MESSAGE FROM OUR CEO’S DESK

If you’ve been on the internet during the last week and a half, you’ve seen some of the drama and fallout around the Callaway / Good Good promotional video (two companies in the golf space - I refuse to tag them because we don’t need to give them ANY more eyeballs). In the video, Garrett Clark, the co-founder of Good Good, shoved a female golfer to the ground over a golf driver, menacingly saying “Do not touch my new driver." This wasn’t a junior marketing hire making a 2 am call on a video posted straight to Instagram that nobody reviewed. A founder, on camera, enacting violence against a woman to sell equipment - confident enough in the bit that he wanted to be the one doing it.

And he wasn't the only person who thought this was fine. Someone wrote this concept. Someone storyboarded it. Someone filmed, directed, and edited it. Then it went to Callaway - a public company with a legal team, a brand team, and presumably more than one adult in the room. By their own CEO's admission, the concept was even approved by Callaway prior to posting. "That approval should never have happened," Chip Brewer said, after the fact. Sure. But it did happen, which means it passed through however many people at two separate companies without a single one of them saying, out loud, "we can't put this out."

Callaway says it's now running internal and external investigations into how the approval happened. I don't need the results to tell you what they'll find. This is what happens when a company is missing the two things that actually catch a bad idea before it airs: diversity in the room and psychological safety for the people in that room to speak up. Either there weren't women anywhere in the creative and approval chain who could've flagged "this reads as domestic violence,” or there were, and they didn't feel safe enough to say it without getting waved off, or remembered for it the next time headcount gets cut.

Here's what actually would have stopped this:

• Diversity WITH authority. Put someone outside the creative team in the approval chain for anything customer-facing, and give them real authority to kill it.

• Strategic representation. If your product or audience skews toward a group that isn't represented in your leadership, get people from that group to build and review the work, not just react to it in a survey after it's already live.

• Psychological safety check. Ask your team directly, “if someone here thought an idea was bad, or worse, dangerous, would you feel safe telling an executive that to their face?” If you don't already know the answer, then that's your answer.

• Feedback pathways. Build a way for people to flag when something doesn’t sit right with them that doesn't route through the person who greenlit the idea in the first place.

My first job out of college was at a casual game development company called Arkadium, founded by a husband-and-wife team (shoutout to Jess & Kenny!). They knew their games were played overwhelmingly by women, so they made sure women were actually in the room building and producing them, not just brought in afterward to react to what a room full of men had already made. I didn't clock it at the time as a business strategy. It just felt normal. It wasn't until years later, watching companies blow themselves up over stuff that one person in the room could have caught, that I understood how deliberate and thoughtful that actually was.

Representation is a lot more than a values statement you put in a deck. It's strategy and risk management, among other things. Companies that build in representation catch the bad idea in the writers' room. Companies that don't, catch it in the headlines.

ASK THE EXPERTS 🧠

This week, PFunc’s Senior Talent Consultant Amit Pandya answers…

Question: How can a company identify when ageism crops up in the interview process and ensure it doesn't in the future?

Answer:

Ageism can show up in some insidious ways throughout the consideration process.

It can look like:

• Specific phrasing like "high energy" or "digital native" that equates to a young person

• An upper limit on years of experience

• Candidates flagged as "overqualified" despite them having actively applied for the role

• A resume review that penalizes career gaps (it takes longer to find the ideal role when you bring a great deal of experience with you) 

• Commentary after interviews mentioning the candidate "is not hungry enough" or "may struggle with the pace" 

We can detect ageism by listening and auditing language in reviews and debriefs, not just the outcomes. Coded phrases like "fresh perspective" or "long runway" can be flagged for calibration conversations. If older candidates are self-selecting out, ask why.

Preventing it can also be straightforward. Be sure that interviews are structured; have a fixed rubric tied to core competencies for the role; and establish clear parameters defining what bad, good, and great answers are. Remove age-related proxy phrasing from postings. Train interviewers specifically on age bias. Most bias training defaults to race and gender, which is important, but skips age entirely. Finally, diversify your sourcing channels so your team isn’t relying solely on platforms with younger user bases.

Have an HR- or operations-related question? Submit it here to see it answered in an upcoming issue!

