Why Working in HR Sucks Right Now

Being in HR right now is like being the drummer on the Titanic—your job is to keep things upbeat while the whole ship’s going down. In this episode, Sarah Needleman joins Chad & Cheese to talk about mass layoffs, AI eating HR’s lunch, return-to-office mutiny, and why immigration raids are the new fire drill. Oh, and yes—someone’s still trying to make Coldplay tickets a perk.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Joel Cheesman (00:38.064)

This is the Chad and Cheese Podcast. You know what's up. I'm your cohost, Joel Cheesman. Joined as always, Chad Sowash is in the house as we welcome Sarah Needleman. She's the leadership and workplace correspondent for Business Insider. She was at the Wall Street Journal for 23 years. Sarah, welcome to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast.

Chad (00:46.337)

Sup.

Sarah E. Needleman (01:00.994)

Thank you for having me. That's quite the intro.

Joel Cheesman (01:03.726)

Now, before we get into you a little bit, I've got to set the table here. Sarah and I met 20 some years ago. we bonded over my space at the time and we bonded over, the band arcade fire. And I have to tell you, Sarah, you have a lot to do, with, with my stock rising within the family because at the time I was doing SEO, I was blogging and no one in my family knew what the hell I was doing.

And you quoted me in an article in the wall street journal, and I was able to show my parents and my grandparents. I was in the wall street journal, which totally legitimized whatever the hell I was doing that they didn't understand must be important. So thank you, Sarah, for making the last 20 some years of my life a little easier at the, family picnics and the reunions.

Sarah E. Needleman (01:51.288)

You're welcome. I'm happy to be a part of the Cheeseman history.

Joel Cheesman (01:55.344)

Oh, Cheeseman history. That's something you don't want to be a part of. so Sarah, aside from being a, an awesome journalists and I've, I've respected your reporting for so long. And I know it's been an effort after an effort after an effort to get you on the podcast, but it sounds like a business insider is a little more flexible. So we're happy to have you, but aside from the reporter stuff, what should our listeners know about you? What makes Sarah tick?

Chad (01:58.086)

No, no.

Sarah E. Needleman (02:21.166)

Let's see one more Jersey girl lifelong always lived in Jersey different parts of Jersey, but 100 % I am a music lover. I still like the arcade fire very much and Music is a big pastime of mine going to see live performances. I'm mostly punk and indie bands. That's that's my bag I have a dog of a labradoodle. She's actually on the front page of the Wall Street Journal once a picture of her But I'm also secretly a cat lover

Joel Cheesman (02:31.343)

Me too.

Sarah E. Needleman (02:50.507)

And I have a collection of vinyl and plushy toys. That's pretty outrageous for somebody my age.

Joel Cheesman (02:58.99)

You don't need to be a secret cat lover. We accept cat lovers on the show. It's all good. Dogs are always welcome on the show. Always welcome on the show.

Chad (02:59.743)

Vinyl?

Sarah E. Needleman (03:02.19)

Well, my dog just doesn't really want to hear that, but yeah.

Sarah E. Needleman (03:10.414)

toys. well, just figure figurines like the I collect figurines of characters are the Simpsons Nightmare for Christmas, video game characters. No, that's not what I meant. That's another conversation for a different podcast.

Chad (03:20.417)

wasn't sure if it was latex or okay, cool.

okay. Well, that's the next podcast. So why are we here today? Not to talk about latex, but you just wrote an article called, if you think your job is hard right now, try working in HR. This is something we've been telling people for years, although it seems to be getting harder. Why the hell does that happen?

Joel Cheesman (03:34.782)

you

Sarah E. Needleman (03:49.934)

I think a big part of it is the mass layoffs that we're seeing just over and over. It hasn't ended and you keep thinking it's going to die down and then you hit another, you know, Microsoft laying off another 9,000 people. the HR people are the ones conducting the layoffs in many cases and that's really hard and I thought about looking at it from the other side of the table and trying to understand where they're coming from because I know they don't want to do it. It's not fun for them.

