Episode 318 · 14 July 2026 · 1:09:05

Toxic Founders, HR Rebels and Stalling Women’s Progress. PLUS! Is it good to have fun at work? With Rebecca Taylor

Featuring Rebecca Taylor

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Introducing Rebecca Taylor and summer chit-chat
intro#introduction #summer-chat #podcast
Story 1: The HR rebel calling out unhinged leaders
news roundup#hr #leadership #toxic-workplace
Story 2: Why women's progress at work is stalling
news roundup#women #career-progress #gender-equality
Truth or Lie: Work and fun don't mix
truth or lie#work-fun #truth-or-lie #workplace-culture
Workplace Surgery: Judging an employee's private social media
workplace surgery#social-media #privacy #employee-conduct
Workplace Surgery: Workplace relationships and promotions
workplace surgery#workplace-relationships #promotions #office-romance
Workplace Surgery: When the toxic person is the founder
workplace surgery#toxic-founder #startup #leadership
Outro: Where to find Rebecca and what's coming up
intro#outro #podcast #where-to-find

Show notes

Toxic Founders, HR Rebels and Stalling Women's Progress — with Rebecca Taylor

Guest: Rebecca Taylor — Head of People, Content & Community at AllVoices, and host of the HR Voices podcast.

What happens when the person destroying your culture is the one who signs the paychecks? And why does women's progress at work appear to be stalling despite decades of gains?

Rebecca Taylor joins Al and Leanne for a special This Week in Work, unpacking the viral HR rebel calling out unhinged leaders, the uncomfortable data behind the "leaning out" generation, and whether fun at work actually undermines performance. Plus, a special HR-flavoured Workplace Surgery tackling workplace relationships, social media judgement calls, and the founder-from-hell dilemma.

🔥 Stories Covered

1. The HR Rebel Calling Out Unhinged Leaders HR professionals have some… interesting conversations with leaders. But what happens when one HR pro calls it out on LinkedIn in the most direct, musical way possible? Al and Leanne break down the viral post from Emma Djemil (Founder of Be Unstoppable and The HR Club) — including the "Emma every time" moment that had Rebecca howling.

2. Is the "Lean In" Generation Now Leaning Out? Sheryl Sandberg's 2013 book told women to "lean in." A decade on, new data from The Economist suggests women's progress at work is stalling. Leanne and Rebecca dissect the learned behaviours — over-apologising, avoiding conflict, and taking on invisible "empathy tax" work — and ask whether workplaces have actually changed enough.

🧠 Truth or Lie: Does Fun at Work Undermine Performance?

For generations, work has been the serious part of life and fun is something you earn once the job is done. But is that actually true?

Leanne dives into decades of organisational psychology to deliver the verdict:

The case for "fun and work don't mix": Forced, "managed fun" — mandatory pyjama days, awkward icebreakers — can cause cynicism, frustration, and emotional exhaustion. Blurring work and play too closely can also encourage workaholism and make switching off harder.
The case against: Spontaneous humour and micro-breaks actually restore attention and boost mental energy — even short personal internet breaks can increase productivity by up to 9% when done in moderation.
The verdict: Forced fun rarely works. True workplace fun is a natural byproduct of getting psychological safety, autonomy, and the human elements right.

Plus, Rebecca introduces the concept of social effervescence — and why the best workplace fun happens organically, not on a scheduled Tuesday at 3pm.

💬 Workplace Surgery

Three listener questions, tackled live by Rebecca, Al, and Leanne:

Social media judgement: Should a manager judge an employee's private social media when they run a public account following adult content — but are otherwise an excellent employee?
Workplace relationships: "I've been casually seeing someone at work for a year. I've just been promoted and will be managing their department. Should I tell my employer or keep it private?"
The toxic founder: What do you do when the person destroying the culture owns the entire business and there's no board to appeal to?

(Got a question? Submit it via the connect link below.)

Connect With Us

Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect

Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14

Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.

Full transcript

Expand full transcript

Leanne ElliottThis episode may contain some coarse language. Listener discretion is advised.

Al ElliottComing up this week in work.

Leanne ElliottYou might not be surprised to hear that some of the conversations our HR professionals have had with their leaders are somewhat unhinged. But what happens when an HR professional calls them out on LinkedIn in the best way ever? I will share all very shortly. Also this week, Hey, it's Rebecca Taylor!

Al ElliottRebecca Taylor!

Leanne ElliottWoo!

Al ElliottYay!

Rebecca TaylorI'm so glad to insert myself into this conversation because I need to talk about this. This week, women have made extraordinary gains in the past few decades across the world of work, but are things stalling? Sheryl Sandberg, in her infamous 2013 book, advised women to lean in, but is the lean-in generation now leaning out?

Leanne ElliottAnd in Truth or Lie, fun and work don't mix. For generations, work has been treated as the serious part of life while fun is something you earn once the job is done. But does fun really undermine performance? Well, I've read the research and I've got a verdict.

Al ElliottAnd in a special HR Workplace Surgery, one listener asks, what happens if the founder is a bit of an asshole? Well, we've got a letter here which honestly I cannot wait to put to Rebecca and Leanne.

Leanne ElliottThis is Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio destination for business professionals.

Al ElliottMy name is Al. I'm a business owner. I'm here to ask the questions you might be afraid to.

Leanne ElliottAnd my name is Leanne. I'm a Chartered Occupational Psychologist, and I'm here to answer them. We're the co-founders of people and culture consultancy Oblong, and together with our very special guest, Rebecca Taylor, we'll help you simplify the science of work and build amazing workplace cultures.

Al ElliottJust before we go to break, Rebecca, if no one's heard of you, which is very unlikely—

Leanne ElliottVery unlikely.

Al ElliottJust give us your 10-second Yes.

Rebecca TaylorSo my name is Rebecca Taylor. I'm the head of people and content and community at a company called All Voices. I spent 10 years of my career in HR before quitting my HR job to co-found another HR tech company that was focused on coaching, performance management, and development. And that's how I met Leanne and Al. I crash-landed into Leanne's LinkedIn DMs, introduced myself, and now we became friends. And that's my real job description, is to meet people on the internet and make them my friends.

Leanne ElliottAnd we're so glad you did.

Al ElliottWe really are. We really are. We've got much more from Rebecca just after this very quick break. The dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.

Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot because why? HubSpot connects it all. Every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation. into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.

Al ElliottNice. Check out hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

Leanne ElliottRebecca, welcome, friend. Regular listeners will be very familiar with you. You've been on the show a couple of times before. How you doing, love? What's occurring? What, what's your week looking like?

Rebecca TaylorYeah, I'm doing well. So I've been just kind of like settling into summer, I think, over here in beautiful central New Jersey, spending some time at the beach. It's actually been really fun because I live in central Jersey, which is right between New York and Philadelphia, which are 2 big cities that have been hosting a lot of the World Cup games. So in sort of in the area that I'm at, we have a lot of people that have been traveling sort of between the 2 cities and we run into them at the Jersey Shore. So we've been hanging with people from Brazil, from Haiti, like all these different like places. And it's been, I don't even watch soccer, sorry, football, but it's been really fun to just be part of it even without having to even really know what's going on in any of the games. So that's been my vibe this summer. It's actually been really fun.

Leanne ElliottI've seen so many good like things on the socials about how, how well the different fans are getting on and like sharing the, I mean, the Scottish fans, I think, were Pretty vile, weren't they?

Rebecca TaylorHilarious.

Leanne ElliottFor what they brung to the party. But I saw one today that I just thought was brilliant. It was, it was post-England-Denmark match, and the England fans had found themselves— it looked like a park somewhere where beer was involved, um, with the Norway fans. And the English fans started singing, you're rowing home, you're rowing, Denmark's rowing home. And they were like, hey! It was so good. Like, such good, great sportsmanship and just banter.

Al ElliottIt was brilliant. It's felt kind of wholesome this year, hasn't it?

Rebecca TaylorYeah.

Al ElliottI'm sure there's been pockets of disagreement, and I think we've all seen little bits of that, but it has felt wholesome. And credit to the host nations for, for, for making that like a relatively wholesome place. Whatever's going on, it's going on.

Leanne ElliottForget that conversation that happened on the phone.

Al ElliottOh yeah.

Leanne ElliottAllegedly, allegedly he said it, didn't he?

Al ElliottBut, um, forget that.

