I Wanna Talk About Me: The Introvert's Guide to Being Heard in a World That Won't Stop Talking
There's a Toby Keith song that most people treat as a punchline. The premise is simple — he's tired of every conversation being about her, and he'd like to talk about himself for a change. It's played for laughs. It's also, if you're an introvert who has spent a career being the listener in every room, painfully accurate.
Because you know exactly what he means.
You just would never say it out loud. That's not what you do.
The Gift That Costs You
Listening is genuinely a skill. Not everyone has it. The ability to be fully present in a conversation, to track what someone is actually saying rather than waiting for your turn to speak, to hold space for another person's experience without immediately redirecting it toward your own — that is a form of emotional labor that our culture celebrates in theory and exploits in practice.
Introverts tend to be good at it. Exceptionally good at it, often. And because they're good at it, they become the default listener in every room they occupy. The colleague who always has time. The friend who always asks how you're doing and actually waits for the answer. The HR professional who can sit across from someone in a difficult moment and make them feel genuinely heard.
It's a gift. It's also exhausting in ways that are difficult to explain to people who don't experience it the same way.
Listening is not passive. It requires sustained attention, emotional regulation, and a constant suppression of your own internal experience in service of someone else's. Do it all day at work — and many introverts in people-focused roles do exactly that — and by the time you get home there is simply nothing left. Not for small talk. Not for social obligations. Not even, sometimes, for the people you actually love.
And here's the part that stings: after all of that, almost nobody asks how you're doing. Not really. Not in the way you ask them.
The One-Sided Conversation Problem
Let's talk about a specific phenomenon that introverts will recognize immediately.
You're in a conversation. Someone asks how you're doing — and for a moment, you think this might actually be a real exchange. You start to answer. And within thirty seconds, something has happened. Either your answer has been used as a launchpad for a story about them that is somehow bigger, more dramatic, and more interesting than yours. Or the conversation has pivoted so smoothly back to their world that you're not entirely sure your answer was registered at all.
This is boomerasking — asking a question with no genuine interest in the answer, because the real purpose of the question was to create an opening to talk about yourself. It happens constantly. It happens in professional settings, in social settings, in networking events specifically designed to be about connection. It is, once you name it, almost impossible to unsee.
There's actually a term for the broader pattern: conversational narcissism, coined by sociologist Charles Derber. It describes the tendency to redirect conversations back to oneself — either by shifting the topic entirely or by responding to someone else's experience with a related personal anecdote rather than a genuine question. Derber's research found it's so embedded in how many people communicate that most practitioners are completely unaware they're doing it. That last part is important. We'll come back to it.
The experience of realizing mid-conversation that it was never actually about you — that the question was a formality, a social nicety, a door that swings one way — is a particular kind of deflation that introverts know well. You showed up. You engaged. You were generous with your attention. And you are leaving the conversation having given everything and received essentially nothing.
That's not connection. That's a performance you didn’t buy a ticket for.
Who Listens to the Listener?
Here's the question that sits at the center of this piece and doesn't get asked nearly enough: Who takes care of the listener?
The world has a lot to say about the value of listening. We teach it in leadership programs. We celebrate it in feedback conversations. We hold it up as a marker of emotional intelligence and professional maturity. What we talk about significantly less is the loneliness that comes with being the most attentive person in every room.
Because that's what it is. Loneliness. A specific, quiet kind that's hard to name because from the outside everything looks fine. You're engaged. You're present. You're asking great questions. Nobody can see that you've been waiting for twenty minutes for someone to return the favor and that it hasn't happened yet and probably won't.
There's a question worth sitting with here — one that introverts tend to turn over privately without ever saying out loud: is it that extroverts genuinely don't hear the same messages about listening that we do? Or do they hear them and just not apply them with the same rigor?
Both possibilities are uncomfortable in different ways. The first suggests a fundamental difference in how people process social interaction. The second suggests something closer to indifference — that the listening advice lands as a concept but doesn't translate into actual behavior change because the motivation to truly hear another person simply isn't there in the same way.
This is where two psychological phenomena are worth naming — because they explain a lot.
The first is illusory superiority — the well-documented tendency for people to overestimate their own qualities relative to others. Most people, when asked, rate themselves as above-average listeners. Statistically, that's impossible. But the belief is genuine and it's widespread, and it means that many people who are actively not listening believe sincerely that they are.
The second is the Dunning-Kruger effect — the finding that people with significant gaps in a particular skill are often the least equipped to recognize those gaps, precisely because the self-awareness required to see the gap is the very skill they're missing. In other words, the worse someone is at listening, the less likely they are to know it.
There's an old saying — attributed variously but felt universally — that a lady never has to announce she's a lady. The same principle applies here. If you have to tell people how well you listen, how empathetic you are, how much you care about others — there's a reasonable chance the people around you already know the answer, and it isn't what you think it is. The people who are genuinely good listeners don't announce it. They demonstrate it. And the people on the receiving end notice immediately.
The Internal Monologue Nobody Hears
For anyone who hasn't lived inside an introvert's head during a one-sided conversation, a brief translation:
They're still talking. That's fine. I'm listening. That's what I do. Wait — did they just circle back to the same point they made ten minutes ago? They did. Okay. I wonder if they realize they haven't asked me a single question. They probably don't. Should I redirect? No, that feels rude. I'll wait. There's going to be a natural pause and I'll — nope, they filled it. That's okay. I genuinely do care about what they're saying. I just also exist. Is that — yes, they're wrapping up. Here it comes. The goodbye. Yep. Gone.
And that - that was NOT a conversation. That was a monologue.
If you recognized yourself in that monologue — either as the person thinking it or, uncomfortably, as the person who prompted it — this article is doing its job.
A Fictionalized Illustration — But You Probably Know This Person
Picture a colleague — confident, loud, well-intentioned in her own estimation — who is called upon to support a struggling employee. The employee is having a hard time. She needs to feel heard.
What follows is a masterclass in conversational narcissism.
The colleague listens for approximately ninety seconds before pivoting. She tells the employee that she needs to find something about herself to be proud of. She offers herself as the example. She talks about her accomplishments, her confidence, her self-care routine, the specific things she does to feel good about herself. The conversation, which was supposed to be about the employee, has become — almost instantly and with complete sincerity — about the colleague.
The colleague leaves feeling she has been enormously helpful. She has, in her own assessment, modeled resilience and self-worth for someone who needed to see it.
The employee leaves having been talked at by someone who fundamentally could not stop making it about herself long enough to actually help.
This is Dunning-Kruger in its most vivid form. The colleague lacks the self-awareness to recognize what she just did. And because she lacks it, she cannot develop it. She will do the same thing tomorrow, and next week, and in every conversation that requires her to set herself aside — because setting herself aside is not a skill she knows she needs.
You probably know someone like this. You have probably spent significant professional energy managing around someone like this. And you have probably, at some point, sat in a meeting and watched this person dominate the room while the quieter, more perceptive people in the room said nothing — because that's what they do.
Finding Your People
Here's where the vinegar gives way to something more useful.
Not everyone is a boomerasker. Not everyone will redirect your answer back to themselves before you've finished giving it. There are people — fewer than you'd like, more than you might think — who will actually ask a follow-up question. Who will remember what you said last time and refer back to it. Who will notice when you've gone quiet and check in rather than filling the silence with more of themselves.
When you find those people, keep them close. Deliberately, intentionally, and with the same care you’ve always given to everyone else's needs.
The particular joy of two introverts in genuine conversation is something that's difficult to describe to someone who hasn't experienced it. The pacing is different. The silences are comfortable. The questions are real and the answers are actually heard and the whole exchange has a quality of mutual respect that makes it feel genuinely restorative rather than draining.
That is not a small thing. That is, in fact, the whole thing.
Give yourself permission to be selective. You do not owe your listening energy equally to everyone who wants it. Reciprocity is a reasonable standard. Seeking out relationships where the exchange is genuinely balanced is not antisocial — it's self-preservation. Quality over quantity is not a consolation prize for people who find large groups exhausting. It's a legitimate and sustainable way to move through the world.
You Are Allowed to Take Up Space
This section is for the introverts who have spent so long being the listener that they've half-convinced themselves that's simply their role. That inserting themselves into a conversation is an imposition. That wanting to be heard is somehow needy or self-centered.
It isn't.
You are allowed to redirect a conversation that has been about someone else for forty-five minutes. You are allowed to answer the question that was technically asked of you but never actually answered. You are allowed to say — out loud, in actual words — "I'd love to tell you about something I've been thinking about."
There is a difference between being selfish and being balanced. Selfishness takes more than its share. Balance asks for an equal share. You have been operating well below your share for a long time. Asking for it back is not selfish. It's overdue.
A few practical things that actually work:
When someone boomerasks and redirects before you've finished — finish anyway. Not aggressively. Just calmly complete your thought before engaging with theirs. Most people won't even notice. The ones who do will respect it.
In networking situations, give yourself explicit permission to exit conversations that are going nowhere reciprocal. "It was great to meet you" is a complete sentence. You do not owe anyone an hour of your attention in exchange for a business card.
Find your recharge ritual and protect it without apology. Not because you're being difficult. But because you cannot pour from an empty cup — and unlike a lot of things people say, that one is actually true.
A Closing Word — Including One for the Extroverts
The world genuinely needs listeners. People who will slow down, pay attention, and make another human feel heard in a world that is moving too fast and talking too loud. That is not a small contribution. It is, in many ways, one of the most important things a person can offer.
But listeners need to be heard too. And the sustainable version of being a generous listener — the version that doesn't end in resentment, exhaustion, or quietly withdrawing from everyone — requires being intentional about who gets that generosity and making sure that somewhere in your life, someone is returning it.
Be selective. Seek reciprocity. Give yourself permission to take up space.
And to the extroverts reading this — we see you. We hear you. We always hear you.
Here's a simple self-audit worth trying. At the end of your next social or professional event, ask yourself honestly:
How many people did I talk to — and how many of those conversations were mostly about me?
How many stories did I tell about myself versus how many questions did I ask about someone else?
How many minutes did I spend talking versus how many did I spend actually listening?
No judgment. Just data. And if the numbers surprise you — that's the beginning of something worth paying attention to.
Just once, ask a follow-up question.
That's all. Just one.
The Vanishing Act: The Psychology Behind Ghosting in Hiring — and Why Everyone Loses
You've been ghosted. So has your candidate. Here's why it has to stop — and what the research says about who's really to blame.
A Scene in Two Acts
Act One. A hiring manager posts a role. A candidate applies — and is passed over. A rejection email goes out. Standard process.
Then she applies again. To a different department. The manager wants to give her a shot; a phone screen is scheduled. No answer.
A few months pass. Another position opens. She applies again. The manager, generous by nature, wants to give her the benefit of the doubt. A phone screen is scheduled again. Again, no answer.
This pattern repeats — the same name surfacing in the applicant queue, and though rejection emails are sent, it continues to surface — across a year and a half and multiple departments. The candidate’s resume shows she has the background in what the company is looking for, and the manager considers that since it’s been over a year, perhaps the candidate has matured; let’s schedule a phone screen. She actually answers; but it doesn't go particularly well, but the manager is becoming desperate to fill the position and schedules an in-person interview.
