Corporate HR Truths Unfiltered with Jesse Tervooren

Join Tara as she chats with Jesse, aka "Your Unfiltered BFF" on TikTok, who is known for her raw and hilarious takes on corporate life and HR nonsense. 

Jesse shares her journey on social media, unexpectedly becoming a voice of reason for many frustrated employees. Discover how small daily injustices and performative HR policies can undermine corporate culture and why unfiltered honesty is in high demand. 

Jesse offers insights on how companies can improve employee experience and maintain authenticity. If you’ve ever felt alone in your corporate struggles, this episode is sure to resonate!

Check out the detailed show notes (https://tarakermiet.com/podcast/) and leave your thoughts or questions about today's topic.

To connect with Jesse, follow her on TikTok at https://www.tiktok.com/@yourunfilteredbff.

Need a little more balance and a lot more badass in your life? Check out my 1:1 coaching sessions designed to help you tackle your biggest challenges, manage stress, and create a personalized plan for success. Your first 30-minute session is free! Visit tarakermiet.com to get started. 

Want to turn your dreams into reality? Check out my 7 Days to Crushing Your Goals mini-course! This course is packed with practical lessons and hands-on activities designed to help you define your “why,” leverage your strengths, and take decisive action. By the end, you'll have a clear plan and the tools you need to crush your goals. Visit tarakermiet.com/crushyourgoals to join the course and start making things happen! 

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Jesse: The Unfiltered BFF
• 4:04 The Rise of Jesse on TikTok
• 8:13 The Need for Unfiltered Honesty in the Workplace
• 16:58 Performative HR and Corporate Hypocrisy
• 24:43 Discussing Unjust Promotions
• 26:49 HR's Role in Communication
• 27:48 A Shocking Executive Meeting
• 29:48 Flaws in Performance Reviews
• 32:18 Aligning Compensation with Performance
• 39:33 Challenges in Implementing Fair Policies
• 44:21 Final Thoughts and Where to Connect

Transcript

Tara: [00:00:00] All right, friends, if you've ever doom scrolled through HR TikTok, and I'm guessing you probably have, 'cause most of us have, and. Thought. Finally, someone said it. What we've been thinking, there's a good chance that it was today's guest, Jesse, AKA, your unfiltered BFF on TikTok is blowing up for her raw, hilarious, and painfully accurate takes on the nonsense that we all put up with in corporate life.

From eye roll worthy onboarding to performative HR policies. Jessie's calling it like she sees it and it's exactly the breath of fresh air. I know I've been craving and I'm sure a ton of other people have been craving. So for me, after coming across her account, I knew I just had to have her on the podcast.

She's got a really cool background. Um, you can tell just a deep love for what she's sharing and, uh, what seems to me, at least from an outsider's perspective, a zero tolerance policy on some of this corporate BS that we're [00:01:00] coming across. So a perfect match for the balance. Bad, bad as podcast. So welcome to the show, Jesse.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Awesome. Thank you so much for having me, Tara. I am excited to be here today.

Tara: Yeah. Yeah. So I like to start all of my episodes with, um, guests with the same kind of icebreaker question, and that question is, what's something you're loving in your life right now?

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Yeah, so something I'm really loving right now and it's really nerdy is gardening.

Tara: Oh, nice.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : I and just to clarify, like I do not have a green thumb. Um, never something that I've been skilled at, but over the past couple years, I've like slowly been dipping a toe into it and I had my husband build me some planter boxes, and then this past year I thought, okay. I didn't do very well last year. I killed most of what I tried to plant, so how can I, how can I do a little bit better this year? So I plugged it into chat, GPT,

Tara: Oh.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : I said like, here are, here's the size and [00:02:00] dimensions in my planner boxes. Here's the area that I live in. I kind of wanna do this type of stuff.

I'm a total beginner. What should I do? And it literally mapped out everything for me.

Tara: That's so smart.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : 50%. The other 50%, I just kind of threw seeds in. 'cause you know, I have a DH, ADHD and I got bored halfway through, but it's turning out pretty darn good. And I've got like peas and carrots and green beans, and some cucumbers growing.

So I'm feeling very proud of that accomplishment.

Tara: That's awesome. I love that. I love that you use chat GBT for that. 'cause I, my husband makes fun of me all the time because I'm constantly on chat GBT for everything. It's my meal planner. IT plans. I just recently had knee surgery and it's planning like, aside from obviously my medical professionals, but it's helping me plan like my recovery process and all that.

