At SHRM 2025, former hostage negotiator Jeffrey Owens shared a message every HR professional should take seriously: civility isn’t about being agreeable—it’s about being effective. Drawing from years of law enforcement experience and high-stakes communication, Owens introduced the CIVILITY framework, a behavioral model designed to reshape how organizations build and sustain workplace culture.
HR doesn’t just write the policies that define culture. It sees the unspoken norms: what’s said in passing, what’s ignored in meetings, and what’s silently accepted. That insight makes HR uniquely positioned to promote—not enforce—civility through influence, structure and example.
Here’s how each part of the CIVILITY model can be applied to your organization:
Connect with humanity
Respect starts with recognition. Everyone in the workplace—regardless of position—is a human being with goals, struggles and perspectives. When employees feel reduced to roles or tasks, they disengage. When they feel seen, they participate.
HR tip: Encourage managers to acknowledge employee wins in a way that feels personal, not procedural. Simple recognition tied to individual effort can foster dignity and trust.
Influence behaviors
Culture is built by behavior, not by posters or slogans. You can’t control how others act, but you can shape the environment by modeling and reinforcing what’s expected.
HR tip: Reinforce the link between behavior and evaluation. Include civility-based actions—like listening, collaboration and conflict resolution—as part of performance management conversations.
Validate perspectives
Validation doesn’t mean agreement—it means acknowledging that someone’s perception is real to them. That’s how empathy begins. When employees feel dismissed, they shut down. When they feel heard, they stay open.
HR tip: Train people leaders to repeat back what they hear before responding. This small habit reinforces understanding and prevents misinterpretation from escalating conflict.
Include others respectfully
Inclusion means more than checking a diversity box. It means recognizing that people with different backgrounds often see what others don’t—and bringing them in on purpose.
HR tip: Build diversity of perspective into meetings. Make it a norm to invite team members outside the usual group when decisions would benefit from a wider lens.
Lead by example
Employees watch what leaders do far more than what they say. Leadership behavior sets the unofficial tone for the workplace.
HR tip: Ask department heads to review whether their everyday actions reflect the values in your company’s mission. Where they don’t, offer coaching—not criticism—to close the gap.
Initiate trust
Trust often has to be given first. Leaders who consistently model trust—by being transparent, following through and owning mistakes—encourage the same in return.
HR tip: Incorporate trust-building into onboarding. Encourage new leaders to share how they give and earn trust with their teams, creating early alignment.
Transform conflict
Conflict isn’t inherently bad. When addressed respectfully, it leads to innovation, clarity and better decisions. Ignored, it becomes resentment.
HR tip: Offer neutral, HR-facilitated check-ins when departments experience friction. Use these to surface issues before they calcify into workplace divides.
Yes to feedback
Feedback fuels growth—but only when it flows both ways. Leaders who ask for feedback set a tone of continuous improvement and psychological safety.
HR tip: Help leadership normalize “How can I do better?” as a routine question during 1:1s. When feedback becomes expected, it becomes easier to deliver.
Respect isn’t a sentiment—it’s a skill. And like any skill, it can be practiced, coached and embedded into systems. The more consistently it’s modeled, the more naturally it spreads.
A growing number of Gen Z college graduates are seeking out blue-collar work—not as a fallback, but as a strategic career choice. According to a May 2025 ResumeBuilder.com survey of over 1,400 Gen Z adults, 42% are currently working in or pursuing skilled trades. Notably, 37% of those individuals hold bachelor’s degrees. The top reasons include job security, better long-term earning potential and reduced fear of being replaced by AI.
For HR professionals hiring for skilled roles, this presents both an opportunity and a challenge: it’s time to reconsider what “overqualified” really means.
Why they’re applying—and why that’s a good thing
The stereotype that college grads only turn to trades out of desperation is no longer accurate. Many are choosing these paths for stability, autonomy, and fulfillment. These candidates bring a wealth of transferable skills—problem-solving, communication, digital fluency—that can elevate your workforce. Some may even have long-term plans to move into leadership, training or technical specialties within the trade, bringing ambition as well as experience.