She doesn't show.
A few months later, her application appears in the system again.
At some point, the only appropriate response is: You have got to be kidding me.
Act Two. A seasoned professional tailors her resume carefully, researches the organization thoroughly that she has applied to, and nails a phone screen. She's then invited for a first interview, then a second. Completes a follow-up phone call. And then she’s asked for one final in-person interview, at the conclusion of which, she is told that she will hear something by the end of the following week. That date comes and goes with no communication. She sends a polite status inquiry at the beginning of the next week. Then another at the end of the week. Then silence. Days become weeks. The role stays posted. She never hears another word.
The hiring manager from Act One and the candidate from Act Two are sitting somewhere right now, furious.
Both feel disrespected. Both feel like their time meant nothing to the other party. And — here's the part that should give everyone pause — both are right to feel that way.
Welcome to ghosting in hiring. It's not new, it's not going away, and in 2026, it has reached levels that the research describes, without exaggeration, as a crisis.
How Bad Is It? The 2026 Numbers
Job seekers have been saying for years that something is broken in the hiring process. The data is now confirming it — in increasingly uncomfortable detail.
Employer ghosting has hit a three-year high and is accelerating:
38% of applicants were ghosted by employers in 2024 — Criteria/Fortune
48% ghosted in 2025 — Criteria/Fortune
53% ghosted in 2026 — and climbing — Criteria, March 2026
That trajectory is not a blip. It is a trend line moving in one direction, consistently, year over year. As Fortune reported in March 2026, job seekers are not imagining things — and the numbers have now reached a three-year peak.
Candidate ghosting, however, is actually declining:
25% of job seekers have ghosted an employer in 2026 — Fortune/Criteria 2026
Compare that to the historical high of 78% in 2022 (Indeed) and 62% in 2024. The "both sides do it equally" narrative that has long been used to deflect employer accountability is no longer accurate. Candidates have largely gotten the message. Employers have not.
Ghost jobs are not an accident — they are often a deliberate strategy:
81% of recruiters acknowledge their employers post roles that don't exist or are already filled — MyPerfectResume 2024, via Fortune
Let that number settle for a moment. More than eight in ten recruiters say their organization posts jobs with no real intent to hire. The reasons, as reported to Fortune, are illuminating:
38% do it to maintain a presence on job boards when not actively hiring
36% do it to assess job posting effectiveness
26% use ghost jobs to gather intelligence on the job market and competitors
And nearly 25% post them specifically to make the company appear as though it isn't freezing hiring — projecting health and growth it doesn't currently have.
"Companies are trying to project 'We're okay, we're still maintaining hiring, that we're still moving in a growth-oriented trend.' In this market, our organization is doing well." — Jasmine Escalera, MyPerfectResume career expert
For the candidate who spent three hours crafting a targeted resume, preparing for a phone screen that was never going to happen: this is why job seekers are using words like tired, depressed, and desperate to describe the current market. They're not being dramatic. The system is failing them.
The level divide — and a finding that may surprise you:
21% of senior-level candidates are ghosted most often — 2026 data
18% of VP-level candidates — 2026 data
Earlier research suggested that senior candidates were protected by relationship-based hiring and executive search accountability. The 2026 data tells a more complicated story. No level is immune — and experienced candidates investing the most in a process are among those most frequently left without a word.
Where Did This Come From? The Origins of a Broken Ecosystem
Ghosting didn't begin in hiring. It began in dating — the digital-age practice of simply ceasing contact rather than having an uncomfortable conversation. The term entered common use in the early 2000s alongside the rise of online dating platforms, where the low stakes/high volume nature of connections made avoidance feel consequence-free.
It migrated into hiring as the job market became similarly transactional and screen-mediated. And then, in the past several years, a convergence of forces turned a rude habit into a systemic crisis.
The AI application explosion. AI tools have made it easier than ever to apply for jobs at scale — tailoring resumes, generating cover letters, and submitting applications in volume. 38% of job seekers now mass-apply to roles, flooding employers with hundreds of applications for a single position, sometimes within hours of posting. As Josh Millet, CEO of Criteria, told Fortune: "The resume, once the benchmark of a job application, is now becoming a weaker signal because it can be easily generated by AI. As more people highly tailor their resume with AI tools, it becomes harder to differentiate the frontrunner in a pool of polished applications."
Recruiter overload. Internal Greenhouse data shows recruiter workload increased by 26% in the final quarter of 2024 alone. An overwhelmed recruiter staring at 500 applications for a single role is not making a deliberate choice to be cruel — but the effect on the candidate who never hears back is identical to deliberate disregard.
The ghost job economy. When 18–22% of active job postings in any given quarter represent roles with no real hiring intent, candidates are sending applications into a void by design. The system isn't just inefficient. In many cases, it's rigged.
The normalization loop. Employers ghost. Candidates, having been ghosted, feel justified in ghosting back. Research from Elon University found that applicants who have previously been ghosted by employers are significantly more likely to ghost in return — suggesting the behavior becomes normalized through reciprocity. Each party taught the other that this is simply how hiring works now.
"Ghosting is less about intent and more about a hiring process that hasn't caught up to how candidates are applying today." — Josh Millet, CEO of Criteria
The Psychology of Candidate Ghosting — Why They Disappear
Understanding why candidates ghost doesn't mean excusing it. But for hiring managers who want to reduce it, understanding the psychology is the starting point.
The Dark Triad connection. In a landmark 2024 study published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, researchers at Elon University examined the personality predictors of candidate ghosting behavior. Their findings were striking. Psychopathy — characterized by impulsivity, lack of empathy, and antisocial behavior — emerged as the strongest predictor. People high in these traits may apply on a whim — and simply not reply when they get a callback, because they were never serious in the first place.
Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). The second major driver identified by the Lyons et al. research: candidates high in FOMO tend to ghost employers to keep their options perpetually open. They are not making a deliberate choice to disrespect anyone. They are simply incapable of committing to what's in front of them while the possibility of something better exists. In a job market saturated with LinkedIn notifications and recruiter outreach, FOMO is in constant activation.
Fear of conflict. For many candidates, ghosting is not a power move. It's avoidance — a way to opt out of an uncomfortable conversation they don't know how to have. Saying "I've decided to pursue another opportunity" requires a directness that, absent a genuine relationship with the recruiter, many candidates simply don't feel obligated to muster.
The process drove them away before they told you. This one belongs on every hiring manager's desk. The 2024 Monster Work Watch Report found that 47% of candidates quit the application process due to poor communication. 46% cited the interviewer's attitude as a reason for disengagement. 27% left because the role was misrepresented. When a candidate ghosts, the question worth asking is not just why did they disappear? but what did we do — or fail to do — that made disappearing feel like the right call?
It's Not the Same at Every Level — The Level Divide
Ghosting does not affect all candidates equally, and it does not manifest the same way across levels. Understanding the differences matters — because the cause and the cure look different depending on where you are in the hiring funnel.
Entry-level candidates face the highest volume of employer silence. They are often lost in a flood of applications, receive the least personalized attention, and are most likely to be screened out by automated systems without any human acknowledgment. On the candidate side, ZipRecruiter research found that 31% of first-time job seekers admit to ghosting an employer during their current search — compared to only 12% of experienced professionals. First-timers often haven't yet internalized the professional cost of burning a bridge.
There is also a self-protection dynamic at play. Research on early-career candidates found that ghosting is sometimes used as a self-protective mechanism against processes that feel like black holes — when candidates never hear back at the application stage, they stop expecting to hear back at any stage, and their own communication follows suit.
Mid-level professionals show the highest candidate ghosting rates of any group. The reason is largely structural: they are most likely to be actively employed while job searching, juggling multiple processes simultaneously, and empowered by having existing income and options. 70% of candidate ghosters are employed full-time — meaning that ghosting is not primarily a behavior of the desperate or the disorganized. It is a behavior of the comfortable, the busy, and the options-rich.
Senior-level and VP-level candidates present the most nuanced picture — and the one most relevant to the article's broader argument. Earlier research suggested that relationship-based hiring and executive search accountability protected senior candidates from employer ghosting. The 2026 data complicates that. With 21% of senior-level and 18% of VP-level candidates reporting that they are ghosted recurringly; the protection that professional networks were supposed to provide is eroding.
The dynamic at the senior level is different in ways that make the breach sharper. A senior candidate has not submitted a mass-generated resume to 200 openings. She has targeted this role specifically, invested considerable time in multiple conversations, prepared substantively for each touchpoint, and in many cases managed the emotional complexity of searching while currently employed. The silence, when it comes, is not just impersonal. It is a dismissal of a significant professional investment — and it lands lamentably.
The small and mid-size organization factor.HR Dive's analysis of hiring manager behavior found that companies with fewer than 1,000 employees most often ghost candidates because they are "still deciding on the right candidate" — holding people in place while waiting on another applicant to accept or decline. Large organizations tend to ghost because the candidate doesn't fit. The small-org ghost is particularly menacing because it leaves candidates in genuine uncertainty, often for weeks, while the organization treats their time as expendable.
The Audacity of Reapplying — And What It Actually Tells Us
It is maddening. It is also, in the context of everything above, somewhat explicable — though explaining it should not be confused with excusing it.
Normalization. In an ecosystem where ghosting is abundant on both sides, many candidates genuinely do not register their own disappearance as a transgression. If they have been ghosted five times this year by employers, the act of going silent themselves has been mentally reclassified as standard procedure, not a breach of professional conduct.
The FOMO applicant. The candidate who applied to 47 positions last month, powered by AI tools and an anxious job search, may genuinely not remember the specifics of every process they engaged with. This is not a flattering explanation, but it is a real one. When applying costs almost nothing — in time, in effort, in personalization — the cognitive footprint of each individual application shrinks accordingly.
The reciprocal math. Research on reciprocal ghosting suggests that candidates who have been ghosted by employers feel, on some level, that they are owed the same latitude. If your organization ghosted a candidate in 2023, and that candidate reapplies in 2024 without mentioning the previous process, there is a reasonable probability they are operating from a "we're even" framework, consciously or not.
The professional reputation they're not calculating. What the reapplying ghoster consistently underestimates is how small their industry actually is. HR professionals talk. Recruiters remember. A candidate who no-showed an interview at a 90-person organization in a mid-sized market may be applying to a role whose hiring manager knows the previous recruiter personally. Taking into account too, most modern ATS systems track candidates and any previous application history across every role they've touched at that organization — the ghost who reapplies isn't invisible. They're flagged. The professional world has a longer memory than most candidates appreciate – and a narrower footprint than they assume.
"Industries are smaller than they appear, and a poor reputation can spread quickly. Ghosting might seem harmless in the short term, but the professional world has a long memory."
The data backs this up in a way that should matter to every candidate who has ever justified a disappearing act: CareerPlug research found that 65% of job seekers who were ghosted by an employer said they would never reapply or refer others to that organization. That is the reputational cost of one unanswered email — two out of three candidates permanently closed. For candidates, the mirror image applies. The employer who remembers your no-show is not just closing a file, they are updating a mental record that may follow you the next time your name surfaces in their network — and in tight professional communities, it will.
