Most of what HR preaches sounds good on an office wall and falls apart the moment it meets reality. Lies of HR takes one comfortable HR belief at a time — "people first," "hire for culture fit," "engagement equals productivity" — calls it what it is, and takes it apart in three steps: the myth, the cold truth underneath it, and the reframe an honest leader uses instead. Not HR-bashing — just swapping things that sound good for things that actually work.
Created by Martin Spiteri Schillig, drawn from sixteen years running HR inside iGaming, working alongside founders and leaders who were openly sceptical of much of what HR preached. The arguments and the point of view are his. The voices you hear are AI — but every episode is built from his own notes. A new Lie drops regularly.
Full written breakdowns, sources, and the mailing list: liesofhr.com (http://liesofhr.com)
Change Can Be Managed — Why 95% of Transformations Miss | Lies of HR #10
"Change is a project — give it a plan, a timeline and a steering committee, and you can manage it from A to B." Except you can't project-plan your way through a storm.
In the tenth and final Lie of the first series, we take it apart: why most meaningful change is a complex system you can only influence, not control; why roughly 95% of corporate AI initiatives fail — and why the failures are organisational, not technical; how "change fatigue" set in after the average employee faced ten enterprise changes in a single year; and why you can't project-manage a person through denial. Then the reframe: change can be led, shaped and navigated — but never managed in the tidy sense the word implies.
The voices are AI; the arguments come from Martin Spiteri Schillig's sixteen years in HR.
Full written breakdown, sources, and the mailing list: https://liesofhr.com/lies/change-can-be-managed (https://liesofhr.com/lies/change-can-be-managed)
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This is the tenth and final lie of the first series. More is coming — new lies, and conversations with the leaders who've lived on the other side of them. Join the list at liesofhr.com (http://liesofhr.com) to know when the next chapter lands.
Also on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Music.
2 Aug 2026
Reviews Measure Performance — Why the Annual Review Measures the Wrong Thing | Lies of HR #9
"The annual performance review objectively measures who performed and who didn't." Except the score often says more about the manager who gave it than the person who earned it.
In Lie No. 9 of Lies of HR, we take it apart: how recency, availability and affinity bias quietly distort every rating, why forced ranking and the bell curve are statistically invalid (real performance follows a power law, not a normal distribution), how Goodhart's law turns any review score into a target people game rather than a measure that works, and why automating the whole flawed process with AI just makes biased judgement faster and harder to challenge. Then the reframe: separate evaluation from development, make feedback continuous, and keep a human accountable for every call.
The voices are AI; the arguments come from Martin Spiteri Schillig's sixteen years in HR.
Full written breakdown, sources, and the mailing list: https://liesofhr.com/lies/we-measure-performance (https://liesofhr.com/lies/we-measure-performance)
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This is the ninth lie in the series. New episodes regularly. Also on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Music.
26 Jul 2026
Hours Drive Output — Why the Punch Clock Still Runs Your Workplace | Lies of HR #8
"Productivity is a function of time — measure the hours and you've measured the output." The punch clock outlived the factory by a century, and nobody's quite sure why.
In Lie No. 8 of Lies of HR, we take it apart: why hours are a factory measure that collapses on knowledge work, why the fashionable "results-only" alternative is also a trap, and how the deeper lie is single-number thinking. Then the AI twist — why a third of employees who use AI now hide it from their managers (efficiency gets punished, not rewarded), and how AI-driven "speed-up" cranks the treadmill instead of freeing people. Then the reframe: reward efficiency with trust, set humane expectations, and support people instead of surveilling them.
The voices are AI; the arguments come from Martin Spiteri Schillig's sixteen years in HR.
Full written breakdown, sources, and the mailing list: https://liesofhr.com/lies/hours-drive-output (https://liesofhr.com/lies/hours-drive-output)
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This is the eighth lie in the series. New episodes regularly. Also on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and Youtube.
19 Jul 2026
Leadership Will Get Us There — Why Followership Is the Hidden Engine | Lies of HR #7
"Leadership is what matters." We screen for it, promote for it, and blame it when things go wrong — while treating "follower" as a word nobody wants attached to them. But you can't lead an empty room.
In Lie No. 7 of Lies of HR, we take it apart: why leadership is a relationship rather than a title, what Robert Kelley's followership research reveals about the yes-people, the cynics and the exemplary few, why Ira Chaleff's "courageous follower" is the most valuable person in your organisation — and why this suddenly matters far more in the age of AI, when the confident authority everyone nods along to is an algorithm. Then the reframe: build a culture where challenge is rewarded, and treat AI's answers as proposals, not orders.
The voices are AI; the arguments come from Martin Spiteri Schillig's sixteen years in HR.
