Join us for some breaking news.  
This episode contains information about the following Events
1. Podcast Adventure on the Via Ferrata.  Email the podcast or contact Dyno Outfitters and tell them you're with our group at: https://www.utahviaferrata.com/ Date: Sept 11th at 8:30am in Vernal. 
2. The Utah SHRM Excellence Awards, get tickets at: https://utahshrm.org/utah-shrm-excellence-awards/ We'll be there.  Date: September 15th at 6:00pm at Hales Theater in Sandy.   
3. We're presenting at the Work Elevated Conference on September 22nd at 9:30am.  Our session is a two hour session and has limited seats.  You can find more information at: https://www.utahworkelevated.com/agenda and get tickets to the conference at: https://whova.com/portal/registration/BGfw6xK2Ykzbkt1WRnhN/
(Bird sounds in the background provided by Nat and Pippa.  No birds were injured in the recording of this episode.) 

Learn more about Fantastic Tony Benjamin at: https://www.thegrangellc.com/
Learn more about Steven "Big Deal" Smith at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/
Learn more about the Books mentioned on the podcast at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/hr-life-podcast

Learn more about Dyno Outfitters at: https://www.utahviaferrata.com/
Learn more about MegastarHR at: https://www.megastarhr.com/
Learn more about Pucks for Autism at: https://www.pucksforautism.com/
Learn more about Thrive Life Project at: https://www.thrivelifeproject.org/

Rebekah Bradford has hand-sharpened knife-thin blades, has fallen across an Olympic qualifying line in a torn skin suit, and still found the composure to ask for a do over.  Rebekah competed in long-track speed skating at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, which is a fancy way of saying she voluntarily strapped 17-inch blades to her feet and went very fast on purpose. Somewhere between Olympic trials, a torn suit, and a twenty-nine minute window to pull herself together for a re-skate, she made the team and picked up a husband along the way, courtesy of a celebrity date auction. These days, she has traded the ice for product marketing, a couple of master's degrees, and a household that includes a toddler daughter, a brand new baby brother, and presumably far fewer skate sharpening jigs lying around the house.  Rebekah walks The guys through a health scare that escalated during an ultimate frisbee game and ended in an ER visit that very likely saved her life.  So what does a blood clot scare have to do with your Tuesday afternoon standup? What is the one thing people always get wrong about Olympians? And does Steve's He-Man HR review hold up against actual gold medal level feedback?  (Steve's name in the transcript is Wolverine... because we know you all read it... just sayin'.)  

Learn more about Rebekah Bradford: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebekahbradford/
Learn more about the National Blood Clot Alliance at: https://www.stoptheclot.org/
Learn more about Fantastic Tony Benjamin at: https://www.thegrangellc.com/
Learn more about Steven "Big Deal" Smith at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/
Learn more about the Books mentioned on the podcast at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/hr-life-podcast
Learn more about The Gods Must Be Crazy, the movie at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080801/

A 2010 U.S. Olympian and two-time U.S. Sprint Champion in speedskating, Rebekah has built a life around competition, resilience, and the willingness to get back on the ice when life knocks you down. Today, she brings that same energy to her role as a product marketing leader at Energy Exemplar, a global energy software company.  But Rebekah’s greatest races haven't always been on the track. She is a survivor of bilateral pulmonary embolisms, a transracial adoptive parent, and a leader who has reinvented herself more than once. Her story is one of high-speed competition, unexpected obstacles, big pivots, and refusing to stay down.  She brings an Olympian’s mindset to everything she does: prepare relentlessly, embrace the pressure, trust the training, and show up—especially when showing up is hard.  Rebekah holds a dual MBA and PMP and lives in Salt Lake City with her family.

Help us a pressure The Utah mammoth to get involved in Pucks for Autism: https://www.nhl.com/utah/
Learn more about Dyno Outfitters at: https://www.utahviaferrata.com/
Learn more about MegastarHR at: https://www.megastarhr.com/
Learn more about Pucks for Autism at: https://www.pucksforautism.com/
Learn more about Thrive Life Project at: https://www.thrivelifeproject.org/

Thien Nguyen showed up to the podcast having already peaked, by his own admission, since his only goal in life was apparently to be on a show famous enough that Johnny C. Taylor stalks the host's LinkedIn profile.  He says he spent years building an HR career the normal way, HR director, chief of staff, then a president role overseeing sales and operations, right up through his company going through an acquisition. Somewhere in that climb he stopped being seen as "an HR person," even though he'll tell you flat out he's still HR at heart. Now he's President at ISO Talent, co-founder of the People Club, and he brought Tony and Steve something most HR professionals never get to see up close.

