Why Quiet Terminations Turn Into Lawsuits: A Guide for HR Leaders

Employee relations cases used to arrive once or twice a year. Now they land every quarter, and words like harassment and retaliation move fast enough to freeze an entire HR team. Susanne Kleveros, founder of Don't Tell HR and a 14-year veteran of investigations and terminations across US and international companies, argues that the function absorbing all this risk is the one companies fund the least.

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Why has employee relations exploded in the past year?

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AI is inseparable from the reason. Employees reach their rights faster, paste emails and Slack messages into a chatbot, and come back with a narrative and flag words, often without the full context. "But when an employee say those words, all of HR goes like, freeze, hold, lock it down," Susanne says. Two camps end up in defensive mode and hours disappear into investigations. For most of her career she saw one or two large investigations a year. Last year the volume jumped.

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Why do companies keep underfunding the function?

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They read employee relations as reactive cleanup instead of organizational health, so the work lands on a stretched junior HRBP. The cost of getting it wrong is hard to put on a budget line. Susanne points to a January verdict in Los Angeles: "five former employees, $52 million. And it was in a whistleblower retaliation case. This case took six years of litigation." Attorney's fees had not been added yet, and the operational cost of six years in court never showed up on anyone's forecast.

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How should HR run a termination so it does not backfire?

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Start with a written process and refuse to improvise off it under pressure. "you never walk into that room improvising," Susanne says, however many times you have done it, because you cannot predict how the person across the table will react. She frames the exit as a change management event, not only a legal one. Employees stay ambassadors from the moment they submit a resume through long after they leave, and the people who remain are watching how the departure was handled.

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Why does silence after a termination signal a lawsuit?

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Because silence escalates emotion. When someone leaves feeling shut down or disrespected, that vacuum fills quickly, usually with a lawyer. Of every silent termination case Susanne has handled, all but one turned out to be a former employee lining up a demand letter. The exception had forgotten the separation agreement was sent. "silence escalates emotion," she says, so a thin severance offer that reads as an attempt to exit cheaply invites the exact escalation the company wanted to avoid. Early, structured dialogue lowers the temperature, and a person who feels seen rarely becomes the person who files.

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What do managers need after handling one?

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Permission to admit it is not fine. Managers carry real weight through terminations and investigations, and when no one helps them process it, they can slide into the micromanaging distrust that reshapes how they lead. Susanne coaches HR to prompt self-reflection for the weeks after and to recheck the manager's trust in the team a month out. She models it herself: "Even if I've done these conversations so many times, I still get affected. I still block time after these conversations to break off my day, go outside, take a walk."

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Her one tactical ask is small. Take the last termination or investigation, sit down, and hunt for the gaps you assume are not there, because the case that feels closed is the one that teaches you the most before the next one lands.

Susanne Kleveros (00:00): Just the last year, employee relations has just exploded.

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Logan (00:04): Yeah, which is interesting because the AI conversation, you almost can't decouple it now because if you just go in and paste emails that you get or Slack messages.

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Susanne Kleveros (00:17): Yeah. And then with that, they will have like their narrative, which like they don't have the full context or the data. And employees, like the technology is there and they get the access to knowledge in a much different way. But I think the challenge there is also too, that they tend to throw out all of these warning words or flag words, like harassment, retaliation, and kind of using it very freely.

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And I think a lot of people don't fully understand what actually would qualify as a harassment or retaliation claim. But when an employee say those words, all of HR goes like, freeze, hold, lock it down. We need to do an investigation, look into it immediately. And it eats up a lot of time. I think the change here too is with AI employees are much more outspoken.

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They have a louder voice too, which is a good thing because it's an HR. I want to know what's not working. I kind of want to know before it becomes a claim. Like, please loop me in earlier on. But we are getting more voices, which is not necessarily a thing, honestly. We just need to be better.

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Logan (01:13): Yeah. And I could see how employees could start tossing around, you know, the harassment, all those words, because while they could get AI to tell them what it qualifies, but you have to spend some time prompting for a while and at least kind of understand some baseline. Not that employees don't, but to then start getting like, would this qualify? Like, how should I bring this up? Rather than haphazardly just tossing things out and then HRs go, my gosh, we need to back up a little bit, right?