So, um.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : I use it for literally everything.

Tara: like my best friend.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Uhhuh,

Tara: Yeah,

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : perhaps in a unhealthy way for me, but you know, that's okay.

Tara: it's fine.[00:03:00] 

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : it's no big.

Tara: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's, that's really interesting. I am not an outdoor plant person. I will kill them. I have a green-ish thumb for indoor plants. They survive at least most of the time if they're fairly easy.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : there.

Tara: Well, okay. So you've built a pretty strong following pretty quickly from my observation on TikTok just by saying what I'm sure so many people are thinking and dealing with.

And I'm just curious, like what inspired you to start sharing kind of those hot takes online?

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : So funny enough, I had absolutely no intention of doing that. And, um, I, in fact, I was consciously avoiding it.

Tara: Hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : what what's interesting is kind of how I started, why I started on social media, had nothing to do with [00:04:00] building a following or like taking my voice online or anything like that. I wanted to.

Work on desensitizing myself to being perceived and to just putting like raw, organic, not polished version of me out online. Um, and I wanted to do that just for like my own personal development. So in the beginning, my intention was to really do content based around like. The fact that I'm kind of in this weird in between zone.

I'm 38, almost 39. I left my corporate job. I have a 6-year-old, so I'm a little bit. Older than some parents. Um, it, I'm just in this zone where I'm like, I don't identify with a lot of young people or like up and coming, but I also don't know that I identify with like 40 plus and 50 plus. And [00:05:00] I don't identify with stay at home parents, but I also now am like staying at home.

And so I don't identify with corporate and so I wanted to start there. Um. I did and it just, it bombed Tara. It bombed, like it went nowhere. I tried doing parenting content. I tried doing a DHD content, like a day in my life and like nothing. And

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : what I learned from that is that TikTok or the internet or just humans in general don't fund me funny. And that's okay. I can lean into that. So I thought, okay, well I'm just gonna try something different and do like. One video, just one on like, kind of my corporate experience. I did, and it blew up. And I thought, okay, well I guess this is really what I need to be talking about. And so I, I had a little bit of like a, like an identity crisis with it because I was trying to move away. From the corporate [00:06:00] version of myself and the career centered focused identity. Um, but I realized that my experience and my leadership and my years that I've spent has given me a perspective and that people wanted to hear it. And so here we are,

Tara: Yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : that I expect it to be, but I am, I'm now leaning into it and enjoying it.

Tara: Mm-hmm. I think that's such a good example too, especially with social media. Like anyone who's out there trying to be a creator of some sort, that you're not gonna get it right the first time or the hundredth time maybe. Um, and, you know, applicable for a lot of situations, but a lot of times we're gonna have to pivot.

And I also think that there is. A component of like, as an outside observer, you have a natural strength in talking about these things. And so I think that the universe was [00:07:00] probably trying to push you in that direction of trying to get you to, to formulate, into utilize those strengths.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : that's, you know, that's what I joked with a lot of my friends about who were kind of watching me. They're like, talk about this, talk about this, talk about hr, talk about leadership. And I'm like. I don't wanna do that. I'm over it. I wanna like uncouple that and then the one time I do it, it gets traction.

And I was like, okay, I get it. I hear you universe like, I'm here. This is what we're doing now.

Tara: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, why do you think so many people are craving that kind of content craving more just of that unfiltered honesty in the workplace right now. I mean, we know the job search world is bunkers, but you know, there's still so many of us. Working in this corporate world and navigating that.

Why do you think so many of us are craving this kind of content?

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : You know, I dunno. I think we always crave. Unfiltered talk,

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : always want raw [00:08:00] communication. It's not always best for us to receive raw communication, but, but we always want it or we think we want it. Um, think that, you know, and I hate to just like refer back to COVID, but. me, that's when it shifted.

