HR Mixtape
by WRKdefined Podcast Network
Saddle Your Own Horse: Leading with Conviction Instead of Fear
About this podcast
HR Mixtape is a weekly human resources and business leadership podcast for HR professionals, people leaders, and executives navigating the real work of managing people. Episodes cover human resources strategy, HR compliance, workplace culture, leadership development, employee experience, payroll and HR technology, and the future of work.
Whether you work in HR, talent management, people operations, or business leadership, HR Mixtape offers practical insights, expert conversations, and real-world perspectives to help you lead with confidence in today’s evolving workplace.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 207 episodes
- Saddle Your Own Horse: Leading with Conviction Instead of Fear · 27 min · Episode 206Plenty of managers think leadership means carrying everything. They answer every question and fix every problem, then wonder why nobody on the team grows. Zach Arend, founder…
- Pizza Won't Save You: Daily Leader Habits That Keep People From Quitting · 27 min · Episode 205Most companies know turnover is expensive. Plenty of them still answer it with a pizza party on Friday and call that culture. Dr. Sharon Grossman, Retention Strategist at…
- The CEO's View: Toby Williams on AI and What's Next for HCM · 15 min · Episode 204Every HR leader is being told to adopt AI faster than they can evaluate it. The harder question isn't whether to use it. It's whether the company behind it can be trusted with…
- Change the World Tuesday: Rethinking Recruiting for the Age of AI and Flexibility · 28 min · Episode 203Pay used to decide who took the job. Now the first question most candidates ask is whether they can work from home, and companies still writing postings around salary alone are…
- Speaking CFO: Winning the Budget Conversation with Finance · 26 min · Episode 202HR asks for a new system, more headcount, a bigger training budget. Finance says no. The instinct is to assume the idea wasn't good enough. John Sansoucie, Founder and CEO at…
- Leave Doesn't Wait: Managing Absence When Volume Rises and Headcount Doesn't · 8 min · Episode 201Leave of absence looks like paperwork until you're the one holding it. A request lands, and you're reading federal, state, local, and company policy against each other while an…
- Too Little Too Late: Why HR's Most Important Conversations Can't Wait · 17 min · Episode 200Retention sits near the top of almost every HR priority list. The main tool most organizations use to understand it is a conversation with someone who has already quit. Jim Link…
- Work Slop: What SHRM's Research Says About AI Guardrails and the Skills Gap · 13 min · Episode 199A little less than half of workers now use AI regularly on the job. Of that group, 44% admit the output looks finished on the surface and holds nothing underneath. SHRM has a…
- Vibe Teaming: How HR Turns AI Experiments into Real Adoption · 18 min · Episode 198Most HR teams have already run their AI experiments. A pilot here, a policy draft there. Turning that scattered activity into something people actually use on a Tuesday is a…
- Excess Deference: The Retirement Plan Role HR Often Gets Wrong · 24 min · Episode 197Most HR professionals treat the annual retirement plan review like a status update. The advisor presents, the team nods, and everyone gets back to the work they actually…
- The Disengagement Tax: Turning Employee Listening into Revenue · 22 min · Episode 196Most founders treat culture as a launch-phase item: define the values, hire people who believe in the mission, and trust that early momentum carries it forward. It does, for a…
- Profit Doctor: When Revenue Grows but Profit Doesn't · 23 min · Episode 195Revenue growth is the metric every business celebrates. Record quarters become press releases, and the top line becomes a proxy for health. But when the revenue line on a P&L…
- Trust at Speed: Hiring Fraud, Deepfakes, and the Identity Risks CHROs Can't Ignore · 20 min · Episode 194Most CHROs have a fraud problem they didn't sign up for. Deepfakes in video interviews. Synthetic IDs at the application stage. AI-generated credentials that pass every automated…
- Name It, Tame It: Trauma-Informed Leadership and Felt Safety at Work · 26 min · Episode 193When performance problems show up at work, most organizations respond by adding something: a new policy, more training, another initiative. But those problems usually aren't what…
- Story First: Why Information Alone Can't Drive Change · 21 min · Episode 192Most change initiatives fail not because the strategy was wrong but because the communication didn't move anyone. HR leaders deliver their message, check the box, and wonder why…
- Shatter the Limit: Building Resilient Leaders Who Thrive in the Uncomfortable · 22 min · Episode 191Most organizations assume they have resilient teams. What they actually have, in a lot of cases, are teams that have gotten good at tolerating hard things. The two aren't the…
- Global by Design: The Culture Playbook for Distributed Workforces · 22 min · Episode 190Most organizations solve the wrong problem when they go global. They get the infrastructure right, find the talent, and figure out the cost model. Then the offshore team quietly…
- Back of House: People-First HR in High-Turnover Hospitality · 23 min · Episode 189In most industries, culture lives in your annual engagement survey. In hospitality, it walks out to the dining room every single night. It shows up in how your server handles a…
- Meeting Makeover: Treating Your Meetings Like a Product · 23 min · Episode 188Most organizations treat meetings as the default answer to everything, but that's costing you more than you think. Rebecca Hinds, Head of the Work AI Institute at Glean…
- EQ Is the OS: Leading with Emotional Intelligence in an AI World · 23 min · Episode 187Most high performers don't get passed over because of what they know. They get passed over because of how they lead. In this episode, Dr. Bushra Khan makes the case that…







