The Golden Toots and Coal-filled Boots of 2024

2024 was a challenging year. We saw the implementation of six-day workweeks, so many layoffs, return-to-office (RTO) mandates, and DEI rollbacks. SHRM removed the E from DEI and Silicon Valley CEOs and VCs seemed to want a return to days of HR past (or no HR at all.

We also had some progress with parental leave policies, new prenatal care protections, and much-needed conversations around the realities of HR work sparked by a viral NYT article.

Join us as we award the first ever Golden Toots and Coal-filled Boots and recap the highs and lows of 2024.

Connect with Kim:
On LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimrohrer/
Or at her website Patchwork Portfolio: https://www.patchworkportfolio.com/

Articles and resources we discussed:
You Got This Journal: https://a.co/d/d417s5V
PaidLeave.ai : https://www.paidleave.ai/


No HR Playbook
SHRM to lead with inclusion and diversity
Today, Lattice Makes History and Leads the Way in Responsible Employment of AI
Yes Madam clarifies on firing over 100 employees for being stressed, says, 'No one was fired;
What You Should Know About the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act
New York becomes first state to mandate paid time off for prenatal care
Citi boosts paid parental leave to match industry peers
So, Human Resources Is Making You Miserable?

Chapters

• 3:58 Stacey's Pick for Coal-Filled Boot of 2024
• 11:48 Kim's Pick for Coal-Filled Boot of 2024
• 19:08 "Dishonorable" Mentions of 2024
• 23:24 Kim's Pick for Golden Toot of 2024
• 29:45 Stacey's Pick(s) for Golden Toot of 2024

Transcript

Stacey (00:00):

Welcome to Toot or Boot, where each week we talk about news related to HR and the world of work. We toot the news we like and we boot the news we don't like. I'm your host, Stacy Nordwall, a serial joiner of early stage tech companies as their first-in or only HR person. And joining us for our last Toot or Boot of the year, we have Kim Rohrer. Hi Kim.

Kim (00:24):

Hi.

Stacey (00:27):

This is the thing we have to say. So I was looking it up. This was earlier in the year than I even thought We first did a recording in May. Oh my goodness. So for those of you who don't know, I approached Kim saying, I have this idea of something fun I want to do. At the time it was just short LinkedIn videos and Kim was game to do it. And this is why I wanted to end the year with you as well because it feels very full circle to have you back. We like

Kim (01:00):

A theme

Stacey (01:01):

We do and to have you back as the one who kind of gave me that push, that impetus to keep going and bring it to what it is now. So I am super stoked to have you here and be doing it our end of year review moment. But before we dive into that, tell folks who you are if they haven't had a chance to listen to you on the show before.

Kim (01:27):

Who am I? I'm Kim. I am also a serial joiner of early stage companies. I've spent the last 15 plus years at a variety of tech companies in a variety of stages of early to mid stage growth. Most recently I was at Oyster where we scaled from 75 to 650 across 70 countries in about a year, less than a year and a half. So I like to say I got five years worth of tech experience just in that first year of working there. Most recently I was the co-founder and chief creative officer over at PeakHR as well as running my consulting business through Patchwork Portfolio. I do a variety of consulting things in the HR space and also more recently in the communications and design and branding space. That is my primary focus right now as I jump back into the job market. So many of us are in this troubled economy we find ourselves in, but I'm excited to be wrapping up this year and entering a new phase of my career. And yeah, I'm stoked. Stoked to be here. There was a lot that happened in 2024. This was a year.

Stacey (02:44):

Okay. So I feel like 2024 was a tough year and so the format for today what we're doing is we are each picking a golden toot. So something that was great for the year, and a coal-filled boot. And I will say in reflecting back on the year, it was hard to find a golden toot. There were so many worthy things. I had to really, really think about what my coal filled boot was going to be because there were so many options. Honestly,

Kim (03:27):

There were so many choices, so many beautiful, beautiful choices.

