HR Voices

About HR Voices

HR Voices is a scenario-based podcast for People Leaders who’ve actually had to make the call. Each episode brings experienced HR and People leaders into realistic, anonymized workplace scenarios—the kind you recognize immediately. Performance issues. Messy conflicts. Investigations that don’t fit neatly into a policy box. Instead of talking about their own companies, guests react to outside cases and walk through how they’d think it through in real time. There are no right answers here. What you’ll hear is judgment: how seasoned leaders balance risk, fairness, legal reality, and humanity when the stakes are high and the path isn’t obvious. HR Voices is for HR, People Ops, legal, and leaders who want to hear how other smart humans actually handle employee relations—without confidentiality breaches, hypotheticals that feel fake, or a lecture on “best practices.”

Publisher

Rebecca Taylor

Category

business · news

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

18 Aug 2025

Latest episode

13 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

105 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   13 Oct 2026

   Proof Over Prestige: Why the Best Resume Isn’t Always the Best Hire

   (with guest Heather Kruger, Chief People Officer at Engine) Two finalists. One spent three years at a household-name company, but joined after the IPO, once the hard part was over. The other spent three years living through a layoff, a near-collapse, and growth with no playbook, and has the less impressive resume to show for it. Leadership wants the logo. The hiring manager wants the person who has already proven they can function when everything’s on fire, and now has to win that argument with people who’ve only read the resumes. What you’ll hear in this episode: Why “are we hiring the logo or the person?” is really two different decisions, and why the biggest red flag in this scenario is how leadership is reasoning, not which candidate wins The “how” questions that cut through polished, AI-assisted interview answers: how did you handle it when the roadmap changed three times in a quarter, or when everything was an emergency? How Heather uses interview transcripts and AI to map a new hire’s gaps against the job description, then builds the onboarding plan around those gaps, because the hiring manager owns the person’s success, not just the decision What a 30-to-60-day “incubation period” of modeled behavior looks like, and how an operating rhythm helps leaders be shock absorbers instead of shock amplifiers Why Heather reads LinkedIn more than resumes, hires non-HR people onto her HR team, and considers a realistic job preview the biggest gift you can give a candidate Why an interview panel where everyone agrees might mean your assessment has a blind spot About Heather Kruger: Heather Kruger is Chief People Officer at Engine. She has led people teams through more than one high-growth company, so she knows how brutal the first six months of a scaling role can be. She’s skeptical of resumes, a fan of hiring HR people who didn’t start in HR, and runs her people function like a product org: if employees don’t feel the value, it’s just a tax. HR Voices is a podcast by AllVoices, the AI-powered employee relations platform for HR teams who handle the hard stuff. Learn more at allvoices.co.

2. 

   12 Oct 2026

   The Hidden Risks of Workplace Wellness Programs

   (with Adam Goldman, CHRO at Cacique Foods) Your step-count challenge got a standing ovation from the exec team. It also passed legal review as ADA compliant. And it’s quietly telling employees with disabilities to choose between disclosing private health information, begging for an exemption, or paying more than their coworkers. Unwinding it without torching a program leadership loves is harder than it looks, especially when you’re the one who launched it. What you’ll hear in this episode: Why “not technically a penalty” doesn’t hold up when some employees can’t reach the discount at all How most wellness programs end up rewarding the people who were already healthy, and what “meeting people where they are” looks like instead How to tell leadership you missed something without calling it a failure, by framing the fix as phase two rather than a do-over Why an annual physical will likely do more for your healthcare costs than 10,000 steps ever will How to design one program for a workforce split across an HQ, production floors, and sales reps who spend half the day in the car Why the most mediocre HR teams protect the process instead of the result, and how to keep pride of authorship from getting in your way About Adam Goldman: Adam is CHRO at Cacique Foods, where he leads HR across a headquarters office, two manufacturing facilities, and a remote sales team spread over more than a dozen states. After spending most of his career in California, he now works from Texas and brings a strong bias for results over process. He’s also the HR leader who will tell you to get out of your office and walk the grocery aisles with a sales rep. HR Voices is brought to you by AllVoices, the employee relations platform for HR teams who’d rather catch issues before they become backfires.

3. 

   7 Oct 2026

   When AI Writes the Performance Review, Who Was Actually Watching?

   (with guest Jaime Akers, VP of Team Member Relations at Hilton Grand Vacations) For two years, an employee's performance reviews were drafted by AI and lightly edited by her manager, and she only found out because the tool credited her with a project she never touched. The AI isn't really what stings. It's the question underneath it: has anyone actually been paying attention to her work? Now HR has to decide whether this is a performance management failure, a documentation integrity problem, or both, and what it means for every review that manager has ever delivered. What you'll hear in this episode: Why the first move is to pause and notice your own thinking before bias quietly becomes your conclusion Why your AI acceptable-use policy, not your personal judgment, has to anchor the investigation, because consistency breeds credibility How a "hallucinated" project might actually be a botched redaction, and why that still doesn't let the manager off the hook Where a policy violation ends and a coaching moment begins, and why the cover-up is usually what turns one into the other Why a performance review is a moment of connection, not a writing exercise, and what repair looks like when that connection breaks The case for one-page policies, since legal and compliance are usually the only ones reading page two About Jaime Akers: Jaime Akers is vice president of Team Member Relations at Hilton Grand Vacations, where she leads the Team Member Relations Center of Excellence in the Human Resources department and initiatives focused on employee relations and leadership partnership. With over two decades of experience spanning hospitality, gaming, technology, financial services and human resources, Jaime is passionate about building people-centered workplaces that balance human connection with business performance and the evolving future of work. She is a global HR executive, doctoral researcher and advocate for modern leadership practices that foster trust, accountability, and engagement. Outside of work, Jaime is a member of a running club in Las Vegas and recently completed the Ragnar Trail Soldier Hollow relay in Utah with her team. She adores her husband and two children and brings energy, curiosity and a commitment to growth into everything she does. Those same qualities shape her leadership approach and reflect her belief in continuous learning, both professionally and personally. HR Voices is a podcast by AllVoices, the employee relations case management and whistleblower hotline platform built for situations exactly like this one. Learn more at allvoices.co.

Who has been a guest on HR Voices

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Cindy Williams
• Miriam Chan
• Chad Thompson
• Kandi Gongora
• Stacy Winsett

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

3.7 / 5

6 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

3 ratings

Contact HR Voices

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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