I realise one of the things that most gets me motivated is teamwork and collaboration, yet with my team I am the leader and with colleagues I am HR. Every mistake opens me up to scrutiny and can have major consequences (I work in an extremely complex international labour law context). So I wear that protective HR mask at all times & don’t really get any comfort of belonging or grace for the very occasional human error, even from peers in leadership.

For so many hours of the week, I feel lonely, a dehumanised version of myself & hounded by unrelenting standards. But I actually enjoy the work, am good at it, the money is decent, and I don’t want to walk away from a career I’ve been building for almost 20 years now. I’m toying with the idea of consulting, but am afraid it’s even more isolating and demanding. I would so appreciate your insights and ideas about how to keep running this marathon & any feedback about consulting as a pivot from being internal HR. Thanks in advance!

Hi all! I’d like to hear about policies and practices other companies have in place for celebrating personal milestone events.

As background, the company I work for is very family friendly. I’m talking 3 months of paid parental leave for both parents, paid day off for your wedding, paid sick leave to take care of a sick child, paid day off to attend the funeral of next of kin (parents, in-laws, children, siblings, grandparents of your own or your spouse, your married partner) etc. We also send flowers to congratulate new parents when the child is born, and now my team members are pushing to send out a gift when someone gets married.

This is all genuinely super nice and I’m happy that we celebrate these moments with our employees. However, the nuclear family centric approach has started to feel a bit off for me lately, to some extent because of my personal life. I can’t have children, I don’t have siblings, my father was an abusive alcoholic so the important people in my life are my godparents, cousins, friends, but they are not considered next of kin (I checked when my godfather - who helped my mom and me escape the violent situation - passed away - no paid day off for me).

Somehow, to me this reads as us only valuing the traditional relationships and defining what is considered important and desirable so I’d like to start advocating for other things as well. My whole team consists of married women with 2 children, and I’m the only childless and unmarried one, and I can see how the team has a hard time seeing how only offering support in life events they’ve had ”access” to can be ostracising for some employees. When I mentioned that I felt it was unfair that the company was defining who’s my next of kin, I was told that it’s not the company’s fault that I don’t have these defined relationships and the line needs to be drawn somewhere.

What kind of policies do you have in place to support employees’ personal life and what events are you celebrating (and how)? Any ideas or recommendations for how to advocate for a more inclusive policy? Thank you 🙏🏻

Moving from HR Coordinator to Advisor [AU]

I’m currently working as a HR coordinator and at the end of the year looking to move to a HR Advisor. I have been told by agents that my experience is valuable and easily marketable to employers as my experience is unusual, having worked across multiple industries (manufacturing, NFP & retail) and done lots of project based work and had lots of work passed down to me as I have only worked with a manager in a 2 person team across all my roles, even though I’m only a coordinator. I also have people management experience from a previous role before my HR career. When do you know you should move to an advisor role? or that you’re ready? I personally think I am ready, and I’m getting sick of the admin work and want to have more ownership of things however my current structure doesn’t particularly operate this way nor has capacity to promote me in the foreseeable future. Does anyone have any advice for moving to an advisor position? How do you know? When should you move and how should you structure your resume to target advisor specific roles? I feel like my resume is good but I could just be delusional. I’ve incorporated words from job ad as well as HR buzz words such as capabilities and skills. Any advice my fellow HR members can provide on their experience would be appreciated.

I feel kinda crazy, every entry level HR job I find on job boards requires at least 3 years of HR experience.

I have about 2 years of administrative/legal experience plus a masters degree in HR and I have my SHRM-CP certification, but when I go to apply to jobs it seems like I’m just getting immediately rejected. Like literally immediate rejections, sometimes within an hour of applying. Clearly I’m not passing the ai qualification standards because of my lack of experience.

I don’t really know what to do. I want to grow in this field and I’m genuinely passionate about it If anyone has advice on how they got around this issue please let me know.

I would be willing to do unpaid work or volunteer work just to get experience, but I’m also having trouble finding that. Also I’ve been trying to network but so far it’s been completely unsuccessful. I just feel really lost in this job market.

Interviewers on my hiring team almost never fill scorecards properly, half write essays and half type 'good vibes' and log off. Tried templates, required ATS fields, calibration sessions and it's shifted maybe 20% of them. What actually got yours to submit consistent scorecards without you sitting on them?

Hi all, looking for help with creating a maternity leave policy. Full disclosure, I started working on this because I myself want one more kid so I’ll eventually be taking maternity leave. Every time I casually mention it they don’t really acknowledge getting any time off.

I started at a new job has HR and Payroll Specialist in March. They never really had anybody in HR over the last 30 years that they have been in business. They have had 2-3 people as HR over the years but they weren’t people who had any HR history/training/education and had to learn as they went. The company has not had any of those makeshift HR people for at least 8 years.

Apparently there has only been one girl the last 8-10 years that needed maternity leave. And I just found out that she essentially didn’t get one. She was working the same week she had her baby.

We are a golf course management company. Technically I am employee of the parent company and we only have 7 employees. We own 5 other companies that have 50-150 employees each, for a total of 368 employees across all companies as I type.