To Hiring Managers and HR Professionals: No Excuse Left
This section is direct. It needs to be.
If you are a hiring manager, an HR professional, or anyone with a role in your organization's recruiting process, this is for you — because the candidate ghosting conversation, as frustrating as it is, cannot be used to deflect from what the data now makes unmistakably clear: employers are the primary offenders in 2026, and the gap is widening.
You are not being asked to write 35 personalized rejection letters.
This is the excuse that ends the conversation before it starts. We're too busy. There are too many applicants. We can't respond to everyone. And yet — every major applicant tracking system on the market has automated rejection workflows. Every ATS from Greenhouse to Paychex to BambooHR to the most basic job board integration has a template function. Sending a rejection to a candidate who applied and didn't advance is, in most systems, a matter of checking a status box. One click. One template. Done.
There is no longer a logistical argument against not communicating with candidates at the application stage. There is only the choice not to prioritize it.
Timely communication is not a courtesy — it is a competitive necessity.
Top talent does not wait. Research consistently shows that highly qualified candidates make decisions within 48 hours of not hearing back — not 48 hours to accept an offer, but 48 hours before they emotionally disengage from your process and redirect their attention elsewhere. Every day of silence from your organization is a day your strongest candidates are becoming someone else's employees.
Don't let candidates stagnate mid-process.
Ghosting gets most of the attention, but the slower damage happens in the gaps between touchpoints. A candidate who interviewed on a Tuesday and hears nothing by the following Monday is not quietly waiting. She is stress-reading Glassdoor reviews of your company, reconsidering whether she actually wants the role, and — if she has other options — mentally ranking you lower. A brief, honest update costs nothing: "We're still in the interview process and expect to have a decision by [date]. We'll be in touch." Fourteen words. That is the difference between a candidate who stays engaged and one who accepts an offer from your competitor on Thursday.
The reputational math is not in your favor.
65% of ghosted candidates won't reapply or refer others to the company — CareerPlug
72% of ghosted candidates tell others about their negative experience — 2025 Ghosting Index
37% leave a negative online review after a poor candidate experience — 2025 Ghosting Index
For a small or mid-sized organization, a pattern of Glassdoor reviews describing poor hiring communication is not a minor inconvenience. It is a talent acquisition problem that compounds over time. The candidate you ghosted today may be the referral you needed next year, or the reviewer whose three-star post surfaces every time a strong applicant researches your organization before deciding whether to apply.
"Every candidate you ghost is potentially a lost customer, a lost referral, and a future negative review. The candidate you stop corresponding with could have been your next great hire."
A note on the ghost job practice specifically.
If your organization is among the 81% whose recruiters acknowledge posting roles with no real hiring intent — this needs to stop. Posting phantom positions to maintain job board presence or project organizational health is not a neutral marketing strategy. It is a misrepresentation that consumes candidates' time, erodes trust in your employer brand, and contributes directly to the exhaustion and disillusionment that is driving talented people out of the job market altogether. The short-term optics are not worth the long-term damage.
Breaking the Cycle — And Who Has to Go First
Here is the hard truth about where this ends: somebody has to go first.
The ghosting epidemic in hiring is a feedback loop. Employers ghost because they're overwhelmed and candidates seem disposable. Candidates ghost because employers have taught them that communication is optional and processes are unreliable. Each party points to the other as justification for their own behavior, and the loop tightens.
Someone has to decide to break it. And because employers hold the underlying power in the hiring relationship — they have the role, the decision, and the platform — the obligation to move first belongs to them.
The practical steps are not complicated:
Set up automated status communications at every stage. Application received. Under review. Not moving forward. Decision communicated. These four touchpoints, automated, would eliminate the majority of candidate ghosting complaints overnight.
Define your hiring timeline upfront — and keep candidates posted against it. If your process takes six weeks, say so on day one. If it takes longer than expected, send an update. Candidates can handle waiting. What they cannot handle is not knowing.
Close every loop, even the uncomfortable ones. Rejected candidates deserve a notification. Candidates who ghosted you and then reapplied have already told you something important about their professional reliability. A one-time courtesy opportunity may be reasonable – once. Beyond that, a straightforward rejection notification each time they reapply is both appropriate and sufficient. You are not obligated to re-engage indefinitely. Either way, someone sends a message. The alternative is silence, and silence is what built this problem in the first place.
Audit your job postings. If a role has been posted for more than 60 days with no active hiring movement, take it down or update its status. If your organization is not hiring, do not post roles. The short-term perception management is not worth the long-term erosion of candidate trust in your employer brand.
Train your hiring managers. Ghosting is frequently a manager problem, not an HR problem. Managers who don't follow up, who forget to notify HR of their decision, who are "still thinking about it" for three weeks while a candidate waits — these are the gaps where most mid-to-late-process ghosting lives. Clear expectations, clear timelines, and clear accountability within the hiring process are the fix.
The organizations that take these steps will not just feel better about their hiring practices. They will hire better. Greenhouse data shows that automated acknowledgment of applications alone reduces candidate ghosting by 41%. When candidates feel seen by a process, they engage with it. When they feel like a resume in a void, they behave accordingly.
The hiring process is, at its core, a first impression of your organization's culture. Every unanswered email, every vanished hiring manager, every phantom job posting tells candidates something about what it would be like to work for you. And in a market where talent has long memories and short patience, that impression is increasingly difficult to recover from.
The ghost story doesn't have to end this way. But someone has to decide to haunt differently.
7 Signs You're Breaking the Psychological Contract With Your Employees…
…And why your silence is costing you far more than you know.
The Contract Nobody Signed
There's a contract your employees signed that you'll never find in your HR files.
It wasn't in the offer letter. It wasn't covered during onboarding. There's no signature page. But it is absolutely, completely real — and your employees are holding you to every word of it.
Organizational psychologists call it the psychological contract: the unwritten, unspoken set of mutual expectations that lives beneath the formal employment relationship. In plain terms, it sounds something like this:
"I will give you my effort, my reliability, my discretion, and my loyalty. In return, you will compensate me fairly, treat me with respect, give me the tools to do my job, and — this part matters more than most employers realize — show me that you see me as a person, not just a cost on a spreadsheet."
Nobody negotiates it. Nobody signs it. But the moment it's broken, everyone feels it.
The research is unambiguous. A landmark study published in the Journal of Business Research, analyzing data from nearly 22,000 employees across more than 1,900 workplaces, found that cost-cutting actions — wage freezes, benefit reductions, staff cuts — significantly eroded trust and strained employee-management relations — especially when those actions were taken without communication or employee involvement.
The breach doesn't require a dramatic event. It can happen slowly, quietly, through a series of decisions that each seem reasonable in isolation — until one day, the people who used to go the extra mile simply stop. Here are seven signs it may already be happening in your organization.
Sign #1: You Eliminated Perks Without Explanation
The holiday event is gone. The Employee Assistance Program got cut. The small recognitions — birthday acknowledgments, work anniversary notes, the occasional team lunch — have quietly disappeared.
You probably had reasons. Good ones, even. But here's what your employees heard: nothing.
And here's what that silence communicated: those things weren't worth explaining to you.
Perks and recognition are not just line items on your budget report. They are signals. Every one of them says something about how the organization views the people who work there. When they disappear without acknowledgment, employees don't assume financial pressure — they assume a shift in values. They ask themselves: did we ever actually matter here?
The EBSCO Research Starters analysis on psychological contracts puts it plainly: a breach occurs when employees feel that implicit promises — made during recruitment or simply during the course of a long employment relationship — are no longer being honored. Morale drops. Engagement falls. And the best employees, the ones with the most options, start quietly updating their resumes.
Sign #2: You Shifted Costs Onto Employees and Called It Nothing
This one is insidious — because technically, nothing was "cut."
But consider this: if an employee's health insurance premium increases by 50% in a single year and their wage stays flat, that employee just took a meaningful pay cut. They are bringing home less money. Their financial reality has changed. And in many cases, leadership genuinely doesn't register this as a cost shift — because the line item on the employer side didn't move.
The employee's side of the ledger tells a very different story.
We are in an era of sustained cost-of-living pressure. Groceries, housing, utilities, childcare — the baseline cost of a stable life has risen significantly over the past several years, and wages for most workers have not kept pace. Employees are already absorbing those pressures before they show up to work. When their employer simultaneously increases insurance premiums, freezes wages, or reduces benefits — without acknowledgment or context — it doesn't land as a single policy decision. It lands as one more compression in a life that is already feeling tight. And the implicit promise of fair compensation — the bedrock of the psychological contract — quietly breaks.
This is a psychological contract breach dressed in spreadsheet language. The promise — implicit or otherwise — was fair compensation for fair work. When the real value of that compensation erodes, the contract frays, even if no one in leadership touched the salary line.
"I didn't get a raise. My insurance went up. So I actually got a cut — and nobody said a word about it."
That's not hypothetical. That's what employees are saying to each other right now in organizations across every industry. The question is whether anyone in leadership is listening.
Sign #3: You Froze Wages But Raised Expectations
Imagine a regional veterinary group with three locations finding itself in a familiar position: operating costs up, revenue growth slower than projected, ownership pushing for tighter margins. The response seems logical — a wage freeze, a directive to keep all staff (including managers) at or under 40 hours, and a quiet expansion of responsibilities across the board.
What ownership doesn't fully account for is what that combination communicates.
A wage freeze says: we can't — or won't — reward your growth right now. Adding responsibilities without additional compensation says: we expect more from you anyway. Capping hours while expanding scope says: figure it out, but don't let us see the overtime.
Together, those three messages don't land as prudent financial management. They land as: you owe us more than we're willing to give you in return.
That is a direct breach of the psychological contract. And according to a 2025 ScienceDirect study tracking 1,135 employees over two years, even a single perception of breach is associated with meaningful, lasting divergence in trust — with 86.87% of employees landing on a trust erosion path once breach is perceived. It doesn't reverse on its own.
Sign #4: You've Never Shown Employees the Scoreboard
Here's a question worth sitting with: do your employees know if the organization is winning?
Not the financials — you don't have to open the books. But do they know how many customers were seen last quarter? How many cases were handled across locations? Whether the organization is growing, holding steady, or navigating a rough patch?
Most employees have no idea. And that absence of information is its own kind of breach.
Earlier in my HR career, I worked for an organization that held semi-annual all-staff meetings they called "Compass" meetings. No P&L. No financial disclosures. But every employee saw the scoreboard: how many units moved, service volume processed, market position relative to competitors of similar size. New hires were introduced. New initiatives were announced. People understood where the organization was headed — and where they fit into that picture.
The employees who were least likely to volunteer enthusiasm going in were often the ones who quietly admitted, afterward, that they were glad they came. Because those meetings answered the question every employee is always asking but rarely voices out loud: does what I do here actually matter?
The answer to that question is one of the most powerful retention tools available. It costs almost nothing to deliver. And most organizations never deliver it.
The Deloitte 2024 Global Human Capital Trends research defines transparency as using plain language to share information, motives, and decisions that matter to workers — and identifies it as a core driver of trust. Showing employees the scoreboard is transparency in its most accessible, practical form.