Rethink your rejection criteria
Too often, applicants with a college degree are screened out early in the hiring process under assumptions like:
But rejecting candidates based on these assumptions risks missing out on loyal, high-performing talent. Many of these applicants are actively seeking long-term trade careers—not waiting around for a corporate ladder to climb.
HR teams should:
Don’t let bias shrink your talent pool
As trade industries face a growing skills gap, turning away willing and capable workers based on outdated ideas about qualifications is a luxury no one can afford. Smart hiring means looking at what candidates bring to the table, not what box they came from.
Temperatures are hitting new highs, and your workers need protection now. As summer heat intensifies, HR professionals must take immediate action to establish workplace heat safety measures. Your to-do list includes creating clear policies, setting up training programs and implementing monitoring systems to prevent the worker fatalities and thousands of heat-related injuries that occur each year. Here’s how to get started with practical steps that could save lives at your workplace.
Understanding the scope of the challenge
Heat-related workplace incidents represent a significant and growing concern:
These statistics likely underestimate the true impact due to underreporting. Each number represents a worker whose health was compromised or whose life was lost—people with families and colleagues who depend on them. As HR professionals, preventing these human tragedies should be a primary motivation for implementing robust heat safety measures.
Recognizing heat illness for effective policy creation
Creating comprehensive policies requires understanding the conditions you're addressing:
Beyond these direct conditions, heat increases workplace accident risks through impaired coordination, reduced grip strength from sweaty hands and fogged safety equipment.
Policy development strategies
Effective heat safety initiatives require a multifaceted approach:
Technology integration for heat management
Leverage technology to enhance your heat safety program:
In a unanimous decision written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Black woman, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employees claiming they have been the victim of reverse discrimination don’t have additional hoops to jump through before getting their day in court. Until now, some federal courts required that employees claiming they had been discriminated against because of their status as members of protected classes that constitute the majority had to prove their employer was the unusual one that discriminates against a member of the majority. No more. Heterosexuals, white people, men and other members of majority groups now will have a much easier time getting their cases in front of juries.
The case: Marlean, a heterosexual, worked for the Ohio Department of Youth Services for more than two decades. In 2019, she was interviewed for a promotion. She wasn’t picked but a lesbian woman was. Soon after, she was demoted, and a gay man got her old job. The successful candidates had less education or experience than Marlean. She then sued, alleging she was denied a promotion and demoted because she is a heterosexual.
Lower courts rejected her claims, noting that she had not met her initial burden of proof, which they articulated as showing “background circumstances to support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.” She appealed to the Supreme Court.
The court concluded that because minority groups don’t have that burden, neither should members of majorities. Title VII gives all individuals the right to sue over disparate treatment accorded them because of their protected status—in this case, as a heterosexual. Belonging to a majority (heterosexual) or minority (homosexual) group makes no difference. (Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, U.S. Supreme Court 2025)
Takeaways: This case makes it easier for workers to sue their employers for discrimination based on all protected classifications, whether that classification constitutes a majority or minority. This is colloquially known as a reverse discrimination claim. Expect more reverse discrimination lawsuits to be filed and go to trial.
Employers should treat reverse discrimination claims as seriously as they do all other discrimination claims.
As economic uncertainty swirls, many employers have begun whispering one of the most dreaded words in the HR lexicon: layoffs. Even if you don’t believe you will have to eliminate jobs any time soon, it’s probably a good idea to start formulating preliminary layoff plans now so you can move quickly if the need arises.
According to Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, the Trump administration’s tariffs on goods from other countries will raise prices and lead to fewer jobs and a weaker economy during 2025.
While a recession isn’t certain, planning as if one could happen will make any eventual layoff go more smoothly. For example, if your company finds itself having to conduct a mass layoff, preparing now will help you comply with the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act and state mini-WARN laws. The laws require employers to give advance notice of any significant layoffs; some even require you to make severance payments.
The first step in preparing for a layoff is building a list of people and positions to be terminated. Here’s how to create a layoff list:
Base it on performance reviews. Whether you need to lay off 10 employees or hundreds, you will need a layoff list. Prepare it in a way that doesn’t discriminate. The best way to avoid bias is by basing job cuts on recent and up-to-date performance reviews that score each employee on a competitive scale based on objective, measurable performance metrics. Employees who scored lowest on your scale should be the first to be laid off.