I think COVID crumbled a lot of the foundation of corporate America and the idealism of what it had to be and what it had to look like. That we had to do things this way because it was the only way COVID hit, everyone kind of pivoted and had to come up with creative solutions and different ways to do things and more flexibility and. employees, a lot of them benefited from that, myself included, and saw that like, oh, I, I can sit at home my own environment where I'm comfortable with, you know, and be more productive. [00:09:00] I'm never going back to an office again. Like, I'm not gonna do that. And so people got used to a little bit more flexibility and. And then I think it backfired when companies started trying to just pretend like that never happened and reverse it because people are smart and the ones who are thriving in that environment are gonna call out the bullshit and they're

Tara: Right.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : is, is my performance poor? now, has my performance dipped? If not, why do I need to go back into the office? Am I not fulfilling the same requirements here? the fact of the matter is that for most companies, and yes, there are absolutely businesses that need you to be physically in person, I'm

Tara: Sure.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : with that. But for the ones that don't, for like the corporate offices, um. not about productivity. It's not about profitability. It's about control.

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : [00:10:00] It's about, it's easier, Tara, to be able to see people physically sitting in a space and typing, who knows what they're typing. They could be applying to a job online. You have no idea. But I see them and I feel confident that they're doing something versus when they're at home and I don't see them, they can be. Following all of the directives. They could be turning everything in. They could be crushing it, but I don't see them. And I have anxiety I'm a immature leader. Right. And a lot of leaders, unfortunately, are not qualified to be. Leaders.

Tara: Oh yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : when they struggle with trust, when they struggle with, confidence, it comes out in micromanaging and a desire to control.

And it's easier to do that if you can physically see people.

Tara: Yeah, absolutely.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : So I think, you know, for me that kind of started it. It's like we're seeing through some of the bullshit and we're not wanting to put up [00:11:00] with it as much anymore because we've personally seen behind the curtain now.

Tara: Mm-hmm. Yeah, we've seen the wizard behind, behind it. Yeah, I, um, I mean I had that issue too. I worked in higher ed originally during COVID and a, a lot of what we do, obviously we need to be there for students and, and all that kind of stuff, but there. It, it was interesting when we started going back, we had, we went back way before the students came back and it was like, why are we here?

And it was, it came down to a lot of conversations of do you just not trust us? Like what's going on? And

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Yeah.

Tara: you know, a lot of times I see in corporate when I'm, when I'm talking with folks too, is there's like one or two employees that are ruining it for everybody. And it's like the leaders have not been taught how to manage.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Mm-hmm.

Tara: The outliers and just treat everybody the same, which there's a difference between equality and equity [00:12:00] and approaching that conversation. And, you know, you talk about, you know, leaders are often not in the place to be leaders. And I think that that's a, a mishap on just the training and development that.

Folks get, they usually get promoted because they've done a really good job in their, at their job where they have the credentials that they need or what have you. Or they know the right people depending on the situation, but they're not getting the support they need to actually be strong leaders and managers of people, and I'm seeing a lot of the people being forgotten.

Part of corporate too.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : absolutely. I

Tara: Yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : good at your job does not make you a good leader.

Tara: Oh no.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : often makes you a worse leader

Tara: Yep.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : you are so particular about how something is done, and you're so hyper-focused on that, that you're not thinking about problem solving and strategic thinking and [00:13:00] coaching and communication.

You're just focused on task and result.

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : it's a tricky situation that a lot of companies find themselves in.

Tara: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think like a lot of people are connecting with this kind of content too, because so often we feel so isolated and alone in our own experiences, but

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Yeah.

Tara: there's some nice sense of validation when someone else is calling, stuff that you're seeing,

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Mm-hmm.

Tara: you don't know if it's just you or your company or if anyone's else, anyone else is even noticing,

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Yeah.

Tara: you know?

So.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : I mean, I can tell you that I still get excited anytime someone comments on one of my videos. It's like HR Professional here and I can validate all of this. I'm like,

Tara: Yes.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : you know, they send me a message, you know, a private message and say like, I just want to say thank you, like I'm a executive, or I'm, you know, a head of something in this company and see all of this as well.

Thank you for calling it out. And so I. I feel like I need that validation too, because [00:14:00] there are times when I put something out I think, is it gonna be misinterpreted? Are people gonna come at me? And they. Definitely all of that. I

Tara: Yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : a lot in the comments of like, oh, you can't say that when this happens.

It means this. It could mean a variety of things. And it's like, yes, of course, but

Tara: Like no shit, like

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : and we, we have to use our brain in context. And like if you watch 30 seconds of something and don't look at the rest of it and make an assumption like that's on you,

Tara: mm-hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : not my problem. But yeah, I mean we all want that feeling of I'm not alone and we're in it together.