Sign #5: Your Cuts Are Too Small to Matter Financially — But Too Meaningful to Ignore
This is the sign that should stop leaders cold.
When an organization eliminates a benefit that costs less than $4,000 a year — roughly what it costs to replace a single entry-level employee who leaves — something important happens beyond the budget line. Employees do the math.
They don't have access to the full financial picture, so they work with what they can observe. And what they observe is this: the organization was willing to remove something that mattered to them — their EAP, their holiday gathering, their small recognitions — for an amount of money that, in the context of a multi-location operation, is essentially a rounding error.
That math leads somewhere uncomfortable. If the savings aren't meaningful at the organizational level, then the cut wasn't really about the money. It was about something else. And employees will form their own conclusions about what that something else might be — and those conclusions are almost always harder to recover from than the truth.
As Dr. Chidiebere Ogbonnaya of King's College London has noted, when employers make decisions without adequate communication, it can feel like a betrayal. The size of the cut doesn't determine the size of the breach. The absence of an explanation does.
Sign #6: Your People Are Quieter Than They Used to Be
The loud version of disengagement is easy to spot. Complaints. Pushback. Someone finally says what everyone's thinking in a staff meeting.
The quiet version is far more dangerous — and far more common.
Research on recessionary workplace behavior has identified something striking: cost-cutting measures don't necessarily produce the stress-related absenteeism leaders expect. Instead, they produce withdrawal-based absenteeism — employees who are physically present but psychologically checked out. They stop volunteering ideas. They stop flagging problems. They do their job and nothing more, and they stop caring about the difference between doing it well and doing it adequately.
In many organizations, this is invisible to leadership — because the employee is still showing up, still technically performing, still not causing visible problems. But the culture is eroding. The institutional knowledge is walking toward the door. And the people with the most to offer — and the most options — are quietly deciding whether to stay.
Sign #7: You Think Your Employees Trust You More Than They Do
This may be the most consequential sign of all — because it's the one that prevents leaders from acting.
If you believe your employees trust you, you won't prioritize transparency. You won't schedule the all-staff meeting. You won't explain the cuts or acknowledge the insurance increase. You won't make the time, because you believe the relationship is fine.
The data suggests otherwise.
According to PwC's 2024 Trust in Business Survey, 86% of business executives believe employee trust in their organization is high. Only 67% of employees agree — and that gap is widening year over year. The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer Global Report sharpens that picture considerably. In the U.S., trust in employers dropped 5 points in a single year – part of what Edelman calls an unprecedented global decline. Globally, 68% of employees now actively worry that business leaders purposely mislead them, up 12 points since 2021. And among employees who already carry a high sense of grievance – the ones leaders most need to reach – trust in their own CEO has fallen to just 51%, while general trust in CEOs collapses to 30%. Leaders aren’t just overestimating the trust they’ve banked. For a growing segment of their workforce, that trust is nearly gone.
The gap between what leaders believe and what employees experience is where psychological contract breaches live — and grow — unaddressed. And it is a much wider gap than most leaders are prepared to find.
What This Is Actually Costing You
Here's what too many owners and administrators don't know they don't know: people are expensive to lose. Far more expensive than the benefits being cut to save money.
Industry research consistently places the cost of replacing a single employee at between 50% and 200% of their annual salary — and that calculation only captures the visible costs: recruiting fees, onboarding time, training investment, lost productivity during the gap.
It doesn't capture what happens to the employees who stay.
Research by Leadership IQ found that 74% of employees who kept their jobs during a period of organizational cuts reported that their own productivity declined. The people you didn't lose became less effective because of how the situation was handled. Disengagement doesn't show up in a budget line. Withdrawal-based absenteeism doesn't appear on a timecard. Quality decline is hard to quantify until a patient complains, a client leaves, or a key relationship walks.
By the time the cost becomes visible, the culture has often already paid it.
"The cuts designed to save money may be generating costs leadership can't see yet. The conversation costs nothing. The silence costs everything."
There is also a longer arc to consider. Organizations that operate in sustained cost-cutting mode — particularly when cuts are unexplained and morale is low — damage their ability to attract talent in the future. Reputation travels. And in smaller markets, in tight-knit professional communities, it travels fast.
Why You Should Trust the People Who Study People
HR is not a compliance function. It is not a paperwork department. At its best, it is the organizational function that understands what drives human behavior at work — what builds trust, what destroys it, what keeps people, and what sends them toward the exit.
When an HR professional raises a flag about the human cost of a financial decision, that flag is data. It is the translation of research, experience, and direct employee observation into language leadership can act on — before the damage is done.
The problem is that the costs HR describes are often invisible on the spreadsheet where the savings are visible. A $4,000 EAP appears as a line item that can be eliminated. The disengagement, distrust, and eventual turnover it generates do not appear on the same document. They show up later, in ways that are harder to trace back to the original decision.
Owners and administrators making these decisions are often talented, committed, and genuinely trying to do right by their organizations. But without the training and expertise to calculate what people cost when they disengage — and what they're worth when they're fully invested — they are making high-stakes decisions with an incomplete picture.
That's not a criticism. It's a case for the table.
Involve HR before the cuts are finalized, not after the damage is visible. Ask what this will cost in people terms, not just in budget terms. Trust that the answer is not obstruction — it's the rest of the equation.
Because the employees filling those chairs are watching every decision you make. They're drawing conclusions. They're deciding whether to stay.
And the chairs that go empty are far more expensive than the ones you thought you were saving money on.
5 Reasons Your Brain Is Exhausted by 5 PM
"What do you have to be tired about?"
I've heard versions of that question at different points in my career — sometimes out loud, sometimes in the look on someone's face when I said I was exhausted after a day that, from the outside, looked like sitting in meetings and answering email.
I remember one particular afternoon, years into a demanding leadership role, when I sat in my car after work and just didn't start the engine. Not because something was wrong. But because I had genuinely nothing left. I had made dozens of decisions that day, navigated two difficult conversations, held my composure through a meeting that required every bit of it — and my brain was done.
But I couldn't point to a single thing that looked like hard work.
These days, I'm in bed by 9:30. Jeopardy is my late-night television. And I have made peace with that — because I finally understand what's actually happening.
The contrast that used to trip me up wasn't between my work and someone else's — it was the contrast I carried internally between what I knew I'd done and what I could actually show for it at the end of the day.
That invisible gap is where cognitive fatigue hides. No visible output, no external measure, no tangible product to hold up and say: this is why I'm tired. Just the weight of everything you processed, decided, anticipated, and absorbed — and a nervous system that's been running at full capacity since 7 AM.
It turns out, I did a lot. And so do you.
The exhaustion that comes from a day of thinking, deciding, managing, and emotionally navigating is not a weaker or lesser version of physical fatigue. It's the same biological process, drawing on the same finite resources, producing the same very real depletion.
There's a name for it: cognitive fatigue. And the science behind it is worth understanding — not because it gives you permission to be tired, but because understanding why you feel this way changes how you take care of yourself, and how you show up for the people you lead.
1. Your Brain Burns Real Fuel – and You Ran Out
Here's the foundational concept: your brain consumes glucose — the same energy source your muscles use to do their work. That's not a metaphor. It's physiology.
Researchers studying what's called ego depletion (a concept introduced by Roy Baumeister and colleagues in the late 1990s) found that self-control, decision-making, and emotional regulation all draw from a shared cognitive resource — and once that resource is depleted, your capacity for all of it diminishes. The more decisions you make, the harder the next decision becomes. The more you regulate your emotions, the less bandwidth you have for it later.
Think about the end of a long day when someone asks you the most innocuous question — "Where do you want to eat tonight?" — and you just want to cry. That's not drama. That's a depleted decision-making system that genuinely has nothing left to give.
2. Emotional Labor Has a Measurable Neurological Cost
Beyond decisions and emotional labor, there's the mental effort required to manage what you express versus what you feel – to hold appropriate professional composure while something difficult is happening.
Think about what is costs neurologically to deliver difficult feedback to a staff member – not in a moment of frustration, but in striving to do it well. To hold the thread of a clear message, regulate your own discomfort, read the other person’s responses in real time, adjust your approach as the conversation shifts, and stay focused on the outcome you’re there for. That is not a simple cognitive event. It is sustained, high-stakes mental labor. And fMRI research shows real, measurable changes in brain activity – stress hormones, metabolic cost – that mirror the biological signature of sustained physical effort.
3. You’ve Been Carrying a Mental Load No One Else Can See
Beyond decisions and emotional labor, there’s a specific kind of mental drain that leaders carry that most people outside of leadership don’t fully understand: anticipatory thinking.
This is the constant background loop of what’s next, what could go wrong, what do I need to prepare for, who needs what from me?
Mental load research — much of it originally developed to understand the invisible labor carried by women in dual-career households — identifies anticipatory thinking as among the most cognitively costly states a person can sustain. It’s not just thinking. It’s perpetually managing a to-do list that lives entirely in your head, that nobody else can see, and that never fully clears.
Leaders carry this chronically. The project that’s off-track. The team member who’s struggling. The conversation you need to have and keep postponing. The metric that’s trending in the wrong direction. None of these require you to be actively working on them — they just quietly run, consuming resources in the background, the same way too many open tabs slow down a computer.
4. Your Body Has Been Keeping Score All Day
There’s a term for the cumulative physical toll of sustained mental and emotional stress: allostatic load. It describes the wear on your body that accumulates when your nervous system is chronically activated — when it’s responding to real cognitive and emotional demands over time.
This is why the tension in your neck and shoulders isn’t imaginary. It’s why you get sick more often after a brutal quarter. It’s why chronic leadership stress doesn’t just affect your mood — it affects your sleep, your immune response, your cardiovascular system.
Your body is not overreacting. It’s doing exactly what it’s designed to do when it perceives sustained demand: it mobilizes. Cortisol and adrenaline, the same stress hormones that would help you outrun a predator, are being activated by back-to-back meetings and an inbox that never empties.
This isn’t psychosomatic. It’s your nervous system responding accurately to real signals.
5. You Can’t Point to Anything – And That Makes It Worse
When your labor produces no visible artifact — when what you did today was a make a tough decision, or deescalated a conflict, or made a team member felt seen — there's no external validation that the work was real or hard. And in the absence of that validation, it's easy to tell yourself you should have more in the tank.
But you don't. And the story you tell yourself about that matters.
What this means for how you lead.
Understanding cognitive fatigue isn't about lowering your standards. It's about making better decisions about how you spend your finite daily resources — and building recovery into your leadership practice the same way an athlete builds rest into a training plan.
A few things worth considering:
Sequence your day with intention.
Your highest-stakes decisions deserve your best cognitive fuel. That usually means earlier in the day, not whenever things land on your calendar.
Recognize when you're running on fumes.
Decision fatigue and emotional exhaustion look like irritability, avoidance, analysis paralysis, and the inability to engage with something that normally comes easy. These aren't character flaws. They're data.
Rest is not a reward. It's maintenance.
The cultural message that leaders should be able to push through unlimited cognitive demand without degrading in quality is simply not biologically accurate. Recovery isn't optional — it's what makes sustained performance possible.
Name what you did today.
