Get on board or get out buyout tactics, sex discrimination and revenge quitting

We discuss a recent sex discrimination case where a male employee in a female-dominated workplace filed a claim after being excluded from awards with the announcement "it's not going to be any of the men." We explore the complex dynamics of being in the minority at work.

Next, we analyze the growing trend of companies like Google and the Trump administration offering buyouts with an underlying message of "get on board or get out." What does this signal about workplace culture when organizations are explicitly prioritizing mission alignment over accommodating diverse perspectives?

Finally, we question the emerging concept of "revenge quitting" - is this just a rebranding of employees setting reasonable boundaries by leaving toxic environments? We examine how companies are scrambling to prevent turnover, but seemingly don't want to acknowledge how this is the work of DEI and HR.

Connect with DeMario:

On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/demario-bell-7a510994/

Connect with Stacey:

On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/staceynordwall/

Articles

Man loses sex discrimination claim after boss says ‘sorry boys’ at awards do

Why Trump and Google are paying employees to quit and what it means for your business

5 ways employers can prevent employees from revenge quitting in 2025

Chapters

• 1:41 Man Loses Sex Discrimination Claim
• 14:10 Why Trump and Google are paying employees to Quit
• 26:21 Five Ways Employers can Prevent Employees from Revenge Quitting in 2025

Transcript

Stacey Nordwall (00:00):

Welcome to Toot or Boot, a weekly discussion about HR and work-related news. Each week we toot the news we like and boot the news we don't like. I'm your host, Stacey Nordwall. I have about 20 years of HR experience, mostly in early stage tech companies. And joining us today, we have DeMario Bell back, Welcome to DeMario.

DeMario Bell (00:20):

So glad to be back. Hi, Stacey.

Stacey Nordwall (00:22):

It's great to be here. I'm glad that you've come back for a second episode. For any of those folks who didn't hear you the first time, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

DeMario Bell (00:32):

Yeah, so I'm Mario Bell. I've worked in HR Tech for the past several years. Most recently I was at Culture Amp. I was the head of our HR community leading over a hundred thousand HR professionals and people leaders. Such an exciting time. But my background, Stacey, is in community building. I love community, all things community. I consider myself a community architect, so it's such a joy to be at the intersection of two of my loves, HR and community, and how do we just make places more inclusive and equitable and where people want to belong. I'm a first generation college grad, so that shapes so much of how I move throughout the world and how I empathize and what also brings me to this space. And most recently, I founded my own community consultancy company focused on helping organizations build internal community and as well build external community with our customers as well.

Stacey Nordwall (01:30):

Fabulous. Well, I'm so glad that you could come back and do another round of Toot or Boot with me. We're going to start off with one, an interesting one. This is from The Guardian. The title is Man Loses Sex Discrimination Claim After Boss Says, “sorry, boys” at Awards do. The recap is that a man working at a company predominantly staffed by women, filed a sex discrimination claim after not receiving a Christmas award where the award was announced by a woman director who said, now it's time for the awards. Spoiler alert, it's not going to be any of the men, the tribunal. This happened in the uk. The tribunal dismissed his claims and he was later dismissed for gross misconduct. And I'll start off by saying, this is one I felt really mixed about. My initial response was a bit welcome to being a woman in the workforce. Welcome to being in a situation where you are not in the dominant group. And having to experience what that feels like, which is often not great, but then also because it's happening to a man instead of a woman doesn't make it better. Okay. So I felt very, very conflicted about this. What did you think after reading it?

DeMario Bell (02:53):

The same way we know Stacey, that workplace discrimination is real, and we know that underrepresented groups do experience it at higher rates than other particular groups. So when I read this similar, I was torn. I, I'm like, yes, I could see both ends of this. And what I mean by see both ends of this, both things could be true. And just when I separated it from the article, when I look at the situation from the article, I was torn. I said, I would not know how to deal with this. So yeah, we can dig into it. But yeah, I was just like, huh. Yeah.

