HR Besties: Culture of fear
HR BESTIES
HR Besties LLC
4.8 • 586 Ratings
🗓️ 22 October 2025
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today's agenda:
- Word cloud
- Cringe corporate speak: don't throw the baby out with the bathwater
- Hot topic: all things fear-based work culture and actions you can take
- What are some signs that an organization has a culture of fear?
- Lack of psychological safety and fear of speaking up
- It doesn't have to be outright hostile to be toxic
- Reaping the benefits of employees who enjoy their work environment
- Questions/Comments
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Leigh, Jamie & Ashley
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Tune in to "HR Besties," a business, work and management podcast hosted by Leigh Elena Henderson (HRManifesto), Ashley Herd (ManagerMethod) and Jamie Jackson (Humorous_Resources), where we navigate the labyrinth of corporate culture, from cringe corporate speak to toxic leadership. Whether you're in Human Resources or not, corporate or small business, we offer sneak peeks into surviving work, hiring strategies, and making the employee experience better for all. Tune in for real talk on employee engagement, green flags in the workplace, and how to turn red flags into real change. Don't miss our chats about leadership, career coaching, and takes from work travel and watercooler gossip. Get new episodes every Wednesday, follow us on socials for the latest updates, and join us at our virtual happy hours to share your HR stories.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We talk a lot about how important it is to get feedback and communicate and on all those things at work, right? |
| 0:10.6 | We sure do. |
| 0:11.6 | Sometimes that's not the best idea. |
| 0:13.4 | And I don't mean in generally, but I mean specifically is being thoughtful in what you're asking for and maybe thinking a couple steps ahead of what that |
| 0:21.1 | feedback might be. |
| 0:23.1 | So this was sent in by a bestie who had said at their workplace, they had a webinar and they had |
| 0:30.6 | webinar because they were all working remotely. |
| 0:33.8 | And during this webinar, they announced that they were going to be having a return to the office in this workplace. |
| 0:41.2 | Oh, boo. |
| 0:43.9 | And there hadn't been a lot of discussion about that. |
| 0:47.8 | So it's not one of those things where they're like, oh, we saw it coming. |
| 0:50.3 | There's been this feedback. |
| 0:51.3 | Like it was pretty surprising. |
| 0:52.8 | And also it was like not the first topic of the conversation. Like it was topic four. Like it was like, oh God, this brush under the rug. Right, right. One of the one of those that we've all kind of sat through and you get it, but you also know. Anyway. But at the end of us, they said, okay, we want to try something. And so during it, they'd had, like, comments |
| 1:11.2 | kind of suppressed, but they said at the end, we want to get feedback. So we're going to do this |
| 1:15.6 | cool new tool that we have with IT called a WordCloud. And so you can, you can use your phone, |
| 1:22.0 | your personal device. And we, you know, from this meeting, we would love to hear your thoughts on the meeting and get your input. |
| 1:30.7 | So people start scanning the QR code. |
| 1:32.5 | They start typing things up. |
| 1:33.5 | And so all of a sudden, words stop on the screen. |
| 1:37.5 | Oh, I know where this is going. |
| 1:39.2 | And they were saying, you know, feel free to add it about any aspects of this, like the, you know, the results, the company, |
... |
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