Not as performance, but as a practice of accurate accounting. You made decisions, held tension, anticipated problems, managed relationships, regulated your own reactions. That is labor. Call it that.
The work of coming home.
Understanding cognitive fatigue doesn't stop when you leave the building. In fact, one of the most undermining habits leaders develop is carrying all of the open tabs of the workday straight into their personal time — never actually setting that load down.
Those first minutes after closing the laptop, the transition from leader to person, the commute home — these are not dead time. They're your first real opportunity to interrupt that neurological loop. And research on recovery from work stress consistently points to a few practices that are both evidence-based and accessible.
Create a deliberate transition ritual — in both directions.
The research is clear that psychological detachment from work — mentally disengaging, not just physically leaving — is one of the strongest predictors of recovery quality. But the ritual works best when it has a shape, and not just an intention.
For me, it looks like this: computer off, files put away, drawers locked, lights out. A physical sequence that tells my brain the shift is over before I even reach the parking lot. Then, once I'm in my car, a slow cleansing breath — the kind that actually activates the parasympathetic nervous system — and a minute or two of quiet. Not scrolling. Not replaying the day. Just a deliberate pause between work brain and home brain.
What's worth noticing is that the same ritual works in reverse. Lights on, computer on, drawers unlocked, bag unpacked — and then, before the day actually starts, another breath, another minute of stillness. A signal in the other direction: Okay. We're on!
This kind of bookending isn't soft productivity advice. It's neurological hygiene. The transitions between states — working and not working, activated and at rest — are where your nervous system either gets a clear signal or keeps running in the background like an app you forgot to close. The physical sequence gives your brain something concrete to follow. The breath gives it permission to shift.
You don't have to build elaborate rituals. You just have to mean the ones you have.
Stop narrating the day on repeat.
Rumination — replaying conversations, rehearsing what you should have said, pre-worrying about tomorrow — is one of the most significant barriers to cognitive recovery. What feels like processing is often just prolonged activation. Distraction that genuinely captures your attention (a book, a conversation, a walk, Jeopardy) isn't escapism. It's neurological relief.
Give your body a clear off-ramp.
Physical activity, even a 20-minute walk, helps metabolize the residual cortisol and adrenaline that have been running since your first morning meeting. Not because the walk fixes anything — but because your stress hormones evolved to help you outrun predators, and a body that mobilized for a hard workday responds well to actual movement as a signal that the demand has passed.
Name what you did, and then put it down.
The same accurate accounting practice mentioned earlier — cataloging the real labor of your day — is also a completion signal. Once you've acknowledged it, you have permission to stop carrying it. You did meaningful, costly, uncredited work. You replenish nothing by reliving it.
Your brain is not broken because it's depleted at 5 PM. It's doing exactly what it was asked to do all day.
The most productive thing you can do for tomorrow's performance is take this evening seriously.
A few sources to have in your back pocket:
Baumeister et al. (1998) — the original ego depletion study, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Allostatic load: McEwen & Stellar (1993) — foundational paper on stress and cumulative body burden
Mental load / anticipatory labor: Arlie Hochschild'sThe Second Shift(1989)
fMRI/cognitive fatigue: Wiehler et al. (2022) inCurrent Biology— "A neuro-metabolic account of why daylong cognitive work alters the control of economic decisions"
Is SHRM Still Worth It? Part Two: Behind the Curtain
This is Part Two of a two-part series. Part One — The Money, The Membership, and The Missing Voice — is available here.
This piece draws on SHRM's publicly available 2024 Form 990 filing and other public records. The numbers cited are documented. The questions are genuine.
The Vendors Behind the Brand
When an organization generates $233 million in annual revenue and spends aggressively to maintain its position, the vendor relationships that support that machinery are worth understanding. SHRM's 2024 Form 990 lists its five highest-compensated independent contractors. Three of them tell a story — and interestingly, the filing categorizes two of the most notable ones under the same broad label: "content services."
CGI Technologies and Solutions received $19.7 million for IT support services. This one is straightforward. An organization delivering digital content, certifications, webinars, online communities, and conference platforms at SHRM's scale has substantial technology infrastructure costs. IT spending at that level, for an operation this size, isn't the point of this conversation.
HEVE LLC — pronounced "heavy," because in their words great stories carry great weight — received $7.9 million, also listed under content services, though their work is very different in nature. HEVE is SHRM's full creative agency of record, handling brand marketing, video production, design, and media buying since 2019. To give you a sense of the scale involved: one of their campaigns for SHRM took over every one of the 72 LED screens at the Oculus — the iconic wing-shaped architectural landmark and transportation hub at the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan that serves over a million commuters every week — plus all the screens at the adjacent Fulton Street subway station. The campaign featured ten short videos, each telling the story of a real person and a real workplace struggle, built around the message "It takes one honest conversation to change the workplace." The themes — pay equity, workplace culture, being underestimated — were genuinely relevant to the profession. Hundreds of thousands of commuters saw it daily. That's the level of brand investment member dues are underwriting.
And then there's Bully Pulpit Interactive — also listed under "content services" in the 990, which tells you something about how broadly that category is being applied — which received $5.3 million.
The Bully Pulpit Question
The name alone raises eyebrows — and your instinct to look more closely is the right one, even if the answer lands somewhere more interesting than a simple "dark side."
The name comes from Theodore Roosevelt, who used the term to describe using a position of authority as a platform to shape public opinion. Bully Pulpit Interactive — now Bully Pulpit International — was founded in 2009 by the digital marketing team behind Barack Obama's presidential campaign. They went on to manage the digital strategy for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and its joint fundraising operations with the Democratic National Committee. They have worked extensively for the DNC and affiliated Democratic political committees. Their services for corporate and nonprofit clients like SHRM include audience targeting, message development, narrative building, and reputation management — the same tools honed in political campaigns, applied to organizational communications. They have been a long-standing client of SHRM's, appearing in agency listings as far back as the early 2010s.
The question worth sitting with isn't dark or conspiratorial. It's simply this: what exactly is SHRM spending $5.3 million of member dues on in the category of reputation management and narrative strategy — and why does a professional association serving HR practitioners need that level of investment in shaping how it's perceived? Reputation management at that scale is typically deployed when an organization is actively managing how it looks to an audience that may be skeptical. The 2024 filing covers a year in which SHRM dropped "equity" from its DEI messaging, renamed its Inclusion conference to "Blueprint," and was navigating the discrimination lawsuit that would result in an $11.5 million jury verdict in December. The timing is what it is. Draw your own conclusions.
What "Free" Actually Costs You
Here's where the conversation gets personal for most of us.
SHRM's genuinely substantive educational content — the certification prep materials, the in-person seminars, the eLearning programs — comes with a real price tag. The Learning System study materials for the SHRM-CP or SHRM-SCP run between $820 and $1,330 for online access, and up to $1,940 for instructor-led programs. The exam itself costs $495 to $695 depending on membership status. All in, first-time certification can represent an investment of well over $1,500 to $2,600 before you've paid for a single hour of continuing education. Annual membership on top of that. Recertification fees every three years on top of that.
Against that cost, the "free" content SHRM makes available to members is supposed to feel like value. And sometimes it is. But too often it isn't — and most of us know exactly what I'm about to describe.
The webinar where the host and the panel are clearly reading from a script. The perfect set, the soft lighting, the glazed eyes tracking back and forth across a teleprompter. No live audience. No real questions. Recorded, edited, and pushed out as though it were a genuine conversation about an important topic. This is what a bad HR soap opera looks like — and it's the vehicle that gets passed off as professional development when the content is actually underwritten by a vendor with something to sell.
Vendor-sponsored content isn't hidden — it's typically disclosed in advance, and that's fair. But disclosure doesn't fix the underlying problem. When the same PDC badge appears on a genuinely educational practitioner-led program and on a vendor webinar about why their platform is the answer to your problems, members are left to sort out the difference on their own time. The badge makes the purchasing decision easier — members see it and know the content qualifies for their recertification credits without having to do extra verification work. That's good for vendors. Whether it's good for members depends entirely on what's actually in the content.
And here's the ask that actually makes sense given what we now know about SHRM's financial picture: if $233 million in annual revenue — generated from member dues, certification fees, conference registrations, advertising, and vendor partnerships — is flowing into this organization, why are the substantive, non-vendor educational programs still priced out of reach for practitioners who don't have an employer footing the bill? Not all of us have a training budget. Not all of us make $4 million. The revenue is there. The question is whether investing it in accessible education for working HR professionals is actually the priority.
Your Vote: Where Is It, and What Does It Mean?
Let me ask the community something directly, because the comments from within SHRM's own community suggest this question has been sitting unasked for a long time.
According to SHRM's own bylaws, every professional member in good standing is entitled to one vote in the election of the SHRM Board of Directors — the same board that approves the CEO's compensation package and oversees how member money is spent. Elections are conducted annually on a staggered basis, with roughly three seats opening each year. SHRM's board page currently notes they are recruiting candidates for three seats beginning January 2027.
The word "recruiting" is doing significant work there. The governance committee identifies and vets candidates before they appear on any ballot. By the time a member receives a voting opportunity, the field has already been curated by people already inside the structure. That's standard practice for many professional associations — it's not unique to SHRM. But it does mean that the practical choice available to members is often ratification rather than genuine selection.
The actual ballot, when it exists, lives at vote.escvote.com/shrm — a third-party online voting platform. Most members have never seen that URL. If you've never received a notification directing you there, you are in very good company.
SHRM does not publicly disclose member participation rates in board elections. I looked. It isn't there. That absence is worth naming — though to be fair, this kind of transparency gap is not unique to SHRM. Most professional associations in this space don't publish their governance participation data either. The standard isn't higher because SHRM is SHRM. The standard should be the same for any organization that asks members to trust it with their credentialing, their professional development, and their dues dollars — publish the numbers, make the process visible, and treat member governance as something more than an administrative formality.
What happens when member participation is low? Practically speaking, the governance committee's curated slate wins. The board perpetuates itself. The same compensation committee approves the same CEO pay structure using the same independent consultant and the same undisclosed peer group. The cycle continues — largely invisibly, funded by dues, certification fees, and conference registrations from members who may not even know the election is happening.
What Would Meaningful Change Look Like?
I'm not writing this to watch SHRM fail. The profession needs a strong center and SHRM built something genuinely important. But the organization that claims to lead HR practice owes its members the same things it teaches HR professionals to provide their own workforces: transparency, accountability, and a genuine voice in decisions that affect them.
A few things would go a long way:
Publish member participation rates in board elections — and if the number is low, say so and tell members what's being done about it.
Make the ballot visible — a prominent notification through the member portal, separate from the promotional email stream, with a clear link to where the vote actually happens.
Disclose compensation comparability data — members fund the CEO's salary. They have a reasonable interest in understanding how the benchmark was built.
Invest the revenue in accessible education — if $233 million in annual revenue is flowing through this organization, the substantive non-vendor content should not carry price tags that exclude the solo practitioner, the small business HR professional, or the person investing in their own development without employer support.
None of this requires SHRM to become a smaller or less ambitious organization. It requires the organization to behave like it actually works for the people who fund it.