Stacey (03:32):

But yeah, it was a rough one. So I am going to start with our coal filled boots. We got to end on a golden toot. I feel great.

(03:47):

So I'm going to start my coal-filled boot. And Kim doesn't know and I don't know what hers is, she doesn't know what mine is, so it'll be funny if we pick the same one, but I don't think, well my coal-filled boot, this goes back to the first episode we ever recorded, Kim, the first episode we talked about the guys from the All In podcast and their no HR playbook and how they didn't need hr, how they would never have HR at a company that they ran. And I picked this one because in a way it was the most boot worthy thing. It kind of made the Toot or Boot even happen. It was like I have to talk about how ridiculous and terrible this is with someone. And I also think it feels to me, and maybe it's just because I wasn't paying as close attention prior to that, but it felt like a tipping point for me of all these other very boot worthy things happening of these leaders, senior leaders, VC men in this echo chamber that just kept echoing and it was like, yeah, layoffs and RTOs and DEI rollback and everything because of this echo chamber that

(05:16):

It felt like the first domino for me. Do you remember that story?

Kim (05:20):

Yeah, I absolutely do. And if I am not mistaken, I think you were just on HR Doesn't Like You somewhat recently talking about this same article. I was like, I've been thinking about it recently. Can I just look them into your episode? And one thing that's interesting to me about this particular article is it's one of the rare boots where want to boot the article itself and also the content of the article. So a lot of the booth are like, I'm booting the story, no shade to the journalist. The article is fine, it's well written or whatever, but the topic that we're discussing is what I'm booting in this case. I also want to boot the article itself for being so one-sided and being so giving a stage to this viewpoint in the first place because it's certainly something that we've all heard time and time again and experienced even as a company does hire HR even as a company does break with this echo chamber and hire someone the way that first hire is treated, the way that first hire is listened to or respected as an equal leader. All of those things we've seen so many times go wrong because of this kind of harmful dogma around

(06:46):

Leadership. And I mean it ties into the founder mode bullshit. It ties into so many things. It's the catalyst as you said it felt. It did feel like a tipping point.

Stacey (06:56):

Yeah, I think I am glad you brought up founder mode. That was also my mind of this whole thing. Just it felt like it started with that, with people saying, oh, okay Leah, let's break the mold and go back, not even break the mold, go back, just get a lawyer

Kim (07:15):

Protect you and you'll be fine. Just do whatever the hell you want as long as you have a lawyer to fix it.

(07:22):

It's something, I was actually just talking about this with my husband recently that the political landscape that we're reentering right now, I realized I just sat up closer. It made me three times the size of you, the political landscape that here in the US we're reentering has a real danger of turning us back into hustle culture, founder mode, bro culture bullshit from 15 years ago. Right? I'm looking at some of the language. I'm looking at some of the people who are being elevated into positions of power. I'm looking at some of the language in our politics and so much of it is just so familiar to the things that were pared on Silicon Valley that we're too close to home for those of us who were working in tech companies when that show was on. But that's my big fear with this kind of attitude is that it's taking us backwards and it's dismantling a lot of the progress that we've made for the last decade.

Stacey (08:23):

Yeah, it absolutely feels like we are devolving and I have the same reactions to you of I feel like I already lived through this and I thought that we were progressing and it feels like didn't we do this already? I'm being clawed back into the dumpster fire and I'm not happy about it. And also from the perspective too of feeling given our experiences that we are moving more into that HR is strategic and we're leaders and we have our seat at the table and look at the impact that we can have in the business and then all of this feels like it's dragging us back into that place of compliance and rules and rules enforcement

Kim (09:16):

And

Stacey (09:16):

All of that. And it's just a gut punch for me.