Rebecca TaylorThat wasn't so wholesome.

Leanne ElliottBut everything else, the The fans.

Al ElliottYes, definitely. Definitely. Have you— so do you reckon you can kind of like, can you identify fans by their behavior? Like if it's Scottish or English, are they just in the pub?

Rebecca TaylorWell, the Scottish definitely, mostly because I've— so whenever I run into someone from Scotland, I feel like I'm like, I feel like I'm speaking to a Sim or it sounds like Simlish because I'm like, I can understand you, but I also can't. And I cannot quite figure out why. Like just the very, very thick accents. And so every time Every time I run into someone from Scotland, I'm always just like, oh my God, hey, can you just say something so I can try to see if I can understand what you're saying? I don't know. I think it's the, the reason that we've been kind of like, that we know where people are from is because they're usually wearing like a jersey or we'll overhear whatever language they're speaking and then, you know, kind of ask them like, hey, where are you traveling from? And it's been cool because it's a good way to kind of start conversations with people. Like they're here, you know, just trying to have a good time just as much as the rest of us. And I think it's like, Yeah, there was that one phone call that like just was not a great representation, but is a very accurate representation of a lot of leadership that happens here. But all the wholesome content is a good representation, I think, of the people. And like, we are not our leaders. Like, we are, we have a lot more in common than we think that we do. We really can rally around something that's just like joyful and that feels like it's something you're participating in that's bigger than just the actual event that it is. Like, Yes, the World Cup is about soccer, football, all those things, but it's also about this. And that's why it doesn't happen very often. It's every 4 years, right? And it's like, I think it's just exciting. But, you know, but you could spot a Scotsman a mile away.

Leanne ElliottYou'd hear them first.

Rebecca TaylorThey're usually wearing striped clothes on their heads.

Al ElliottThat's true. And we can say that because I'm half Scots, so I can definitely, definitely say that. In the normal, like in a normal year where there's no World Cup hosted in North America, do you even talk about soccer at all? Or is it like all baseball and basketball?

Rebecca TaylorAnd what I've been finding is that I have friends who actually, who I did not know follow soccer. And they're telling me now that they're like, oh, I watch this all year round, but we had no idea 'cause we just don't watch it together. So, it's usually this time of year is like very much baseball. Basketball just ended, you know, Knicks won, go Knicks. But it's usually not that popular in the way that other sports around here are.

Al ElliottI love that. And also, so just to give us a— so I've never been to Jersey. I've been to New York once. You've been to Orlando?

Leanne ElliottYeah, just Florida.

Al ElliottYeah. Yeah, Florida. I've been to Las Vegas. What, what do we need to know about— so is, is, is—

Leanne ElliottThat's what we know America, right? Florida, New York, Vegas. What else you got going on?

Al ElliottThis is where I'm going.

Rebecca TaylorOrlando is also like the center of Florida.

Al ElliottSo I have seen like this. I'm sure there's a Twitter account called Floridian People or something, which is some odd things go on.

Rebecca TaylorFlorida Man.

Al ElliottRight. Well, sell us, not even sell us, but just tell us what happens in Jersey. What's it like?

Rebecca TaylorIt's funny because I call myself an expat living in New Jersey because I grew up in New York City. And there's a lot of friendly rivalry between New York and New Jersey because like we're neighboring states, we're right next to each other. And there's a lot of, you get a lot of people who live in New Jersey but work in New York City. And it's always sort of like this running joke that New Jersey is where you go to sit in traffic on your way to other places. And what I've kind of— or like most people's experience with New Jersey is either like the Jersey Shore, which had a whole television series about it, which I love that show, or like Newark Airport. So just like flying into, you know, this, you know, airport area, which is, You know, never, they're never glamorous, right? But what's been kind of interesting is like, so each state in the US has a tagline. And so New Jersey's is the Garden State. And I always thought that was ironic because I'm like, oh, right, because it's oil refineries and the highway and the airport, right? Um, but it actually is, there's a lot of, uh, preserved farmland in New Jersey and a lot of the East Coast produce is grown here. So it's actually the blueberry capital of the United States. If not the world. Um, and it's like little things like that that I learned sort of like, okay, so there's a lot that New Jersey provides that not a lot of people know about, but I think that's kind of a good thing cuz it kind of keeps it a little bit more precious that way. I love that. What I've liked about it is like, so when I first met my husband, he told me he's from Jersey and I was like, oh God. And I basically like wrote him off. As one does. It's, you know, my blood right. That's what I have to do. And then he convinced me. He's like, no, he's like, you know, it's actually not that bad here. It's like nice to live here. And he's converted me. I've been here for 9 years now. I didn't have a driver's license till I moved here. So I got my license just to be able to get around. That's how much of a New Yorker I am. I just didn't drive. And what's kind of fun about it is that it's a small state that you can experience a lot in within sort of the actual state boundaries.

Leanne ElliottSo you've got the beach, there's a lot of wine country.

Al ElliottYeah.

Rebecca TaylorThere's a lot of farmland, um, and then there's great like tubing along the river. There's mountains, there's hiking, there's a lot of stuff that you can do all within like an hour's drive of wherever you are at any given time.

Leanne ElliottThat's so cool.

Rebecca TaylorAnd so, yeah, it's cool. It's like there's a lot to do that, but you like, you don't really realize it until you're here, if that makes sense.

Al ElliottNice. Nice. Well, I'm— I hope that you're gonna go and warn all the local businesses about the, the burst in tourism that's gonna happen after this goes out, because I'd imagine you'd be up many hundreds of percent— percentile points. Anyway, right, we need to go to your favorite time of the week, Leanne. It is time for the—

Leanne ElliottIt's time for Newsround. I'll cue that jingle for you.

Al ElliottPressing that button. Who are we going to do first, Leanne? Should we go to you first?

Leanne ElliottYeah, you can come to me first. Mine's a bit, a bit, a bit sillier this week, a bit lighter, but also not. Rebecca, you worked in HR for 10 years, right? Can I just ask you on like just a roundish number of the day, daily conversations you had with leaders where you were like, what the actual? Are you serious? Really?

Rebecca TaylorI worked in HR for 10 years. Figure every workday was around like 8 to 10 hours, right? So like, figure at least once an hour over those 10 years. So whatever that round number could be. Thousands of times.

Leanne ElliottThousands.

Rebecca TaylorThousands.

Leanne ElliottYeah. And I don't think anyone who's worked in HR, next to HR, alongside HR, would, would disagree that, that yeah, the rate of unhinged conversations is pretty Pretty high. There is an incredible, incredible professional called Emma Jamil who has been on the podcast.

Al ElliottShe has.

Leanne ElliottShe's on LinkedIn. Rebecca, if you don't follow her, oh, you need to go and find her immediately. She is incredible. Um, she worked in HR for years. She now helps other HR professionals navigate that entire, entire life and works with businesses as well. She put this on across all of her socials. I found it on On YouTube actually, but it's on LinkedIn. But it started with, I turned the messages I get in HR into a house song.

Al ElliottHouse, as in like—

Leanne ElliottAs in dance.

Rebecca TaylorI think I've seen this actually.

Leanne ElliottYou've seen this?

Rebecca TaylorYou liked it.

Leanne ElliottSo I'm gonna, I'm gonna play it through the power of technology just in my microphone so you can hear it. It is genuinely the best thing I've seen on the internet in 2026.

Al ElliottGo!

Leanne ElliottI don't think it's gonna get beaten. Tracked out. They're starting tomorrow. No need for references, they're a friend of the CEO. Emma, you've seen this. They're a key hire, need them to hit the ground running. We've sold their laptop. Let's announce them in an email. Draft me something to look at.

Rebecca TaylorNeed it first thing tomorrow.

Leanne ElliottEmma, got the draft. That's why I would negotiate a hybrid for them. Think that goes against policy, but don't want to lose them. They have another offer on the table.

Al ElliottEmma.

Leanne ElliottEmma.

Al ElliottI have questions, Leanne. It's just so good. Emma.

Rebecca TaylorGood job. It's the Emma every time. Emma every time.

Al ElliottAnd is it Emma actually singing?

Leanne ElliottYeah. Well, I don't know if she's singing it or whether it's produced in some way. I don't know. But she wrote it. I messaged her immediately afterwards. I was like, this is the best thing I've ever seen. And she was like, who knew what you needed to do to get noticed on LinkedIn was write a song? It was really good. It's amazing. It's so good. Yeah.