The Conversation Continues
Between these two pieces and the comments from within SHRM's own community, one thing is clear: this conversation was waiting to happen. HR professionals are analytically-minded, perceptive people who apply scrutiny to every organizational system they work within. It was only a matter of time before that scrutiny turned toward the organizations that serve us.
If you want to vote in the next SHRM board election — now you know where to go. If you didn't know the ballot existed — now you do. If you've been quietly asking these questions for years and assumed you were the only one — you are not.
The most powerful thing members can do isn't to cancel a membership in frustration. It's to show up. Vote. Ask questions publicly. Expect the same transparency from the organizations that serve HR that those organizations expect HR to provide.
That's not a fringe position. That's just good HR.
Is SHRM Still Worth It? A Candid Conversation HR Pros Are Already Having Part One: The Money, The Membership, and The Missing Voice
A conversation has been quietly building across HR professional communities — in forums, comment threads, and private messages between colleagues who are starting to ask the same question out loud: is SHRM still worth it?
The trigger this time was a familiar one. A format change — the shift to digital-only delivery of HR Quarterly magazine — opened a floodgate of frustration that had clearly been building for a while. What started as a discussion about reading preferences quickly became something larger: a candid, sometimes pointed reckoning with what SHRM membership actually delivers anymore versus what it costs.
I'll be transparent. I've been part of those conversations. My own take is straightforward — SHRM has become too diluted, with too much of its content functioning as a sales pitch for one company or another. That's not a fringe opinion. It's a sentiment I've seen echoed consistently across HR communities by practitioners at every career stage and experience level.
After years of membership, the value proposition has become increasingly difficult to defend. The magazine that once featured articles written by HR practitioners doing actual work has been replaced by something that reads more like a sponsored content platform — leaving interested HR professionals glued to their screens even more. The annual conference, once a genuine gathering of the profession, now announces headline acts that prompt HR professionals to email their bosses with a single reaction: "interesting choice." The webinars and podcasts that are supposed to deliver member value too often feature scripted exchanges so wooden you can practically hear the page turning.
I'm not alone in this assessment. I hear it from colleagues. I see it in the quiet decisions HR professionals are making about whether to renew. I feel it myself every time I look at my membership renewal notice and try to justify the cost against what I'm actually getting in return.
This isn't about tearing down an institution. It's about asking whether that institution is still serving the profession it was built for — or whether it has drifted into something else entirely.
A Profession's Patience Running Thin
The frustration isn't limited to the magazine. It runs through nearly every touchpoint of the membership experience.
The conference cost conversation comes up repeatedly among HR professionals trying to justify the expense — not just registration, but travel, hotel, and time away from organizations that are often already running lean. And the value question becomes harder to answer when the headline entertainment has no discernible connection to HR practice, employment law, people management, or organizational strategy. General inspiration is a difficult sell at current price points.
The contrast is worth naming. I once attended an HR Executive Leadership & Wellness conference where the featured speaker was Ginger Zee, ABC's chief meteorologist, who spoke openly about her personal experience with mental health. It was directly relevant, deeply human, and genuinely useful to an audience of people who spend their careers supporting others through hard things. You don't need a headline-grabbing name to deliver a memorable conference experience. You need the right story for the right room.
Smaller, local HR events are now delivering more practical value than the flagship annual conference — at a fraction of the cost. When your most engaged members are finding more return on investment in a regional half-day session than in your marquee event, that's not a preference difference. That's a market signal.
And then there's the content itself. SHRM's podcasts and webinars — increasingly a primary vehicle for member value — have taken on a quality that is difficult to describe charitably. Scripted exchanges between a host and a guest where it's clear both parties are reading lines for the camera isn't professional development. It's a bad HR soap opera. HR professionals are perceptive people by trade. We notice inauthenticity. We notice when a conversation has been engineered rather than had.
What members are asking for instead is refreshingly simple — honest discussion of real issues, compliance guidance grounded in current practice, and a professional home where reality is actually on the agenda. The desire to hear from practitioners who are actively doing the work, sharing hard-won experience and practical guidance, comes up consistently in these conversations. That used to be what SHRM delivered. It's increasingly not.
The Credibility Question
I hold a SHRM-SCP. I want to be clear about that because this piece isn't coming from someone on the outside looking in with no stake in the organization. It's coming from someone who has invested in the credential, maintained it, and continues to believe it carries professional weight — because it does.
But credential value and membership value are two different things, and SHRM has benefited for years from the assumption that they're one and the same. You can believe in the certification and still ask hard questions about what the membership itself is delivering. Holding both of those things at once isn't contradictory. It's exactly the kind of nuanced thinking HR professionals apply to every other area of their work.
The uncomfortable truth is that SHRM is increasingly expensive to belong to, expensive to learn from, and expensive to attend. The free content — what little of it exists — is largely underwritten by a rotating roster of HR technology and services vendors. The line between education and advertising has blurred to the point where it's sometimes hard to find at all.
What the Numbers Say
For those who want to move beyond opinion and into documentation, SHRM's 2024 Form 990 — the annual tax filing every nonprofit is required to make public — is available through ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer. The numbers are worth a few minutes of your time. Total revenue: $233 million. Conference and meeting expenses: nearly $31 million. The CEO's total compensation package: just over $4 million — a figure that exceeded the organization's entire annual net income of $1.27 million by more than three times. By comparison, HRCI — which serves the same professional community through its credentialing programs — reported $22.8 million in total revenue for the same period, with its CEO earning just under $1 million. A note of transparency: I have no firsthand experience with HRCI's membership or programming and cannot speak to the value of their offerings. I reference their 990 numbers here purely for financial context, not as a recommendation or critique of their organization. Two organizations. Same profession. Very different financial pictures. These are public documents, filed under oath, and every SHRM member has the right to read them. SHRM 2024 Form 990 via ProPublica
Who Actually Controls This?
Here is where it gets interesting — and where I think the conversation in our communities needs to go next.
Many members assume there is simply no accountability mechanism for how SHRM spends its money or sets executive compensation. That's not entirely accurate. According to SHRM's bylaws — the most recent version I have access to is dated February 22, 2025 — every professional member in good standing is entitled to one vote in the election of the SHRM Board of Directors. The same board that approves that $4 million compensation package.
So technically, members do have a voice. The board that sets CEO pay is elected by the membership.
But here's the question I'd genuinely like this community to answer: have you ever voted in a SHRM board election? Have you ever seen a ballot?
I haven't — and I've been a member for years.
The bylaws still use the phrase "mail ballot," but the actual mechanism is electronic — completed ballots are submitted to a third-party election company designated by the Society, which we know to be vote.escvote.com/shrm. That means your voting notification arrives by email, competing for attention in the same inbox as every sponsored webinar invitation and vendor promotion SHRM sends. And by the time any ballot arrives, the Governance Committee has already recruited, vetted, and presented the candidates who appear on it — and under the 2025 bylaws, every candidate who is an HR professional must hold a SHRM certification before they can appear on that ballot.
The board that sets certification fees and recertification requirements is composed of people who hold SHRM credentials. The candidates for that board must hold SHRM credentials to run. Members vote on a pre-selected slate. That isn't unusual — it's how many member-driven organizations operate when governance participation is low enough that it doesn't function as a real check. And engagement can only be high when members know the process exists.
Now you do. Part Two of this article goes deeper — including how the vendor content pipeline works, who's paying to be in front of you, and what it means that the board election you didn't know you could vote in is happening again this year.
The Landscape Has Shifted
HR professionals have more options than they did ten or fifteen years ago when SHRM's position as the default professional home for the field was largely uncontested. That's no longer the case.
Communities like Hacking HR offer substantive learning and genuine peer connection at a price point that doesn't require budget approval — I've been a member for a couple of years and the depth of content consistently surprises me. If you're curious, I've included an affiliate link, which means I may receive a small commission if you join. Independent HR educators — practitioners who are still doing the work and teaching from that experience — are building audiences and delivering value that feels immediate and real. Niche LinkedIn communities are having the conversations that used to happen in SHRM's own spaces.
None of this means SHRM is finished. Organizations with this much history and this much infrastructure don't disappear. But they can become irrelevant to the people they were built to serve, and that process tends to be quieter and faster than anyone expects.
What I'd Like to See
I'm not interested in watching SHRM fail. I'm interested in watching it recalibrate. The profession needs a strong center — a place that sets standards, advocates for HR's seat at the strategic table, and provides education that reflects the complexity of the work. SHRM built something genuinely important. The question is whether the organization still sees itself in that light, or whether it has drifted toward something closer to a media and events business that happens to serve HR professionals as its audience.
The digital magazine format, the scripted content, the conference price tags, the headline acts with no connection to the work we do — none of these things individually would be worth writing about. Together, they tell a story about priorities. And HR professionals, who spend their careers reading organizational culture through exactly these kinds of signals, are reading this one clearly.
As dues renewal season approaches for many members, it's a reasonable time to ask: what am I getting for this, and is there a better use of these dollars for my professional growth?
I'd genuinely like to know where you're finding the most value in your development right now. The conversation happening in our communities suggests we're all figuring this out together — and that conversation, at least, is still free.
Michigan Is Watching - Are You?
~ What the Menopause Movement Means for Your Organization Right Now
The United Kingdom figured this out before we did.
While American employers are still debating whether menopause is even a workplace conversation worth having, British employers with 250 or more employees are now required to have formal, written Menopause Action Plans in place. It's documented. It's accountable. It has teeth.
We're not there yet in the US. But we're moving — faster than most employers realize — and Michigan is squarely in the middle of it.
The Numbers You Need to Know
Approximately 39 million women in the US workforce are currently experiencing or will soon experience perimenopause or menopause symptoms. That's not a niche demographic. That's nearly 30% of the American labor force. One in three working women.
A Mayo Clinic study put a price tag on what happens when we ignore this: $1.8 billion in lost productivity annually, driven by missed workdays, reduced hours, and employees pushing through symptoms without support. Add in related healthcare costs and the total economic impact exceeds $26 billion per year.
Here's what that looks like inside a workplace: only 8% of women are satisfied with their employer's menopause resources. Fewer than one in five feel comfortable enough to even bring it up at work. Research from Stanford shows that women who seek medical care for menopause-related symptoms see a 10% decline in earnings within four years — largely because they reduce hours or step back from demanding roles just to cope.
These are not women at the end of their careers. They're often mid-stride — experienced enough to lead, seasoned enough to mentor, and valuable enough that losing them isn't their personal failure — it's an organizational one.
I Know This Isn't Just Policy. I've Lived It.
Years ago, while working in HR at a large auto dealership, I started experiencing symptoms I didn't recognize. I knew what PMS was. But I sure didn't know what PMDD was, or that perimenopause could feel like your emotional floor was dropping — without warning, without explanation.
When I finally told my doctor that I couldn't stand the sound of my own boss's voice — a man I genuinely liked and had worked alongside for over ten years — I wasn't going crazy. I was undiagnosed, managing it alone, and doing my best to hold everything together. My doctor helped me identify what was happening, and we spent months dialing in treatment.
But at work, I was still struggling — with focus, energy, stability, and with simply getting through the day. When I admitted all of that on a team call, my new boss's response was silence. No follow-up. No FMLA conversation. No support of any kind.