And then you have on top of all these other factors like the implementation of AI. And that's driving a lot of people crazy and people are afraid of losing jobs. And then the ICE raids, the immigration enforcement, that's creating another headache. And then this is all after some of the challenges HR people had during the pandemic. They were leaned on for a lot of help for remote access and keeping things together. So it's just piling on.

to their workloads for very sensitive matters that other occupations don't necessarily have to deal with. I mean, everybody has their challenges. But when you're with people and people's lives, their families and their health and things of that nature, it's pretty tough on those people emotionally. And that's what I heard when I started reaching out. And that's how the article came together.

Joel Cheesman (05:16.752)

Well, the good news is they're getting tickets to Coldplay concerts now. So that should be considered for the next article. Didn't quite happen.

Chad (05:17.238)

So.

Yeah.

Sarah E. Needleman (05:20.59)

you

Yeah, that's another black eye in the profession. That does not help because that has a negative connotation and it's a different perspective on it. And it doesn't help people lower down the HR chain at all.

Chad (05:24.253)

Chad (05:36.441)

no.

And we've been known for years of being human resources, but not having a lot of really humility and or humanity behind some of the decisions that are made. And I'll give you a great example. This is talking about bankruptcy and layoff that literally just happened. And this is from an HR professional on LinkedIn out in the wild.

He says, I get the point that timing sucks. However, we must remember that severance is neither guaranteed nor a right. It is strictly at the discretion of the company. I mean, these are the kind of things that are put out there by HR. I mean, they sound more like litigators and or attorneys than they do somebody who is there to to literally help the humans. And this is literally

what we hear a lot of times. It's like, well, I'm not going to go to read human resources because they're just the snitches. Right. So yeah.

Sarah E. Needleman (06:38.638)

It's a good cop, bad cop thing, right? Like when the cop, when you're in trouble and you need a police officer to help you because someone's breaking into your home, then you love the police officer. Thank God you're here. But when they're pulling over for speeding or whatever, it's the opposite. And HR, think there's a lot of similarities. You need them when you want help with your benefits, you want to help with answering questions about your paycheck. But when they're the ones enforcing rules,

Chad (07:04.32)

Mm-hmm.

Sarah E. Needleman (07:07.79)

that you don't like, then they're the bad guys. So it's not a fun position to be in for these people. that's where, you know, that's the spotlight I put on them.

Joel Cheesman (07:17.006)

Yeah. And one of the spotlights you had a guy named Evan Loveless, who went through seven rounds, seven rounds of layoffs impacting hundreds of people. Talk about his story in the conversation and kind of give us a sense of the emotional, turmoil that he went through in that process.

Chad (07:22.069)

What a name.

Sarah E. Needleman (07:34.094)

Yeah, he talked about how just doing it over and over is hard. You look into these people's eyes. Sometimes he said that their spouse had just been laid off. A lot of times there's tears. The emotions are tough. And HR people aren't psychologists. They're not, you naturally go into the profession to do layoffs. That's one function. But when they're happening over and over, it can get you. And he said, he recalled one particularly really soul crushing conversation.

with someone he was laying off, this woman confided in him that she thought the meeting that was on her calendar was about a promotion. And instead, she's getting laid off. And he said it was just the look in her eyes, the devastation. It was really hard for him. so, he just talked about how doing it over and over has made him

Joel Cheesman (08:16.388)

Dope.

Sarah E. Needleman (08:33.763)

It just breaks his heart. feels like he's constantly under a dark cloud. And it's been really hard.

Joel Cheesman (08:41.124)

Another layer to that that we notice with what we do is HR departments are getting smaller because of replacing with AI. I assume that would add an additional layer of stress, but not only are you laying off departments, you're laying off your own people. Did you get a sense for that being an extra layer of stress? You talk about automation and AI in the story.

Chad (08:41.385)

I mean, they're being asked.