Exclude illegal considerations. Check your list for employees who have taken any form of protected leave, such as FMLA leave, or time off as an ADA reasonable accommodation. It is illegal to base any adverse employment action on job-protected leave. Don’t count that time off against employees when arriving at their performance-review scores. For example, if you mark down an employee’s score because they missed their yearly sales quotas, you must have adjusted the goal to account for time missed for taking FMLA or disability-related leave.
Check your list for disparate impact. Depending on how you structure the layoff, it may have a disparate impact on members of a protected group. That could amount to illegal discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and other federal and state laws. For example, if your layoff significantly or disproportionately causes job losses for employees over age 40, that disparate impact may trigger an age-discrimination lawsuit.
Recent case: Donna had been a nurse at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center for more than 30 years when she was terminated for breaking numerous rules. She is diabetic and must eat regularly to maintain steady blood sugar levels. Otherwise, she experiences hypoglycemic episodes accompanied by irritability. She was allowed to take regular breaks and she only worked two 12-hour shifts and two eight-hour shifts instead of the standard three 12-hour shifts.
In 2011, Donna was suspended for violating patient confidentiality. In 2014, she was written up for pharmaceutical mistakes that could have endangered patients. Meanwhile, she was counseled repeatedly for being rude and hostile. She received a final warning.
Then, during one of her 12-hour shifts, Donna claimed she was too busy to eat and became “irritable and cranky” due to a hypoglycemic episode. She argued with a doctor and threatened to hurt co-workers. She was fired.
Donna sued, claiming her disability triggered the outbursts and therefore the hospital fired her because she was disabled. The court didn’t buy her excuses and tossed out her case. (Katz v. UPMC, 3rd Cir.)
But it’s not just open posts to X or other social media platforms that companies use that are a concern. So are the private-messaging parts of social media platforms like Facebook’s Messenger and Instagram’s Direct Message services, as well as the instant-messaging services cell phone users can access. Supervisors routinely respond to messages from employees about missing a specific shift due to illness or injury and about assignments and the like. Communication that used to take place over landlines or at a press conference now takes place over a long list of social media services.
What happens in the case of a lawsuit? You know that if sued, employers must preserve the evidence for potential use in litigation. That’s when the authenticity of these posts comes into question. Did the post originate from whom it purports to have derived? Can litigants gain access to the record showing when and who made the post? And most importantly, what happens if your organization destroyed the social media accounts or posts on those accounts?
Spoliation. Spoliation happens when an organization knows there’s a legal claim and its records may be relevant. If a worker was fired for breaking a call-off rule, he may claim he did communicate his anticipated absence by messaging his supervisor. If the employer can’t produce that evidence for the court because someone deleted it after the company knew there was a claim, that may be a case of spoliation. Essentially, it is destroying the evidence, and the court will generally instruct the jury that they can make a negative inference against the party that deleted the information. In this case, that might mean inferring that the employer’s stated reason that it fired the worker for not calling off was a pretext for discrimination.
Due diligence. To avoid spoliation, know how to preserve all forms of electronic communication, including that accomplished through social media platforms. Here’s how:
Tell managers or supervisors not to use their personal devices to communicate with employees. You don’t have control over whether they can delete information.
1. Excessive tardiness, unexcused absences. Accurate attendance records—listing dates and times—form the backbone of many decisions to discipline or terminate.
2. Incompetent job performance. Describe what the employee did or did not do, how that violated your rules or standards, and the consequences of the poor performance. Cite attempts you made to help the employee improve.
3. Failure to comply with policy or with established safety procedures. Specificity matters here, too. Detail the policy or procedure that was violated. Especially where safety violations are concerned, document that you counseled the employee.
4. Physical violence, verbal threats. Especially if your zero-tolerance policy requires termination, spell out exactly what happened.
5. Complaints of sexual harassment or discrimination. Documentation is critical here because these complaints so often turn into lawsuits. Include details of your follow-up investigation. Assume that your records will become evidence in court.