Kim (09:20):

Yeah, I mean the idea that you can replace HR with legal is just such a great fallacy because both are necessary. Compliance is necessary, rules are necessary. All of these things. I'm not saying we should live in a lawless world where HR has nothing to do with compliance and policy, but there's a difference between legal's approach to policy and hrs approach to policy. And you need both approaches to make something that's actually going to create healthy workplaces. And that's the problem. I think that these people don't care about creating healthy workplaces and I'm like,

Kim (09:57):

Are we going back to now? Are we going to spend another decade fighting this fight again for human humane treatment in the workplace? And it's only gotten worse from an equitability standpoint. Yeah. There's so much danger in reverting back and I think a lot of today's HR leaders are tired. Speaking for myself, I don't have the same kind of stamina for this work as I did when I was 28. So supporting the next generation to take on the fight. But it's just so disheartening to be like, are we fighting the same fights over and over and over? Yeah. Yes we are. I feel that, I mean that is the struggle of anyone who's ever fought for anything over generations. These are generational repeatable struggles, but it just sucks when it feels like I thought we had made progress.

Stacey (11:06):

Well, and also I'm like, I just do this. I just did it.

Kim (11:11):

It was recent. It was

Stacey (11:12):

Like wasn't that long ago. No, I mean it's within recent memory and I thought we had learned. So tell me, what was your Coal-Filled boot?

Kim (11:26):

Well, here's the thing, Stacy,

Stacey (11:29):

I

Kim (11:29):

Had a hard time choosing one coal-filled boot.

Stacey (11:34):

I have a couple of dishonorable mentions.

Kim (11:37):

Well, I realized as I was struggling to pick my boot that all of my boots are tied together in one pair of boots, one collection of winter boots. Yes. So the main stems from SHRM removing equity from DEI that was the catalyst boot for this whole booty mc ersin rant. I'm about to go on.

(12:03):

So for me, there's this bookend. It started with removing the E from DEI. I felt like it's saying the quiet part out loud, right? It's like all the stuff that we've all known about SHRM for years that we've been saying about SHRM for years was like, well, here it is. We're just going to put it right out there in front of everybody. So that in and of itself was less booty for me. I was like, well, at least now we know, right? But now capping it off at the other end with the very predictable and unsurprising announcement that the CEO of SHRM is trying to get a cabinet position in Trump's administration. It's just like the cherry on top of the SHRM shit cake Sunday, whatever. It's a predictable story. We all saw this coming and so to see it happening, it's just such a boot for me because as I was looking through the boots in our list, and I haven't pulled up here, I wanted to specifically call some of them out paramount getting sued by ex workers over their last layoffs without notice.

(13:21):

EEOC claims, federal judge striking down FTC rule banning, there was another one. Oh, email traffic and imposing remote work bans. All of these things are political, right? You've been saying this for years, for months at least, specifically publicly, that all of this HR work is political and the idea that you can separate politics from policy is ludicrous. And this has been the whole thing of good old boy Johnny from SHRM of like, let's keep things civil politics don't belong at work, but all of these things that we're talking about start with policy. They all policy is politics. And if our job is to react and respond to policies that are created at the government level and to use this to create our own internal policies and employee experiences, it is all political. I mean, you have people in your workplace whose very existence is political because of who they are. You can't separate these things. And so this, again, with a tipping point like SHRM going out and saying Equity is just going to happen as part of diversity and inclusion. It just, it felt to me like open season being called, and it feels completely inextricable to me from Trump politics and from this uber conservative right-wing political world where as we saw with the last time Trump, Trump was elected, it gives free license for people to act in ways that are incredibly harmful.

(15:15):

And that's really where a lot of this worry stems from for me is we're not going to be dealing with a government that at a policy level is trying to do things to make life better for people, trying to make life better for workers. It might mean more buddies coming into the tech industry like, yay, for late stage capitalism, I guess, but who are the people in the funding landscape who are going to benefit from this administration and are those the people we want funding companies and building companies and being responsible for people's livelihoods. That's what's scary to me about all of this, and that's where this big collective boot for me comes from is that you can see the breadcrumbs already being dropped for things that are potentially very harmful for employees.