Full written breakdown, sources, and the mailing list: https://liesofhr.com/lies/leadership-will-get-us-there (https://liesofhr.com/lies/leadership-will-get-us-there)
11 Jul 2026
Leaders Are in Control — The Fantasy Running Your Org | Lies of HR #6
"Leaders are in control." We want the calm pilot's voice on the intercom — someone at the top with their arms around the chaos. It's the most load-bearing lie in the corporate world.
In Lie No. 6 of Lies of HR, we take it apart: why most real leadership work lives in the "complex" zone where no one can dictate the answer (via Snowden's Cynefin framework), how organisations systematically confuse confidence with competence and promote the wrong people, why the "command and control" manager is a relic of Theory X — and how AI is now stripping the coordination work out of management entirely, revealing that control was never the valuable part of leadership. Then the reframe: lead the situation, promote for competence, and get comfortable saying "I don't know."
The voices are AI; the arguments come from Martin Spiteri Schillig's sixteen years in HR.
Full written breakdown, sources, and the mailing list: https://liesofhr.com/lies/leaders-are-in-control (https://liesofhr.com/lies/leaders-are-in-control)
5 Jul 2026
Perks Equal Care — Why the Office Playground Is a Costume | Lies of HR #5
"Perks prove you care." Nap pods, craft beer on tap, catered dinners, wellness apps — the perks arms race is sold as proof a company is devoted to its people.
In Lie No. 5 of Lies of HR, we take it apart: why perks are weak, extrinsic motivators (and can even erode the drive that actually matters), how "free" dinners and all-inclusive campuses are really extraction dressed as generosity, why "unlimited PTO" makes people take less time off, and what a major Oxford study of 46,000 workers found about corporate wellness apps — that they do almost nothing. Then the reframe: fix the work, not the worker.
The voices are AI; the arguments come from Martin Spiteri Schillig's sixteen years in HR.
Full written breakdown, sources, and the mailing list: https://liesofhr.com/lies/perks-care (https://liesofhr.com/lies/perks-care)
27 Jun 2026
Retain, retain & retain — HR's Most Comfortable Lie | Lies of HR #4
Retain at all costs." The 95% retention slide gets the biggest applause in the room — but a glowing number can be the proudest slide and the emptiest.
In Lie No. 4 of Lies of HR, we take it apart: why the lifelong-employee era is long dead (median tenure is down to 3.9 years), the crucial difference between regretted and non-regretted turnover, how a frozen job market created "job hugging" that makes retention numbers dangerously deceptive, and why forced retention and AI flight-risk surveillance rot a company from the inside. Then the reframe — trade the cage for a launchpad, and treat departures as a graduation, not a divorce.
The voices are AI; the arguments come from Martin Spiteri Schillig's sixteen years in HR.
Full written breakdown, sources, and the mailing list: https://liesofhr.com/lies/retain-retain-retain (https://liesofhr.com/lies/retain-retain-retain)
19 Jun 2026
Engagement Equals Productivity — The Dial That's Wired to Nothing | Lies of HR #3
"Push the engagement score up and performance follows." It's a multi-billion-dollar corporate obsession — and the dashboard dial it's built on is wired to nothing.
In Lie No. 3 of Lies of HR, we take it apart: how the whole industry misread its own science (correlation is not causation), what longitudinal research actually found about the engagement-performance link, why global engagement can fall to record lows while business output holds steady, and how the myth has mutated into AI surveillance that measures activity instead of value. Then the reframe — fix the work, not the mood.
The voices are AI; the arguments come from Martin Spiteri Schillig's sixteen years in HR.
Full written breakdown, sources, and the mailing list: https://liesofhr.com/lies/engagement-productivity (https://liesofhr.com/lies/engagement-productivity)
19 Jun 2026
Hire for Culture Fit — Why It Backfires | Lies of HR #2
"We only hire for culture fit." It sounds like a commitment to quality — but in practice it often just means "people like us," and it quietly builds a comfortable, fragile monoculture where nobody sees the problem coming from a new angle.
In Lie No. 2 of Lies of HR, we take it apart: where "fit" really comes from, why it screens out the difference a team actually needs, how AI threatens to automate yesterday's hiring bias at scale, and why hiring for culture add — not culture fit — is the more honest goal.
The voices are AI; the arguments come from Martin Spiteri Schillig's sixteen years in HR.
Full written breakdown, sources, and the mailing list: https://liesofhr.com/lies/cultural-fit (https://liesofhr.com/lies/cultural-fit)
19 Jun 2026
People First — HR's Most Comfortable Lie | Lies of HR #1
"We put our people first." It's on every careers page — and it's a promise reality eventually forces companies to break. In the first episode of Lies of HR, we take the myth apart: why it erodes trust, how AI is exposing the gap between what companies say and do, and what an honest leader does instead.
The voices are AI; the arguments come from Martin Spiteri Schillig's sixteen years in HR.
Full written breakdown, sources, and the mailing list: https://liesofhr.com/lies/people-first (https://liesofhr.com/lies/people-first)
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