Stacey Nordwall (03:48):

So I think for the listeners, the additional context here too was that, and why this likely I don't think would fall into the case of discrimination, is that the award was voted on by peers. So this was not something where it was selected by managers or directors. It was voted on by fellow employees. He had been working there for three months or about at the time. So it is completely easy to believe that maybe he hadn't worked there long enough to have been in the contention for an award to win an award, and that his peers just voted for other people because they wanted to vote for other people. So there's a very easy way to see that It wasn't necessarily about discrimination or sex discrimination. And then you have to look at the comment itself of like, oh, sorry, boys, or it's not going to be any of the men. And it's like, okay, that's not great. We're not living for that. And I can see you shaking your head.

DeMario Bell (05:05):

Yeah. So I hear you. I hear you. So for me, Stacey, I think this is a case of where language matters, where the language that was used did make someone feel othered. In this case,

(05:22):

To your point, I don't know that this is a case of discrimination because there was no pattern or evidence that would support that this individual had experience with being discriminated against by this manager or this workplace. I do think this is a case where, sorry boys, none of the men are going to get it. It was not only tone deaf. I do think that it was irresponsible. I do think that it was just, in this case, it just shows that whether or not it was for fun, it was for levity that some people might not render it that way. Now, going to follow a lawsuit, it felt like having your mom call the employer. And I'll say that, I will say that, but lemme just say this, Stacey, real talk. How many spaces have you and I been in where language have been used? And we have felt like, Ooh, that was an ouch moment, and no one has to come over to you or me, Stacey, and say, are you okay? Did that offend you? And to your point, I don't look at this. This was peer selected, their peers selected this award. So yeah.

Stacey Nordwall (06:38):

Yeah. I know. I was trying to think of the reverse of if it was in the reverse, like, oh, sorry ladies, you're not going to get it. Yeah. I think it would just be like, yeah, okay. And I wouldn't love that comment, but I also, it's like I've experienced it so many times that I'd just be like, okay, whatever. Which is again that interesting thing of this, of how it happens when someone who's not used to being not in the dominant group experiences something when he's not in the dominant group.

DeMario Bell (07:18):

I was about to say that. I said, this is different. I hear you like Stacey, I regret that we would have that reaction initially, but we're human, so we will have that reaction. But we're not in dominant groups in the workplace. You see what I'm saying? So we don't have, this article is so nuanced. This situation is so nuanced, power and privilege. And so it's no pattern where women have historically discriminated against men and or oppressed men. So I hear you. Yeah. It's one of those cases where when someone says to me, they talk about, and I'm just going to real with you, reverse racism, it's not a thing. 

DeMario Bell (08:14):

An oppressed group. Cannot oppress, oppress those who are in power. It doesn't happen. So yeah. So for me, it was a case where I think that what I think how a better angle for this discussion, not us, but the way that the article is, how do we in the workplace develop clear standards for inclusive language? And then the other, how we opened this discussion was what makes discrimination claims legitimate versus frivolous? And when we look at this, when we read articles like this, again, we know that workplace discrimination is real, but when we read something like this, we're like, this is silly.

Stacey Nordwall (09:08):

I know. I think that we had so many thoughts and emotions and conflict about, it speaks a lot to our experiences, what's happening in the world right now. The fact that I feel like we're going to see a lot more cases like this with everything that's going on. And so yeah, it really, it's funny because I had a lot of layers of my experience in comprehending and thinking through this article.

DeMario Bell (09:37):

I think what the article didn't give us those Stacey, I think that's the reason why we were, at least me. The reason I was going back and forth was there wasn't enough examination or context for us to go off of. And I think the other thing is, one of the things that I tried to do and wanted to do, I think this is just important to humanity, is to put myself in their shoes and to see how they would have felt. And I could imagine anytime any of us, Stacey, or in any environment where we're not the majority, and we might be one of or a few of, and we feel that we're not getting recognized and others are getting recognized, I think it's natural. And for folks who are saying, no, this is untrue. We all have unconscious bias.