And it's a shared experience. And also like. I think just right now in 2025, our world in the United States is kind of bonkers and there's a lot of people that are fired up on wanting to call out nonsense. Everywhere we see it.

Tara: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I think it's needed.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : it's, and it's, you know, I, I can only speak intelligently and from an educated [00:15:00] standpoint about that, which I have lived and experienced.

And so that's where I'm choosing to use my voice and to call things out because I know from walking in it day in and day out.

Tara: Yeah. Well, I think that's important because you're bringing your personal context in there. It's not just. A one and done kind of thing or something that you chat GPT, right?

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Yep. Yep.

Tara: Yeah. And that's the same with what I do too. It's like I always tell people I've done the research, I've done the education, I have the background, but also I lived burnout.

So

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Yeah.

Tara: of what I'm doing is speaking from my own experience, tweaking what I've researched and done the background on. So,

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Well, and that's the valuable part because you know, anyone can research it. Anyone

Tara: yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : books. Anyone can ask chat, GPT and come up with a detailed plan, right? Just like I did for gardening. Like you can do that for burnout. You can do that for navigating corporate [00:16:00] craziness,

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Seeing it written out and hearing from, or engaging with someone who has actually lived through it, it's just, it's not the same.

Tara: Yeah. Yeah. Well let, uh, so you've, you've called out quite a bit of performative HR in your content, and so I, I really particularly love the ones where you're asking people for their own experiences because. I shared a few of mine with you as well, but, um, what's like the wildest example that you've seen of a company just pretending to care about people but they didn't clearly care about the people?

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : You know. probably gonna disappoint you in this answer

Tara: okay.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : because I think that it, that is like people are looking for the wildest, they're looking for shocking, controversial, the like, oh my God, I can't believe that happened. No way. Like, I need to know all the details. And while that stuff [00:17:00] does happen, um, the reality is what happens more often than not are the more mundane, less. Exploitive, less juicy, um, incidents that are easier to gaslight people with. And so I wanna talk about that because

Tara: Yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : a death by a thousand cuts versus one fatal blow, right? When

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : fatal blow, when something really big and really speculative happens, you hear about it and you see it.

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Someone is calling it out, someone is talking about it. It's the daily things that happen that people don't talk about that I think are easier to get swept under the rug. Like, the majority of my career was in healthcare. And so healthcare companies offering either. No healthcare insurance [00:18:00] or like the worst possible, most expensive, lowest coverage healthcare insurance.

Like if, if you are a healthcare establishment and you are building your business on providing care for people and their health you are not providing that to your internal employees, and I know like coming out of my mouth, that sounds like, well, no shit, but like it is wildly known.

Tara: Oh yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : in healthcare insurance sucks.

Like you're just gonna have shitty benefits. How is that, how like the math is not mapping

Tara: Make it make sense.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Make it make sense or, you know, again, in healthcare, if you're a company that is saying you really promote family values and you are like very into family and the culture of that and the community, and yet for a. Shift, let's say like a medical assistant or receptionist or dental assistant, the type of shift that you do have to work in the [00:19:00] office. You say you have to have, have full availability from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM Monday through Friday, and we'll schedule you anywhere within that time in an eight hour shift, but you're not gonna know until the week before. Well, that doesn't really promote family because I'm a parent and the majority of. Medical assistant, dental assistant nurses, hygienists, like those types of roles, statistically are females. And again, statistically in their childbearing years, I've done the research. That is just a a fact. so you're telling mothers now I'm And I am. Lumping that together just based on statistics. But you are telling people who are likely to have families that they need to have a full range of availability from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM and that they're probably getting paid. Mm. I say like 20 to $25 an hour. That's hard. You're saying you [00:20:00] can't, like how do you plan, how do you plan on How do you, even if you have a partner. Or you, you know, how do you navigate it with them, with that degree of uncertainty and variability when it would be not that difficult to create block schedules and shifts and hire for them, but that's harder for the company to manage. They would rather have people who are there all the time and available all the time, great, you can have that.

Like that is your right to have that. But then don't go say that you promote family values because your actions are not correlating with that.

Tara: Yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Like that. Those are the, those are the type of things that are, that you just see every day and that don't make it into the news. They don't like get

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : up because they gaslight people and they say like, well, you.

