Meta's "do not rehire" list, the decline of workplace friendships, and HR teams too stretched to action employee feedback

In this episode, we analyze new Glassdoor research suggesting employees are increasingly deprioritizing workplace relationships, questioning whether this shift stems from broader social disconnection or reflects changing priorities in a hybrid world. We also discuss a revealing Perceptyx survey showing that while 95% of HR teams are collecting employee feedback, only 27% feel confident they can act on it—highlighting the growing burnout crisis among HR professionals who are stretched too thin. Finally, we explore the controversy surrounding Meta's "do not rehire" list, examining the tension between standard HR offboarding practices and transparency in employment relationships. 

Connect:

Kim Minnick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kim-minnick/

Stacey Nordwall: https://www.linkedin.com/in/staceynordwall/

Articles:

Employees care less and less about workplace relationships, new research finds

Stressed HR teams say they can’t take action on employee feedback 

Meta keeps secret ‘do not rehire’ list of ex-employees — despite exceptional performance reviews: report 

Transcript

Stacey Nordwall (00:00):

Welcome to Toot or Boot, where we sift through the week's HR headlines so you don't have to. I'm Stacey Nordwall, your host with 15, 20 years in hr, mostly building people functions from the ground up at early stage tech companies. We get together, chat about the news, toot, what we like, boot, what we don't like, and joining the conversation today is Kim Minnick. Welcome back. Kim.

Kim Minnick (00:25):

Thanks for having me back. I'm so excited to be here.

Stacey Nordwall (00:29):

Are you ready? Have you got your tooting and booting hats on.

Kim Minnick (00:32):

I've got my tooting and booting hats. I am ready to go. Should I do a quick intro? Hey, I do people ops. I've been around the block for around 15 ish years. I'm for hire. I'm your fractional people ops pal. Yeah, building teams. Loving it. Let's do it.

Stacey Nordwall (00:52):

All right, let's dig in. We have an article from HR Brew employees care Less and Less about workplace relationships, new research finds. I haven't even done the recap. And Kim is, her face is fully Okay, wait. She's reading the recap. Okay. New Glassdoor research finds employees are increasingly deprioritizing workplace relationships which may potentially impact their wellbeing and productivity. They point to several factors for decline, like American work culture, erosion of trust and employment relationships and poorly executed hybrid and remote work policies. They suggest facilitating relationship building through employee chosen experiences to basically boost those connections, improve retention, reduce group think, and help prevent toxic workplace behaviors. Kim, your reaction was a strong one. What did you think about this?

Kim Minnick (01:47):

When I first saw the title, I think the title is Employees Care Less about Workplace Relationships. I yelled Good. I was like, good. What? When in our society as an adult, and the article kind of touches on this, but work should not be the only place that we are finding relationships. And to me it's a symptom of hyper capitalism that we're like, okay, if you need friendships work, if you need healthcare work, if you need this work, it's just so dystopian to me. So I read that and was like, cool, how can we as HR leaders not facilitate relationships in the workplace, but facilitate a better work life balance so folks can explore places to find communities that can't be cut off during a riff event?

Stacey Nordwall (02:38):

Oh yeah. That's so good. Kim

Kim Minnick (02:42):

I mean, and the article, I think Adam Grant does talk about this. We used to find relationships in organized religion that's not my bag or the book club or this, and I was like, yeah, and I have found at the gym, there's a crafting group that I'm going to check out so I can get my crochet chops on. And I'm able to do that now because I work for myself, I control my own schedule and I'm able to build time and space in for communities and not reliant on work. So that was the extreme literal head roll of my reaction to this.

Stacey Nordwall (03:25):

Yeah. Yeah. I think I had a different thought about it, but I really love that. I mean, it is similar, but kind of different thought. I love what you're saying about, because I think it's true. There's research, and I've read about this before about that folks are finding community in fewer and fewer places, and a lot of these things that it's kind of like community and decline, I think that they call it, where you just don't have the kind of level of connections or our housing and neighborhoods aren't built in ways that are conducive to meeting and hanging out and things like this. And I don't think I quite took that next leap where you have taken it about, well, that doesn't mean everything needs to happen in a workplace. Let's focus on facilitating that, which is a great point. And to your point about rifs and layoffs. Exactly. I've had that experience too where you get cut off and then a big part of your community or your relationships is gone because that has been severed. And so I think you're right in saying, let's think about where we can create this balance so that people can then, they're not so tired, they can't facilitate those relationships elsewhere. They can seek them elsewhere and that it's an important thing. And so I love that you brought that up.