DeMario Bell (10:35):

It’s natural for us to feel like, did any person of my identity ever play into that again? I truly did. But it was hard when you just put all these things together and it was just like, well, welcome to the world of what women and people of color go through, walked in our shoes

Stacey Nordwall (10:54):

For a moment. Yeah, I know. That was kind of my initial thought was like, okay, suck it up. Bye. And I know that then I had to bring myself out of my initial just snark reaction to it and actually be empathetic and think more concretely and more constructively about it. So yeah,

DeMario Bell (11:22):

I wonder if this article would've been written if it was the other way around,

Stacey Nordwall (11:27):

To be

DeMario Bell (11:28):

Honest with you.

Stacey Nordwall (11:29):

Yeah, totally. 

DeMario Bell (11:32):

So what did you give it, Stacey? 

Stacey Nordwall (11:33):

Oh, I said it was a boot because, and I don't know, I don't even know why. It just, I felt like, I think it was because ultimately it's so hard to talk about and harassment in the workplace and to bring that up into a workplace when it has happened to you. And it frustrates me when I see, and you kind of said this of was this just frivolous? And it felt like it was, and it bothers me when people bring about frivolous claims like this because there are so many folks who really are negatively impacted and who don't get heard that for this to not only be heard but be reported on is a bit like why

DeMario Bell (12:37):

An award?

Stacey Nordwall (12:39):

Yeah,

DeMario Bell (12:41):

An award. I'm booted as well, Stacey, because it misrepresents workplace discrimination,

DeMario Bell (12:49):

Which is real and those who have gone through it, we are not filing lawsuits over things like that. We are filing lawsuits because we have a documented paper trail of a pattern of behaviors that we have experienced. The other reason why I'm booting this, it missed an opportunity for a real conversation around how workplace discrimination shows up. And I don't want nobody coming in my dms, but I would say that not to say that people who look like you and me are the only groups who experience or who can't experience workplace discrimination. Yes, we all can, all can no matter who you are. This case was not a true representation of what that could really look like and what it looked like systemically as well.

Stacey Nordwall (13:59):

Alright, let us go on to our next article from Inc. This one is Why Trump and Google are paying employees to Quit and what it means for your business. So the recap for this article, this was from a couple of weeks ago, and that already seems like ages ago, given everything that happens on the daily. But the Trump administration offered federal employees a buyout. Google offered a buyout to 25,000 of their employees. And the author says that the bottom line when it comes to this is basically get on board or get out, that they are basically sifting through the workforce to get folks who are mission aligned. And the author says, you can hire as an employer, you could hire these workers, but you should also make sure that they're aligned with the mission of your company. And this wasn't part of the article, but I also saw that UnitedHealthcare is offering buyouts to about 30 K of their employees and will do layoffs if they don't meet their buyout quotas. So what do you think about this whole shift into buyouts, firings as opposed to layoffs and this message of get on board or get out?

DeMario Bell (15:08):

It's a lot. I mean, because what I'm nervous about Stacey is topics becoming politicized, polarizing when they were already happening. Layoffs just, they happen as a part of the business. Buyouts happen as a part of the business. So I would say this in this context, I had a reaction to it because the intent was not pure in this. I am worried about the number of layoffs and the number of buyouts that we are seeing right now and the tens of thousands and what that will do to our economy. But this entire ecosystem, I was just talking to a friend last night, let me just go down this rabbit hole. I'm going to come back.