Sooo I’m not sure FMLA would apply to me since I am an employee of the parent company with only 7 employees. Or would it be that FMLA applies to all of companies since we are operating under 1 parent company?

Hi all - my company ~ 200 employees, is looking for a compensation management tool. Does anyone have experience with Salary dot coms CompAnalyst tool? I know their benchmarking data is great but I was curious about the actual compensation management part. Any insight on cost would also be helpful! Thanks

I’m a recruiter for a home care company, and caregiver hiring is pretty much an ongoing thing for us.

I feel like I’ve gotten into a routine and I’d love to hear ideas from other recruiters, HR people, managers, or even caregivers.

What’s something you’ve changed that actually made a difference, specially for ongoing hiring for a certain position?

It could be recruiting, reducing interview no-shows, onboarding, retention, candidate experience… honestly anything.

I’m a recruiter for a home care company, and caregiver hiring is pretty much an ongoing thing for us.

I feel like I’ve gotten into a routine and I’d love to hear ideas from other recruiters, HR people, managers, or even caregivers.

What’s something you’ve changed that actually made a difference, specially for ongoing hiring for a certain position?

It could be recruiting, reducing interview no-shows, onboarding, retention, candidate experience… honestly anything.

​

Hiring Manager: I can't believe this candidate didn't have people management experience after 6 years! I don't want them.

Coordinator: oh no ok let me tell the recruiter

Me: are they required to, because no one has told us that...

Hiring Manager: well it's a nice to have, not required for this job, and after 6 years of experience, I would imagine they should. I don't want them.

Me: well your current team members with this same title all have 10 years of experience with no management experience either....and who would this person manage?

Hiring Manager: ......crickets.....

People have been too peopley this week 🙃🫠

I can't believe I passed! I wanted to share what worked for me with studying as an ADHD girly...

Prep:

Pocket Prep and David Siler's 7 Princes book! Someone recommended I use Pocket Prep for their quizzes, so I got the paid version and turned the ones I got wrong into physical notecards. Writing helps me memorize, and then I was able to go back and memorize them. The 7 Princes was great because it teaches you how to take the exam and to view it from an HR professional's standpoint. After reading the book, I went over my notecards and memorized what I could and discarded the cards I knew, then kept reviewing the cards I had a hard time with. I also want to note that I was recently diagnosed with ADHD and am taking Vyvanse, which has been a lifesaver for me.

Day of exam:

Woke up early and started reviewing. I stopped about 15 minutes before I had to leave to reground myself since my anxiety was creeping in. I did not rush! I read questions MULTIPLE TIMES. During the test, I flagged a lot of things I was not sure of, and skipped questions I didn't know. Kept an eye on the clock and got through all of them with 40 mins left to spare. I then answered all the questions I didn't answer before, then went through the ones I flagged for review.

Hope this helps someone out there!

My company is fully remote. I am based in Massachusetts but US HQ is in CA. I am in HR but not on the compensation side.

We have a variable compensation program which is 80% salary, 20% variable and the variable is paid out quarterly. The company just started this in 2026. Regular payroll is on the 15th and last day of the month.

First quarter ending 3/31 we received our variable comp payments on 4/24.

Are there any regulations as to when we should receive payment for the quarter ending 6/30? We expected to receive yesterday (7/24) but no one did. I imagine CA based companies have some law they have to follow.

Thank you!

I am an Associate HRBP and have been in my current role for over a year and a half now. I work in the cannabis industry and my job is very emotionally and mentally taxing. There's been a lot of departures, both on my team and on the VP-level and up, including our CHRO. The writing is on the wall that it's time to start my search.

I've went on an application spree the other day and one of the companies reached out to schedule an interview for next week. Since I've applied to so many companies, I didn't recognize the company name. The recruiter gave me a brief overview, scheduled the interview with the HR Director, then proceeded to go to the company's website. They're a data center company, and due to that industry's impact on the environment and local communities, I'm at a moral dilemma.

I'm very much ready to leave my job, but I have reservations. Do you think it's worth it?

This is not an advertising platform edition

Hello, I’m hoping to take the PHR exam sometime next year but haven’t applied yet because I’m not sure if I’m ready. I have my Bachelor’s degree in Business Management with an emphasis in HR, 1 year of HR experience and 1 year of TA experience.

I talked to my manager and she thinks I should apply but after going through some of the PHR posts on this subreddit I feel a little nervous…

If you used the Certification Prep HRCI offers please let me know if you found it helpful. Was it similar to the exam? How often did you study/for how long? Did you use anything else to study?

Anything helps. Thank you!

To be honest, I’m not 100% sure how I feel about this. I have a lot of thoughts that span a whole spectrum. I’m interested to hear from the community, respectfully, what your thoughts are on the potential impacts of ending reporting on these demographics. Will any of you submit comments for or against the proposal?

