“Whose side are you actually on?”
The manager question that changed what I thought HR was for
A warehouse manager asked me whose side I was on. My honest answer took two years to work out.
· 3 min
Illustrative example Stories
Turning points, field notes and honest experiments, each one grounded in a real situation and the judgment behind it.
All topics
Manager support
Practical people operations
Professional turning points
AI and changing work
8 stories
We cut our onboarding checklist from 41 items to 12
New hires kept asking the same five questions. The checklist was answering everything except those.
· 2 min
Illustrative example We tested AI drafts for policy FAQs. Editing time told us more than output.
A six-week trial with non-sensitive inputs, a stopwatch, and one skeptical colleague.
· 2 min
Illustrative example What changed when I became the only HR person
In a big team I had a lane. At a 60-person startup, I had to decide what the lane was, and say it out loud.
· 2 min
Illustrative example We stopped the monthly HR update meeting. Here’s what replaced it.
Forty supervisors, one hour, and very little that reached the production floor.
· 2 min
Illustrative example Manager training didn’t stick. A 20-minute follow-up did more.
Charge nurses rated the workshop highly. On the ward, almost nothing changed, until we booked the Monday after.
· 2 min
Illustrative example The engagement survey we stopped sending, and the three questions we kept
Response rates were not falling because people were busy. They were falling because nothing visibly happened.
· 2 min
Illustrative example Coming back to HR after two years away
I expected to be behind on tools. I did not expect to be ahead on patience.
· 2 min
Illustrative example