I was eventually let go. The reason given: hard to work with. Hard to get to know.
Nobody ever asked why.
I was an HR professional. I knew the language, I knew the resources, and I still fell through the cracks. If it happened to me, it is happening to someone in your organization right now.
Where the Law Stands — and Where It's Headed
Rhode Island made history on June 24, 2025, becoming the first state in the nation to require employers to provide reasonable workplace accommodation for employees experiencing menopause and related conditions. The law applies to employers with four or more employees and treats menopause the way pregnancy has long been treated: as a legitimate condition deserving support, flexibility, and protection from discrimination. Accommodation can include flexible scheduling, remote work options, more frequent breaks, or easier access to a restroom.
Illinois, Louisiana, Oregon, and Washington have enacted laws requiring insurance coverage for menopause treatment. Philadelphia passed a local ordinance extending workplace protections as well. Rhode Island remains the only state with explicit workplace accommodation law — but California, New York, and New Jersey all have bills in progress, and the momentum is unmistakable.
Here in Michigan, four bills are currently working their way through the legislature:
HB 4790 and HB 4791 — focused on workplace policy and employer recommendations
HB 4814 — would require insurance coverage for menopause and perimenopause treatment
HB 4815 — would extend that coverage to Medicaid recipients
None have passed yet. The House is in recess until April 14, and realistically, passage — if it happens at all — is likely fall 2026 at the earliest. Bills can and do die in committee. These could be reintroduced in the next session, or they could stall entirely. That uncertainty is exactly the point. Michigan employers who wait for a law to tell them what to do may be waiting a long time — while the need inside their organizations is happening right now.
Why Getting Ahead of It Is Just Good Business
Here's where employers have a genuine opportunity, and it has nothing to do with compliance deadlines.
Research from Bank of America and the National Menopause Foundation found that women with access to menopause-supportive benefits are significantly more likely to recommend their employer as a great place to work. In a labor market where organizations compete for experienced talent, that matters.
Consider what a menopause-supportive workplace actually looks like in practice. Most of it costs very little:
A flexible scheduling policy that allows for appointments, difficult symptom days, or adjusted hours without penalty
Temperature considerations in the physical workspace — a fan, thermostat access, a cooler room option
A clear, private process for employees to request accommodation without having to explain themselves publicly
Health benefits that include coverage for menopause-related care — platforms like Maven, Progyny, and Midi Health are worth exploring with your benefits broker if you don't already have something in place
Manager training — and this one matters more than most employers realize
On that last point: a trained manager doesn't just wait for an employee to come forward. A trained manager knows what to look for. They recognize when someone who has historically been strong is suddenly struggling — with focus, with patience, with engagement — and they know how to open a door without forcing someone through it. Think about it this way: if a manager suspected an employee was in an abusive relationship, a good leader wouldn't ignore the signs and wait to be told. They'd already know where to direct that person, what resources exist, and how to have that conversation with care. Menopause deserves the same informed, human response. You need to be educated to spot it, and trained to coach your employee on possible next steps.
The Menopause Society has published a free employer guide — Making Menopause Work — that covers exactly how to build this kind of culture. They've also launched an Employer Designation program: a formal certification for organizations that meet established standards — similar to a veteran-friendly employer designation — which can be displayed in recruiting materials and used as a visible signal to job seekers. Fisher Phillips has published guidance on the business case and legal landscape if you want the compliance angle as well.
What This Means for You, Right Now
Michigan legislation may pass. It may not. Either way, your workforce isn't waiting.
If roughly 30% of working women are in some phase of the menopause transition, and you have even five or ten employees, the math is straightforward: this is already in your organization. The only question is whether the women experiencing it feel safe enough to say something — and whether you've built any structure to support them when they do.
You don't need a law to do the right thing. You don't need a formal Menopause Action Plan to start the conversation. But if you build one before you're required to — if you become known as the employer in your industry who already has this figured out — that reputation is worth more than any compliance checkbox.
The UK didn't wait for employers to sort this out on their own. Rhode Island didn't either.
You don't have to wait for Michigan to create the law to start building something great.
Resources & Links
Michigan Legislation
HB 4790 & HB 4791 — Workplace policy & employer recommendations
HB 4814 — Insurance coverage for menopause treatment
HB 4815 — Medicaid coverage for menopause treatment
Employer Resources
The Menopause Society — Making Menopause Work (free employer guide)
Fisher Phillips — The Business Case for Menopause-Savvy Workplaces
Rhode Island HB 6161 — The first state law requiring workplace accommodations for menopause (signed June 24, 2025)
EEOC Rescinds 2024 Harassment Guidance
~ What It Means and What Has Not Changed
“The guidance is gone, but the law is not. If you’re a Michigan employer wondering what this means for you, the answer is simpler than the headlines suggest — harassment is still illegal, your obligations have not shrunk, and now is not the time to get comfortable.”
If you’ve seen this in your legal update emails, your HR professional group newsletters, or floating around on LinkedIn — you may be wondering what to make of it. On January 22, 2026, the EEOC voted to rescind its 2024 harassment guidance, and depending on the headline you read, it might sound like harassment law just got turned upside down.
It didn’t.
There are some real nuances worth understanding, but the bottom line is this: harassment is still illegal, the law has not changed, and employers who think this is a green light to look the other way are going to find themselves in a very uncomfortable position. Let’s break down what actually happened, what it means, and — maybe more importantly — what it does not mean.
A Quick Civics Lesson — How the EEOC Actually Works
Before we get into what happened, it helps to understand who the EEOC is and how it operates — because the makeup of the commission right now is part of the story.
The EEOC is a federal agency led by five commissioners. All five are nominated by the President and must be confirmed by the Senate. They serve fixed terms and can only be removed for cause — meaning a new administration cannot simply come in and clean house. Once confirmed, they serve out their terms regardless of who is in the White House. The President sets the broader policy agenda, and the Chair — being the President’s appointee — aligns the agency’s strategic priorities accordingly. That’s why the EEOC can feel noticeably different under different administrations even when the underlying law has not changed.
One of the five commissioners serves as Chair, and the Chair drives the agency’s strategy and enforcement priorities. Some actions the Chair can take independently — others require a vote of the full commission.
Here’s where things stand right now:
• Only three of the five seats are currently filled
• Two commissioners were appointed by the current administration, including Chair Andrea Lucas
• One commissioner — Kalpana Kotagal — was appointed by the prior administration
• The commission regained its quorum — the minimum number of members needed to take official action — in October 2025 when the third seat was filled
• The vote to rescind the 2024 harassment guidance: 2-1
That 2-1 vote matters because it tells you this was not unanimous. Commissioner Kotagal opposed the rescission, arguing that at minimum there should have been a public notice and comment period before pulling the guidance entirely.
Guidance vs. Regulation — Why the Difference Matters
This is one of those distinctions that sounds technical but is actually pretty important for understanding how much weight any of this carries — so bear with me for a moment.
A regulation is formal law. It goes through a lengthy process — proposed publicly, open for comment, published in the Federal Register, and it takes a minimum of about two years to change. Regulations carry the force of law and employers are legally required to follow them.
A guidance is different. It’s the agency’s interpretation of how it views the law — essentially the EEOC saying “here’s how we’re going to look at this.” Guidance does not go through that same formal process, it carries less legal weight, and it can be issued or rescinded much more quickly — as we just saw with the 2-1 commission vote on January 22, 2026.
Here’s the practical takeaway: guidance is not law. But it matters — because it tells you how the EEOC is likely to interpret a complaint if one lands on their desk. When guidance exists, employers have a roadmap. When it’s gone, there’s more uncertainty about how the agency will evaluate your policies and practices.
The 2024 harassment document was a guidance — not a regulation. That’s why it could be pulled with a commission vote rather than years of rulemaking. And importantly, no replacement guidance has been announced yet, which leaves employers navigating without that roadmap for now.
First, Let’s Talk About Protected Classes
Before we get into what the 2024 guidance said and why it was controversial, it helps to have a clear picture of who is actually protected under federal and Michigan law. This is foundational stuff — but you’d be surprised how many employers and managers are fuzzy on the details.
Federal Protected Classes
Several different federal laws create protected classes, and each has its own employee threshold:
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (1964)
Applies to employers with 15 or more employees. Protects against discrimination based on:
• Race
• Color
• Religion
• Sex — including pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity (per the Supreme Court’s Bostock v. Clayton County ruling in 2020)
• National origin
Age Discrimination in Employment Act — ADEA (1967)
Applies to employers with 20 or more employees. Protects workers age 40 and older from discrimination based on age.
Americans with Disabilities Act — ADA (1990)
Applies to employers with 15 or more employees. Protects individuals with a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities.
Pregnancy Discrimination Act — PDA (1978)
An amendment to Title VII. Protects against discrimination based on pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions.
Pregnant Workers Fairness Act — PWFA (2022)
Applies to employers with 15 or more employees. Requires reasonable accommodations for known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.
Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act — GINA (2008)
Applies to employers with 15 or more employees. Prohibits discrimination based on genetic information and restricts how employers can acquire or use it.
Equal Pay Act (1963)
Applies to virtually all employers. Prohibits sex-based wage discrimination for employees performing substantially equal work.
A note for federal contractors: If your organization holds a federal contract, you have an additional obligation — you cannot discriminate based on protected veteran status, and you are required to take affirmative action to employ and advance veterans in your workforce. This falls under the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act, known as VEVRAA.
Michigan Goes Further — The Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act (ELCRA)
If you’re a Michigan employer, you’re playing by a broader set of rules. The Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, originally passed in 1976 and expanded several times since, covers all employers regardless of size — meaning even small employers with fewer than 15 employees are covered by Michigan law.
ELCRA protects against discrimination based on:
• Race
• Color
• Religion
• National origin
• Sex
• Age — and unlike the federal ADEA, Michigan protects against discrimination based on youth as well, not just workers 40 and older
• Height
• Weight
• Marital status
• Familial status
• Sexual orientation — written directly into Michigan law in 2023
• Gender identity or expression — written directly into Michigan law in 2023
• Pregnancy and related conditions
• Hair texture and protective hairstyles such as braids, locks, and twists — protected under Michigan’s CROWN Act, signed into law June 15, 2023
Disability is covered separately under the Michigan Persons with Disabilities Civil Rights Act, which also applies to all employers regardless of size.
The bottom line for Michigan employers: your obligations are broader than federal law in several meaningful ways. Height, weight, marital status, hair texture, and the expanded age protection are all areas where Michigan goes beyond what federal law requires. Make sure your policies and training reflect that.
What Is Harassment — and What Makes It a Hostile Work Environment?
Now that we know who is protected, let’s talk about what harassment actually is — because there’s a lot of confusion out there about where the line is.
Harassment based on any protected characteristic is a discriminatory practice. While sexual harassment tends to get the most attention, the same rules apply to harassment based on race, color, national origin, religion, age, disability, or any other protected class. Employers need to be equally vigilant across the board — and that includes harassment coming from outside your four walls. The harasser does not have to be a coworker or a supervisor. Employers can also be held responsible for harassment by vendors, customers, or other third parties — if they knew or should have known about the conduct and failed to address it.