Thien sat through his own company's acquisition, the practice presentations, the dinners, the entire dog and pony show, and not one investor or buyer ever asked him for his ENPS score. Not once. So, the guys dive deep. If HR isn't in the room when the money moves, what is HR actually in the room for? Can the average manager survive without HR holding their hand through a hard conversation, or are we all just one awkward confrontation away from chaos? What happens to the rewards a company promises its people once the deal is signed and the new owners show up? And what's the one number thing Thien thinks every HR person should know cold, the one most of us are too scared to ask about? Somewhere in there he also explains why recruiting fees are basically a shakedown, which is a fun thing to hear from a guy who runs a recruiting company.

Learn more about Thien Nguyen at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thien-v-nguyen/
Learn more about ISO Talent at: https://www.isotalent.com/
Learn more about Fantastic Tony Benjamin at: https://www.thegrangellc.com/
Learn more about Steven "Big Deal" Smith at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/
Learn more about the Books mentioned on the podcast at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/hr-life-podcast

Learn more about Dyno Outfitters at: https://www.utahviaferrata.com/
Learn more about MegastarHR at: https://www.megastarhr.com/
Learn more about Pucks for Autism at: https://www.pucksforautism.com/
Learn more about Thrive Life Project at: https://www.thrivelifeproject.org/

Mare, Raquel, Steve, and Tony laugh their heads off discussing perimenopause, menopause, and post menopause.  Menopause costs U.S. employers an estimated 26.6 billion dollars a year in absenteeism, presenteeism, disengagement, and unnecessary medical visits. Yet, most HR leaders have never had a single conversation about it, and most doctors received perhaps two chapters on it in medical school. The guys sit down with Mare and Raquel, co-founders of MenoPalz, to talk about what actually happens to women in perimenopause, why so many end up in the ER convinced they are having a heart attack, and why an entire generation of providers still won't prescribe estrogen because of a study that was flawed from the day it was published.

This one gets into real workplace territory fast. What do you actually say to an employee who is clearly struggling but you have no idea if it is stress, burnout, or something else entirely? Is a lunch and learn on menopause a thoughtful gesture or a liability waiting to happen? And why does psychological safety matter more here than almost anywhere else in HR? Mare and Raquel don't hand out easy scripts, but they do explain why the conversation is happening, whether HR is ready for it or not, since every woman in your workforce is eventually heading toward this phase of life. Stick around for the tangent about George Washington, mistakes, and what it actually means to let people fail their way into becoming better.  (Caution: Authentic sounds of a dog drinking from a bowl included in this episode.)  

Learn more about MenoPalz at: https://www.menopalz.com/?srsltid=AfmBOorteFl56MOEN9Glf-gqUa5O3gXzfk6BY-oC4IZCiCg6KCwxVmjS
Subscribe to Take a Pause with MenoPalz Podcast at: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/take-a-pause-with-menopalz/id1825203115
Download Information from MenoPalz at: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1C8LcaoHaOA5eZHDXMqRb1CqUMRfp_hZp?usp=sharing
Learn more about Fantastic Tony Benjamin at: https://www.thegrangellc.com/
Learn more about Steven "Big Deal" Smith at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/
Learn more about the Books mentioned on the podcast at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/hr-life-podcast

Learn more about Dyno Outfitters at: https://www.utahviaferrata.com/
Learn more about MegastarHR at: https://www.megastarhr.com/
Learn more about Pucks for Autism at: https://www.pucksforautism.com/
Learn more about Thrive Life Project at: https://www.thrivelifeproject.org/

Theresa Hummel-Krallinger joins the guys for a more than an hour of laughs and great insight.  Theresa talks about what makes great HR, and reacts to Johnny C Taylor's recent speech.  She talks about winning two Emmy's, her list of what makes a good culture (including #31 no "A holes") and talks about why her book (Make Waves) is more than a fancy business card.  Strategic HR has never been so fun as it is in this episode.  Oh... and Theresa should move to Utah... Just sayin'.  Watch out Dry Bar, here she comes. 