Rebecca TaylorAnd it's like the constant, just like, because it's almost like you start to hate your own name when you're in HR because it's always like people will call you from across the room and it's usually because they need something. It's usually something stupid and it's just like, what? What? So you hear Emma, what? What do you need?

Leanne ElliottAnd just that as well. I've, I've been adjacent to teams that have had that exact scenario happen where it's like, we have to make an offer immediately. They're going to get poached by another company. That's like, oh no, wait a minute. Turns out they went to jail last year for awful things.

Rebecca TaylorIt's don't do a background check. They know the CEO or they know this person. It's like, okay, I've also known people who might not pass a background check. Like, We come across a lot of people in life.

Leanne ElliottYeah, but I think as well as you've got, you've got to— our heart, my heart always goes out for people in, in HR who are just thrown these things and other things constantly, day after day after day, and somehow managed to keep it together and be that, that facilitating, friendly person in a company without just slapping somebody around the face. So I felt seen and heard by that. How about you, Rebecca? Yeah.

Rebecca TaylorYeah, no, same. And I think there's like the, the thing that my, one of my biggest gripes about working in HR is that you're usually the one that gets stuck dealing with other people's like stupidity or childishness or intrusive thoughts showing up in the workplace. And then you are portrayed as the person who's like not fun, the, you know, the, the, the enforcer or whatever like it is. And it's like, I'm not the one who's, you know, causing issues with hiring this person. I'm just saying we have to follow a specific process so that we know that we're covering all of our bases. But like, I'm now seen as the person who's blocking progress. The thing that is sort of like the biggest gripe is when employees do things that they know they shouldn't do because they're looking— because like they know that they're going to get a rise out of someone. Like I saw a post the other day where they had almost like— it was— I forget what— I forget exactly what they called it, but it was like almost like an in memoriam wall of their coworkers who'd just been laid off. Yeah. And they were like, you know, in memoriam of their service to the company. And so they had, you know, pictures of them, they laid flowers down. And I think it was an employment attorney who'd posted it on LinkedIn, and he was like, HR, what would you do? And, you know, naturally HR gets stuck kind of dealing with something like that. But it's like, this is their way of communicating protest to decisions that were made. They know that they're portraying these people as if they're dead, which they're not, they're laid off. Um, but the leaders are basically hiding behind HR instead of addressing the way that people are feeling that makes them want to do this. They're just going to HR and saying, HR, you have to make it stop. And that, that's the kind of stuff that like we deal with all the time is like employees are trying to express something. They're looking to get a rise out of someone. The leaders who it's actually about won't say anything because they don't want to deal with it. So it gets stuck with HR and then HR comes in like finger wagging, like, you can't do that. That's not appropriate. And that's what we're known for. And it's just so frustrating.

Al ElliottI feel like HR or can— is like the elementary school teacher of the business world because you have to deal with all kinds of things from literally someone who's misbehaved, argument, like puerile arguments between 2 people, and then occasionally someone who shit themselves when they shouldn't have done it.

Rebecca TaylorIs that fair? Yeah, no, it is true. I did have to call in some bathroom incidents when I was working in retail HR. Yeah.

Al ElliottOh, come on. What can you tell us? Can you tell us anything?

Rebecca TaylorSomeone shat on the floor of the employee bathroom. Didn't know who it was, but it wasn't a bathroom that customers could access. So I had to call housekeeping and be like, well, someone who works here did like, just took a dump in the bathroom on the floor. So I need you to come clean it up. It's like, was it a protest? Was it an accident? Like, does this person need help? Was it just Whatever. Why didn't they clean it up? Why didn't they call it in? You know, like, but people— but like, whoever found it, they called it in and they left a voicemail on the HR, like, shared services, like, phone answering machine. And that's how I heard it.

Leanne ElliottSo it—

Rebecca Taylorthe message had been sitting there probably for like 4 or 5 hours before I got to it. And I'm like, okay, I guess I'll call housekeeping. It turns out no one else had called housekeeping. Like other people had been in that bathroom. All they did was one person called HR, left a voicemail, everyone else just ignored it. But I'm like, anyone can call housekeeping. Why am I the one that has to do it now? I didn't even know that was there. I don't even use that bathroom. But yeah.

Al ElliottWhy don't you have like, like, like in the police where we wouldn't go, I'd like to report a code brown or something like that?

Rebecca TaylorNo, I mean, I wish we did, but I had to, I had to, I had to submit a ticket. Like, I had to like submit a ticket to housekeeping, be like, you know, um, I forget, I think I just put like someone had an accident, someone had a bathroom accident in the bathroom. I think I kept it like very vague, but I was like, it needs to be cleaned up. And that was like how I communicated it. But it was like, wow, what do you do? Do you say like someone shat on the floor? Probably be better, but we were not that sophisticated at that time.

Al ElliottYou have to log that incident, wouldn't you?

Rebecca TaylorYeah, because like housekeeping had to like track all incidents that they were called in to clean up just as like a, you know, hey, we're deploying this person to handle this ticket basically. So I'm like, I don't know how many others they got.

Al ElliottThat's so toxic.

Rebecca TaylorThat gets all the time in like dressing rooms. Like people would change their children, like they'd change their kids' diapers in the changing rooms, in the dressing rooms, and then leave the dirty diapers in the dressing room. Like that would happen all the time. But like it was New York City, Fifth Avenue. Those were customers. It's different when it was in the employee bathroom. It's like this person works here. Like, that's a different level of gross.

Leanne ElliottWow.

Al ElliottWe need to come back to you and do an entire episode on all the things. Like, literally, literally tell us the shit that went down. That is, that is incredible. That's great.

Leanne ElliottAnyway, Emma Jamil. I will leave a link in the show notes. Go and find her on LinkedIn. She's also on Insta, YouTube. She's incredible. It's just so many funny little bits like that. And after that video, I was like, Emma, you need to come on one of our summer episodes. And she was like, hell yes. Emma will be with us telling us all about that video and more in an August episode. So stay posted on that.

Al ElliottLovely. We may, we may film that from Ibiza or something that we might just—

Leanne ElliottEmma. It's such a tune as well though. Like it's just a tune.

Al ElliottRebecca, what have you seen this week?

Rebecca TaylorSo I shared this article with from The Economist, which is basically about how women's career progress is stalling statistically. And, you know, when I was kind of like up and coming in my HR career, Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In was like a huge book that we were all reading. We were all girlbossing. We were all like, you know, yes, women can do it all. Women can do everything. And what this article shows is that for the second time in 2 years, The pay gap is actually widening between men and women, and it's kind of been accelerating ever since COVID So there are a lot of different factors that contribute to it. And this isn't even just in the US. Like, this is sort of, you know, it's a broad— it's sort of happening everywhere. But what's interesting is that a lot of it comes down to this narrative that I'm wrestling with, where this article says that it's about Are women just like changing their ambitions? Do women just wanna stay home with their children instead of, you know, leaning in anymore and going for these like big level jobs? I just think that's a simple way to talk about it because a lot of times when I've seen, and this is mentioned in the article too, a lot of times like women might be stepping back because the cost of childcare is insane. Or if the cost isn't insane, the availability isn't there. So Germany has free childcare, right? But there's something like 300,000 like spots For that, like, there's just an overflow. They don't have enough room for childcare. So what happens? Women stay home with their kids. And for those who choose to do that because that's what they want to do with their life, they should be able to go and do that too. This is more about those that otherwise would have wanted to be executives at Goldman or would have wanted to reach to that, you know, big CEO seat at these big companies. It's kind of one of those things that it's like, it's easy to say that I don't know, it's easy to say that it's like women losing ambition, but I'm just like, I think there's a bigger conversation happening where we're all thinking about work differently. It's not just women. And we're thinking like, what is it all for? Like, what's the— what am I here to do on this earth? Am I here to be the CEO of Goldman Sachs, or am I here to just show up in the best way that I can for my family, for my friends, to provide? And I just think there's like a— there's a large shift in how people are thinking about work, but it's showing up the most Statistically in how women aren't going into these higher-level positions at rates that they used to before. There's a whole layer there about, you know, our current administration here in the US where, you know, they dismantled diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. And now it's like considered a faux pas to put a woman up for a job because they think that they're just doing that to hit numbers, which is almost— it's a whole It's a whole other cyclical debate that grinds my gears, but I'll pause there.