Sarah E. Needleman (09:05.845)

Yeah, certainly that is an issue. They have to lay off some of their own peers and that's extremely awkward. For another story, one woman in HR told me that her HR colleague made a remark, something along the lines of, now's not a good time for anybody to buy a boat. None of us should be buying a boat right now. And she looked at her and she goes, huh. And then a few weeks later, indeed she was laid off. And that was the HR person's kind of way of hinting to her colleague.

things are not good right now. She knew something that the other one didn't. And so that was another piece I did about like, try to ask your manager HR if a layoff is coming and one of the way to do it. Cause oftentimes they can't say they're under some sort of NDA, but they can kind of maybe give little hints because again, these are people's lives we're talking about. And it's not just other people in the organization, but just other HR people too. mean, when companies are laying off people, don't need as many recruiters, right?

recruiting if you're letting go people. Of course, sometimes they are, but a lot of times when you see HR people being cut or recruiters being cut, that's a sign that labs are coming at your own organization is what I've been hearing. And so yeah, it's a double whammy.

Chad (10:19.179)

So, and then back that asset, where we start talking about downsizing the HR department, obviously looking that, you know, everything runs in cycles, right? So the, you know, scaling up later might happen with AI, not with human beings. And as you had said, you know, some of these individuals are being asked to do things that they are not qualified to do.

I mean, they're just not qualified. They're not counselors. I mean, to be able to provide the human empathy, you know, I get if you're a human, you should have some empathy, right? But to ask them to be the counselor and the cop is really just a bridge too far in many cases, right?

Sarah E. Needleman (11:04.014)

I mean, that is the profession. So you have to know what you're signing up for. But I think a lot of HR people aren't expecting to be doing layoffs over and over and over. You may have to every now and then. You know that's part of the gig. But in the case of the gentleman you mentioned in my story, he was like, wow, it just doesn't end. It just keeps going. doing it a couple of times is one thing, but doing it over and over and over, then it starts to really chip away your soul.

Joel Cheesman (11:30.34)

Yep. Let's talk.

Chad (11:31.339)

Well, and then that leads to something else that you talked about in the article was incivility in the office space, because again, you're seeing your friends slowly leave you, right? And then you feel like you're on an island. And then the next thing, even if you haven't been downsized or laid off or what have you, you still are going to feel that. And I would assume that incivility is up with employees even before they're let go.

Sarah E. Needleman (12:00.96)

because in tough times people get disgruntled and HR is the messenger. They say don't shoot the messenger, but HR is usually the one who's delivering the news, enforcing the rules. They may not be making the rules, they may not like having to enforce them, but that is the job. And at least one HR person I spoke to for that piece said that he had a let go of someone he had up until this point had a good rapport with someone they were friendly with, chat at the water cooler, different departments, but they...

They got along, maybe had some history or lived in the area, knew each other's kids, whatever. And when it came time to the layoff, he said, look, he felt really bad, even worse than, and then in other cases, because he really knew this person, he said, look, I really want to help you. I'll edit your resume. I'll give you some leads. But this person just turned around and just spewed out a ton of horrible things. great. And this HR person,

He said, you know, I have a thick skin, but this one hurt because he really thought he had reported the guy and really thought the guy understood that it wasn't his decision by any means and there's nothing he could do to prevent this. And he wanted to help. But the personality took a very big change and it was maybe a moment of frustration, anger, maybe in hindsight, this person, you know, look back and maybe have regret. I don't know, but it's human nature. We get angry and we...

Chad (13:25.161)

Mm-hmm.

Sarah E. Needleman (13:25.282)

we feel hurt and sometimes the messenger is the one who ends up taking that. So it's really tough. you know, the, another woman I spoke to said that when she had laid off someone, the person didn't take it well, looked up her phone number and got her parents landline. Cause that was which this person found and just harassed the parents over and over and over to the point where she changed her name. And, you know, I think the parents had to change their number. But this is,

Joel Cheesman (13:49.245)

my God.

Sarah E. Needleman (13:54.606)

This is sometimes what happens. It's tough.

Joel Cheesman (13:56.122)

Wow. So, so I'll file this one under the, tell me I'm laid off without telling me I'm laid off. you talk about the return to office mandates at companies, which for a time that was headline news on a regular basis. talk about how that has impacted HR as a profession, employees that I'm sure are pissed off about that as well. You're right in the heart of it at New York. You've got JP Morgan Goldman. So like this.