Stacey (16:05):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I debated whether that would be my coal-filled boot because it really was that whole thing of feeling gaslit in a way, right? That, oh, it's not about politics. It's not about politics, and then predictably trying to get into the cabinet. I think it has been about politics this whole

Kim (16:38):

Time. So ridiculous. Stacey, even when you take out the very obvious piece of people's very existence being political, and when you're arguing about trans rights, when you're arguing about racial inequity, when you're arguing about wage discrimination, these are all very political things and they are inescapable in a workplace. Even if you were to take all of that aside and just talk about politics outside of policy and just politics in the traditional sense of politicking, it has obviously always been about politics. Follow the money, where's the money going? It has been clear for a long time. SHRM is, I don't know, the largest governing body of HR education and what's the word I'm thinking of?

Stacey (17:36):

Certification.

Kim (17:37):

Certification, thank you. And is actively lobbies the government. It's an active lobbying group. And you're going to tell me that HR is not political, right? Yeah, it's bananas. It's bananas. Yeah. No insult to bananas. Sorry. Bananas do mean to dispar the great and holy banana, but it just drives me nuts. And anyone who has ever been in a workplace during a global crisis, during a political election season, during a contentious voting period, you can't just say, okay, don't talk about politics at work. And that's it.

Kim (18:26):

You Can't tell people to not be affected by politics that affect them. You can set standards around respectful communication in the workplace, but to go out there and try to say, this isn't political. It was just such a joke.

Kim (18:48):

It's just like one piece after another I feel like has catapulted this into our reality this year.

Stacey (18:57):

Oh yeah. Absolutely. I want to also, since I did have a couple of dishonorable mentions, these are a little bit not to, the coal fill boots that we have given are very big and enormous. These mentions are just tiny blips on the radar, but I found it to be a little bit just funny to me. I'll take them. If you remember back when Lattice announced that they were going to have AI workers,

Kim (19:34):

AI people, yes, I do remember this. You

Stacey (19:37):

Recall. And then immediately changed their minds because the response was such a big WTF that they went back on it. That was a mention for me, a one in terms of the boots. And then I am still, this is a late breaking boot. I'm excited.

Stacey (20:02):

Which is just a funny thing to, I think I know, said I wanted say.

(20:07):

Yeah. So I'm waiting to see if this is legit still, but it seems like it is. Did you see the news that yes, Madam put out, it's an Indian company. They put out a survey asking people if they, yeah, it was, they put out a wellbeing survey asking people how they were feeling at work, and then they sent out a message. This is as of today, they sent out a message to those who said they were stressed basically and fired them. So they fired a hundred people. Yeah, they fired a hundred people. And the note said essentially, Hey, we've decided to part ways with anyone who said they were stressed because we don't want to have a stressful working environment. It

Kim (20:54):

Feels like it's not legal.

Stacey (20:56):

Maybe

Kim (20:57):

It's

Stacey (20:58):

This shouldn't be. This is just

Kim (21:01):

Drop. Sure. It's

Stacey (21:03):

Today.

Kim (21:03):

I was going to say, I'm sure it's just on this side of the law,

Stacey (21:07):

And I don't know what the employment laws are in India in terms of what the, but

Kim (21:13):

This is why people don't want to fill out engagement surveys. They don't trust that it's anonymous and they don't trust that there won't be retaliation. This is why.

Stacey (21:20):

Yes, absolutely. So gross, gross. I'm still waiting to see. There is a slight hint of people hoping that it's not real and that it is some kind of marketing thing gone wrong, which I can't even imagine. What are you trying to market? What the marketing gimmick would've been, but this is another dishonorable mention boot late breaking boot for the show.

Kim (21:47):

Late breaking boot. Oh my Lord. That is, I want to try to find this one. I saw somebody mention it. I, on the old LinkedIns, oh, it was from Lauren Schneider, who's the head of Brand and Comms at Compt. I'm not getting, this is not an ad. She's just, I like her LinkedIn content. She read an article where a CEO suggested that managers should pick favorites to motivate employees.