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Susanne Kleveros (01:49): Right. And I think that's the thing. Now we have two camps that are in defensive mode and it's so hard to come out of that and try to meet and have like a really collaborative communication piece. Because now HR is going to watch every step they take and every step that we undertake, they're going to be so careful, which is a good thing. But I would rather have people almost prompt AI's of like, hey, I'm getting all of these things. It doesn't necessarily feel right, but like what's the steps I should take here? Like, should I talk to HR? How should I approach them in the best way? Things like that. I think that would help a lot of times. If they don't want both camps to be in defensive mode, that's never a good outcome.

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Logan (02:27): Yeah, I'm here with Susanne. Susanne, is there anything you would like the audience to know about you and Don't Tell HR and some of the stuff that you're working on?

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Susanne Kleveros (02:35): Yeah. So I founded Don't Tell HR about maybe four years, three years full time went into this. My work sits in the parts of HR that carries like the most risks and requires most judgment. So it's usually employee relations, investigations, terminations, HRBP support and strategy as well, because they're all connected with each other.

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I've worked across multiple different startups and larger corporates as well, both in the US and internationally. I'm originally Swedish, which helps sometimes too. And sometimes don't because I don't always understand the language. Thank God for AI helping me there. But I think where I step in is kind of where business risks and human behavior tends to collide a lot.

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And I love, I love. I think love is strange word to say when it comes to employee relations. But what I really like about this piece is that it's so complex. You never know everything. That's impossible. Even employment law counsel don't know everything. And we work with human behaviors. So like you might have the law very clear, but you work with humans and that will set the stage.

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Logan (03:41): Yeah. And I mean, I'm not a lawyer and I don't know that much about law, but I like to watch law shows and it's interesting. I get the impression that US law is so subjective because it is built on precedent. So there is flexibility in a lot of that. So it's not like black and white that this is clear cut and it becomes a wild system. And I would imagine you end up experiencing that as you go through some of this stuff.

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Susanne Kleveros (04:05): Very true. And then you couple that with each state has different laws too, which makes it more fun. And the fact that we have new laws every year coming out and new judgments and verdicts. And there's so much gray zone. I think one thing that's really true that I always try to remind myself and businesses, you can never be 100% compliant. It doesn't exist. But you can do your best.

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Logan (04:32): Yeah. Well, you're operating in high risk areas and that's awesome because it always sets the stage for some good conversation. And we had kind of started this thing out talking about how AI is giving rise or employee relations as a function is kind of exploding because employees are figuring out ways to, I guess not figuring out ways, but understanding their rights and their situation better and being able to come to companies. But I want to start with while it's exploding, while it's high risk, you mentioned during some of the prep that you see people under companies underfunding the function or turning to junior HR folks to lead the function, and I just want to start there as to what you see in that camp.

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Susanne Kleveros (05:21): Yeah. And I think this is a really big part of all of this because employee relations is one of those areas where you might not touch it. Like, you might not, if you're in HR, you might not touch it throughout your whole career. And I think it gets underfunded a lot because leaders and companies don't understand what it actually is and how it can help the companies. We're not here to be reactive. I do a lot of coming in and helping getting things cleaned up a little bit more. But a really good employee relations is someone that understands the proactive work is so important piece too. And it's not just again, like what I said, terminations and investigations. It's about keeping the organization healthy.

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And I think one thing that I really want to highlight too, that actually just came out in January of this year, there was a verdict in LA where they awarded five former employees, $52 million. And it was in a whistleblower retaliation case. This case took six years of litigation. They have still not added attorney's fees to that $52 million price tag yet. And this is what companies miss a lot, that it can take time. You don't even think about the operational cost this company had before it went into litigation. Really hard to put this on a budget line item.

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Logan (06:41): Yeah, that's interesting. I guess two things in there. The proactive piece, what do you do or what do you advise your companies to do to be proactive in the employee relations landscape?