Leanne ElliottI saw an interview with Jimmy Carr, you know, the comedian who's becoming a bit of a, like, a life coach guru.

Al ElliottJimmy Confucius Carr.

Leanne ElliottBut he said something that I thought was fairly, fairly— yeah, it felt right, or it felt like a definite point of reflection. He was asked if women can have it all. And he said, yes, but not simultaneously.

Rebecca TaylorOh.

Al ElliottMm.

Leanne ElliottAnd I think that's really what, what is happening, whether it be a change in priorities since the pandemic, just the actual cost of childcare and the cost of everything else going up now financially. It doesn't always make sense for 2 parents to work. And if a woman has had that break for having children, then chances are their partner is on a higher salary, whether that be a man or even in, you know, a same-sex marriage. Chances are the person that stayed in work is going to be on a higher salary. So therefore financially you take the step, step back. So I'm not sure— I'm with you, Rebecca— I'm not sure this is— that this is fully explained by women taking an empowered, conscious choice to step back. I think there will be a number of those will be the case. I think probably more of a majority will be people that financially can't afford to, to send, you know, have their kids in, in childcare all the time. Plus we're seeing, as you said, there's rollbacks in terms of of flexibility, the RTO mandates we're seeing, it's much harder now for women to balance it. That's where, you know, women and people with disabilities or neurodiverse, you know, found so much opportunity in the pandemic because there was this big shift towards remote work that's allowed this extraordinary level of flexibility that is now being rolled back and having a massive, massive impact. So I'm not sure it's changing ambitions. I think it's, it's, it's a change of potentially priorities, but also just feasibility. You know, if it's costing you more money to go out to work and put your kids in childcare, why would anyone choose to do that? Even just financially speaking, let alone the sacrifice of doing that. And the time you get to spend with your family.

Al ElliottCan I ask a quick question, which is about to get me cancelled? So you are now the new host, but you said, can women have it all? Not simultaneously. And this is not, this is not me going, oh God, poor men. But you look back from the '60s to maybe the mid-'90s, the men didn't have it all. They didn't have that traditionally, didn't have that relationship with their children that the mothers did because they went out to work. So have the re— what I'm asking here is not, oh God, poor men, let's feel sorry for them because that's completely subverting what you are saying there. But nobody seems to be able to have it all. Is, is that fair? Or please, by the way, please pile on me and tell me how wrong I am. I'm fine with that. Yeah.

Rebecca TaylorI was like, you are wrong. I think our society is built for a very specific structure, and our— the way that we work, our relationships with work is specifically built where theoretically you have someone who goes out and makes the money, and then you have someone who maintains the home, whatever that might look like, whether that involves children or not, or caring for parents, right? Like any version of doing work that you don't get paid for. Basically. And that's what, I mean, that's what our society's designed for. But what I think is like part of what the conversation that we've all been trying to have is like, we've created society. Society is a man— this is a man-made, human-made structure. So if there, if men wanna have closer relationships to their children and women wanna be able to work, why can't we, why can't we seem to do the things that change the structure that allow that to happen? Like, that's the part that everybody should be able to have a little bit more and a little bit less of whatever it is that they have to give up to take more on their plate. And I think the issue is that there's no consistent way of sort of sharing, not the burden, but sharing the work, sharing the, the situation in the way that it would require us to make a lot of changes to make that happen.

Al ElliottMm-hmm.

Rebecca TaylorRemote work, to your point, Leanne, was something that allowed a lot of this to become a lot more possible. But now that that's being rolled back, it makes it a lot harder, which is why people are dropping out of the workforce like this. So it's like, we created this problem, we can fix this problem, but for some reason we're not. And that has to be because someone's making money off of the problem.

Leanne ElliottYeah, the social expectation is that women stay home with the children should that scenario be one that has to happen financially or logistically or whatever else. There is a level of judgment that comes when women don't, but that is also backed up in policy. If we think about— I mean, I mean, I know in the States it's, it's just, it's even a bigger issue, but in the UK we think about maternity and paternity leave. Maternity leave in the UK is actually pretty generous statutory in terms of international standards. It's not bad. Paternity isn't so much. But if you imagine that— I'm thinking like we've got friends now that have not long had a baby and, and And the woman is on maternity leave, which is 9 months, and her husband had 4 weeks paternity and is now back at work. Now, physically speaking, of course, a woman might need longer to get over the physicality of childbirth, but probably only 8 weeks.

Al ElliottRight.

Leanne ElliottWhat happens in a world where you go, as a woman, I would like to transfer my maternity leave to my husband, who will take paternity leave to look after the child for the first 6 months? And I will go back to work. That's not even a conversation that's even possibly possible to have.

Rebecca TaylorYeah.

Leanne ElliottSo even policy-wise of companies, the expectation is, is if a child needs extra care, it's a woman that has to do it, with the impact that's going to have on their career.

Rebecca TaylorWe have no mandated leave in the US, so we're all on our own.

Leanne ElliottYeah, I know, that's a whole— that's why I mean, it's all— it's just, yeah, it's even worse. At least we've got the option. Um, but yeah.

Al ElliottI love this, right? We need to hear so many more, especially more HR stories. Love that. But also, I love your point of view on everything. We are going to come back after this break with the Truth or Lie segment where we basically ask something which everyone believes, and Leanne goes and does some research and tells you whether it's true or not.

Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number one management podcast— that's us, by the way— yeah, yeah, and the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast We actually have a lot in common.

Al ElliottWe both use behavioral science to help people do better at work.

Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.

Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking. And you're not gonna say which. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number 1 marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s— the HubSpot Podcast Network.

Leanne ElliottThe audio destination for business professionals. Seamless.

Al ElliottSeamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. We've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.

Rebecca TaylorIt is.

Leanne ElliottIt's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?

Al ElliottIt can.

Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?

Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.

Leanne ElliottBut come back.

Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back. I'll cut that out.

Rebecca TaylorKeep that in.

Al ElliottWelcome back to Truth or Lie. It's that time of the week where we take a popular workplace idea and ask if the research really does back it up. Today we're testing the claim that work and fun don't mix. Leanne, I think we've all heard some kind of version of it. You're not paid to have fun. Mm-mm.

Leanne ElliottNo, sir.

Al ElliottRebecca, you've said this for generations. Work has been treated as the serious part of life, whereas fun is what you do after 5 PM. So if people are laughing or chatting or just generally mucking about, it must mean less work is getting done. Is that right, Leigh?

Leanne ElliottWell, you know, I need to first of all define fun because if psychologists suck anything out of anything, it's the fun outta the room.

Al ElliottThat's the least fun thing you've ever said.

Leanne ElliottSo when psychologists research fun at work, they're basically looking at things like joking with colleagues, celebrating successes, maybe taking part in some kind of games or social activities, events. Or just simply work in an environment where people are enjoying themselves. So, that's what we're looking at when we talk about fun. And when we're talking about whether work and fun mix, we're comparing it with outcomes. So, things like productivity, performance, employee engagement, wellbeing, relationships between colleagues, all the good stuff. So, are we clear what fun means and whether, whether it mixes with work?

Rebecca TaylorThanks.

Leanne ElliottAre you on the same psychologist boring page? Yeah.

Rebecca TaylorOn the same page.

Leanne ElliottSo, in terms of the case for that work and fun don't mix, there is some research done by John Michael, who has been on the show previously.

Al ElliottOh, we know him. Yeah, yeah.

Leanne ElliottYeah, with some of his friends. Um, they undertook a review of workplace fun literature in 2018. They pulled together decades of research, and they argue that workplace fun isn't something managers can simply switch on. So, employees judge fun at 3 different stages: before an activity starts, while it's happening, and afterwards when they reflect on whether it was worthwhile. Psychologists call this the anticipatory appraisal.

Al ElliottThe what, sorry?

Leanne ElliottI struggle with that word. Anticipatory.

Al ElliottNice.

Leanne ElliottAnticipatory.

Rebecca TaylorIt's a tough one. That's a tough one. There's a lot of sipity-pities.

Leanne ElliottAnd there's lots of, lots of, I struggle with lots of vowels, I think.

Al ElliottYeah, yeah. And also, Rebecca, you Americans like to take vowels out of things. How do you say anticipatory?