You know, you applied for the job and you should be happy to have a job or like you are getting fair pay and [00:21:00] it's like, yes, you may be getting fair pay, you may be in the median or the 70th percentile, or even the 90th percentile for what that position pays. But if you think about it from a personal perspective, is that worth what you are sacrificing? In your life, and most people who are in that position are there because they, that is the best available option to them, and they don't have a choice. And I just hate that we are taking advantage of that.

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : I hate it

Tara: Yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : hate that we are, know, we touched on this a little bit already, but another way that companies are not caring for people and they say that they are, is when they are promoting people into

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : multiple complaints against them,

Tara: Yes.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : are known to be. You know, in some form or [00:22:00] another, whether they're assholes, whether they're incompetent, whether they have sexual harassment complaints against them, but we are promoting them because either they get results. by ethical or unethical standards, or they are the only people that you know will tolerate the bullshit and not push back on you,

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : promote them to gain compliance like that is not caring for people.

Putting in positions of power, putting people in positions of power who are not trained, who are not supported, who do not have strong ethics, who have complaints against them, like valid complaints. is not right, that is not caring for people. Like those are the things that I see all the time, know it's not as like shocking and sexy and fun and wild and like let's all laugh about it, right?

But it's like these are the things that happen every single day.

Tara: Yeah. Well, I think there are things that we need to [00:23:00] know are happening to keep kind of our eyes out for too. When you're in those situations. I know you're talking about people getting promoted when they shouldn't. You know, I, in a previous role that I, I was in, I, I had a senior leader talk to me about.

Another individual who was higher than me on the hierarchy should not have been talking to me about this individual in the first place. But here we are. And literally telling me like he's not a good people manager, like he should not be doing this. And then within a month or two, inherited like three teams because of restructuring.

And it came down to it because. That individual was a yes man, if you will. So they were the person that exactly, to your point, was not gonna push back. They were gonna do whatever they needed to do and they were the right person for the job, [00:24:00] if you will.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Yes, and I see that so much and that's another like red flag for me, right? Like if, if you are in a company where you see that the people who speak up, the people that push back are the ones who are leaving in herds.

Tara: Hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : There's probably a reason, right? And there's an appropriate and an inappropriate way to do that.

And a lot of times people do it inappropriately, unfortunately.

Tara: Yeah,

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : but if there is a pattern of strong leaders, ethical leaders who are using their voice, who are speaking up, who are challenging things within a company that are just. Disappearing or getting demoted or, you know, leaving for, it was a mutual agreement.

We're still on great terms. Like, I'm gonna go ahead and say, no, there's something else going on. And if

Tara: You just signed an NDA like.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : yeah, if [00:25:00] after they're, they leave, like their team kinda is trickling out, like it's.

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : That most people don't realize and as hr, like of my job when I was head of HR for a company was pr.

Tara: Yeah. Oh yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : it was spinning communication a way that was as honest as I could be. Um, but didn't sound bad to the employees and I hate that. It's like whatever you hear from hr, whatever you hear from executives, it's probably spun.

Tara: Oh yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Significantly,

Tara: Mm-hmm. They have spent time crafting that message.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : they have spent time crafting it. Yes. And they're using very vague language intentionally and then ignoring your questions or wanting further clarification because they're covering up shit that they don't wanna [00:26:00] talk about.

Tara: Yeah, they're covering their asses.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Yep.

Tara: Mm-hmm. Hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : But I

Tara: Well, yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : kind of like funny one if

Tara: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : a good one. Um, I was in an executive meeting one time, so like executive leadership, top leaders at a company and during these executive meetings, a leader was often highlighted. They were notified beforehand to like present something that they were doing within their department that was really working, right?

So one leader. Was asked to present and he starts off by saying, you know, people are like cows. If you don't fence them in, they're just gonna roam forever to the point where they'll leave their food and water or run off into the highway like you need to in because they're just not that [00:27:00] smart. And then went on to explain that what was getting results was essentially like a huge micromanaging

Tara: Yeah, fencing. Cool, cool.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : like, did we, did we really just start out with the sentence,

Tara: People are like cows.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : I was like, where is this one going?

Tara: Oh my gosh,

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : And then I watch and I'm very expressive, right? So I had to, I think like cover my mouth. I might've turned because it's a, you know, we're on camera and I'm like, I need to control my face right now because I am it.