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Susanne Kleveros (06:55): Well, beyond making sure you have policies that are up to date, which is really, really important. It's also not just updating policies, post them on your internet and then you're good to go. I think what I'm seeing more from employment counsel too, is them asking, did employees sign and acknowledge that they've read this? This week I was at a seminar and they even said this, where they want to start having things more separate too, and not lump all policies into one acknowledgement. Because then did they really comprehend everything they read? Are we asking the right questions on the acknowledgement piece too? Did you read this through? Do you understand what's written? Then you say yes. So employment counsel are getting more granular on those pieces too.

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HR people and companies have so much to do in our day to day work that these things are those that tends to come up on a back burner. Because it's not that often you get like a case or an investigation coming up, at least not in the past. I think through almost all my years in HR, it's been 14 plus years now, before last year, I didn't have that many ER cases per year, maybe one, maybe two, like larger investigations. And now last year just exploded.

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Logan (08:13): Mm-hmm. Yeah. And you mentioned a lot of it, you think, because of AI. How should HR, because I mean, we were just at Transform, that's where we met. And I listened to kind of at the startup stage is where I heard a lot of the talks, because I was at a booth and all of that. And the way that people were talking about AI was very, very fearful. But in this instance, where we know that it's causing a section of what you normally didn't see very often to explode, like how should HR start thinking about AI and prepping themselves that this kind of stuff is happening more and more?

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Susanne Kleveros (09:02): I think we all like, the one thing that we need to shift in the AI conversation too is adapting or not adopting to AI. You don't really have a choice anymore. And like in HR, it doesn't matter if you don't want to adapt, the people around you are adapting to AI. So you actually need to show up a little bit better to improve your processes, strengthening your team. I think what you and I talked a little bit about AI too before is companies, especially HR people, we get pushed so much to start utilizing AI within our work, which is great. We need to learn, right? But in that we forget to build like a strong foundation. Like what should we have for access? What should AI access? How can we really make sure that this is locked down and safe? How should employees utilize AI? What is our policies around it? What can we access when employees using our own AI tools?

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And it's still a gray zone in color, like in the law too. We're going to see it coming more, I think in the next couple of years where we're going to have a bit more laws around what we can or can't do. And I don't know if you remember this, but just maybe two years ago, our biggest fear in HR was that people would record when we would have to do terminations over video.

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Logan (10:18): I don't remember the loss. I don't remember in HR specifically what that happened, but I know that's a big thing. Being in California, it's not that way in other states, but that's a really big problem in California if you record without telling somebody.

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Susanne Kleveros (10:19): Yeah. So California is a two-consent way state. HR people need to keep in mind track of which states are two-way consents too, and which states are not, especially if you have employees in different states. And work with your counsel too. Okay, what can I request or ask employees not to record if we're going to do this conversation over video? But you need to structure up how you're approaching the calls too.

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Logan (10:37): Yeah. Is that still a big thing? What was the issue two years ago with the recording?

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Susanne Kleveros (11:03): It was that people were recording when they were walking into a termination conversation and then put it on social media. And it got blasted. Like a lot of people were doing this. I think I have so many thoughts on how you can mitigate it a little bit, but you also have to understand in these meetings, you're walking in, the employee is going to have feelings and emotions. And how we approach the meetings really, really matters.

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Logan (11:32): So how should people approach those meetings?

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Susanne Kleveros (11:35): Yeah. And I think you're right. Nobody's going to skip jump out of a termination meeting and be like, yay, everything's so happy. That's not happening. Nobody likes being part of that conversation, no matter what side you're on. But my really strong belief is that our employees are ambassadors for the company. It starts when they first hit submit to the resume to a position, throughout, like after they leave the company too. So it's not just that they're no longer ambassadors just because they left the company, it continues. And the reason why I'm saying this is because they're gonna remember how they were treated, whether the communication was clear, whether they felt respected, or whether the company showed integrity when it mattered the most, and they talk, right?

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So say you want to apply for a job and you might know someone that used to work there, you're going to check in with them. How was it? And if that person didn't have a good experience, you're now getting, that's spreading a little bit. So I think while there's always going to be terminations that are challenging, where there's been misconduct and things like that, you can still make sure to show up with dignity and respect from the company side.