Rebecca TaylorOh yeah, I would probably be like anticipatory. I don't know, I'd probably say it like that, but like I would say it so quickly that like you wouldn't even know if I messed it up. Yeah, yeah, that's why I'm so slow. That's my New York coming in though, to New Yorkers, we just drop things all the time. So it's just like, hey, you know, you fill it in.

Al ElliottAnyway, I'm sorry, I digress. We digress. Anticipatory appraisal. Is that what you're saying?

Leanne ElliottYes, exactly. They concluded that if people expect an activity to be awkward, childish, or a waste of time, unsurprisingly, they're more likely to resist it. And if it feels forced rather than voluntary, it can create frustration and emotional exhaustion instead of kind of the happy, positive emotions we were hoping for. And that idea does show up in the actual workplace as well. So some researchers called, and you know, I Join names, Al. Barbara Plester.

Al ElliottPlester. That's a name.

Leanne ElliottThat's a good name. Strong, solid name, isn't it? And Anne Hutchinson spent 4 months in 4 New Zealand-based organisations, and they were observing everyday behaviour, and they interviewed 60-ish employees as well. They found a very clear difference between spontaneous fun that naturally emerged, um, and what they called managed fun. I think if you put manage in front of anything, it ain't fun, but especially in front of fun, it's really not fun, is it?

Rebecca TaylorNo, no, we always called it forced fun.

Leanne ElliottForced fun, right? Yeah, yeah. Which is basically— it was, yeah, what you're saying, Rebecca. It's activities that were organized by the company. So things like mandatory pajama days— ick— uh, dressing up as TV characters, um, things like that. Unsurprising reviews: childish, contrived, and at times emotionally invasive. So rather than boosting morale, some employees became cynical, frustrated, and even admitted deliberately calling in sick to avoid taking part.

Rebecca TaylorGuilty, guilty.

Al ElliottYeah.

Leanne ElliottThere is also some evidence that too much fun negatively impacts wellbeing. So one of the broadest pieces of evidence came from a review in 2021. So rather than carrying out a single experiment, these researchers analysed 326 research papers spanning 40 years in 18 different disciplines. Al, what is that called?

Al ElliottIt's called a meta-analysis.

Leanne ElliottYes, sir, it is. So they did that to understand what happens when work and leisure become, um, increasingly Racing with Blood, and they found that if organizations integrate work and play too closely, employees can struggle to switch off mentally. So rather than helping people recover, highly blended environments can encourage workaholism and create role confusion and make it harder for people to detach from work at the end of the day. So basically, making work feel more like play doesn't mean people are healthy. It just kind of workaholism. Um, and then there are some practical concerns as well. Um, so some other research in 2022, they explored 4 Swedish workplaces designed to be deliberately playful. You know, the ping pong tables and the, the slide that Stephen Bartlett famously had in his Manchester office.

Rebecca TaylorPing pong tables. I just can't even— I have so many things to say about ping pong tables, but I won't do that here.

Leanne ElliottYeah, well, no, please do. This is exactly the place to do that. Um, but anyway, yeah, these, these types of offices. Um, so through interviews with employees and by observing behavior as well. They found that while participants liked the atmosphere overall, open-plan leisure activities, particularly activities like a table tennis setup, created enough noise, surprisingly, to disrupt concentration, with some employees choosing to work from home instead. Participants also questioned whether highly playful workplaces were appropriate in industries where safety, precision, or professionalism were especially important. So yes, there is evidence that work and fun don't always mix, specifically If it feels imposed rather than chosen, it blurs the boundary between work and home, or simply becomes a distraction, it can undermine concentration, recovery, and as we've heard, an employee's willingness to engage. So, so far it sounds like fun and work don't really mix.

Al ElliottYes. So Rebecca, before we go to the against, any thoughts on what we've just heard?

Rebecca TaylorIt's like, it's one of those things where when you look at something like, like bringing games into the workplace, like having, you know, Ping pong tables, table tennis, like all of that. It just sets this weird sort of expectation where are people playing? Are people able to play? When are they allowed to play? If I'm on a sales call, can you hear it happening in the background? That's the kind of stuff that I had to deal with all the time. Um, or it kind of like creates this layer of expected ethics or unspoken workplace behaviors where it's like, I had so many times where we had a ping pong table in one of my old companies. The sales manager would come up to me and he would say, why are these 2 people playing ping pong? So-and-so's behind on his sales goal. And I'm like, I don't know. Like, are they not allowed to play ping pong when they're not behind on their sales goal? Did you tell them that? Did they know that? You're their manager. Why don't you deal with it? It just creates all these other, besides the whole ping pong's annoying thing, it just creates all these other unspoken workplace behaviors that people are judged by without that expectation actually being clearly communicated.

Al ElliottYeah.

Rebecca TaylorBut maybe that's my non-fun take on fun.

Al ElliottI get, I get this. And also it brings back for certain people like myself, brings back into a school situation where there were the sporty cool kids who could play ping pong. And then there's the me who would try and hit the ball, trip over my own shoelaces and end up just falling on my ass. And so it just, yeah, same with like non-uniform day at school. And then also if you wear a uniform, you can bring in whatever you wear at You wear at home, then you get judged on what you're wearing at home. And I turned up in my £3 Walmart trainers and everyone's like, oh, look, he's got no money, which was actually true at the time. But it's, yeah, it's just a whole like thing, isn't it, Leanne?

Leanne ElliottThere was nothing more stressful than an own clothes day.

Al ElliottYeah.

Leanne ElliottI just think school should have a uniform and just remove that level of peer pressure.

Al ElliottAnd no, especially when you're not cool.

Leanne ElliottYeah, it's like me.

Al ElliottYeah, not like Rebecca.

Leanne ElliottYeah, no, Rebecca.

Rebecca TaylorAnyway, no, same. I wore uniforms growing up in school and I loved it. And then whenever it was like don't wear your uniform day, I was like so stressed out about it because I was never one of the cool kids. I was never ever like, it wasn't even about like who could afford what, it was about what was your sense of style, what was your taste? And I was like, I don't really know. And then it became a whole thing with like, oh, you're wearing that. I'm like, I thought this is what we were wearing. And they're like, this is what you were wearing last year. I mean, there's famously teenage girls are not very nice to each other. So I experienced a lot of that. I'm like, this would've been great if we just wore uniforms again.

Leanne ElliottYeah, definitely.

Al ElliottDefinitely. I never thought about that actually. As a boy, like a 13-year-old boy, there's certain ex— you know, it was quite stressful, but I imagine a 13-year-old girl, it would be a million times more stressful.

Rebecca TaylorThe worst. I'll never forget when low-rise jeans started becoming popular and I didn't know. So I came to school with like mid-rise jeans and everyone else is wearing these like super low-rise jeans that I've never been able to pull off. And they were like, you're dressed like a mom. I'm like, what?

Al ElliottWhat do you mean?

Rebecca TaylorAnd my butt crack's not hanging out and yours is.

Leanne ElliottLow-rise was a tough, tough time.

Rebecca TaylorI don't know what it is. And they're back and I hate it. I know.

Al ElliottI don't understand what it is.

Leanne ElliottYou know how in the noughties where you'd always see basically, you'd look at the back of a woman's jeans, you'd see the top of her like knickers or—

Al ElliottI was very respectful. I never looked below the shoulders. That was me. Anyway.

Leanne ElliottWell, today—

Rebecca TaylorBring back the whale tail.

Al ElliottBut what the hell's a wet— no, never mind. No, no, no, we're going down.

Rebecca TaylorDifferent podcast.

Al ElliottRight. Different podcast, different audience. Leanne, what's the argument against?

Leanne ElliottSo the argument against starts with the argument that forced fun isn't really fun at all.

Al ElliottYeah, I think— yeah, I'm with that.

Leanne ElliottYeah, I think that says it all really, doesn't it? So yes, employees do dislike company-organized activities like mandatory pajama days or dressing up. The New Zealand research that we just heard about also concluded that spontaneous humor between colleagues has the opposite effect. So, after spending 4 months observing these workplaces and interviewing employees, the researchers found that joking together gave people a mental break from demanding work, helped them recharge, and strengthened relationships within teams. And quite interestingly, the researchers also found that employees could dislike the work itself, but feel highly engaged with the organisation because of the social environment around them.

Al ElliottOh.