Tara: what?

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : we actually talking about? And then to see other leaders be like, yeah, yeah, that's great. And I'm like, alright, this is,

Tara: Uh,

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : we care about people, but they're stupid like cows, and we need to fence them in for, for their own benefit.

Tara: yeah, yeah, sure, sure.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : are idiots. Like [00:28:00] not a leader or

Tara: No,

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : be.

Tara: no. Correct. It shouldn't be. Yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : You shouldn't be.

Tara: Wow. People are like cows. I am gonna remember that one for a while.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Yep.

Tara: Mm-hmm. Well, so with your experience in hr. And just what you've come across through your years, like what's one common, you know, best practice that's out there in the corporate world that you think just needs to die already and maybe what would you replace it with?

Okay. Well, you have to pick one because you know, if we get rid of everything, the world will implode.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : gosh. I know, I know. I, you know, I personally have lot of gripes with the performance review

Tara: Hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : increase process, annual raises, like whatever you wanna call it in terms of like a best practice because there isn't a best practice there. And I think, [00:29:00] um. What really gets under my skin specifically is when companies say they are doing performance reviews or merit increases or performance increases, and they have a predetermined. Percentage that is being allocated, that is basically a cola or a cost of living adjustment, right? If you are, and there's nothing wrong with Colas, um, but don't confuse performance. Or merit with inflation adjustment

Tara: Yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : is not the same and that pisses people off. And so I like, and my background comes from coaching and training, instructional design, teaching, like that's kind of where I. Grew up in and ended up in hr. So I'm very, very heavy on the development side of things. Like I want to nurture and coach and build [00:30:00] people up and give them the tools and the resources and the communication to be successful. so the idea of like leaving people hanging. They don't know what to expect.

They hear it's increased time. They're thinking, oh, I've crushed all my goals. I've done all of this. I put in 60 hours a week on average, and then to be hit with you, get a 2.5% increase, as does everybody else. And then you're looking at like. Karen sitting next to you and you're like, I busted my ass. She's done jack shit, and she's gonna get the same as me. This is not, like, this is not adding up. Right. So what should it be replaced with? Like perfect world, I would want to see companies like just do annual inflation adjustments. Whether you call 'em a cola, like whatever you call

Tara: Yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Annually, there is a percent that a salary [00:31:00] is adjusted based on the economy. It's what social security does,

Tara: Right.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : it's what the, the government does. It's, and you know, and it's typically like in the two to 4%. It's not a lot, but more times than not, companies are increasing their prices.

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : inflation, like everything is going up. If you are asking someone to continue in the same role without adjusting their salary, they're essentially making less money year over year.

Right. Like I, we should be adjusting based on the economy. That's number one. And then performance, there should be a culture of performance in companies where we are waiting until an annual time to talk about your performance. You've already screwed up like. We need to be coaching on performance on a regular basis.

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : should never be a question in someone's mind they are performing. If they're in danger of losing their job for performance, [00:32:00] what metrics they need to improve, like the anxiety that builds for leaving that until review time. it just, it kills me. It kills me. And then tying that to compensation, right?

So then companies are, and managers especially, oh my gosh, I have so much empathy for managers that are given a budget or an amount at that time. And then said, do with it what you will. But then they have to like move it around within their team in a way that doesn't make sense based on the position, based on the merits, based on, you know, the dynamics or the results.

Like, it just is it, it's all completely nonsensical

Tara: Yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : the most part. Like there is not a set strategy behind it, or if there is a set strategy, it is stay within this budget and the budget is insignificant.

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Right, and so then you're like, it's just, it's [00:33:00] mixing too many things. It's mixing inflation, it's mixing performance based feedback, it's mixing merit increases.

Those are all different things. So I would, like, if I were running a company, we would have inflation adjustments. We would have set transparent pay bans. Four positions. Right?

Tara: Hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : be very clear about what that looks like if a position ranges from. 60 to 80,000 maybe there's a junior, a standard, and a senior, right?

The junior always starts at 60 and can go up to 70, the manager 65 to 75, and the senior 70 to 80, right? Like there is a clear range. People know and understand, and there's career paths and career mapping

Tara: Oh.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : and metrics that go with each, so that if I'm hired, [00:34:00] I know like this is the position I'm hired for, here's what I can expect over the next two to five years if I'm performing and what my career trajectory looks like. It's the lack of communication and the ambiguity that is what. all of the issues because if you communicate that upfront, people either sign up for it or they don't.