THE HR BRIEFING 🗞️

THE LATEST NEWS TO KNOW

HR headlines and stories, curated with our perspective. 🤝

A Gartner survey finds that employee total reward preferences have shifted significantly away from career growth and work-life perks toward long-term financial security and medical cost relief. 

• ↪️ PFunc’s Perspective: Focus first on providing a compensation package anchored on a livable base wage and meaningful health benefits to provide stability for your team.

In a survey of over 1,000 frontline workers, 69% of them feel replaceable, according to Business Wire. They feel under-appreciated due to last-minute schedule changes, the lack of a clear path to advancement, and having little say over when and how they work.

• ↪️ PFunc’s Perspective: Nailing your basic operations is critical. Show your team that they matter by granting them predictable shifts, schedule autonomy, and practical steps for promotion.

A couple of other stories we think you’d like:

• HR Dive: 54% of finance execs view higher team productivity as the primary outcome of AI implementation, not wide-scale role elimination.

• Indeed Hiring Lab: Job postings are holding near pre-pandemic baselines, wages aren't keeping up with inflation, and unemployment's dip reflects a shrinking labor supply.

COMPLIANCE CHECK

Watch out for these HR compliances going into effect (or hitting deadlines) in the next month.

• Federal (eff. 9/21) – Covered federal contractors are no longer required to ask applicants or employees about their disability status or track their teams against a 7% disability utilization goal.

• Federal (eff. 9/30) – Calendar-year ERISA benefit plans need to get their Summary Annual Reports into employees' hands by September 30.

• Connecticut (eff. 10/1) –  Employers are now accountable for AI-driven employment decisions, barring AI as a discrimination defense and requiring WARN act notices to disclose if they’re due to AI.

THE OPPORTUNITY EXCHANGE 📈

ROLES ON OUR RADAR

The PFunc job board is packed with open roles across our client companies, making it easier than ever to tap into our network.

This week, we’re highlighting the latest job openings in our network.

• Staff Materials Engineer, Tempo - Lead complex materials development and quality initiatives while combining ceramic materials expertise with ownership of process control strategies, supplier qualification, and scale-up readiness.

• Member Experience Coordinator, Small Door - Own front-desk comms and member experience including scheduling, billing, clinical support, feedback, and growth outreach.

• Payroll Manager, Honeycomb.io - Own end-to-end global payroll (processing, compliance, audits, reconciliations, reporting) as well as related expense, travel, and employee data administration.

See a role you’re interested in? Reply to this email and we’ll try to connect you with the hiring team. Hiring for an open role yourself? Reply to have your job featured in an upcoming PFunc Pulse issue.

THE PEOPLE PULSE

Welcome our newest Senior People Consultant, Elle Petrie! With 14+ years of HR leadership experience, Elle has expertly built out HR arms from scratch and scaled people functions that teams love. After hours, you'll find her tackling a home improvement project, chasing after her two young boys, or walking her miniature schnauzer.  

WHERE TO NEXT?

Our team is always on the move, popping up at the HR events, conferences, and summits we actually love.

SEPTEMBER

Getting HR and Non-HR Teams Aligned on Compliance (Virtual) - September 1 at 1pm E.T.

• Join SixFifty and a panel of HR practitioners, including People Function’s Adriana Estrada Genao, for a 1-hour discussion on common compliance friction points between HR and other stakeholders, as well as practical strategies for aligning on compliance.

CHRONICALLY ONLINE📱

We’re bringing the weekly HR Pulse Check directly to your social feed 🗞️ Let us know what you think in the comments!

@peoplefunction

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STAY IN TOUCH 💌

If you’re interested in fractional HR support for your team, reply to this email or contact us to learn more about our offerings, pricing, and how we can support your growing company.

Join the Talent Network here (it’s free!). Whether you’re actively exploring new opportunities or happily employed but open to the right fit, becoming part of our network boosts your profile when roles align with your experience, skills, and career goals.💡

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Every Tuesday, The PFunc Pulse delivers the HR news and compliance shifts you actually need to know about, without all the corporate fluff. Emma brings her unfiltered take on the trends keeping CEOs awake at night, served with the gritty, practical wisdom of a founder who’s seen it all. Real talk for better people decisions, week by week. (P.S. Do your work bestie a favor and forward this— friends don't let friends do old school HR. 🫢)