Leanne ElliottThat finding runs through some wider research that was conducted in 2020, or it's a review in 2020. They examined 11 of the most common myths about workplace fun, including the idea that work and fun don't mix. So, looking across decades of research, they found very little evidence to support that belief. So, instead, the literature consistently linked workplace fun with high energy, greater creativity, stronger attendance, increased loyalty, and better organisational performance. That review also challenged the idea that fun has to be expensive or carefully planned. They pointed out that around 80% of workplace humour and laughter happens spontaneously.

Rebecca TaylorHmm.

Leanne ElliottSuggesting again that most— the most effective fun is often the kind that develops naturally rather than being organised by management. But what happens when organisations do introduce something more structured? Well, some researchers looked at exactly this in 2014, and they followed more than 230 salespeople at a technology company. And it's over 2, 3 weeks. One group took part in a basketball-themed sales game. Another simply saw a public leaderboard showing sales ranking. And a third group carried on as normal. The employees who embraced the game experienced significantly higher positive emotions, so feeling very, very happy, much higher than other groups. But simply displaying performance rankings without the playful elements actually reduced performance. So, the research concluded that it wasn't competition that exactly made the difference, it was the experience of play and providing employees—

Rebecca TaylorMm-hmm.

Leanne ElliottUm, with that experience, so long as they genuinely bought into it. Um, and finally, the benefits don't have to come from organized activities at all. According to a systematic review in 2023, they looked at something many managers might discourage, uh, brief periods of personal internet use during the workday. Is that okay? I don't know. But the research found, and this is from around the world, that these micro breaks, whether it be looking at YouTube or browsing online or playing a quick computer game, helped to restore attention and mental energy. And one study even found employees who took moderate digital breaks were 9% more productive than those that didn't. The key though was moderation. Once those breaks exceeded around 12% of the working day, they became counterproductive.

Al ElliottInteresting. Interesting. By the way, if, um, if anyone's listening and they want to know how to be funny at work without going to HR, then go to episode 269, uh, with, uh, Beth Sherman, and, uh, she explains exactly how to do that. Leanne, do we— can we go to Rebecca and get her thoughts at this point?

Leanne ElliottWhat do you reckon? Truth or lie? Work and fun don't mix.

Rebecca TaylorSo, um, I think it's a lie with a caveat. So, Have you heard the term social effervescence?

Leanne ElliottMm-hmm. I have.

Rebecca TaylorSo I read about it first in the New York Times, which sounds so obnoxious of me to say, but—

Al ElliottCan I just read, just in case anyone didn't hear about that? You wrote about it first in the New York Times might be the greatest sentence.

Rebecca TaylorRead about it. Read about it. Didn't write about it.

Al ElliottI will take that out.

Leanne ElliottI will take that out.

Al ElliottI apologize. I thought you said you wrote about it and I thought, oh my God, that's awesome.

Leanne ElliottNo, no, no.

Rebecca TaylorThat would be a flex. I would definitely have mentioned that way earlier.

Al ElliottSo, you read about it in the New York Times?

Rebecca TaylorI read about it in the New York Times. It was an article that came out around, I think it was 2021. So, it was sort of a social article talking about what we were missing from the pandemic. So, what was sort of the impacts that we were feeling? Why was loneliness, you know, becoming such a thing that we were all experiencing more, even though in a lot of ways we're more connected than ever? But it came, they introduced the term social effervescence, which is essentially the concept of when people are in a group together, whether they know each other or not, and they just start playing off of each other. They start either teasing or bouncing ideas off of each other or just inserting each other in conversations, you know, asking each other questions just like, if it were an apocalypse, what role would you play? Would you be the fighter? Would you be the hunter? Like, what would you do? Just introducing these types of kind of pieces where people can just bounce off of each other. That's considered social effervescence. So, when in this research, Leanne, that you mentioned, The moments where it's mentioned that fun is sort of appropriate for work, I would call that social effervescence. All of the, all of the footage that we're seeing about fans enjoying the World Cup together, you know, the rowing, you know, everybody rowing, everybody sort of like bantering with each other, that's social effervescence. That's just people experiencing a shared moment together and organically just finding ways to enjoy it together and finding ways to contribute to it together.

Leanne ElliottYeah.

Rebecca TaylorAnd that to me is where work can be fun, but it has to happen organically. The thing about social effervescence is it doesn't start with like a corporate icebreaker. It doesn't start with a pizza party. It starts with a group of people who feel like they can trust their environment and they trust each other. And it's more, uh, a, a result of a really healthy environment that people are in. where it actually allows them to kind of bring some of their guard down, let some of their own humor in, and form connections, genuine vulnerable connections. Vulnerable meaning even just laughter. Like, laughter can be very vulnerable when it's like real genuine and authentic, but you can't orchestrate that without orchestrating a culture of trust that rewards that, or at least that allows that to happen.

Leanne ElliottYeah, I think it's, it, I, I think you're right. It's a, it's a truth with a caveat, or it's, it's kind of like we don't really know, or neither.

Rebecca TaylorYeah.

Leanne ElliottI think essentially, as you kind of said there, we're kind of asking the wrong question, because as you say, Rebecca, it's much more organic, it's much more spontaneous, and that is where these relationships are nurtured. And we know relationships are one of the biggest drivers of all the good stuff in the workplace. In terms of the evidence, it doesn't suggest that work and fun don't mix, but it also doesn't show that simply simply adding fun makes organizations more successful. And there's a few problems. Psychologists, as I kind of mentioned at the top, that we're measuring lots of different things under the umbrella of fun, um, whether it be humor, whether it be organized social events, gamification, digital breaks, enjoying the work itself. Those aren't the same experience. So surprisingly, we're not finding any consistent results from looking at them. But what does seem remarkably consistent is that forced fun rarely works. Rarely works. So, these structured activities only really succeed when employees genuinely buy into them, and that's difficult because fun is subjective. One person's brilliant team-building exercise, the dressing-up-the-pyjama day, is going to be the reason that another person calls in sick. So, I think perhaps a more interesting finding is that the strongest results come from workplaces where fun, exactly as you said, Rebecca, emerges Naturally, it's the places with good relationships, with psychological safety, with autonomy, with mutual respect. They tend to have more laughter, more spontaneous humor, and better outcomes. So yeah, it isn't— fun probably isn't the thing that organizations should try to create, but it is a thing that will appear if you've got all the human stuff right.

Al ElliottThank you so much, Leanne. Links, I'm guessing, to all of these complicated studies are in the show notes.

Leanne ElliottIndeed they are.

Al ElliottFabulous, fabulous. Okay, so it's on to my favorite time of the week. It's time for the World Famous Weekly Webisode where we wrap up your questions to Leanne.

Leanne ElliottSo, Leanne. And Rebecca.

Al ElliottYes. Oh yes, you're right. These are going to Rebecca today.

Leanne ElliottYay!

Al ElliottNo, absolutely.

Leanne ElliottI'm just here to, I'm just, I'm just here to listen.

Al ElliottYou can sit back, have a cup of tea. Don't worry, Rebecca's got this. She's got this. So we have 3 questions here from listeners. I will read them out and Rebecca will give her, give us her answer. Rebecca, people will be loving you by this point, or if they don't, they'll have turned off. But if they love you at this point, how do they learn more about you? Where's your podcast? Tell me everything about you.

Rebecca TaylorYes. So, you can find me on my podcast, HR Voices, where we dissect real workplace scenarios with actual people leaders who have been dealing with this kind of stuff for years and years and years. It's a podcast where we talk through, here's a crazy thing that's happening at work, how would you handle it? And so, it's kind of a lot like this. It's like, it's all about human judgment, discernment, taking things and really kind of applying a microscopic lens to see how the right scenario might meet the right resolution, if there even is a right resolution.

Al ElliottFabulous. Thank you so much. So, HR Voices, definitely go and subscribe to that today. Okay, so on to question number 1. Should this— the title of this I've written down is, should a manager judge an employee's private social media? But I tell you what, it is a lot more juicy than that. So this person writes, I recently discovered that one of my employees has a public Instagram account where he follows a huge amount of adult content. Sorry, I'm trying to keep a straight face here. This is a serious matter. It doesn't break any company rules and he's an excellent employee. But another colleague brought it to my attention. Should this influence how I see him as a manager, or basically is his private social media none of my business? Rebecca.