RTO is a big story in New York. Tell us your perspective on that and how it was a stress for HR.

Sarah E. Needleman (14:29.824)

Yeah, it's a huge stress for HR because again, they're the ones enforcing these policies. They may be talking to managers and telling them, your employees coming in and pressuring them to make sure attendance is happening. Some of the HR people I've talked to said they're getting a lot of phony excuses as to why people can't come in or real exaggerations. And another case is that sincere, they talk about traffic, like they're spending three hours a day commuting.

Now part of this is because people move far from where they are and now the callback is like, okay, I have to get in the car and drive really far. And then of course you hear about the extreme commuters who will get in airplanes to get to work. But some people just can't do it. But the HR people, they're torn. They don't wanna lose good talent. What if it's one of your best people who is pushing back against RTO? Then you're really in a pickle. And it's hard to make an exception for one person and not another because that drives up resentment.

Chad (15:19.744)

you

Sarah E. Needleman (15:28.118)

You can see a lot of this on Reddit if you go to some of the different subreddits for RTO topics and you'll hear people say, I'm tempted to snitch on this colleague, he never comes in, I schlep in every day, it's not fair. Now we don't know, maybe the colleague has a health issue, but a lot of times people just don't want to go in and so it's a real tough spot to be in for HR.

One HR person I spoke to just the other day said he really pushed to give an exemption for two people who had extremely long commutes, but that were very important to the company. And so he said it was really hard because again, the other people who want the same thing and you can't do for one, not for the other. It's again, good cop, bad cop, being mom and dad, being the messenger, it's a tough spot to be in.

Chad (16:17.729)

Well, and it also sounds like, mean, because obviously we had, you know, George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, COVID. Now we have, you know, we have probably one of the biggest labor market imbalances we have ever had, at least in our lifetime, we have ever had. We are pushing out immigrants who are doing jobs and now we have all these jobs that are open. Then we have hundreds of thousands of white collar workers that were kicked out of the government.

that are not gonna do those jobs. And then we've got all these tech guys from the bloated metas of the world. They kept them around just so that they could keep them off the market. And now they're back out. it just seems like it's incredibly hard with all of this like tsunami of different things that happened over the past, not even 10 years for God's sakes.

Sarah E. Needleman (17:13.742)

Yeah, it last happened just since I'd say 2020. So much that that's why the story says that it's one of the toughest times ever to be HR. I mean, it's hard to, it was a little fluffy statement, hard to quantify that. But you talk to people who've been in it for decades, know, 30, 40 years, and they're saying that it really, it says something, it's meaningful. You know, you can't quantify it, but the anecdotal evidence is pretty strong.

Chad (17:18.432)

Mm.

Joel Cheesman (17:41.668)

The profession at large you sort of touch on as being challenged. You mentioned the declining number of jobs on platforms like indeed.com. Is this going to be an impact that we'll see for years and years to come or is this a little blip in the profession of HR?

Sarah E. Needleman (18:01.55)

mean, are always hard to make, but it does seem like this could be doing some serious damage to the HR profession, the interest in it, people going into it. The data we saw from the Indeed was showing that fewer people are looking for work in HR. I think even though people are desperate for jobs right now, if you have a choice between two different ways to go, HR not.

may not be attractive. Or if you're a college student thinking about what field to go into and you find out you're going to be the one responsible for enforcing rules that are unpopular, maybe you're not going to go into that profession. So it's hard to say because we're talking about a very big sea change. But when you have many years now, at least five really tough years, that's a whole class of a whole cohort of people going through the college education system.

Chad (18:56.161)

Yeah.

Sarah E. Needleman (18:56.302)

And by this, the time they started it, now that they're graduating in the market, their thoughts may have changed. So pay bill may have considered HR as a profession in these past five years, in the college system may have pivoted. And I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case. And I think we could see that next few years at the entry level, a decline in HR people. And so over time, that can present a problem.