Stacey (22:21):

That's super motivating,

Kim (22:24):

Right? Super motivating. You should definitely pick your favorites and tell your employees who your favorites are. That's a thumbs up. Great idea.

Stacey (22:32):

Seems like it would be very just what

Kim (22:34):

Are

Stacey (22:34):

People when it comes to performance review and salary? For

Kim (22:39):

Sure. There's going to be no bias there at all. We've all seen how favoritism works. It's just a meritocracy. Stacy.

Stacey (22:46):

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I forgot that it was actually a meritocracy. Okay. Okay. Oh

Kim (22:57):

My Lord.

Stacey (22:58):

Let us leave these.

Kim (22:59):

Forget us. Some good stuff.

Stacey (23:01):

Yeah. Let us leave these boots behind and let

Kim (23:04):

Us Goodbye boots.

Stacey (23:05):

Talk about our golden toots of the year. Kim, why don't you tell me what was your golden toot for the year?

Kim (23:13):

My golden toot for the year might be a little controversial, but my golden toot is the New York Times article about human resources making you miserable, cover star Hebba Yusef.

Stacey (23:28):

Nice.

Kim (23:29):

And here's why.

Stacey (23:31):

Okay.

Kim (23:31):

I think this article in a way that so many have not gave voice to the burnout that HR leaders are feeling. And the reason I say it's controversial is it sparked a whole bunch of stuff. The article was not super well written, if I'm being honest. I don't think all of the opinions were accurately represented based on having spoken to people who were interviewed for it in general. But it gave voice to something that we've all been feeling for a long time. And I know there have been other articles in Forbes in HBR about the exodus of HR leaders over the last four years about why HR has such burnout. I've written about it in places like, this is not a new topic, but to have it be so front and center and to have this topic go so viral, I felt for Hebba because her face was on every, it was like the preview image for every share of that article was her face being pissed.

Kim (24:37):

Was like, well, sorry. She just became the poster child for hr, our snarkiness, I guess. But she is a champ and a total badass. So rock on. I was like, oh my God, this is you everywhere on every LinkedIn feed. And that's hard. Being the face of something is really hard. But I was really glad that those sentiments were out there and that this conversation was brought into the mainstream a bit more. I had people who I never talked to about work reaching out to me and being like, Hey, this is what you do, right? Is this true? Are you feeling this way? Do you get yelled at by people? And it was really interesting to have that out there.

Stacey (25:24):

And Kim is sneezing right now. There we go. Hey, at

Kim (25:28):

Least I went on mute. You don't even have to edit. I don't care. Edit it out. Whatever. I had to sneeze. But yeah, I really am tooting the fact that I know that we were allowed to have this conversation in the mainstream and credit to Hebba and to other people who were interviewed for that article for speaking up about something that it is a hard job. And we do get treated in ways that are unfair sometimes and that are difficult sometimes. And the challenges in hr, you don't have HR to go to for support. And so it really spoke, I think, to this loneliness in HR and this helplessness that HR folks feel a lot. And it just, it felt like a very brave thing to be out there saying in a way, as it seems like it's not something we're supposed to be going out and talking about a lot. As difficult as the conversations were sometimes with people calling HR a bunch of Wang babies, which I saw on a comment thread. I feel like it gave us as a community something to rally around and it gave voice to something that hadn't been voiced in such a mainstream way.

Stacey (26:49):

Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting point because truly to have a New York Times article about it says something about the state of things and what people were experiencing and how deep it really was to get that kind of national coverage about HR just being burnt out. And the particular challenges that I think are within our role that just aren't in others.

Kim (27:27):

Yeah, I wish there was more of it, to be honest. I wish it wasn't just one New York Times post. I wish there was a series. I wish there was more talk about this. I know how these interviews go. You get interviewed for an hour and they use two sentences of what you said,

(27:43):

And it's like, this is such a good taste for people and I want there to be more published work in the mainstream about the more progressive world of hr. That was something that I liked about it is it shined a light on HR people who are trying to do better than predecessors, HR people who are trying to fight the systemic inequities that exist, trying to fight the outdated way that HR has been done for many generations of practitioners. And I keep being like, yes, and there's so much more airtime given to the SHRM s of the world.

