livingroomhr

Running Lean

Every impulse I have points toward running lean. Time after time, I’ve found a small team of badass, dedicated, smart people can get so much more done than a larger, less focused group. I was an advocate of running lean well before I even knew what it was. But then I spent more time in the working world and I saw how running lean played out over the long term…

The Employee Experience When Employment Ends

An inevitable part of having employees is that eventually, those employees leave. Putting some thought into the employee experience through somebody’s last day is well worth the effort. Your former employees are still active in local community and workforce, and will continue to be ambassadors (or detractors!) of your company. Resignations can bring up a lot of feelings all around…

Let’s Have a Conversation – Exit Interviews

An exit interview is a meeting with an employee who has turned in their notice and is on their way out. By the time you’re having an exit interview with somebody, you know you’re not going to retain them. So why bother?

Let’s Have a Conversation – Skip Interviews

Skip interviews, also called skip level interviews, are conversations between an employee and their manager’s manager. Their value is twofold: giving employees an opportunity to get in front of leadership, and getting leadership more in tune with what’s happening on the ground with their teams. Much like stay interviews, you never know what will come up in these conversations…

Let’s Have a Conversation – Stay Interviews

Stay interviews are conversations you have to find out what’s going well and what could be going better. They can be done by a manager or HR and they’re an opportunity for employees to share their thoughts, perspectives, and overall experience. I like to ask questions that are specific enough to get meaningful answers, while still leaving a wide range of possible responses…

Automation Done Right

Automation is all the rage, and rightfully so. Rather than remembering to do those thousand little things that add up, automation keeps everything humming along smoothly and on the right timeline…

Kari’s Hierarchy of Workplace Needs

Employees have a wide range of needs in the workplace. Some are the absolute basics that need to be met in order for somebody to stay in their job. Other needs are what allow employees to not just survive, but thrive in the workplace. But if those basic needs aren’t being met, then those higher level needs are suddenly a whole lot less meaningful…

Storytelling

Humans love storytelling. We can’t help ourselves! Half the time we don’t even realize we’re doing it. Sometimes we tell kind stories. Stories with good intentions, best efforts, sympathetic characters. When you give somebody the benefit of the doubt, you’re telling yourself a kind story about that person…

Workplace Astrology

I’m a sucker for personality assessments. I love working through the tests, reflecting on my own tendencies, nudging myself towards self-honesty even when it’s uncomfortable. I love reading through the results and considering the ways they show up in my life. And I love talking with colleagues about their results, having those aha! moments about how we work individually and together. I also think most assessments are complete junk science rooted in inherently fallible methods…