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It's just not the termination. It's not just a legal event. It's also a really big change management event. So like you have the employee that's leaving, but then you have all the people that are still left and like how we're going to make sure that they're continue being ambassadors for the company, feeling safe within the org they're in. How are we communicating a topic to them? We tend to just think that once we leave the room, we're done. We don't have to think about this anymore. But people, again, team members talk, they might be feeling survival guilt. They don't have the full context, they shouldn't have all the information, but they're going to fill the gaps with their own ideas and thoughts.

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Logan (13:22): Yeah. So a lot of our audience comes from high stakes environments, so PE back companies and where there's a lot of organizational changes. What tactical advice would you give HR teams to embody that ambassador mindset to take that forward for these difficult situations that people have to go through?

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Susanne Kleveros (13:55): Go through your termination process that you have, if you have one, and if you don't, you should definitely create one. Is it embodying the values that you as the company have? How are we showing up in the toughest moments in someone's life, embodying the company values? How are we training our managers to show up in a way that is aligned with what we believe how humans should be treated?

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And first of all, it also starts, as I said, operationally with the processes, but don't improvise. Doesn't matter if you've done this a million times, you never walk into that room improvising. Like sometimes we think that I've done this before. I know what to say. I know what to get. Like here's the document. We'll walk through it. That's kind of foolish because you never know how the person on the other end is going to behave or react. And we forget sometimes we actually work with humans. And so this is where you can do everything right too. But you still work with humans under design.

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Logan (14:51): Yeah, that's good advice for the plan. I always hesitate using sports analogies, but I read a handful of years ago, it was Bill Walsh's book, who was the 49ers head coach for a long time, turned the organization around. And he invented scripting your first handful of plays at the start of a game. Nobody did it before he did. They would basically wing it after kickoff. And they did it to where now almost the entire first quarter people will script of a game before things like shake out. And so it's kind of like that. It changes the ability to be effective if you at least have a game plan.

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Susanne Kleveros (15:34): I 100% agree with that one. I mean, I'm terrible with sports. I don't know any rules. I'd like, did I win? Did I not win? But what sports really has figured out is that team piece, and that everybody understands what their role plays and how it plays into the overall game, and companies the same. And they know when they're not doing well, they're fully aware of that. And we can do better with companies in that way too.

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Logan (16:01): Yeah. So on this piece of the values and leaving people as ambassadors, you had mentioned something interesting kind of in our prep about negotiation windows or having people come back and try to negotiate. And you were like, I like to see that as it relates to not only the termination, but also back to where we started with employee relations and investigations and things. Can you walk through like why you think that could be a good thing that employee comes back and wants to negotiate?

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Susanne Kleveros (16:31): Yeah. And I know I'm going to have so many people that are going to disagree on me on this, especially HR people. But we all know that in a perfect world, everyone would just accept the decision, sign and like move on. That's rarely the case too. And the one thing that is really important for me is keeping in mind that silence escalates emotion. So if you're kind of an employee that leaves feeling like they were shut down, they were confused, they were disrespected, that vacuum in them gets filled very quickly and often by a lawyer. So I would much rather have early in a structured, thoughtful dialogue versus like two weeks of silence then followed by demand letter. Because the continued dialogue will give you information too. It also lowers the temperature.

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And I'm going to say this, it doesn't mean that you have to accept the negotiation. It doesn't mean that everything's up for negotiation, but it means that you see the person, under her side. They feel seen and heard. And that's a basic human like feeling we always have. We just want to be seen, right? Especially in really rough, tough moments.

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And the one thing that's really important here, it's again, we're not winging stuff. We need to stop doing that. We left that behind five years ago. We need to think through a severance strategy early on. Also be mindful here, like if the offer is thin, it signals that the company's trying to get out of this cheaply and that they're not respectful to the employee. And you're usually inviting the exact escalation that you were hoping to avoid.

