In The Dropout, the series dramatizing the rise and fall of blood-testing startup Theranos, the company is depicted as dysfunctional to the core, with myriad culture and staffing problems that piled up on top of its fundamental, uh, technical difficulties. Watching the show from the perspective of a reporter for this publication, I could only wince and wonder: Did Theranos even have an HR team? (Answer: It did, the Wall Street Journal reports.)

Some argue that an organization doesn’t need to bring on a full-time HR person until it has ~100 employees. However, in a blog post on startup accelerator Y Combinator’s website, Renee Mars, its director of people ops, wrote that having a solid HR team in place helps startups scale and avoid potential personnel problems. Launching an HR department from nearly nothing and building it alone might sound like a daunting task, but the HR directors we interviewed say there are ways to make the process easier.

Kate Velasquez, director of human resources at ASG, a technology-focused holding company, said she has built HR teams from scratch “a few times” and has found that companies often need to hire an HR person before they think they should.

What have we here? Velasquez said that even if you’re the first HR hire, there are likely certain systems already in place. She recommends asking for a handbook, information on where employees are based, and the type of employees. She said, “Even if there’s been zero HR people, most companies—if there’s more than three humans to know, or 10—there are some natural processes and orders of operations that take shape by way of human beings working together and needing to get business done.”

She says a new HR person must ask themselves, “What are the core things throughout the employee life cycle that need to be in place when [employees] get hired?” Keep reading here.—KP

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @Kris10Parisi on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Kristen for her number on Signal.

Audra Jenkins is the chief diversity and inclusion officer at Randstad North America, the largest staffing firm in the country. Randstad recently published a diversity report, showing the company beat national workplace diversity statistics with 60% female leadership and 34% employees of color, compared to the national BLS benchmark of 22.5%.

We spoke with Jenkins in March about this achievement, and, in particular, how Randstad didn’t reach these milestones overnight. Jenkins shared the role passion played in sparking Radstad’s diversity initiatives, the organizational effort that sustains them, and the enduring importance of sitting down and answering employees’ questions about DE&I.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

This diversity report is really impressive. One of the things that immediately stood out to me was that y’all have been investing in diversity initiatives since 2014—well before DE&I was trendy. How did HR make the business case to launch Hire Hope (a DE&I-meets-CSR program designed to upskill women experiencing homelessness)? Really, it was just a group of passionate people who were volunteering in the Atlanta market and noticed that human trafficking was a real thing and was happening in everyday neighborhoods. So that’s how we started Hire Hope—it really was just a passionate group of people that came together as employees and presented it to our HR department, as well as our CEO, to get support for the program.

There’s that word: passion. But of course, passion might start something. How do you keep a program going? When I took over the program [in 2017], we became more structured, we got a business plan for our community partners, and we got some funding approved from our CEO. That’s how you keep it going—you have to have funding. You can’t rely on passionate volunteerism to make an impact.

And so the funding of the program, we said, “Hey, we’re helping these women, we need to also give them some training that will give them actual jobs.”…And so hiring them on as apprentices and paying them really became the game changer for us. That’s how we were able to demonstrate to our clients our mission, vision, and values around getting work for everybody. So that’s how we were able to sustain it.

Your diversity report shows that, by and large, many of your programs designed to recruit diverse talent have been very successful, but I’ve heard from some HR teams that they’re very frustrated. They spend a lot of money on DE&I and can’t seem to crack the code. What’s your advice to them? Keep reading here.—SV

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @SusannaVogel1 on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Susanna for her number on Signal.

The concept of “hybrid work” is being tested in real time, as workers head back to the office to do jobs they may have performed flawlessly from their couches. The remote-work boom meant an influx of video communication tools like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet became necessary facets of daily office work, connecting employees across borders and time zones.

So why are some workers reporting to physical offices only to stay siloed, calling into meetings as if they were at home? A recent story in Slate, and a variety of other dispatches from the brave new frontier of the hybrid kingdom indicate that some in-office workers are still working just like they did at home: alone.

Some advocates of in-office work see it as the vital grist that feeds the creativity mill. Others say it’s difficult to build and sustain culture in a remote setup. Still others have cautioned that working remotely could harm younger employees who’ve never had the experience of an impromptu watercooler conversation.

There seems to be something of a dividing line between die-hard work-from-homers and in-office enthusiasts: According to Microsoft’s Annual Work Trend Index Report for 2022, which surveyed 31,000 people across 31 countries, 50% of leaders in “information worker roles” said that their “company already requires, or plans to require, full-time in-person work in the year ahead.” Some employees already reporting to the workplace aren’t doing so because they love it, either: A Pew Research Survey in February found that while 61% of workers who can do their jobs remotely report feeling more productive in the workplace than they do at home, 9% said one major reason they’re going into a workplace is due to pressure from a boss or coworker.

In the Slate story, advice columnist Allison Green shared anecdotes that workers sent her about their return to the office. Here’s a taste:

I’m typing this from my office where I’m the only one in my suite and have been all week. More colleagues are physically present across the building, but all my work is done on a computer, and I have no reason to interact with them in person.

Hey you, yes YOU, there in the back. If you’re managing a hybrid workforce, are you finding that your staff is having a similar experience? If hybrid work is supposed to be different from remote, then why is it mirroring the latter arrangement, and what can HR teams do to ensure an office facilitates all the things it’s supposed to?

Join the discussion here on HR Brew’s LinkedIn page, or reply to this email with your thoughts—SB

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @SammBlum on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Sam for his number on Signal.

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: White-collar workers around the world spend more than half their workdays doing “work coordination,” such as responding to emails, scheduling meetings, and other things that allow actual work to take place, according to workplace software maker Asana’s new Anatomy of Work 2022 survey. (Bloomberg).

Quote: “This is getting slightly embarrassing.”—Nicole McCauley, 35, whose caller ID was screened by her company’s executives when she was initially hired, showing that she’s still on her parents’ phone plan. (Wall Street Journal)

Read: Hybrid headaches are plentiful for many workers who are adjusting to the new paradigm. Expensive, long commutes; the balance of having two workplaces; and coordinating with colleagues to make sure face time actually occurs are among the challenges of a hybrid-work world. (Washington Post)

Catch up on the top HR Brew stories from the recent past:

• BIPOC employees still feel the impacts of racial inequality and better policies may be needed
• Maryland eliminates college-degree requirements for thousands of government jobs
• Ask a Resourceful Human: How do I plan an off-site in this new reality?