Find Theresa HK's Comedy at: https://www.facebook.com/theresahkcomedy
Learn more about Theresa Hummel-Krallinger at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tkrallinger/
Find Theresa's book here: https://www.amazon.com/Make-Waves-Career-Pathing-Employable/dp/0991321405/ref=sr_1_1?crid=31QB1TR9XLGD6&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.cVoJ1caj6NInPShlB3C_OA.GP28O19OEX1sjwTsAhZ3GmiT_aUfgeud7xs5MKvvP1M&dib_tag=se&keywords=make+waves+theresa+hummel&qid=1786418089&sprefix=make+waves+theresa+hummel%2Caps%2C211&sr=8-1

Learn more about Fantastic Tony Benjamin at: https://www.thegrangellc.com/
Learn more about Steven "Big Deal" Smith at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/
Learn more about the Books mentioned on the podcast at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/hr-life-podcast
Learn More about the Netflix film Titan at: https://www.netflix.com/title/81712178

Learn more about Dyno Outfitters at: https://www.utahviaferrata.com/
Learn more about MegastarHR at: https://www.megastarhr.com/
Learn more about Pucks for Autism at: https://www.pucksforautism.com/
Learn more about Thrive Life Project at: https://www.thrivelifeproject.org/

Steve and Tony react to Johnny C Taylor's SHRM 2026 speech about the state of HR. Johnny answered the question the guys ask all of their guests, What is the State of HR, and it isn't easy to hear.  What does it really mean? What needs to change? What is Johnny not saying because HR people don't want to hear it?  Are you an expert on people? Are you an expert on work itself?  Who called Tony during the podcast?  Does Steve meet more Beauty Queens than Tony?   

Listen to Johnny C Taylor's Full Speech at SHRM 26 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHoVaS3WKj8&t=33s

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Learn more about Fantastic Tony Benjamin at: https://www.thegrangellc.com/
Learn more about Steven "Big Deal" Smith at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/
Learn more about the Books mentioned on the podcast at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/hr-life-podcast
Learn More about the Netflix film Titan at: https://www.netflix.com/title/81712178

Learn more about Dyno Outfitters at: https://www.utahviaferrata.com/
Learn more about MegastarHR at: https://www.megastarhr.com/
Learn more about Pucks for Autism at: https://www.pucksforautism.com/
Learn more about Thrive Life Project at: https://www.thrivelifeproject.org/

Claire Lazaire is back for round two, and this time she's traded corporate HR for something she calls the wild, wild west: running HR solo across fifteen entities and four owners in an industry so new it barely has a rulebook yet. She talks about the year she almost walked away from HR entirely, what changed her mind, and how rewriting an entire employee handbook in her first month (attorneys included) turned into rolling out a full performance management program for a company pushing 300 employees nationwide. What does it actually take to build HR from scratch while the business is already running at full speed, and why did an industry with zero playbook end up giving her more real HR work than a decade in corporate ever did?

She also picks a fight worth having: is there any real standard for what makes an HR professional good at their job, or is the whole profession just winging it based on whoever happens to be in the room? Claire, Tony, and Steve dig into what the "people ops" trend really means for who owns strategy inside a company, and why a thirty person business trying to stand up a full DEI program might be one of the more avoidable mistakes in HR this year. Is your HR function actually built for the size of your business, or is it running someone else's playbook?

Learn more about Claire Lizear at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clizear/
Learn more about Fantastic Tony Benjamin at: https://www.thegrangellc.com/
Learn more about Steven "Big Deal" Smith at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/
Learn more about the Books mentioned on the podcast at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/hr-life-podcast
Learn More about the Netflix film Titan at: https://www.netflix.com/title/81712178

Learn more about Dyno Outfitters at: https://www.utahviaferrata.com/
Learn more about MegastarHR at: https://www.megastarhr.com/
Learn more about Pucks for Autism at: https://www.pucksforautism.com/
Learn more about Thrive Life Project at: https://www.thrivelifeproject.org/

Claire Lizear, SHRM-SCP, is an experienced HR leader with a passion for creating workplaces where people feel seen, supported, and set up to succeed. Known for her thoughtful approach to employee relations and her ability to bring clarity to complex situations, she’s helped leaders and teams grow through change with empathy and accountability. When she’s not in HR mode, Claire gives her time to Pucks for Autism, a volunteer effort that combines her love of hockey with her commitment to community and inclusion.

Melissa Yergensen has done HR at a two-hundred-person county government, an underground mine, a giant hospitality company, and back again, and she has an opinion about which one prepared her best. It is not the one you would guess. She joins Steve and Tony to explain why she thinks corporate HR, the version with the big titles and the bigger silos, might be quietly making the profession worse, and why the HR people who never got a fancy title might actually be better at the job.