Joel Cheesman (19:23.426)

I'd love to know how many students, how fewer students there are in HR and how big the Shurm ranks are today versus 10 years ago. Chad touched on the political side of this, but you go fairly deep into immigration, H1Bs, deportation fears. This is something HR people probably weren't expecting, at least to this degree. Talk about the political aspect of the job of HR.

Chad (19:23.487)

Me. Me.

Sarah E. Needleman (19:53.432)

Sure, yeah, some of the HR people I spoke to at companies where they have a lot of immigration labor, immigrant labor, sorry, said that workers are starting to come up to them, sometimes with tears in their eyes. And she would say to them, this one particular one, said they were qualified to be here. She's like, you have the correct documentation, but that doesn't stop them from being afraid or for their families being afraid.

Just being rounded up even if it's 24 hours, I let you go they find out that 24 hours in detention is extremely Difficult for people to endure What if they have medication that they need on a daily basis? know my mom takes a pill every day. It misses that one day She's in big trouble because she has no thyroid Children to pick up just all that sort of stuff. We there was a

Joel Cheesman (20:27.824)

Yeah.

Chad (20:33.216)

Mm-hmm.

Sarah E. Needleman (20:45.102)

a in the news the other day, I can't remember what outlet where there was a raid and someone panicked and they ended up falling to their death off a roof because they were running. so another story I did recently was how a lot of companies, you know, they have emergency response plans for tornadoes, workplace violence, a chemical spill, but they didn't have one for ice raids. But now they're starting to have them because

Chad (21:12.542)

Wow.

Joel Cheesman (21:12.682)

jeez.

Sarah E. Needleman (21:13.422)

Think about it, in a manufacturing plant, you're dealing with heavy equipment. Ice comes in with guns. People panic. Even if they're perfectly legal to be here, maybe they're just afraid. Or maybe they're legal, but they had a DUI a couple months ago. Whatever the case, they run. And next thing you know, machines are operating, and people's hands could get cut off or whatever. HR people don't want that to happen. So they're setting up these response plans.

Chad (21:33.568)

now.

Sarah E. Needleman (21:41.678)

you know, their rights, knowing what the difference between, I'm sorry, what kind of warrant is acceptable and there are certain warrants that are okay and certain that have to be signed by a judge before you can let them in. But it's not often that we have many uniforms, sometimes masks showing up with guns and big guns, not little handguns like.

Rightfully, you these big guns coming in that could be disturbing Whatever the reason is whether it be immigration or anything else It's it's not something we see every day in the workplace. And so HR people now that's like another thing They're dealing with the emotional aspect of employees coming to them with tears and fear And then you know, the actual ways themselves can be terrifying if they happen and they are happening They are happening at workplaces and I said said so on their other news page on their website. It's not a secret

Chad (22:15.648)

Mm-hmm.

Sarah E. Needleman (22:30.894)

So and now that the Trump's recent bill has passed, the big beautiful bill as he calls it, there is a lot more funding for ICE and the spokesman for the White House very clearly said they are going to go after illegal governments and by going through companies, going through workplaces, sometimes parking lots, sometimes the actual place of work itself.

Chad (22:40.064)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (22:58.731)

So HR, number one, we need these individuals to do the jobs and that's why we've had them here for years, immigrants, right? Whether they're immigrants that are doing truck driving, dock working, or they're working in the fields or what have you, or as Joel said, with H1B visas. It is again, more pressure on HR, the talent and recruiting function of HR, to find the people that now don't

not just don't want to come to the country, they just can't come to the country, right? Even if they wanted to, those H1B visa individuals are going to Canada or they're going to Europe. mean, hell, France is like, come on, we want all your smart people. We call this the genius visa for the reason, for that reason, but yet we're kicking geniuses out and HR can't find the people to do the jobs.

Sarah E. Needleman (23:56.78)

Yes, that other problem there's especially certain occupations where immigrant labor plays a significant role. And so that's, yeah, that's a hard problem for HR filling positions that maybe local talent doesn't want or isn't qualified for for whatever reason. And then there's just the added burden of getting those 1099 to make sure they're accurate. Even a clerical error could put one of your employees in jeopardy.