Kim Minnick (04:51):

Exactly. There are not a lot of places in our society where we can exist for free. There's not a lot of places where you can just exist for free. I do love Ethena is mentioned in this article. Shout out, Melanie. The way they do a relationship connection, they give employees X dollars a month so they can go meet. I do love that. I love the opportunity that folks can choose to engage. I find a lot of community in my professional network, Stacey, among others, you're my people. And in a way, work brought us together, but the relationship grew differently. So we can always give us a helping hand, but I worry that the pendulum is going to swing so far that we're so reliant on a workplace that can fire us at any moment. How I worked at a company, this article mentioned the third thing, and we had a budget for the third thing, go take a creativity day. Go take a day to invest in something that fills your cup besides work and besides home. And I would love to see more companies doing that, facilitating that balance.

Stacey Nordwall (06:05):

Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the things I feel like they do rightly point out is that, and it's not just remote and hybrid work. I think workplaces in general don't necessarily intentionally think about how community is created and connected there. And I think that that's something clearly that's important for folks to really be intentional about how they're creating those connections. So one of the things they mentioned in the article also though, which I wanted to call out, they said, because they're kind of talking about this between, oh, remote and hybrid work. They're almost blaming that in a way for this continued disconnection and removal from workplace relationships. But what they say is, while research shows being in the office, at least half the week mitigates most negative effects on coworker relationships. Many workplaces do not execute hybrid and virtual work policies to focus on relationship building. And the thing I always think when I see this is most negative effects on whose relationships, because I feel like we've also seen a lot of people talk about and research that a lot of folks prefer, I don't want to say a lot. There are folks who prefer not being in the office because then they don't have to deal with ableism, sexism, racism, et cetera. So when they talk about that it mitigates negative effects on coworker relationships. I'm thinking, whose relationships and does it increase negative effects on other people's relationships? So yeah,

Kim Minnick (08:00):

That's so good. I thought, yeah, most companies have not optimized to build relationships in a hybrid or a digital first environment. No one knows the rules, so it's hard to keep up. But I love what you're calling out for who, because you're right. Me personally, I'm a weird human and I like to be my weird human self on my own. And going into an office three days is panic inducing for me. I know I'm going to get called weird again and just for me remote works, but I had a five year ramp up to learn how to build relationships and perform and excel against expectations in a digital first way. It's a different working environment.

Stacey Nordwall (08:57):

So

Kim Minnick (08:58):

Too, to everything you said,

Stacey Nordwall (09:02):

I feel like this is the thing we need to rewrite this article. I feel like you were calling out some things that I think are great. There's some questions that I have. The other things is because I have to, this is a little shout out to Cassandra Babilya because I had her on and she said there was some survey, she dug into the methodology. So I was like, okay, Cassandra, I'm going to channel you. Look at the methodology for this that it was a poll Glassdoor poll that ran for two days in January and was answered by 800 US professionals, and it was a yes or no to have you ever stated a job because you had a work bestie. So I'm like, okay, I don't know that I'm willing to put too much on that if I'm thinking about trying to foster relationships in the workplace or anything like that, that seems, I dunno, I mean I'm no statistician, but I wonder about the methodology.

Kim Minnick (10:08):

The efficacy doesn't seem great in the approach. Look, I do agree. It's great to have a friend at work, someone who you can vent to someone who understands the BS that you're dealing with, but that should not be extrapolated to HR managers now need to facilitate relationship building because our employees don't have time to find community outside of work.

Stacey Nordwall (10:38):

Yes, hundred percent. We've got enough going on. I think we need to create environments where people can thrive, and that also means thriving outside of the workplace. Not everything needs to happen within the workplace.

Kim Minnick (10:55):

Toot toot

Stacey Nordwall (10:58):

Boot, the article. Toot Stacey.

(11:03):

Oh my gosh. All right, thank you. All right. Let's go on to the HR dive article. It was titled, stressed HR Teams say they can't take action on employee Feedback. The recap here, a March, 2025 Perceptyx survey of 750 HR leaders found that while 95% maintained or increased employee listening efforts in the past year, only 27% felt confident these programs will lead to desired business outcomes, which is down from 43% in 2024. They said the primary barrier to acting on feedback was intense HR workload with over 40% of HR leaders saying their jobs have become much more difficult, 30% considering leaving the field and a quarter already feeling burnt out. What did you think about that, Kim?