Along the way, there is a workers' comp claim that starts in a supply closet and ends somewhere nobody expected, a scheduling form with an answer nobody should have written down, and a small town where firing someone on Tuesday means running into them at your kid's basketball game on Wednesday. Steve and Tony also drag Melissa into a Lord of the Rings comparison she never asked for, and somehow it explains exactly why good people stay in bad jobs too long. Is HR having an identity crisis, or did it just get lost trying to sound smart at the executive table? 

Learn more about Melissa Yergensen at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-yergensen-mshrm-sphr-ipma-scp-aa7a6711a/
Learn more about Fantastic Tony Benjamin at: https://www.thegrangellc.com/
Learn more about Steven "Big Deal" Smith at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/
Learn more about the Books mentioned on the podcast at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/hr-life-podcast
Learn More about the Netflix film Titan at: https://www.netflix.com/title/81712178

Learn more about Dyno Outfitters at: https://www.utahviaferrata.com/
Learn more about MegastarHR at: https://www.megastarhr.com/
Learn more about Pucks for Autism at: https://www.pucksforautism.com/
Learn more about Thrive Life Project at: https://www.thrivelifeproject.org/

Britt Davies started her HR career before she graduated High School, and is most recently in the tech industry, which puts her right in the middle of the layoffs and AI anxiety everyone keeps talking about. She joins Tony and Steve for a real conversation this time, after her first appearance got lost to a technical glitch, and she comes with a historian's eye for how we got here. Britt walks through the shift from Peter Drucker's era of management theory to Jack Welch's forced ranking system in the 1980s, and makes the case that every major leap in technology, from the printing press to the steam engine, has followed the same pattern: fear first, then a new frontier nobody saw coming.

She also gets personal about why AI matters to her beyond the workplace, and she doesn't hold back on what concerns her either. And what does Gallup's engagement data, now the lowest it has been since the pandemic, actually tell us about the people managing others, not just the people being managed? Britt has answers, and a few surprising ones. Stick around for how her idea of an annual girls trip involves Bigfoot, Skinwalker Ranch, and a paranormal conference most people have never heard of.

Learn more about Britt Davies at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittdaviespeople/
Check out Britt's podcast, The At Will Economy at: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6zE64AwfH8h2UPOY3I8MxA?si=ivkG0G0STHKJSaszZjcO5w&utm_source=copy-link&nd=1&dlsi=ba57a0e82292427c
Learn more about Fantastic Tony Benjamin at: https://www.thegrangellc.com/
Learn more about Steven "Big Deal" Smith at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/
Learn more about the Books mentioned on the podcast at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/hr-life-podcast
Learn more about Dyno Outfitters at: https://www.utahviaferrata.com/
Learn more about MegastarHR at: https://www.megastarhr.com/
Learn more about Pucks for Autism at: https://www.pucksforautism.com/
Learn more about Thrive Life Project at: https://www.thrivelifeproject.org/

Ring doorbell sound effects provided by Britt.  

What does a foreman burning a coworker with a cigarette have to do with a submarine imploding two and a half miles under the Atlantic? On this episode, Tony and Steve sit down with Bryan McCurdy, HR Director at Hughes General Contractors, to find out. Bryan didn't set out to work in HR (nobody really does, apparently), but nearly twenty years later he's running people operations for a seventy-year-old, third-generation family construction company He explains why he failed a forty five minute personality test at Target during a Christmas hiring push, why the traditional job posting is broken, and why he'd rather hire for what someone is great at than spend forever trying to fix what they're bad at.

The conversation gets even more interesting when the guys pull the OceanGate Titan disaster into the mix, using it as a gut punch example of what happens when leadership refuses to listen to the people warning them something is about to break.

Learn more about Bryan McCurdy at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryan-mccurdy-shrm-cp-ab703630/
Recovery Friendly Workplace of Utah: https://rfwutah.org/
Learn more about Fantastic Tony Benjamin at: https://www.thegrangellc.com/
Learn more about Steven "Big Deal" Smith at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/
Learn more about the Books mentioned on the podcast at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/hr-life-podcast
Learn More about the Netflix film Titan at: https://www.netflix.com/title/81712178

Learn more about Dyno Outfitters at: https://www.utahviaferrata.com/
Learn more about MegastarHR at: https://www.megastarhr.com/
Learn more about Pucks for Autism at: https://www.pucksforautism.com/
Learn more about Thrive Life Project at: https://www.thrivelifeproject.org/