(16:13):

Let's just use United Health Group, 30,000 over 30,000 folks buy out, if not bought out, then layoff. That's a town. So can you imagine a whole town of people being impacted? And then what that does to the companies, the businesses, the community, that depends on that. So it's not just the people, it's the ripple effect that has on the communities around us. I live in San Francisco, I just moved here a couple of years ago, and the San Francisco I visited for work previously, it's not the San Francisco I see now because layoffs happening, people moving out of the Bay area, companies having to shut down. So it has this ripple effect. So when I see this, I get nervous extremely. I also work in tech and I know that scale up startups, this is prime gold for them because then they'll try to recruit employees from these bigger companies so that displaces professionals who might not have traditional backgrounds or who are more entry level. So all that to say, I also worry that the word mission aligned, it's going to become weaponized and or misused because when you say mission aligned, what are really talking about? What are you saying? So yeah, those are my, I mean we'll dig into, but those are my initial thoughts, Stacey.

Stacey Nordwall (17:39):

Yeah. Yeah, I think so we talked about this on a previous episode where the interesting thing is it used be, or what we've seen in the last couple of years is layoffs. And the layoffs are more like, okay, this is a business decision because we need to look at our overall strategy. And it was more about the business, the company, than it was about the workers. And what you're seeing in some of these meta laying off low performers and Microsoft laying off low performers, and you're seeing this of okay, buyouts because we want people who are mission aligned. That is instead of, and I think this is what you're saying too, instead of it being about the business, it becomes more about the people who are the employees. And that's an interesting shift to me in terms of the messaging about that is that it is creating this more, this tension and this us against them kind of thing about it.

(18:41):

So that is concerning to me. And the other thing that I think is interesting is that I feel like I've had these conversations in HR for a while now where there's this like, oh, well we have to allow for both sides of the opinions to be in the office. We need to create an environment where both sides can feel good expressing themselves. And then you kind of saw some organizations in tech say it's like, no sizeism, right? We're not even going to talk about it in the organization. We want to be neutral. And now it's very, one side is it's my way or the highway. If you don't like it kick rocks. And that is a really interesting trajectory to me when I think about what's happening in the workplace and how it's changing that now. This is kind of where it seems like it's headed. So yeah, I mean in general, it was a boot for me, but it was a very complicated boot, a boot with lots of buckles and straps. You know what I mean?

DeMario Bell (19:50):

I also booted it, Stacey, and you mentioned a couple of, especially your last point is this pendulum is always swinging back and forth when you talked about neutral. And now it's one sided. And I think that we see this depending on what's happening in the macro and the macro here. The reason why I'm booting this is that I'm looking at this as false equivalencies in terms of what Trump is doing with federal government, with the layoffs. I think that layoffs, buyouts are needed. I don't work in federal government, so I don't have data to support whether or not that's needed. But what we do know about the history of Donald Trump is that he wants people who are loyal to him. And so what I'm seeing in the, this is my, I'm seeing what seems similar companies are doing the same thing. We want employees who interpret and or believe in the mission how we believe in it, which goes to that one sided feel like they're all in bed with one another. But what it does ignore, Stacey, and I say this with such reverence, is that those who work for the federal government, they have a unique and a very genuine responsibility to being of service to the work and being of service to the public, to us, the people, and not just the leader.

DeMario Bell (21:28):

So when I looked at those, these are two false equivalencies, but what organizations are doing, they're looking at that as the model, as the example. And so that's what I do worry is that becoming the benchmark right now where folks are looking at, well, I can do a mass lay off. Let's even think about 40,000 government employees taking a buyout or being laid off. Lemme say this, Stacey, let's just say of that 40,000, there are government employees who genuinely will consider that. We'll take that for whatever reasons. But when you think about 40,000 of our government employees potentially being out of the government, what ripple effect will that happen then? Who are they replaced with? And then how does that perpetuate this one sidedness? And this person wanted to become a king. I'm

Stacey Nordwall (22:26):

Sorry. Yeah, I mean I think that I hadn't necessarily thought about that, but that's a good point too of that a lot of business leaders or leaders look at what each other are doing. And so I think I hadn't thought about that when it comes to what the federal government is doing as well. But it makes sense that people would look at that and say, you know what? Actually, yeah, and I think we've seen this with Jamie Diamond from JP Morgan where he's like, you know what? It's my way or no way. And if you don't like it, you can leave. And I'm not doing Zoom calls with Gen Zers and I'm not doing, it's like he's very, it's going to happen the way I want it to happen and the way I'm doing it is the right way. And if you are not on board, get out. And so that is really, it is a big shift. And I think the more people who operate in that way, and it's kind of the same with DEI in some ways, the more people that pull back, the more other people look at that and say, okay, I'm going to pull back too, because that's what everybody else is doing.

