Episode
Tend Your Team Like a Garden
- Podcast
- HR Voices
- Published
- Jun 9, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1814
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://share.transistor.fm/s/61fa95a0
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Summary
Summary On HR Voices, Rebecca Taylor and Sara Birmingham, Chief People Officer at Shutterstock, work through a familiar trap: a manager wants to put a newly remote, recently accommodated employee on a PIP, and the request looks airtight. Sara makes the case that most performance problems are management problems in disguise, and that the first three months under an accommodation are a re-onboarding, not a fair sample. They get into why managers who go quiet on anxious employees create the very problem they later want to act on, how to broker the conversation that prevents it, and why the most valuable HR work, the "saves," never shows up on a dashboard. For HR and People leaders who spend their days in the gray area between policy and people. Chapters 00:00 The Accommodating Conflict scenario 02:30 Why you can't blindly trust a PIP request 06:00 The unseen work behind every PIP 10:00 Three months remote is a re-onboarding 13:30 When managers go quiet on anxious employees 16:30 Tend the team like a garden 19:30 The work is the easy part 21:30 Counting the saves HR never gets credit for 24:30 Approaching success, not underperforming 27:00 The assumption about HR worth challenging Takeaways A manager's PIP request is the start of an investigation, not a verdict to act on, especially when remote work and accommodations invite bias. An accommodation changes how the work gets done, so the first months function as a re-onboarding rather than a fair performance sample. Managers who go silent to avoid worsening an employee's anxiety usually manufacture the performance problem they later want to address. The most valuable HR work, the prevented PIPs and resolved conflicts, leaves no paper trail, so track saves and successful PIPs. Renaming "underperforming" to "approaching succes…