Tara: Right.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : If you don't communicate it, are leaving all of that narrative to the employees to fill in for themselves.

Tara: And that's not gonna go well.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : a very different story than what you would,

Tara: Yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : And so they might be looking to get a $2 an hour RA raise, and in their mind no one said anything to them. And maybe they think they're getting a $20,000 increase. Like we have to communicate and make it clear and give people the tools, the [00:35:00] resources, the path, the training, the mentorship. get there. Yeah, that's, I, I could go on about this forever.

Tara: Yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : really, it's a big one for me.

Tara: The promotion pathing is important for me and promotion, not just in title, but in pay bands and expectations. And, um, you know, I too, obviously coming from like an education background, I also have an instructional design background, so I think like rubrics, right? Whenever I would teach and give an assignment, the expectation was the students got the rubric so they knew exactly what was expected of them.

It made my life a heck of a lot easier for grading and providing feedback, and it made their life easier for meeting the expectations. Or if they choose not to meet the expectations, like that's their choice. Um, that, that, that's huge. And I, I agree. Like separating that cola

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Yeah.

Tara: or whatever [00:36:00] with your merit based and, you know, I think that helps with budgeting a little bit too, because then you can.

Separate those two things out and

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Absolutely.

Tara: you know, but the reason why I think people don't, or comp people companies don't do that work is 'cause it's a lot of work ahead of time upfront and it's a lot to commit to.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : What I have seen that actually is the bigger pushback on that is again, like leaders or leaders who are not as seasoned, they don't want those guardrails. They want to be able to have full autonomy. To do whatever they want with their departments and with their budget and with their people.

And so seen companies where, you know, one department or one division is run by [00:37:00] one executive leader and they're all for it. And they're like, yeah, this totally makes sense. Let's do it. I'm on board. And then another leader is like, well, but this person just bought, brought in like a million dollars for the company.

I wanna be able to give them a really big increase. They don't wanna be able to follow that, right? And so I think there needs to be alignment among leaders first and foremost, because otherwise it will be completely sabotaged and undermined if you have a process like that put in place and you do the work because it is a lot of work. Done it and it, the hours that it takes is like astronomical. to put in that work, to commit to it, to like communicate out, this is what we're doing and this is why we're doing it. you don't have all of the leaders on board, the one leader is gonna sabotage everything and it's. It is so [00:38:00] hard. I think it's harder to get alignment at the executive level than it is to actually like research and enforce the policy.

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : the easier part. It's getting leaders to not sabotage it.

Tara: Yeah, well, 'cause you've got, you've got egos at play. It comes back to that control issue again. And you know, I think a lot of people don't want the curtain to be drawn back. They, they want the curtain to stay closed and to have that level of secrecy and transparency scares a lot of people. I think so.

And those are your more immature leaders. I would say that, that that's the case for, but more often we're seeing immature leaders taking these roles and positions and we've gotta figure out how to, how to manage it. And you just hope someday that maybe it gets through to somebody, but whew. [00:39:00] You know, it is what it is, I guess, right now.

Yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : it's a tough one. And it all comes down to misaligned expectations. And so you know what you were saying with like the rubrics like it, when you say those things out loud, it sounds so obvious. It's like want to know what's expected of them. people really want to do a good job.

Most

Tara: Yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : are not lazy, unmotivated, like. Assholes are like trying to take advantage of the company. The majority, the vast majority of people are good people who wanna work hard, who wanna do a good job, who care about their performance, who care about their output, but they're put in a, in a. Situation in a structure, in an environment where they don't know what's expected of them.

They're seeing leaders say one thing and do another. They're seeing all of the like [00:40:00] unjust actions that are being taken. They're seeing people move to the top that don't deserve to be. And so then that's where the attitude of like, well, whatever. Like if this is how the system is, I'm gonna work the system. created that people are not innately like that, I don't believe. Like we have created that

Tara: Yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : then that's what we use as our excuse as why we can't do any of the other things. It's like, well, people are just gonna screw me over and take advantage of me. It's like, well, have you, have you tried trusting them and like setting expectations and

Tara: that.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : like it just, it might surprise you, I don't know, like it works with how we. Teach and educate kids and how we teach in higher ed, like it is you set expectations. You teach people how to do something, you hold them accountable, you coach them. If they're struggling, it's not rocket science,

Tara: Yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : do it.