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Logan (18:14): Yeah, I like the idea that it doesn't even necessarily, I guess I'm going to take this a little bit, it doesn't necessarily have to even be negotiation that you want people to come back with, but it's the communication. Not even thinking, as you're having to go through this, you know, if you're having to plan something like this, we want the offer and to go and no discussion. It's almost like how can we create it so that there is a little bit of room for discussion. That we are going to tell them they have to discuss this, just be like, let's make it so that they feel seen and heard in that case. And it could be negotiation, it could be anything, but they feel comfortable enough that it doesn't have to be silently. Silence escalates emotion. That's so true.

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Susanne Kleveros (18:58): Yeah. And I'm going to say this, all the termination cases I've had, where employees or former employees went silence, all but one, they were actually preparing a demand letter or lawyer, versus having the conversations with us early on on what they could ask for. And that one case that wasn't, the person just forgot that we had sent them the separation agreement. So it's like, wait, how can you forget this? But yeah.

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Logan (19:23): And that's wild, all but one. And is that a recent thing you think that everybody's coming back like that, or has that always been kind of the case?

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Susanne Kleveros (19:31): I think that's always been the case when it goes really silent. There's definitely level of it where everybody has, of course, the right to review the agreements, to have the right to review it with a lawyer too. It's more when it goes very, very silent. So like when we send that last email with all the off boarding information, a copy of the agreement, or anything you discussed, you know, things you need to know when you leave a company, and you get no acknowledgement, no reply back, and you follow up maybe a couple days later making sure that they receive it. Also HR people, always follow up. You want that paper trail. And it's still silence. Something's coming.

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Logan (20:09): Yeah, man, there's so much into this and I just like, I mean, for people who have been through it or on either side or whatever, it's wild to think about it as we discuss through this, but we've talked a lot about the HR perspective. And one thing that I don't know if it gets talked about a lot, I think it probably does, people do talk about it, but the manager who has to go through this, who it's their direct report and how they feel through this whole process. Because I can't imagine if you have any level of empathy, you ever feel good about having to do this because like you said, it's change management, it's everything. So what kind of advice do you have for HR folks to give support to their managers having to go through either a termination or investigation or any of these difficult situations?

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Susanne Kleveros (21:00): I think this is actually one of the most overlooked parts within HR. Because we tend to approach it in a way where we keep a good front. We want our managers to keep a good front. You don't want to show emotions in the conversation. The manager should keep, like we need to keep calm. So we are now prepping them, was like, be steady, be calm. But in that, we are also not acknowledging that this is kind of big. Like you're going to carry a huge amount of that emotional weight, not just in termination calls, but if you also do investigations. And managers might feel, if they're doing investigations, blindsided, they might feel manipulated, they could feel guilty or like that they're personally being attacked. And if we don't help them process that, or like address that this could happen, it changes how they lead after.

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Like, I think we all have had that manager that was a little bit more micromanaging. They didn't really trust anyone. Was checking in on you all the time. And some of them are just bad managers, but some of them comes from this where they just lost all trust and faith in team members. And I think this is the thing. It's hard, one, we're not therapists. HR is not therapist. You should have your own. We all should have our own. But we can be here helping them, telling them, this is what could happen. I want you to be more self-reflective on your leadership style. We don't have to do personal, but on your leadership style after these, for the next couple of weeks. How do you still have the same level of trust within your teams after this? Check in a month later. Where's your level of trust with your team members now?

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Because this is also where we again think that we have the conversation, done deal, we're good, we move on. And then the manager changes and then something happens three months later where HR again needs to do an investigation. And now we're in a full cycle of keeping me busy. And I want to be proactive, not reactive.

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Logan (23:00): Yeah, that's good advice because especially if it's the first time you go through it, I would imagine that you could be susceptible to a change in your style, like your management style through this, and you want to be ahead of that particular situation. Because you've mentioned one of the stories when you talk to a new manager having to go through this and a seasoned manager and it's like, let's go through a debrief, go for a walk, and the new manager tells you, I'll be fine. And the seasoned manager, yay, I need to do all of that. Like you see that too as well, right?

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Susanne Kleveros (23:33): Very much. New managers tend to be overwhelmed with everything they have on their plate. They haven't gotten to a point where they understand how to manage their management pieces. And they're just in execution mode. And they also think that it's fine. I don't have time to show up. I need to show that I'm capable to do this. I'm good. We don't allow for lot of vulnerability within the workplace.

