

Mainly because employee names are being attached to conversations they never had, and if those customers are blaming those employees when things go wrong, I see how that could be a little confusing.

Legally, companies can usually use employee names in business operations, but this is definitely something leadership and HR should revisit, especially for 1099 contractors. 

At a minimum, there should be transparency that customers are interacting with an automated system and not an actual employee directly

Safe Space members can join this discussion here. Not a member yet? Apply to join here.

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🚨 ON YOUR RADAR

🎧 Nobody warned me that your first termination never really leaves you. I sat down with Jennifer Laurie, fractional CPO and founder of Equitable HR Guild, to talk about first terminations and the necessary debrief too many people skip. Check it out on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!

🛋️ You blinked, and suddenly it's mid-2026! On June 24th’s HR Therapy, we're checking in and highlighting the three biggest challenges HR is facing this year (straight from the data) with panelists who've actually lived it. 

🤖 We're building AI things live and you should be there: Next week for 1-hour i'll be screensharing and building 3 things with you live. Join us here! 

🔥 Your top performers might be running on empty. Wellhub's free virtual event makes the case for treating wellbeing as a business strategy instead of another HR program! Join HR leaders who will be sharing how they're closing the gap between what executives think employees feel and what employees actually feel, and keeping their best people from disappearing.*

*This one is brought to you by one of my amazing brand partners

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📝 RESOURCE OF THE WEEK

Each week I feature a resource I love from the Safe Space library that I believe would be relatable to this week's newsletter topic.

This week, we’re highlighting How I Customized Our Performance Management Framework for Multiple Departments - Without Overloading Our 2-Person HR Team. Check it out HERE ⬇️

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FRIDAY FUN

😂 it's not me but i wish it wasCopy anchor linkCopied

Unfortunately, I have A LOT of meetings today otherwise this would be me. 

HERE'S TO HOPING FOR A BREAK THE NEXT LONG WEEKEND WE HAVE!!

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That's all for this week! I hope you enjoyed! If you have any thoughts, please let me know. I'm allll ears.

Reminder: Today is FRIDAY. 🙏