The Shift is a conversational podcast for HR and People leaders who are carrying real responsibility and trying to lead with clarity in the middle of change.
Hosted by Mindy Honcoop and Marnie Robbins, each episode feels like pulling up a chair in the working room, not sitting through another “thought leadership” lecture. They talk with practitioners, founders, and trusted voices about what’s shifting in the workplace right now: trust, leadership expectations, culture tension, AI and HR tech, change fatigue, messy people problems, and the decisions that sit on your desk when you’re the one everyone looks to.
You’ll leave with practical language, grounded frameworks, and a little more courage to take the next right step.
If you’re tired of performative HR conversations and want honest dialogue that actually helps you lead, you’re in the right place.
What a Year of Future-of-Work Conversations Taught Us | The Shift Season 1 Wrap
Season one started with a community we were sure people wanted. Turns out, they were loving lurkers.
In this season wrap of The Shift, it’s just the two of us. No guest. We look back at what our guests taught us, the near-breaking point that gave us the Signal Loop, and where we’re headed next.
We get into:
The “loving lurkers” survey that pushed us from community to podcast
Why friction is a signal, not resistance, and what a room full of project managers taught us about practicing it
Why our focus is moving beyond HR to the whole leadership team, and what HR’s seat at the table looks like now
The night the Signal Loop was born
What we kept hearing all season: start before it’s perfect, AI amplifies whatever’s already there, trust is the real currency, and cultural connectedness beats culture fit
Mergers and acquisitions: why the people side gets brought in too late, and helping a team grieve what they’re leaving
Mindy’s private equity challenge (Torchy’s fans, you know)
What’s next: season 2, guest nominations, Labs, and the second edition of our field guide
Because friction isn’t the problem. Ignoring it is.
Connect with us:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/althrhive/ (https://www.linkedin.com/company/althrhive/)
Grab the free SIGNAL Loop worksheet here: https://althr.kit.com/workshops (https://althr.kit.com/workshops)
Check out our Disrupt HR Talk: https://vimeo.com/1194090846 (https://vimeo.com/1194090846)
Nominate a guest for Season 2 here! https://forms.gle/TMXjkcB3Uw6Msev88 (https://forms.gle/TMXjkcB3Uw6Msev88)
8 Oct 2026
The Shift to Human-First AI with Deepti Moolya
Most companies are asking what AI can automate in HR. Deepti Moolya asks a better question: does it make work more human? In this episode of The Shift, we sit down with Deepti, VP of HR at Happiest Minds Technologies, who helped scale the company from about 1,000 to 7,000 employees through four acquisitions. She shares real case studies of AI in HR at the enterprise level, where her team decided not to automate, and how small HR teams can start using AI with little or no budget.
We get into:
What breaks in HR when you scale fast: why consistency beats customization, speed beats perfection, and communication beats documentation
Integrating four acquisitions without it feeling like a hostile takeover
A manager coaching bot that works like a flight simulator for difficult performance conversations, with AI personas that push back
AI-assisted employee recognition that nudges managers toward the people they'd miss, and helped double recognition in a year
Why Happiest Minds turned down a fully automated AI onboarding agent and kept day one human
AI on a shoestring: how startups and nonprofits can build HR workflows with free tools like Notion, Make.com, Zapier, and Google Workspace
Why culture is what makes AI adoption work, and what happens to companies that shelved it
Because people may forget the technology you rolled out. They won't forget how you made them feel.
Connect with Deepti:
LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepti-chandrashekar-moolya-mba-shrm-scp-b856aa9/)
Mentoring (https://topmate.io/deepti_chandrashekar_moolya)
3 Sept 2026
The Shift Beyond Awareness: Shawn Utterback on Real Inclusion
Everyone's heard of neurodiversity by now. Almost nobody's asking what happens on a Tuesday morning when someone's just trying to get their work done.
In this episode of The Shift, we sit down with Shawn Utterback, founder of NeuroTalent Connect, to talk about why so many workplace "performance problems" are actually design problems — and why building for clarity ends up working better for everyone, not just neurodivergent employees.
We get into:
Why "culture fit" is really just comfort and conformity in disguise — and what changes when companies hire for culture add instead
The DEI committee conversation nobody thought to have — and why it became one of the most-attended sessions his last company ever ran
Masking, and the hidden cost of spending your energy decoding the workplace instead of doing the work
The curb-cut effect — why captions, ramps, and clear documentation weren't built for everyone, but end up helping everyone anyway
AI as a two-edged sword: it can shrink cognitive friction, or just help bad workplace design move faster
Building Workplace by Design, his in-beta "People OS" — and why he shipped a rough version instead of waiting six months for a perfect one
Because you can't hire for cognitive diversity and then manage for conformity. Fix the system. Don't fix the person.
Connect with Shawn:
LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnutterback/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnutterback/)
NeuroTalent Connect — https://www.neurotalentconnect.com/ (https://www.neurotalentconnect.com/)
Inside a recent episode
The Relationship Shift: Why Every HR Leader Needs a Podcast
Published 11 Aug 2026 · Transcript excerpt
[…] How are we creating a culture that is human and creating that? Because at the end of the day, you can say AI is going to take all of our jobs. Sure, but you still need the human component. Even if all of our jobs somehow get taken by AI, it's a human component. It's that relationship that's going to keep us all connected. And so I think from that standpoint, that's kind of how I would answer your question of like, what do I want to get from these questions? What do I want to get from these conversations? Each person's going to answer that individually. Do the seasons if you want, or talk to If you've got 300 employees in your company, well, that's 50 episodes right there that you could cover in a year. […]
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