Kim Minnick (11:55):

We are that dog that's in flames and this is fine. We are. This is fine dog

(12:02):

Lovingly. I love people ops. I love hr. I have a very traditional path to get here. We are the plus one organization. Oh, don't know what to do, hr. I'll do it. HR will do your offsites. Oh, covid issues, hr. Oh, changing government regulations. Throw it on hr. So yes, of course, we're doing so much. I do think we're listening really well. The issue is I don't think we're asking the right questions, right? We're listening to employees about their experience, about what they're enjoying about their manager. We're not asking them questions. What could the business be doing better? Where's our strategy off? We're not asking them to rate the performance of the business. So of course, when we're listening to them, we're not asking questions to advance the strategic initiatives of the business. We're just creating all this work to hopefully create a better work environment. When I think we could zoom out and say, Hey, when we all win, we all win. So let's talk about how to better streamline these conversations. Let's ask better questions to make your workday better, to make the company performance better, and then we can all go home and build those communities on our own.

Stacey Nordwall (13:22):

Indeed, right? Yeah, I agree. I had a few think thoughts on this. One was, to your point, there is real value to asking the right questions. And I think a lot of folks don't necessarily know how to ask the right questions or get to some of the articles we talked in our previous episode. You're maybe getting at the symptoms, but not the underlying problem at the questions that you're asking. So I think that there is an element there, which is obviously why CultureAmp, I'm a former camper. Those companies exist because they're helping people to try to ask the right questions. There's also, on top of that, if you know can't take action, you shouldn't probably be asking the questions because that kind of erodes people's trust. Why am I giving you this feedback? If you're not telling me what the feedback, what you've got, you're not being transparent. You're not taking action. We know that there's no point in asking if you can't action it. And I think 0% surprised to hear that HR leaders are overloaded and burnt out.

Kim Minnick (14:37):

What else is new?

Stacey Nordwall (14:39):

And

Kim Minnick (14:39):

Nothing is new there, but I do to use one of our favorite phrases, I think this is a good time to do more with less. If your employee listening program isn't serving you, strip it down. If it's causing more work on your end to argue with a wall at the end of the day about things that need to get done, and then now employees aren't even trusting you because you're not bringing it back to them. Maybe strip it down, maybe do less with your listening program. Maybe just ask a couple of questions and focus it on the business. I think that to your point, if you're not going to change it, if employees say that they're overworked, but you are not willing to add more resources or cut down, then does your listening program really have the potential to have the outcomes that employees are looking for?

Stacey Nordwall (15:32):

I think also, so generally I tooted it because I'm like, yeah, this is accurate. I agree. I think the boot for me under that was that the framing continues to be about that. The listening falls onto HR teams. So HR is usually a small department within the org, not the most resourced and yet expected to have org-wide cultural impact and influence. And we cannot do that on our own. It's just not possible. We absolutely can't do it without other teams and leaders getting on board with it. So I think also I would like for the conversation to extend beyond just, oh, HR is not listening. Okay, well, HR is listening. I mean, we're listening. We just need a little bit of help. Can we get a helping hand? Yeah, exactly. I mean, I really feel like the leaders that I know who are out there doing the work, they're listening, but they're exhausted and they have the whole org on their shoulders, and that's not a fair expectation. So I think that it really has to be, let's, even in these articles, let's start talking about what is the responsibility of other leaders within the business to engage and take action on employee feedback. It's not just HR teams. It's not just us

Kim Minnick (17:10):

Strong. Agree. And how are you setting that as a practice from the very beginning with your manager? Is that onboarding and documentation? Yes. Yes. Agree.

Stacey Nordwall (17:23):

All right. Now we have another one that I feel like is a little behind the scenes of hr. This is the article about meta. The title is Meta Keeps Secret, do Not Rehire List of X Employees despite Exceptional Performance Reviews. Also, I should note that this comes to us from the NY Post. They do quote other sources, but we know that the NY Post is probably not the best.

Kim Minnick (17:49):

Yeah, it is. It's like tabloid does politics, I think.

Stacey Nordwall (17:55):

So that's a little caveat there. But the recap is that they said Meta maintains an internal do not rehire list that prevents former employees from rejoining the company. Even those who previously had high performance ratings. While meta claims there are clear criteria for determining rehire eligibility applied at the time of departure affected former employees say they were never informed of their ineligible status and only discovered it through persistent questioning. So I feel like this is kind of a good behind the curtains thing, because on the surface, employees generally are not told that they are on a do not hire list. I mean, it's very common for HR folks within their platforms to mark, okay, this was a layoff, this was a resignation, this was a termination. The person is eligible for rehire, they're not eligible for rehire. These are very common things because you're doing this for your own tracking and reporting and all of that. I don't think that there's anything nefarious within that. That is a pretty common practice. I don't know how many people actually know that that's a thing that's happening, but it does because that's our way of looking at turnover and retention and regrettable turnover and all of these kinds of things. So having said that, giving a little bit more context for any of those folks who might be listening who aren't deeply embedded in all things hr, what did you think of this article?