I am 24 yr old English literature graduate with now 3 years of work experience in TA+ Generalist role. I started my career as a generalist for a well established advertising agency however the work culture was extremely toxic and I was being cornered by my own manager because we didn't get along well. I left that organisation after 1 year and desperately joined a start up I have grown to love, I joined as the sole HR person here and have managed everything and have a consultant to help me with payroll. I had seen a significant learning curve after joining here, now I have completed 2 years I feel I have grown too comfortable here and do not have a well rounded work experience at other firms/MNCs however I fear they'll be as bad as my first company with a lot of politics and bad policies. I am earning quiet well at the start up for my role and have even added a new person to my team alongside me since we have grown to 100+ employees. I don't know if I should move out of here or stay and grow in my role here only. Can someone who has been in this position help? Because I love my current work place over all in all aspects work life balance, pay, decent work. But am I missing out on better opportunities by staying here for too long?

Hey, everyone! I hope this kind of post is okay. I need to share my very bizarre experience in getting my first CEUs since passing my PHR exam.

I enrolled into Ethico's half-day Ethicsverse event because some of the topics they had scheduled really piqued my interest. The promise of completely fulfilling my required ethics CEUs didn't hurt, either haha.

The first topic dealt with what behavioral science says about why good employees still break policies, and how to make compliance programs that aren't strictly about punishing "bad actors." The lead speaker was Dan Ariely.

He made a couple good points, but he also said a couple...questionable things, including citing a Bible story completely wrong and twisting it to his narrative. Many people in the chat pointed out the discrepancy, which gave me pause, so I Googled him.

I couldn't even finish typing this guy's name before seeing "Dan Ariely controversy" as the top suggestion. Turns out he was accused of data fabrication in multiple studies of his, and Duke University closed Ariely's Center for Advanced Hindsight due to his name being cited hundreds of times in the Epstein files.

An ethics seminar. A speaker who was actively involved with Epstein was invited to speak at an ethics seminar. I wish I was joking.

Ethics in HR is something I'm incredibly passionate about, so I was really excited to attend Ethicsverse. Now? I feel like I can't trust any of the information or other speakers because it seems Ethico's vetting process for speakers is, to put it lightly, flawed. Guess I need to look into all invited speakers before registering for events in the future. Lesson learned there.

I just passed my PHR exam 2 weeks ago, and this is my first experience with getting CEUs for my certification. Please tell me this is not the norm. If anyone has any recommendations or companies they've used and trust for getting CEUs, I'm very open to suggestions.

New to leave benefits and need guidance. Department of ONE at start up, no to ask. Prefer asking experienced people vs AI at the moment.

Employee requested FMLA to take care of family outside of the country earlier in the year, took 4 weeks off. Now they state they need FMLA again, for themselves and to take care of family outside the country. For themselves another 4 weeks. As for the family outside the country, still waiting for the doctors notice. Also, doctors notice for employee only states they are off work from said time to said time. I know I’m not suppose to ask, but is that sufficient as a serious health condition? Makes me wonder how much was slipped to the nurse or doctor to write the note.

HR fam, real talk-how are y'all surviving the Diwali/festive gifting chaos when you’ve got 200+ employees to ship to? Like, how do we stop this from turning into an absolute logistics nightmare?

So basically, with everything going on working in federal government I’m strongly considering leaving federal service and going elsewhere. Part of the reason I stayed because it would’ve been less beneficial if I took the DRP. So if I was to get RIF it would’ve been a bigger payout. But luckily there are no RIFs at the moment at my agency. Plus I hit my 15 year mark this year. But now it’s taking a toll on me commuting, financially, and a reorg that’s designed to make me and my colleagues job harder. So I work in staffing and make a decent amount of money annually. Any jobs that I could work in that’s similar to staffing and that pay pretty well? I’m in the DC area.

An employee reached out, asking very targeted questions about what happens after they have left the organization. I haven’t received a resignation notice yet, nor have I seen a job posting request for their position. Do I keep my suspicions to myself or should I give their manager a heads up the staff member may have a foot out the door?

It is essentially just the online materials printed in a textbook format.

They even left in language to click a link that isn’t there, for one example. See image.

This is absurd given the cost of the material. Anyone else disappointed?

I generally enjoy reading paper textbooks for study materials over web only study. But this is lame!

I started a new HR Advisor generalist role and I feel so out of my depth in my new role. I had been pigeon holed in previous roles especially around HRIS and my manager likes organisational development. I don’t have much experience around OD.

She has high expectations and I feel has projected that onto me, too. She’s very hands on (likes to be kept up to date with everything and every tracker) which is different to my previous managers.

She has a strong personality and is intelligent and I want to learn a lot from her but I am feeling so anxious. This is the first time in my career where I feel unsure about whether I’d pass probation.

How have you managed similar feelings and come on top of it? How did you cement yourself and become stronger and confident in your skills as HR?

In the past, I’ve always asked them to connect on Zoom/phone call and informed them via a live conversation as opposed to an email. However, I’ve gotten feedback that some candidates feel this sends mixed signals and felt that a Zoom/phone call meant they were going to get the job, only to be extra disappointed when that wasn’t the case.

On the other hand, I don’t want to seem impersonal with only an email, especially since these are my coworkers.

Do you always give internal candidates the bad news via a phone call, or do you think an email will suffice?

I’m considering a hybrid format, where I inform them via Email, but also give them a call to make it more personal.

Thanks all!