Tara: [00:41:00] Yeah. Well, this has been so good, but I am looking at time and so I wanna make sure I get to my last question for you that I also ask every guest and it's my favorite question. So,

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Okay.

Tara: you know, this podcast is all about balanced living with badass results. Hence the name, the Balanced Badass Podcast.

So how do you, Jesse, define being a balanced badass in your own life, especially considering now kind of that pivot. Time that you're in with your career and life.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Yeah. You know, I. I define being a badass, as being authentic,

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : and I think it's as simple as that. Whatever authentic is to you if you are leaning into your authentic self and living that way, and showing up with authenticity and realness and being a little bit unfiltered every day like. being a badass, you know, being balanced. I'm still [00:42:00] struggling with that.

Tara: Yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : be totally honest, like I am. am someone who has a DHD. I'm more comfortable in extremes. I'm more comfortable going really, really, really hard and then out. Now I am fully aware that is completely unhealthy. Um, but it's what I know and it's how I operate. So I think. I'm trying to reframe that for myself is that it's not really about balance, Like the scale is never gonna be fully balanced. That's a myth. it's more about alignment when we are aligned with what. We are good at what we're passionate about, what we bring to the world, what does good when we're aligned and we're living in alignment, we don't go to the extremes as much, [00:43:00] right?

Like

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : our energy for things that have purpose and the things that move us forward. And it's not as much of this like swing that we feel like we're trying to. calibrate and balance. So I think for me, what it means at this phase of my life is and alignment. Those are the things that I strive for, and if I'm doing a good job with that, then I'm feeling more in the center.

Tara: I like that. I always, I'm sure if listeners have been listening, they've heard this several times, but I always say with balance, I always think of a gymnast on a balance beam and they're wobbling and they have to shift their weight in different ways. And you know, when you think about. Trying to get centered to get that balance.

It's all about alignment with your body. It's [00:44:00] about your head being in alignment with your neck and your stomach and your abs and all that stuff. And really trying to make sure that you think about the core of who you are. And as long as you're staying close to that, as close as you can, recognizing that different seasons of life are gonna challenge that in different ways for sure.

Um, but yeah, I always think of like. The gymnast and like a gymnast falls off and gets back on and sometimes they stick the landing and sometimes they don't, and that's okay.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Well, and I, I love what you said about the core because it's the strength of the core that holds you in, and that's where the authenticity comes

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Like if you are living in your authentic. Path, your core is going to be stronger

Tara: Right.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : constantly being out of alignment or you're operating kind of based on who you think you need to be or who [00:45:00] others want you to be and not yourself. Your core is more wobbly and it's easier to get pulled off balance. So I think that's a great analogy.

Tara: Yeah. Yeah. Well you definitely didn't hold back and I appreciate that so much. I am here for it and can't wait to see the rest of your content and you know, I just think you're honestly the voice of reason that many of us may not even have known that we needed. So

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Oh,

Tara: I just wanna thank you for that and thank you for spending some time with me today.

So.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : welcome. This has been fun.

Tara: Yeah,

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : me.

Tara: absolutely. And for folks that want to connect with you outside of this episode, obviously they can find you on TikTok I'll, I'll share that, but where else can they find you connect with you?

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : Well, since I told you this wasn't really my intention, like there really, I'm just on TikTok right

Tara: Perfect.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : That's, that's kinda where I'm hanging out at your unfiltered b fff. Um, I am doing some like [00:46:00] fractional HR work and consulting on the side. Obviously for companies that know what I'm about

Tara: Yeah.

Jesse | Your Unfiltered BFF : want to take an authentic approach.

And so if there are companies who are interested in that, um, you can find me@emberhr.com, E-M-B-E-R, and that's my kind of consulting fractional HR side gig. But other than that, I'm just kind of doing this to have fun and to see where it goes. So tiktoks really my main platform.

Tara: Awesome. Well, folks, definitely get on the TikTok and, and follow Jesse. And if you loved this episode as much as I did, I hope that you'll take a second just to give it a review or send it to a friend or coworker that may enjoy it and wanna listen and, um, I'll catch you in the next one, y'all.