Rebecca TaylorThis is one of those scenarios where you've seen it, you know this, it is influencing how you see him as a manager, right, wrong, or indifferent, right? That's called your intrinsic bias. It's coming in. You're making a judgment about this person based on something that you see. That's okay. The reason you're even asking this question is 'cause you must feel some kind of a way, and you're trying to digest that and figure out what to do with that, right? Which you've come to the right place because this is basically what HR does day in and day out, is helping people to kind of uncouple and talk through what their initial reactions and biases might be so that you're in a situation where it makes more sense for the workplace. So, it's going to change how you see him as a person. whether or not, like, no matter how you wanna think about that, right? Because it's just natural for us to kind of make judgments about different things. It's about what we do with those judgments at work that really, really matters. So, you know, if it is his private social media and it is something that has nothing to do with work, my question is always going to be something like, could this, could this account ever be tied to him at work in some way or another? Because there is a way that, that your colleague obviously found their, found this account, right?

Al ElliottYeah.

Rebecca TaylorSo, there is some sort of a connection to this person. So, it could kind of thread into this, does kind of show up at work, even if it's not technically social media that's associated with work. So, because of that, I think that this warrants a conversation. When someone's a leader, someone's a manager, they're responsible for other people, right?

Al ElliottMm-hmm.

Rebecca TaylorAnd how they're seen, how they're perceived matters when they're in charge of other people, because it's not just about the people who report to them, it's about the people who they report to and how you are basically endorsing this person as a leader and as an employee. So, not necessarily that you're asking for what to do about this because it's hard to kind of, you know, tell you what I can, I can't tell you what to think. But what I would say is it warrants a conversation with him to say, this is the thing, like, we're, we, I've now become aware that this exists. I don't know if you're aware that other people might be able to see this too.

Al ElliottMm-hmm.

Rebecca TaylorYou might want to think about privacy settings, or you might wanna think about making it less easy to find you. What you do in your own time and in your own business, that's, that's up to you. But it's now something that's more visible to other people, and that could influence people consciously or unconsciously in how they see you and your progression as a leader. And as much as that sucks, that's just the truth of the way that this is. And You can choose what you wanna do with that as the person who has the private social media that they might not want other people to see. 'Cause I also try to assume good intent, right? Like, this person might not even realize that, that his account's public, or he might not even realize that he can be found. So, like, the unfortunate truth is that no one's really anonymous on the internet anymore. So, just assume that whatever you do can be found by someone who's looking for it. But it never hurts to just bring it to the person's attention at hand and then navigate it with them. You don't want it to become just like a gossip situation, which is kind of how this started.

Al ElliottYeah, I totally agree. I read something, just, this is slightly incidental, but I think related. I read something the other day that someone's mother who was in their like 70s, they'd just got a new WhatsApp account and they'd noticed it was groups and they thought it was a way to group their contacts. So they created a group called Not Important, a group called I Don't Like, a group called— and added all of their contacts to it. And it's just one of those things that just makes you cringe so hard, doesn't it? And it's very, very good chance— it feels to me there's a 90% chance this person doesn't know that anyone else can see what they follow because that doesn't seem like a thing that most people would expect to be online.

Leanne ElliottYeah.

Rebecca TaylorYeah. Digital literacy. It's important. Know how these things work and what happens when you do different things on these platforms.

Al ElliottAbsolutely. Absolutely. Okay. So onto question number 2, it's all about workplace relationships. This person writes, I've been casually seeing someone at work for about a year, and until now we've worked on different departments, but I've just been promoted and will be managing their department. Now I'm guessing that the, that the, the subject of this is that this This, their partner is, or in that department. So, should I tell my employer about the relationship or keep it private unless it becomes an issue? This sounds a little technical. Rebecca, talk us through it.

Rebecca TaylorThis is one of those situations where I'm gonna give an HR answer and say it depends, but it's gonna depend on what your company's policy is about workplace dating, if they have one. So, if there is a policy about workplace dating where you do have to disclose, then that's a pretty straightforward, like, yes, you have to. What I've found in my experience is that workplace dating policies tend to be a little bit open-ended and vague and tough to interpret until they can become weaponized. So, until they do become a bigger issue. And when you're looking at the reason that this is kind of complicated and hairy is that you're now looking at power dynamics. So, you're dating someone who now has power over you. And that person with power can show favoritism, or they can, let's say you break up and they decide that they wanna fire you and they can just retaliate, right? Not saying that any of this is okay, but this is what happens. This is why workplace relationships can be complicated is because of that power dynamic that's involved in it. So, as the HR person, I am always an advocate for disclose, just disclose because you'd rather disclose before there's an issue so that your record is clean in ways, and you can say, well, HR knew about this, or my leader knew about this. It's documented. We can put rules in place in how we can interact with certain things. Like, you know, sometimes HR will say that if a manager is trying to promote someone that they're dating, they have to have additional authority from their manager to approve it, where they wouldn't necessarily with someone else. Or that they just have sort of a practice of getting double approvals before promotions, just to kind of show that these decisions are made, they're consistent, they're not showing any type of favoritism. But I would say disclose because you don't want to wait until it becomes an issue, because that's a terrifying statement as an HR person. Like, what do you mean we're going to hold off on something until it's an issue that doesn't need to become maybe the big issue that it ultimately does become? Um, so it's always in your best interest to just know that you've got your ducks in a row, you've got yourself covered, you've disclosed it, you know, and then you might even wanna disclose if things change. So you don't necessarily have to tell HR every single stage of your relationship, right? You don't have to say, we're moving in together, we're engaged, we're married. It doesn't have to be at that level, but you do have to, it, it could be in your favor to disclose that you're dating. And then if that ends, disclose that too. Say, We're no longer dating. We're now just people, or whatever, you know, whatever that might be. Because the other side of this, I know this is kind of a long-winded answer, but HR has so many different kind of layers. The other side of this that you wanna think about and get ahead of is if this relationship does end, and let's say you don't wanna manage this person anymore, HR can usually help you find an alternative. You can, you know, if you, they can talk to you about it and say, maybe there's another team that you can manage. Maybe you can transfer to another location.

Leanne ElliottYeah.

Rebecca TaylorAnd there are usually options to you that HR can help you navigate. You don't have to go right to quitting your job because you're no longer dating the person who you're now, who you were managing. So, the earlier you disclose this stuff, the more of a partnership you have, the more, the less likely something becomes a big issue, and the more support you have as that relationship may change for the worse, right?

Al ElliottAbsolutely. And so, what we're saying is step 1, check the policy. Because if it is dead against that, then that might, that might change your decision of which one of those you're going to go for. Um, and, and secondly, disclose if that sounds good. Leanne, anything to add?

Leanne ElliottJust that this is the simplest, best possible point to have this conversation because you've been having a relationship that didn't matter because you weren't in the same departments. There wasn't a hierarchy involved. Maybe you do have a policy, you're meant to disclose it. at the time, I don't think there'll be that much beef about it because there wasn't really any kind of, as Rebecca said, power dynamics at that point going on. So now it's a really easy, easy point to have this conversation and just protect, protect everyone in that situation because breakups can be messy. Breakups can bring up a lot of, of different emotions and reactions. And, and it could be in 3 months' time, it could be in 6 years' time when there's all sorts of other dynamics involved. So.

Al ElliottYeah.

Leanne ElliottHave the conversation now, be transparent about it, get the guidance of, of, of HR and, and it, yeah, you're starting off on the best possible foot.

Al ElliottI think people need to go and listen to your podcast right now. No, not right now because we've got one last question. Um, and so we get a lot of questions around about toxic managers. We've had toxic superstars, we've had toxic coworkers, never had one like this. What do you do when the toxic person is the founder? So this person says, the founder of our company regularly sends abusive messages, publicly belittles senior leaders, and has created a culture where people are afraid to challenge him. Good people are leaving, but there's no board and there's no one willing to stand up to him because he owns the business. So I'm part of the senior leadership team. I hate to see what he's doing to this company. But realistically, Rebecca, does this person have any options to save the company?

Rebecca TaylorCulture comes from the top. So this is the culture of the company, the bullying, the toxic leadership. This is the culture that the founder has created and seems to be dead set on maintaining. I'm of the firm belief that if your founder is toxic and there's no one to keep that person in check, if you're not up for what they're asking you to do, or if you don't like the way they lead or operate, you're better off going somewhere else. I wanna say like, yes, we can change, we can do this, we can do that. But the truth of it is, if the person who is the most in charge and has no oversight over them has no interest in changing, it's a fool's errand and you're just gonna be wasting your energy to make that person rich.