So like you have to have those documents up to date. Now you should always have them up to date, but you're not expecting rates or checks. So maybe occasionally you may have the federal government will come in and want to see your documentation. But now that they're coming in for other reasons, they may use that as an excuse to probe further. And if your records aren't up to date, if there's an error.

That could be doing a real serious disservice to your employee. So as an HR person, that's a lot on your shoulders. That's big burden to carry.

Joel Cheesman (24:54.416)

Yeah. Anybody talking about sort political uncertainty? So we talk about the tariffs. We see a lot of businesses pausing hiring. We're waiting to see what's going to happen. That's stressful. Like, did that come up in any of the conversations, Yuhad?

Sarah E. Needleman (25:10.092)

That was, it did come up, it wasn't high on the list of the issues just because it's not a direct concern. That's more like at the decision making level. But in terms of what they can do in terms of filling roles that they have to put in pause. And that is a problem because you have job hunters, you put out the application, we're applying, you're not responding. And then their answer is, we don't know if we're going to fill it right now. And that's another awkward.

Joel Cheesman (25:13.583)

Yeah.

Sarah E. Needleman (25:39.918)

position of being you, you want to help people get jobs, you want to fill the roles with the best people, but you're not sure you can do it right now. And there's this constant limbo state. And again, it makes them the boogie man, right? If you're the job hunter and you're you're their silence. It's not necessarily because there's something wrong with you. It's because the position is frozen, they can't fill it. And again, the HR person is the boogie man that goes back to the civility. All these things are tied together.

And you can see it, especially, like I said on Reddit, there are many, posts about the horrible recruiting experience. It's not always the HR person's fault, but they certainly are almost always the one to be blamed.

Joel Cheesman (26:19.972)

Yeah, I'll let you out on this one, Sarah. Can we end on a positive note? Was there any silver lining in your reporting? Give us something good to leave off.

Chad (26:20.147)

yeah.

Sarah E. Needleman (26:25.185)

Yes!

Chad (26:28.2)

thank God.

Sarah E. Needleman (26:30.42)

Yes, there is a silver lining. A lot of the HR people I spoke to had a very positive spin on it. They said, you know, this is the profession they signed up for and that they love helping people. And some of them see this difficult time as a calling. It's that they need to stand up and help and do the things they need to do to keep people employed or if they're being laid off to help them with the best outplacement services possible.

They feel like now's our time to stand up and be a real leader, real helper. And so, you know, people go into HR in many cases because they do care about people. They care about the human element of the workplace. And so this is a time for them to shine if they look at it in that perspective. And many of them did since that was the time where they really need to rise to the level. And some of them are happy to go ahead and do that. I mean, happy in the sense that

It's their calling, it's but yeah, it's their calling. Yes, it's a noble profession. That's how they see it. And that's, that's what the ones who are sticking with it and standing up to this moment.

Joel Cheesman (27:29.978)

Yeah.

A noble profession.

Chad (27:42.197)

Do you hear that HR? It's time for you to shine. So if you haven't read the article yet, it's called, If You Think Your Job Is Hard Right Now, Try Working in HR. That's Business Insider. This has been Sarah Needleman. Sarah, if somebody wants to connect with you, maybe they want to read your stuff. I don't know. Where would you send them?

Sarah E. Needleman (28:04.214)

love to hear from HR people, whether you're the payroll benefits person or the talent recruiter, I want to hear about the challenges you're facing, the trends you're seeing, fun culture stuff. And you can email me at sneadleman at insider.com or sneadleman like sneezing but S-N-E-E-D-L-E-M-A-N. I'm also on LinkedIn and you can message me there. yeah, I'd love to hear from you.

Chad (28:23.361)

Hahaha

Joel Cheesman (28:32.546)

interview almost eight years in the making. Sarah, thanks for hanging out with us. Please come back soon. Chad, that is another one in the can. We out.

Chad (28:32.929)

Excellent.

Sarah E. Needleman (28:39.448)

Absolutely.

Chad (28:41.915)

We out.

Sarah E. Needleman (28:43.534)

Thank