Kim (28:33):

So I wish there was a better balance so that it wasn't always this, here's what HR is going through, here's what HR is trying to do. And then immediately everyone's like, well, that's not my experience with hr. HR sucks, and here's why HR sucks. It feels very Sisyphean, and I don't want to be Sisyphus. I've been thinking about HR and Greek mythology ever since you started talking about Cassandra and the, which Greek God or which Greek legend do you associate with as an HR leader? I've been thinking about this a lot lately, probably more than is healthy.

Stacey (29:11):

I'm glad that one stuck. I might have to bring that back out. Create some more.

Kim (29:15):

I really, I can't stop thinking about it, Stacy. So maybe we are going to need to collaborate on this. I think we were talking about HR tarot decks. Oh yeah. HR and Greek mythology. There's something there. Okay. That is my toot toot too.

Stacey (29:34):

Yeah, no, that's a good one. So my golden toot for the year is a little bit of a conglomerate of things. And looking back, I think the things that felt the best to me were around some, and it's still not enough. It's always we have to measure the, I guess the progress even when it's not where we want it to be, but the move forward around parental leave, prenatal care protections for pregnant workers. So in 2024, the EEOC finalized regulations for the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act,

Kim (30:17):

New York Political.

Stacey (30:19):

Yeah. Oh, is that politics. New York became the first state to mandate paid time off for prenatal care. And we had also

Kim (30:29):

Political, this is so weird that these policies are, anyway,

Stacey (30:32):

Sorry. And then you had companies like city boosting paid parental leave to match what was going on with the rest of the industry. So for me, I know this, I'm not a parent, and so this probably still feels for parents like this is not enough and I'm sure that it isn't, but it also felt, to me it felt like progress. And I think also that we would still really hope that things would happen, not piecemeal. It's kind of annoying and frustrating that everything has to happen one company at a time, one state or city at a time, and why it can't happen in a cohesive way. I mean for everyone, but also for HR folks who have to patchwork all of this stuff together. Oh my

Kim (31:27):

Gosh. Oh my gosh. Doing, creating our parental leave policy at Oyster across, I think at the time we were only in 50 or 60 countries, but patching together a global parental leave policy across all of these different places, it's a nightmare.

(31:44):

And that even within the United States, and this was something that was so funny, working with some of our customer support reps who were supporting our customers, who were HR leaders, hiring people in all different locations. Some of our customer support reps who were outside of the US were learning about US parental leave laws as they tried to help our customers through navigating this, and they were like, wait, every state does it differently. Yes. They're like, so the US is a lot of different countries all put together and sometimes the things overlap and sometimes they don't. I was like, correct.

Stacey (32:23):

You're like, and sometimes even at the city level, yes, it's different.

Kim (32:28):

This is why I always say, if you can do HR in San Francisco, you can do HR anywhere. San Francisco, you have San Francisco, and then you have California, and then you have the us. It's a nightmare. But what if we had one national policy that applied to everyone regardless of work status? What if your healthcare wasn't tied to your employment?

Stacey (32:49):

I know.

Kim (32:50):

Yeah.

Stacey (32:51):

Anyway. Not political. Not political.

Kim (32:54):

No. HR has nothing to do with politics and you should keep them out of the workplace. Don't talk about politics, by the way, also immigration.