(23:40):

And I feel like I see that a lot in tech where CEOs just, they all, once one of them does it, they're like, oh, okay, we all have to do that.

DeMario Bell (23:49):

And it's true. And we saw that in 2022, in 2023 with the mass layoffs with the big tech companies where we don't know whether or not these companies actually needed to do it. But to your point, Stacey, they all look at each other and it's almost like they have a group chat basically all with each other. Are you going to do it? If you do it, I'll do it. That's what it feels like in a way like this good old boys club. The other thing I'll say that came up for me when you were talking is what this does is a it misrepresents unity. And so real unity doesn't come from this idea of get on board or get out,

DeMario Bell (24:35):

But real unity comes from shared values and inclusive dialogue. And I think that what this article has confused Stacey, is compliance and commitment. And so they've conflated it and I think that it might have been intentional. I don't know that to be true, but those are the two things really what we're talking about, compliance and commitment. The other is my last point is it oversimplifies workplace culture down to just mission alignment

(25:13):

Doesn't really capture the nuance and the complex dynamics that make up the mission workplace dynamics. And it ignores the whole diversity of what makes a workplace culture. So when I read this, it's like I want people who want to be bought out to be bought out, people who to get a paycheck on their way going out the door. But what I don't want to happen is for organizations to take the cue from companies like this. If you don't think how we behave, how we think you should behave, we're going to pay you to leave. Because they say that is not the way to do business. And it will backfire. And I tell people, what goes up must come down and I promise you it will come down faster than when it went up. So I worry that companies taking the cue from this as if this is the standard going forward, this will backfire.

Stacey Nordwall (26:10):

Yeah, yeah, I agree. Also, I think this is kind of a good segue. We have an article from Fast Company. This is Five Ways Employers can Prevent Employees from Revenge Quitting in 2025. And I am just going to quote this because it exploded my brain a little bit. So the quote is this phenomenon on the rise since the two thousands sees employees leaving their jobs not just for better opportunities, but as a form of protest and self-preservation against unfair treatment in the past, fear of economic ruin, social stigma and valuing job stability over personal dignity kept many employees from quitting under such circumstances.

(26:59):

They go on to say, companies that want to address this issue have much to gain, but they must go beyond diversity, equity, and inclusion or human resources strategies. Creating a genuine sense of belonging can reshape workplace culture, boost engagement and overall business success. So basically they say the consequences of revenge, quitting or loss productivity, loss of institutional skills and knowledge, potential damage to the organization's reputation and the mitigation is creating a sense of belonging, which they give the five pillars for. I feel like I had so many, I was all over the place with this article. How did you feel about it?

DeMario Bell (27:43):

I liked reading this article to be quite honest with you, Stacey. Okay. Alright. When I first read it, I was just like, first I'd never heard of revenge quitting and I was trying to understand it's not the same as quiet, quitting. So all that to say I liked it. To me, I think that it complimented a previous article that we talked about, which was employee engagement being on a delta, a 10 year decline. And so I liked it. Revenge quitting was something new for me. I'd never heard that concept before. But the reason why I liked it, because I keep saying I liked it, to me I felt that it recognized worker dignity. And especially with how you opened it in the quote as well, where I do think where employees now are just like, I ain't got to take this. And the consequences of staying are far greater than leaving. And we see that. We see workers who are leaving and not having anything lined up just for their own. I am having a reaction to the word protest. And I know for me, anytime that I've quit a company, I don't know that it was an act of protest. It was an act of I just get the hell up out of here. Yes.