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And I think this is where we need to spend a little bit more time on. I don't have to say, like, we don't have to sit in a ring and be like, talk about our worst fears in life. But we're humans. Even if I've done these conversations so many times, I still get affected. I still block time after these conversations to break off my day, go outside, take a walk. You're allowed to breathe. You should have these scheduled in, like on your week, no matter what, but especially after termination conversation. You just did a big reorg where people are changing managers. Take a walk. Teach your team to take a walk too. And I think for that example, I told you without manager, I still schedule like one-on-one stuff, walk and talks. We're going to get outside.

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Logan (24:49): Yeah, that's a good practice. I chatted with one of our customers, Stacey Baird. She talks a lot about, she's a Chief People Officer, she talks a lot about vicarious trauma. And not just, like, it wasn't necessarily in the context of termination, but it's in the context of having to hear difficult stories from employees and everything, the emotional burden that that takes on people. It's not even HR, I mean, just people have it, because you start to internalize some of that. And it's like, there's all of this stuff that goes with it, and you have to take a moment to breathe. And it can't always be the expectation that you just hop on the next meeting and everything's fine.

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Susanne Kleveros (25:27): Yeah, it's not fine. I think that's okay to say, this is not fine. We had to let someone go. Like, there was a justified business reason, but it still doesn't need to be fine because it was justified. And I think that's the thing where I think a lot of HR people think that if I tell managers that it's not fine, they might lose trust in me or in the process. And it's like, no, this is part of the process.

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We spend the majority of our time at work. These are people we've gotten to know. These are people we like know maybe what their kids' names are. This, whether they, just because they were either breaking a policy or didn't perform in the way they needed to perform, this conversation has a big impact on their lives. We, as humans, we take on so much, right? We carry the weight of the world. And we need to learn on how to let things kind of not take it on, but acknowledge that it's there. But we shouldn't, we don't have to carry it.

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Logan (26:23): Yeah. And even, I would imagine as you're going through, because I'm now bringing back a few of the episodes we've had conversations with. Like Stacy Baird, she had the vicarious trauma she talked about. She also talked about, you know, when you say, how are you doing? Or, you know, do pulse checks with your team? You don't allow them to say good or one word answers. They have to have two words to try and get to a little bit so that there's open space. I chatted with a gentleman, Dr. John King. He had a really traumatic story. I won't go into it here, but his episode's great. And he would talk about a follow-up question of always, like, so if you're asking somebody like, how are you doing? And like, just fine. You pause a second, you say, no, no, no, how are you doing? And you ask it again to make sure that they feel like they're ready to open up, or if they have, want to get off their chest, they can. Especially if you're in these situations where it's difficult. So a few tactical things for folks.

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Susanne Kleveros (27:25): Yeah. And I think, again, this is kind of where the funding comes in a lot too. And in the HR world, companies don't spend that much money on HR team members. I am strong believer of that. HR team members should go through and get coaching and learn how to coach, but not just to use it in that way, but how to ask the questions, keep it like open ended. I think some of the best learnings I've had in life didn't come from HR. It actually came from salespeople that are so good at asking the right questions that get you to like, yeah. That's the competence like I need when I'm doing investigations too, of how do I get people to continue talking? How do I get them, like, share more? And it's the same within HR. We need that training too of, don't just ask yes or no questions. Ask open-ended. Really train on it, because it's hard.

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Logan (28:19): Yeah, it is. I will put a shout out. Like I'm a big HubSpot fan for marketing stuff, but I sat on their customer advisory board and I visited them, and something I noticed when I was there and the employees there, it was clear that, or maybe it was in their selection process, I don't know what it was, but there was a different caliber of question asking and curiosity that everybody had throughout that organization. And I was just amazed at the effort that they put in for people to be thoughtful. And clearly, like, they probably have a selection way of how they select people, but they probably also coach. So to your point about coaching for questions and curiosity, like, it can be coached or trained, I believe.

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Susanne Kleveros (29:01): Yeah. Think outside the box, bringing a sales coaching team to coach your HR team, because at the end of the day, we're internal sellers no matter what. And our tag team, your sales leader asks, can I sit in on the conversations? I just want to pick up on how you ask the questions.