Hostile Work Environment — What Does That Actually Mean?
A hostile work environment is a specific legal claim, and the bar to prove one is intentionally high. Not every rude comment, awkward interaction, or offensive remark rises to that level. Courts have been clear that workplaces do not have to be perfect — coworkers do not always choose each other, people make mistakes, and some friction is just part of working with other human beings.
To rise to the level of an unlawful hostile work environment, the conduct generally must be:
• Based on a protected characteristic — the harassment has to be connected to race, sex, age, religion, disability, or another protected class, not just general rudeness or poor management
• Severe or pervasive — courts look at how frequent the conduct was, how serious it was, whether it was physically threatening, and whether it actually interfered with the employee’s ability to do their job
• Both objectively and subjectively offensive — meaning a reasonable person in the same situation would find it hostile, AND the person experiencing it actually did find it hostile
Courts evaluate the totality of the circumstances — they look at everything together, not each incident in isolation. One off-color comment probably does not get you there. A pattern of behavior that is frequent, targeted, and severe? That’s a different story.
Anti-Harassment Training Matters — Legally and Practically
Having a solid anti-harassment training program for both employees and supervisors is not just good practice — it can actually serve as a legal defense. If a harassment claim is ever challenged, documented training is one of the ways you can demonstrate that your organization took reasonable steps to prevent it. Do not skip this.
What the 2024 Guidance Said
Now that we have the foundation in place, let’s talk about what was actually in the 2024 guidance — and why parts of it sparked so much discussion.
First, some context. The 2024 guidance was nearly 200 pages long and was actually the EEOC’s first update to its harassment guidance since 1999. Much of it simply restated well-established law that nobody disputes. But two specific pieces generated significant debate — and those are the pieces that ultimately led to its downfall.
The Non-Controversial Parts
The guidance reaffirmed what the law already clearly says — that sexual orientation and gender identity are protected classes under Title VII. This protection came from the US Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which held that discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is discrimination “because of sex” under Title VII. That ruling cannot be undone by a new administration, the EEOC, or any federal agency. It is Supreme Court precedent, and it stands. Harassment on those bases is therefore also unlawful — straightforward, not controversial.
Controversial Piece #1 — The Hostile Work Environment Threshold
Here’s where things got sticky. Remember that high bar we just talked about for what constitutes a hostile work environment? The 2024 guidance seemed to suggest that certain behaviors, standing alone, could clear that bar. Specifically:
• Misuse of pronouns
• Asking questions of transgender or LGBTQ+ employees about their identity
• Denying an employee access to the bathroom consistent with their gender identity
The legal community largely pushed back on this. Courts have generally not held that these behaviors, on their own, constitute an unlawful hostile work environment. They can absolutely be part of a pattern of conduct that eventually crosses that threshold — think of them as items that go into the bucket — but one item alone probably does not fill that bucket. The EEOC’s suggestion that they could was a significant departure from where the courts actually stand.
Controversial Piece #2 — Religious Rights vs. LGBTQ+ Rights
This is one of the genuinely hard intersections in employment law, and it is one that is not going away anytime soon. What happens when one employee’s right to be free from harassment based on their gender identity conflicts with another employee’s right to express sincerely held religious beliefs?
The 2024 guidance addressed this conflict — but rather than maintaining a balanced approach, it appeared to take a side. It stated that while sincerely held religious beliefs should be protected, employers are not required to accommodate religious expression that creates or threatens to create a hostile work environment. In other words, the guidance landed squarely in favor of the employee complaining of harassment over the employee asserting religious rights.
For many employers and legal professionals, that felt like the EEOC overstepping — wading into a genuinely unsettled legal debate and declaring a winner before the courts had done so.
The Texas Court Decision
It did not take long after the guidance was published for a legal challenge to follow. A lawsuit was filed in federal court in Texas — a venue that has become a common destination for challenges to federal agency actions — and the outcome was significant.
The Texas federal court vacated the controversial portions of the guidance. Specifically, the court found that the EEOC had exceeded its authority by expanding the definition of sex beyond what Title VII’s plain text supports, and by defining harassment to include things like pronoun misuse and bathroom access as standalone violations.
Here’s what’s worth noting though — the challengers did not stop there. They also asked the court to go further and rule that sexual orientation and gender identity simply are not protected under federal law at all. The court declined. Even a federal court in Texas acknowledged that it is bound by US Supreme Court precedent, and the Supreme Court has already spoken on this in Bostock. That protection stands regardless of what any lower court, agency, or administration thinks about it.
So by the time the EEOC commission voted to rescind the guidance in January 2026, the most controversial pieces had already been vacated by the courts. The commission’s vote essentially finished what the Texas court started — pulling the remainder of the guidance entirely rather than leaving a patchwork document in place.
The Rescission — What Happened and What Was Said
On January 22, 2026, the EEOC commission voted 2-1 to rescind the entire 2024 harassment guidance. Rather than surgically removing the controversial sections — the way the Texas court had done — the commission pulled the whole thing. No replacement guidance has been announced.
What’s worth paying attention to, though, is what happened at the commission meeting where the vote took place. All three commissioners — on both sides of the vote — went out of their way to vocally reaffirm their commitment to fighting workplace harassment. This was not a quiet procedural vote. It was a public declaration that harassment remains a priority regardless of what happened to the guidance.
Chair Andrea Lucas put it plainly in the EEOC’s press release:
“Rescinding this guidance does not give employers license to engage in unlawful harassment. Federal employment laws against discrimination, harassment, and retaliation, and Supreme Court precedent interpreting those laws, remain firmly in place. The EEOC is committed to evenhanded enforcement of these laws. The agency will continue to be dedicated to preventing and remedying unlawful workplace harassment.”
Pay attention to the word evenhanded. That’s the key signal here. The 2024 guidance was criticized for taking a side — favoring employees complaining of harassment based on gender identity over employees asserting religious expression rights. The word evenhanded signals a return to balanced enforcement — treating competing rights as competing, rather than declaring a winner in advance.
What this does NOT mean is that the pendulum has swung in the other direction. Chair Lucas did not say that religious rights now take precedence, or that LGBTQ+ employees have fewer protections than before. She said the agency will enforce the law evenhandedly — which means each situation gets evaluated on its own facts rather than through a predetermined lens.
What Has NOT Changed
This is arguably the most important section of this entire article — because if there is one thing employers should walk away understanding, it is this: the rescission of the guidance did not change the law.
Let’s be very clear about what remains fully in place:
• Sexual orientation and gender identity are still protected classes under Title VII. The Supreme Court said so in Bostock v. Clayton County in 2020. No agency action, executive order, or commission vote can undo a Supreme Court ruling. This protection is not going anywhere.
• Harassment based on any protected characteristic is still unlawful. Race, color, sex, religion, national origin, age, disability, genetic information — all of it. The guidance being gone does not change that.
• The hostile work environment standard still exists. The threshold is still high, it still requires looking at the totality of the circumstances, and employers are still expected to take complaints seriously and respond appropriately.
• Other existing EEOC guidance on harassment remains in effect. The 2024 document was not the only guidance the EEOC has ever issued on harassment. There is plenty of other published guidance that remains on the books — including guidance that specifically affirms harassment based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity is unlawful.
• The EEOC is still accepting and investigating harassment charges. Employees retain the full right to file a charge with the EEOC and pursue claims in court.
• Michigan employers have an additional layer of obligation under ELCRA that exists independently of federal guidance. ELCRA’s protections are broader than federal law in several areas, and a Michigan employee may still have a strong state law claim even where federal protections are less clear. Do not assume that what happens at the federal level is the full picture of your obligations as a Michigan employer.
What the rescission does do is remove a detailed interpretive roadmap that employers and HR professionals had been using to understand how the EEOC would evaluate certain situations — particularly around gender identity. Without replacement guidance, there is more uncertainty about how the agency will approach those specific claims going forward. That uncertainty is real and worth acknowledging. But uncertainty is not the same as a free pass.
Key Takeaways for Employers
Let’s bring it home. Here’s what you actually need to do — or not do — with all of this information.
Do not treat this as a green light. The rescission of the guidance is not permission to loosen your standards, look the other way on complaints, or scale back your harassment prevention efforts. Harassment is still illegal. The EEOC is still enforcing. Courts are still hearing these cases and ruling on the merits — and employers who fail to take harassment seriously do not fare well. If anything, the absence of clear guidance creates more uncertainty — and uncertainty is not your friend when a claim lands on your desk.
Understand where your real risk lives. EEOC enforcement matters, but the bigger exposure for most employers has always been private lawsuits. An employee does not need the EEOC to sue you. Watch what the courts are saying about hostile work environment standards — particularly around gender identity — because that’s where the law is actively being shaped right now.
The religious rights vs. LGBTQ+ rights conflict is not resolved. The rescission did not settle this tension — it just removed the EEOC’s previous position on it. Employers navigating situations where these two sets of rights are in conflict are largely on their own right now, without a federal roadmap. These situations are genuinely difficult, and if you find yourself in one, consult your employment attorney before you act.
Keep your policies and training current. Review your anti-harassment policy to make sure it reflects current federal and Michigan law — not just what was in the 2024 guidance. Make sure your training covers all protected classes, addresses third-party harassment from vendors and customers, and is documented. That documentation matters if you ever have to defend yourself.
Watch for further developments. This area of law is moving fast. The EEOC has not announced replacement guidance, executive orders continue to shape agency priorities, and courts are actively deciding cases that will affect how all of this plays out. Stay connected to your legal update sources — your legal update emails, your local or national HR professional groups, and your state or local chamber of commerce — and do not wait for a complaint to force you to pay attention.
One more thing to keep an eye on — the PWFA. While we’re talking about the EEOC, it’s worth a brief mention that Chair Lucas has also signaled her intent to revisit the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act regulations — specifically provisions she views as overreaching, including accommodation requirements related to abortion. Regulations take a minimum of two years to change through the formal rulemaking process, so nothing is imminent. But if you have employees who may be affected by PWFA accommodations, stay tuned.
The Prep List — What You Need to Do
1. Review your anti-harassment policy. Make sure it reflects current federal and Michigan law, covers all protected classes including Michigan’s additional ones, and addresses third-party harassment from vendors and customers. If it has not been updated recently, now is the time.
2. Check your employee handbook. The rescission of the guidance does not change your underlying obligations, but it’s a good trigger to make sure your handbook language is current, clear, and defensible.
3. Conduct or schedule harassment training. All employees need foundational training on what harassment is, what it looks like, and how to report it — and that includes supervisors, who can be perpetrators too. Supervisors also need an additional layer of training specific to their role: how to recognize a complaint, how to respond to it appropriately, and what their obligations are once they know something. Document that the training happened.
4. Don’t ignore the religious rights vs. LGBTQ+ conflict. If you have not thought about how your organization would handle a situation where these two sets of rights collide, think about it now before you’re in the middle of one. This is a good conversation to have with your employment attorney proactively.
5. Stay connected to your legal update sources. This area is moving fast. Your legal update emails, your local or national HR professional groups, and your state or local chamber of commerce are all good ways to stay ahead of developments as they unfold.