Stacey Nordwall (29:14):

Yeah. I think that's why I feel like the first half is a boot for me and the second half is a toot and the boot is like what you're saying. I think it is a weird narrative to put out that because you are leaving an environment that's toxic for you, that that's revenge. Instead of it being this place isn't right for me, this is a boundary I'm leaving. You are just quitting. You're just quitting. If the job is, if you have to say that, then you're quitting because it's not a good place for you. And I think it's weird when it's like we are talking about the previous article. If you don't like it here quit. If you're not missional aligned, quit. And then they quit and it's like that's revenge quitting. You know what I mean? So that's where I'm like this whole, I don't like that narrative about it that again, it puts it on the employees as though they're the ones that are acting out and doing something revengeful or whatever when it's not that.

DeMario Bell (30:31):

I agree with you and which is when I first read it. And how for you, it's both a booted instituted. When I first read it, to your point, I think how the article opened up, it did put a lot of blame back onto on the worker and some of the language that was used in here, revenge and protests. I don't think any of those are going through the mind of an employee when they quit. We have actual workers who are protesting when they strike. That's when I think about protests. I think of workers who are striking, but I'm not thinking, Stacey, if I'm quitting a job when I'm doing this in an act of protest or as an act of revenge, they don't give a damn your job and my job, it's going to be on a job board and the next, if not the same day, the next day, I don please forgive me for being that blunt. But that's how I read that. I'm just like, don't, HR is sitting around after I quit. Well, that was revengeful or ful to do that. I don't think that's the case. So I hear you on that and it does, I think what it does as well, it antagonizes those who do leave a company and the real reasons behind why they truly leave. Again, it puts the blame on the individual and not on what could have gone wrong in this dynamic and that it takes two, it could be more than, but it's not as simple as just someone quitting and they're being vengeful for that, which is absolutely not true.

Stacey Nordwall (32:18):

Yeah, and I think the other kind of challenge I had where I feel like I'm seeing this more and more in articles lately where HR and DEI are kind of the ghosts in the room that no one wants to acknowledge or something. So they say, okay, well, we have to go beyond DEI and HR strategies and seeming to remove HR from the conversation. And then all of their recommendations are essentially HR and DEI strategies. So I think that's also an interesting shift that I'm starting to see where it really does feel like, once again, I don't know, man, I feel like hr, we've had done so much over the past four or five years during and since the pandemic. And then for them to be like, okay, anyways, let's just scooch that over to the side and now we can go beyond these. It just,

DeMario Bell (33:20):

That's a great call out, Stacey, that is a great call out because what I hope people don't hear or read from this is we've tried an hrs way, we've tried it, the office of DEI way, and that didn't work. So now we got to try new things. So we got to go beyond them when that was not the case. And that's not rhetoric that we should be feeding pointing out, which I'm like, well, who wrote this? Tell me more about them and what are they trying to push? What we know, Stacey, HR has had to reinvent itself overnight, literally reinvent itself overnight. And we're all in this together and we're trying to figure this out. And what we're learning is that this is complex. This is hard. We're pushing through this together and HR has to have a seat at the table.

DeMario Bell (34:16):

DEI has to be a part of the equitable operations, and we got to dig deeper into some of these sensational sentences, these headlines, phrases like quiet, quitting and revenge, quitting that will get people to read or listen to a soundbite, but really dig into some substance. So to your point, I liked it, but I'm a mixed bag because it's just some of the language that was used in here. The other piece I'll say to this as well is the five pillars were very interesting to me. I will say the other thing that is missing here that I wish that it would've gone deeper in is talking about the role that psychological safety plays into this, which is a term that we, I'm going to be honest with you, I just recently heard about over the last several years, I hadn't really heard about, maybe it was talked about in other ways, but I didn't really hear about it until the last several years. But what leads up to that and how psychological safety also plays a big part. Not always into why people quit, have quit companies, you, I've quit a company where I just felt like it was time to go, and sometimes that's just enough and you don't need to rationalize that with yourself over me. You just know this ain't working and that's not,