6. Proven instances of on-the-job alcohol or drug impairment. Explain why you believe the employee was under the influence. Document that you followed established protocols for alcohol or drug testing.
7. Positive performance. A file containing only negative comments can make it look like you had it in for the employee. Give credit when it’s due.
A: There are several definitions of compensatory time. One type refers to the idea of having nonexempt, hourly employees work more than 40 hours per week but receive future paid time off for those hours rather than having those hours be paid at time-and-a-half.
For example, an hourly worker might receive $10 per hour and regularly work 40 hours per week. If they work an additional 10 hours that week, they would ordinarily be paid $400 for the first 40 hours and then an additional $150 for the extra 10 hours (10 hours at $15 per hour). That’s what is required under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
If the employer were to pay just for the 40 regular hours and provide the employee a 15-hour credit towards future time off, the employer might believe it was legitimately providing comp time. There’s just one big problem with this arrangement: It is illegal under the FLSA for all but a specific set of employers—namely public employers. Even then, there are strict limits on how the arrangement is set up, how much comp time can accrue and when it must be paid out if not used.
There is another definition of comp time that applies to exempt employees who are not ordinarily entitled to overtime pay—in other words, exempt employees. Employers may provide them with comp time off if they choose, but they are not required to. Because exempt workers can be made to work as long and as hard as necessary to get their work done, they sometimes work more than 40 hours per week. Their employer is free to reward them for working long hours and can do so with comp time.
The employer then sets the rules defining when they will grant comp time and how they will calculate how much leave to provide. The terms are up to the employer since there is no legal requirement to provide comp time for exempt workers.
The most common approach is to focus on special events that require extra work, but not to regularly provide comp time whenever an exempt worker works more than eight hours per day or 40 hours per week.
Employers that don’t have a written exempt-employee comp-time policy and would like to implement one may want to consult their attorneys to draft one.
Re: Managing Difficult Situations
There’s no shortage of negative employee behaviors that can have an ill effect on the entire workplace. The problem is when the behavior is not so bad to warrant discipline or termination, but the manager must do something. And that something isn’t to drop the problem employee in HR’s lap!
Learn how to overcome some of the most griped-about employee behaviors with these tricks of the managerial trade.
Gripe #1: She thinks she’s too good to [fill in the blank] just because she’s an exceptional performer.
Manager actions: You need to set this employee straight. If you want her to complete the duties that she finds beneath her, then by all means tell her so.
Just so there’s no confusion, explain exactly what you expect her to do. In other words, don’t just tell her she has to start doing the “grunt” work; give her a bulleted list of the tasks you expect her to complete and the frequency with which she’s to complete them.
Remind her that the duties are part and parcel of the job and that success is not a get-out-of-grunt-work-free card. Express your confidence in her abilities to handle these duties while remaining a high performer.
Gripe #2: He constantly interrupts my conversations with other employees for no good reason.
Manager actions: There’s an art to putting someone off without making him feel put off, which requires being firm and polite. When his issue doesn’t warrant that you immediately stop what you’re doing and devote your attention to him, then boundaries need to be set. Explain why he must wait and when he will get his turn. Say something like: “Jane and I are just finishing up resolving a customer’s complaint. We’ll be done in 10 minutes. I’ll come down to your office then.”
People often interrupt due to an inflated sense of self-importance. The tactic described above ought to do the trick. But in situations where the individual is riddled with self-doubt and truly believes his issues require immediate attention, then take the extra step to allay his fears that waiting 10 minutes will not mean the end of the world.
Gripe #3: She gets her work done, but she always waits until the last minute to get started.
Manager actions: Point out the obvious—that she shouldn’t wait until the last minute in case she needs to drop everything in order to put out a fire. If pointing this out doesn’t case a change in her behavior, you need to work with her on prioritizing and scheduling her work. Establish a game plan ahead of time. Cut big projects into smaller assignments and set mini-deadlines for them.
Or, give her false deadlines. Nothing drastic, perhaps a day or two earlier than normal; just make sure she still has a reasonable amount of time to complete the task, but also enough time to handle anything that may pop up unexpectedly.
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