Stacey (33:03):

Oh my gosh. Yeah. I know. I think that is, of course, the interesting thing about it all too, right, is even to bring it back to the SHRM of it just for a minute, is that the SM of it, HR of it all, the s shem of it all HR folks, if you have worked with immigration, if you have navigated parental leave, if any of these things, those are impacted by politics. So I think for our profession, we have to really be aware of all of those things and understand how that plays. And so I think to not how it all plays together. So I think you have to have an awareness that your work is impacted by

Kim (33:55):

Your work is inherently political. Even if you take an example of minimum wage, which was, that was a topic for political, the presidential candidates, this political cycle, how much is minimum wage going to be? Is minimum wage going to be raised? That impacts your business bottom line, because what your minimum wage is impacts what you're compensating people. That impacts, even if you're like, well, we pay everyone above minimum wage anyway. Everyone is exempt, blah, blah, blah. There are laws about exempt employees having to make a certain percentage calculated based on minimum wage. These things all intersect and there's no way of escaping it. You can argue politics at work or not, but the work itself is inherently political. And if you're in HR and you don't think your work is political, then you're not being an effective leader, I guess. I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. Look again at what your job is.

Stacey (34:55):

Yeah, exactly. So much of it is impacted by what our government officials and political leaders are doing and what they decide and how we form our policies within programs within a workplace, obviously depends upon that as well. But yeah, so I think for, sorry, we

Kim (35:20):

Just took it down to a side note. Again,

Stacey (35:22):

We were trying to be too d Yeah, we're kind. Bring it back up. So that for me, even like I said, even though it's not, I think enough, it's not what we would hope. I would love to not be doing things from an HR perspective in a piecemeal way where I have to be paying attention to what city and state and locale everyone is in order to make it an efficient policy. At least. I think that the toot of this is also that when one company does it, another company does it, another company matches. When one state does it, another state does it another state matches, right? And that is how in the way that we're able to make progress when things aren't happening at a national level, that's how it happens. And so I'm hopeful that maybe New York is the first, they're not the last, right? So that's, for me, that's what I, in the cloudy sky of 2024, that is the little ray of sun peeking through for me.

Kim (36:32):

And I will say with bringing back our earlier note about AI and how everything, this feels like the year of ai, the people who are in New York and want to learn more about the paid leave that is available to you, to your company, go to paid leave.ai. It is a great resource that is available and they're looking at expanding it countrywide, great resource for just understanding the benefits that are available to you. I think that's one of the hardest things about all of this. As you said, building policies that cater to every employee specific location and needs. But this is an instance where AI can help because it can scrape the government language and the legalese around benefits and help spit out something that's really useful to people.

Stacey (37:23):

Nice. All right. Well, on that note, that

Kim (37:28):

Is also not an ad. I'm not affiliated. It's just a good tool. I'm supporting the people who are building it.

Stacey (37:34):

Fabulous. Well, that's it. This is the last Toot or Boot of the year.

Kim (37:39):

Happy New Year.

Stacey (37:40):

We are trying to end it with some hopeful golden toots. And Kim, I appreciate.

Kim (37:48):

Can I do a quick plug for something that's not mine because I'm looking at it? Sure. Our mutual friend, Cassandra, has these beautiful books, and I just got one for myself and for every member of my adult female family, it's like daily gratitude and weekly reflections, and very much with the mental space of like, you've got this, which feels really important right now in this environment that we're in and that we're going into. And as we're wrapping up, wrapping down, just want to put that if you need something, if you like having a thing to write in, it's not your average journal.

Stacey (38:30):

And if you need a reminder that in 2025 you do have this, you got this.

Kim (38:37):

Yeah.

Stacey (38:38):

Yeah. It will be that touch point for you.

Kim (38:42):

And if you feel like you don't find a friend and get some validation from someone who loves you.

Stacey (38:52):

All right. Kim, I appreciate so much that you are here to wrap up this first year of Toot or Boot with me.

Kim (39:04):

I'm so glad that this exists in the world and that you are doing it.

Stacey (39:08):

And if anyone wants to connect with you after listening to the show, how can they do that?

Kim (39:16):

Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn, linkedin.com/in/kimrohrer or my website is patchwork portfolio.com.

Stacey (39:28):

All right, fabulous. And everyone, have a wonderful end of your year.