Kim Minnick (19:33):

So again, first gut reaction was like, of course they do. Okay, long time in hr, very heavy in the operation side. Almost every system of record I have worked in fondly called an HRIS has a little tick box. Is this person eligible for rehire or not? Somewhere in this New York Post on a New York Post, employment experts say, this is rare. And I was like, I know which experts. Yeah, no, we all do this. But one, there's some really good reasons for it. If there's a sexual harassment, if there is, to your point, nefarious actions that are found, that eligibility needs to outlive my tenure. So we put it in a system of record. Now the here, the big miss is that it's kept a secret. We should be talking about, this would be a part of the exit interview or your offboarding paperwork. And I always tell employees or folks, when I get to meet them, if you have the opportunity to ask those questions, am I eligible for rehire? And what information do you confirm on a reference check as a departing employee? That's probably stuff you want to know. But yeah, this list does exist. Shouldn't be secret.

Stacey Nordwall (21:01):

Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting. So are you saying you think it should be, employees should be told when they're exiting? You're on our do not rehire list.

Kim Minnick (21:11):

I think you should know if you're not eligible for rehire, you should probably know and hopefully know why if you're performance managed out. I can see that being a reason. This is not as long as it's not for a protected reason. This is not under the eyes of the US law an illegal practice.

Stacey Nordwall (21:34):

Yeah, definitely

Kim Minnick (21:35):

Not. You can say someone's not eligible for rehire. I just happen to believe you should probably tell that person.

Stacey Nordwall (21:42):

Yeah, I think that was the, it definitely the article reads as though like, oh, this is secret stuff happening behind it. Any HR person will tell you that that is a common practice when you are offboarding someone, is to go through and kind of categorize the nature of the exit. Are they resigning? Is it a termination? Were performance issues. All of these things, as you said, it's part of the system of record. And again, not because of they're trying to maintain some secret list, but to your point, organizations are big people come and go. It's good to have that information on hand so that if there was some kind of thing that really would preclude someone from being rehired that they aren't rehired. And so that's common practice. I guess I kind of wonder if just because Meta was doing things so shady,

Kim Minnick (22:39):

Egregiously,

Stacey Nordwall (22:40):

Yeah, it seems like they were doing some pretty shady stuff to begin with that. Maybe that's why people are really coming back and saying, Hey, I don't understand this. This wasn't made clear to me. As far as I knew I was a high performer. There's no reason for me to think that I would not be eligible for rehire. And then that's a very different conversation along the lines of what you were saying of that this should have been part of their exit conversation, or if they're doing layoffs. Certainly folks should be told in part of that process of you would be eligible for other positions within the organization.

Kim Minnick (23:20):

Totally. And look, someone can be a high performer and ineligible for rehire.

Stacey Nordwall (23:26):

Yeah, that too.

Kim Minnick (23:28):

Brilliant Jerks do exist. And sometimes you say, Hey, there's such a deep values misalignment between the organization and this human. It has caused issues, so we know better. We're not going to hire this person again. But again, that is new information to them in an exit interview or on their last day. Or when you're sharing this information, Hey, you're not eligible for rehire because of the deep values misalignment. You got other problems, boo. Yeah.

Stacey Nordwall (24:01):

Yeah. I mean truthfully too. Yeah. If that's not having that conversation until the exit interview, you're not doing it right. You're not doing

Kim Minnick (24:11):

It. And then whether the list is secret or not, it's still a crappy list.

Stacey Nordwall (24:16):

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. So I think just to put the end on that, I booted it. I booted that article.

Kim Minnick (24:25):

Yeah, boot, boot it, boot it. It's a practice that exists. Ask, I'll say, ask those questions when you are leaving an organization, am I eligible for rehire? What benefits should I know about as a departing employee? And what information do you confirm on a reference check? Those are good things for you to know.

Stacey Nordwall (24:46):

Yeah, I love that. And I'm sure that most people don't even think to be asking those questions, so that is great.

Kim Minnick (24:52):

Of the nature of the meeting normally.

Stacey Nordwall (24:54):

Yeah, that too. So that is a great tip. Alright, well Kim, thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your insights with us. If people want to connect with you, learn from you, maybe take a performance management workshop from you, how might they do all of these things?

Kim Minnick (25:13):

What a tee up? Yeah. Find me on LinkedIn. Kim Minnick, M-I-N-N-I-C-K, a bunch of ramblings. I've got a performance management learning series coming up. So if you want to build better organizational practices to listen to your employees better and get those business priorities in line, my dms are open. Come say, hi, Stacy. Thank you for having me. This was a blast.

Stacey Nordwall (25:40):

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