Al ElliottI'm curious, Leanne, why would someone who's built a company that's dependent on employees to make them money treat them really badly? What's going on in their head?

Leanne ElliottBut you're assuming that's their intention.

Al ElliottAh, good point. Good point.

Leanne ElliottIt might well be. It could just be a narcissistic asshole that treats people horribly. It's more than likely, and what I see more often than not, is founders that find themselves as an accidental MD, an accidental people leader, who aren't— who are very used to being strong individual contributors, who suddenly have people that they need to motivate and delegate to and coordinate. And often they don't have the skills to do that, nor the interest. to do that. And that's why typically with larger organizations, even, even larger small organizations, you'll see somebody else there to hold them accountable, whether you say, whether it be a chair, whether it be a really strong COR or operations director. You'll see a leadership team that has equal, um, equal levels of accountability around this type of thing. Um, I think the only thing that might— I'm with Rebecca. I don't think this is a scenario that you're gonna be able to fix, you're gonna be able to change. A founder like this, particularly if they're not aware to it and show no willingness to, to get any type of feedback on this. I mean, if nobody's ever told them, maybe give them the benefit of the doubt and have a conversation and go, just so you know, that message came off as a little bit aggressive. Is this the intention you meant when you said that? Was that the outcome you were hoping for? You seem really frustrated at the minute by how, how things work in the organisation. Is there something we could change today that would make things better for you over the next few months? These types of coaching questions in the conversation might might give you an indication of where their intent lies, how open they are to coaching, how open they are to, to developing themselves. But I'm with Rebecca where it kind of— the way the questions were, it sounds that that's unlikely. So I think the only other thing— you didn't say what your role is in the senior leadership team— the only thing that might be worth just looking at is, is what your obligations are as a leader in that business. So for example, if you are, if you're the opposite director in people and culture Lies under your remit, you might want to have a conversation about, um, these bullying-type behaviors. Should somebody bring a formal complaint about that, is your obligation professionally to make the, you know, the founder aware that this behavior isn't acceptable within terms of the law? And somebody might make, um, a formal, formal complaint or raise this in a, in a way that, that is going to cause a lot of problems for the organization, its performance, and its reputation. Yeah. Its, its teams as well. That might be the only thing to do. I— you'll— you only— you can judge this because you know the founder in question, but I think these things are always worth a conversation if you think they— there could be an element that they're not— they don't intend to behave this way, or they don't— they don't imagine their behaviors having the impact in, in the way that they thought. Um, if you don't believe that at all, you just think they're, they're They're just not a people person, then I think Rebecca's right. Just walk away once your professional obligations are dealt with.

Al ElliottAnd also, this person seems really passionate about the company, don't they? They're not just saying, how do I protect myself? They're like, how do I save this organization? So maybe they've been there from the beginning and this behavior is relatively new, which would suggest that perhaps there's a bit of pressure. Perhaps there's a bit of financial pressure. Perhaps they're going through their exiting and they don't know quite how to communicate that to the rest of the team. I'm not sure.

Leanne ElliottYeah, there's lots of context that we're missing here, aren't we? But I think, yeah, I think, yeah, I think Rebecca and I are on the same page that, yeah, chances are you, you're not gonna be able to fundamentally change the situation or this founder. But there's a glimmer of hope, as Al said, if things used to be different, or there's even a hint that it might not be intentional, it could be worth a conversation. But even And even if that is the case, as Rebecca said, it's still on this founder to actually do the work and either put somebody else in charge of people or change and go through that development, which is going to be a long road anyway. So, I think it— have you read that book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck?

Al ElliottYeah.

Leanne ElliottIt depends how many fucks you've got in that bucket right now. If you've got enough, go for it. If not, maybe just leave it.

Al ElliottAbsolutely.

Rebecca TaylorIt's like a question of just like, what's the point, right? So, it's like, if your point is that you believe in the mission of the company, if the point is, you know, you're doing good work that impacts a lot of people and that there's a lot more good that can be done, again, in spite of this particular situation, then like, go for it. If that's not the case, then, you know, like you said, Leanne, like maybe don't give a fuck.

Leanne ElliottI think that might be the first F-bombs as well, weren't we? We're very well behaved.

Al ElliottI know, very well behaved.

Rebecca TaylorYeah, I'm actually very proud of us.

Leanne ElliottAnd that was in the context of a book title, so I don't think it counts. Does it? Yeah, yeah, no, fine.

Al ElliottOkay, superb. Thank you so, so much, Rebecca. Thank you, Leanne, but you don't need to thank us because you're part of this podcast. Rebecca didn't need to be here, and she's not even getting any money for it. But, uh, well, just that— hopefully that's not news to you, Rebecca.

Rebecca TaylorNo, no. I mean, I'm just so glad that we were able to do this. Thank you so much for having me and for just being able to talk through this stuff together. I feel like we never spend enough time together, so So, I'm just gonna keep crashing your podcast so you hang out with me. And I guess that's just the way we have to do this.

Al ElliottLove it.

Leanne ElliottI'm in.

Al ElliottLet's do it. 100% crash anytime. Go and listen to, subscribe to HR Voices wherever you get your podcasts. Go and look at All Voices. Is it allvoices.co?

Rebecca TaylorAllvoices.co, yep.

Al ElliottYep, go and have a look at that. Fantastic. We've had Geoffrey Firmin on before, twice, I think. One on, let me just double-check my memory, i.e., my notes, episode 285. Jeffrey Vermin was the guy who built Office Vibe and how he's— you hear his entire story, how Leanne was very rude to him on LinkedIn and how he decided to come on and talk and then start his new venture. So definitely—

Leanne ElliottAnd now we're kind of friends.

Al ElliottYeah, more than friends.

Leanne ElliottI think so.

Al ElliottHe called you cool. And Jeffrey's cool, cool, cool AF.

Rebecca TaylorJeffrey's super cool. Jeffrey's like my better half on this team. He's amazing.

Al ElliottSo go check out Rebecca on LinkedIn. Thank you so much for listening. Next Thursday, we're joined by Ellie Glasson. Ellie Glasson, you, you may not have heard of her. In fact, there's a very good chance you've not heard of her, but you will 100% have heard of, heard of the people that she represents. She's a PR wizard. The, the majority of great guests we've had on this podcast have had something tangentially— tangential, is that a word, Rebecca? Can I say that?

Leanne ElliottCan you say genitals tangentially?

Al ElliottThat's the word I'm looking for. Tangentially, tangentially connected is all through Ellie, which she's going to give us an Absolute masterclass in PR, but not just PR, just like ethical PR. It's not about shouting. That's her message. So come and join us on Thursday. Join us next week for sadly just us two. But we then got, I think, can we mention? Is it B W?

Leanne ElliottYeah.

Al ElliottB B W. God. B Y. Bill Yost is joining us in two weeks' time. The Bill Yost. Yes, the guy from with a pirate flag from LinkedIn. He's our he's our co-host. And then we're going on to. August, which is a little bit silly. And I think we might see if Rebecca's knocking about and fancies a virtual beer, maybe a bit of a chat. So anyway, just definitely go and check out Rebecca, check out HR Voices, check out All Voices. And if you haven't subscribed to this podcast, then you should probably do that now. Lee, anything to add before we go?

Leanne ElliottJust the usual. Head over to LinkedIn. That's where the conversation continues. Check out, check out, check out, check out the Instagram. Been putting some more clips on there as well, and the TikTok. Go and have a look at that. Um, subscribe, review, it really does make a difference. And thank you for all the lovely comments we're getting on Spotify at the minute. I'm loving the questions, I'm loving the insights, I'm loving people sharing other different articles or things that they've seen. It is brilliant. Keep it coming, we love it.

Al ElliottYes, definitely.

Leanne ElliottThank you. Thank you so much. We love you.

Al ElliottWe do love you. We do love you in an appropriate amount.

Leanne ElliottThank you. Yes, the way HR would approve of.

Al ElliottWe'll disclose our relationship.

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Toxic Founders, HR Rebels and Stalling Women's Progress — with Rebecca Taylor

🔥 Stories Covered

🧠 Truth or Lie: Does Fun at Work Undermine Performance?

💬 Workplace Surgery

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