Stacey Nordwall (35:49):

Yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned the five pillars. So I’ll mention, I'll say what those are. For the audience, it was social comfort, connection, contributions, which is basically recognition and opportunities, psychological safety and wellbeing. And that's why I say to me, that's DEI and hr. That is our wheelhouse. So it felt very weird to me to say that we need to move beyond that. They also said it's about creating a culture of belonging. That's DEI. That's HR strategies to me, and that they have to go beyond this checking a DEI box. And I'm like, oh God. They're trying to pretend that it's a checkbox. They're trying to pretend that it doesn't exist anymore.

(36:37):

It felt like just a very, like I said, a weird reframing of trying to magic away. Don't look over here, but it's the same stuff. And I think you are kind of saying this is like, are we getting to the point where we're kind of throwing out these very trendy things like revenge, quitting, quiet, quitting, just to get people's attention so then they'll listen to the same things we've said over and over and over again. We've been, I think for me, this is the same kind of stuff I've been talking about for years. Definitely since I started at Culture Amp. I was there from 2015 to 2020, and this was definitely, we were having these kinds of conversations there pretty consistently. So for me, I'm thinking, is this just that now we have to fight for people's attention, so we're like, ah, here's this trend, revenge, quitting, get people in and then talk about the same, try to tell the same things like, Hey, actually psychological safety. It's like, yeah, we know. Yeah, this is why. It's just a challenge for me because I thought there's nothing wrong about what they're saying in terms of the things to focus on. But I think that those are the things that HR and DEI teams have been focusing on, and now people are trying to remove us from the conversation,

DeMario Bell (38:11):

Which can happen, which can happen. I was talking to Vanessa, who's also in HR about this. We were talking about what is the future of hr given what's happening right now in the world, and HR fighting for his voice at the table being overlooked. When you think about some of what happens in an organization, HR doesn't get the credit for the things that go right, but gets all blame for when it doesn't go. And so this article, it is almost like whiplash. It goes back or back and forth. It's like, okay, I agree with some parts of this, but you're contradicting yourself. So I do, it was a contradiction within this article, but what it did do though, which is why I liked reading it, is that it did start a conversation, a meaningful conversation. So wherever you are on this topic, we can have a rich conversation on a why are folks leaving? And you can learn that through exit survey, employee engagement, or folks are flat out tell you why they're leaving. But to go back and not to talk in a circle, but to go back to what you said, don't place the fault on the employee and say, well, we see this revengeance quitting, then we lose institutional knowledge. We lose X, Y, and Z that have nothing to do with them.

Stacey Nordwall (39:38):

Yeah. I like what you said about it though. It is. I think one of the things, especially from the articles that we've talked about today, is they're really good conversation starters. Whether or not you agree or disagree with some of the parts of it, they really can facilitate a more in depth conversation. So I mean, that's really what I enjoy about it. I love it.

DeMario Bell (40:06):

I Love it.

Stacey Nordwall (40:07):

All right. Well, thank you so much for joining again. It was great to have you here. For folks who want to connect with you, learn more from you, how can they do that?

DeMario Bell (40:19):

Yes, please find me on LinkedIn DeMario Bell, search Stacey's friends, we are connected. You find me. Please send me a dm. I love talking about all things hr, all things community. As I open with the show, I'm working with organizations now. I'm building internal community among their employees and also working with organizations to build community with our customers as well. So if community inclusion, employee engagement are dear to heart to you, please reach out. Yeah, LinkedIn is my go-to. I'm trying to centralize as much as I can on LinkedIn nowadays. Thank you for having me, Stacey.

Stacey Nordwall (40:55):

Thank you so much for joining and thanks everyone for listening.