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Logan (29:18): Yeah, that's good advice. So I do want to be respectful of time, but is there anything else you would like to leave the audience with? We obviously chatted through high risk things and more difficult conversations, but especially for folks that are in fast paced environments, is there anything else you would like to leave them with as some parting advice or things that they should think about if they're having to do this kind of stuff?

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Susanne Kleveros (29:43): I think the one thing that I would leave people, like a tactical piece to do, is choose your last investigation or last termination that they handled and sit down and do a proper post-mortem. Find the gaps. You might think that there were no gaps, but really break it down and find all the gaps you can, or ask AI to help you sometimes. Don't share confidential information, but where's the gaps in this? Note the learnings and bring it with you to improve the process next time. And think of, just as we think about the whole employee life cycle, it's the same within employee relations. It doesn't end just because someone leaves the company. You're left with the remainders of the team and the managers. It's not just one email saying, this person is no longer with us. You need to do continued check-ins with that team and the leader. Keep an eye on them. How are they really doing? And what is spreading, or like how else can we support them?

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Logan (30:41): Yeah, that's really good advice. Picking up how it went, reviewing, but also the team culture. Because if you're in a fast-paced environment and this might happen a lot, or you have a lot of org changes, you don't want the culture to shift towards not so great for everybody's sake.

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Susanne Kleveros (31:03): It's the change management piece. You have to be mindful of it. And also keep the Spidey senses open a little bit. Then there is more cases coming up because people have more information. And we just said, it's not a bad thing, but us in HR, we need to stay on top of that too, and actually improve our own processes. The company's only as strong and as healthy or protected as the HR team is educated and staying in the known of what's going on.

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Logan (31:33): That is more great advice. And that is really difficult. Like I will acknowledge the learning piece right now because things are moving so fast. It's hard. Like we have to do it. So, you know, give a little bit of grace in the learning. Like it is hard.

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Susanne Kleveros (31:48): It is hard. Felt like, with Claude now coming out, I was like, wait, I'm behind again. What the heck? It's a steep learning curve. You don't have to bite off everything at once. Like start with what you have, look at the facts and the data, not just when it comes to like when you do investigations, but also when you're reviewing your policies and your internal teams. What do we have? What's the data? One small piece at a time. Again, you can never ever be 100% compliant. That's not just the saying I say, I keep hearing this from employment counsel. They might not back you up if you ask them, because why would they acknowledge you can never be 100% compliant? But it's, that's not a thing. So do your best.

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Logan (32:30): Yeah, you can set yourself up for a strong case, but it's not 100%. Well, great, Susanne. I appreciate the time. Where would you like people to connect with you?

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Susanne Kleveros (32:39): I'm LinkedIn because I'm really bad at selling myself on the website. So LinkedIn is usually best. And so yeah, just connect with me there.

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Logan (32:48): Great, we will put that in the show notes and you can chat with us. Don't Tell HR. Awesome.

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Susanne Kleveros (32:54): And Logan, you actually never asked me where my name came from.

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Logan (32:57): Was I supposed to?

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Susanne Kleveros (32:58): I think that's a good segue to my company. Not a company name.

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Logan (33:00): Okay, where'd your name come from, the company name. Hi. And I completely took it like your first one. My god. Your company name, where did it come from? Sorry.

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Susanne Kleveros (33:12): So it's okay. I had a manager that, again, in the past had some bad things where he lost trust and thought that HR should be spying on everyone in the company. And it ended up with me not wanting to talk to people. So, don't tell HR.

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Logan (33:26): Yeah, it is a perfect thing. I did internalize, I will say in my defense at the end, I did internalize don't tell HR.

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Susanne Kleveros (33:35): I think it's, the more scared we are about something, the harder it's going to be for people to support through that. HR is in a tough space. We're in a tough space. We are here to look at the company, the health, but also the employees and then ourselves too, honestly.

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Logan (33:51): Yeah. Well, good, Susanne. Thank you very much. And I'm glad that we got where the name came from. Awesome.

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Susanne Kleveros (33:59): Thank you, Logan.