Human Solutions: Simplifying HR for People who Love HR

"We're in an at-will state." "She never said the words 'reasonable accommodation.'" Many of the most expensive HR mistakes begin with something that sounds like common sense. In this episode, Terry Cook and Tom Jones of AIM HR Solutions work through ten of the most common HR myths, covering terminations, resignations, harassment complaints, paid family and medical leave, accommodations, social media, and the surprisingly durable idea that the safest handbook is no handbook at all.Pete plays the manager hunting for a loophole. Terry and Tom are the people who have taken that call on the AIM HR Helpline more times than they can count. What comes out of it is a practical map of where the law actually sits, and what to do instead when the easy answer turns out to be the expensive one.Links & NotesAIM HR Helpline (AIM members) — 800-470-6277 | [email protected] | Monday–Friday, 8:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m. ETAIM HR Roundtables, including the September 23 Western Mass sessions in Pittsfield and PalmerAIM HR Solutions Employee Handbook Services AIM HR Solutions Training CatalogAIM members can reach the HR Helpline at 800-470-6277 or [email protected] for inquiries Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (EST). Email requests will be responded to within 24 hours.

AI has been showing up at work for years — but now the questions are unavoidable. Pete Wright talks with Kyle Pardo and Terry Cook from AIM HR Solutions about the real AI dilemmas hitting the HR helpline: who actually owns AI inside a company, whether it's safe to let it draft warnings and termination letters, and what happens to confidential employee data once it's out there.They get into the tension between executives mandating AI everywhere and younger workers who want nothing to do with it, the recruiting surprises that come with AI-written applications, and the legal minefield of note takers and meeting recordings. A practical conversation about guiding AI before it quietly reshapes your workplace.Links & NotesThe New York Times v. OpenAI — the case Pete references on chat data that can't simply be deleted. A May 2025 preservation order required OpenAI to retain ChatGPT logs; that order was later terminated (October 2025), and in November 2025 the court ordered OpenAI to produce roughly 20 million de-identified chat logs to the plaintiffs. A useful reminder that "deleted" and "gone" aren't the same thing.Massachusetts Wiretap Statute (M.G.L. c. 272, § 99) — the two-party (all-party) consent law behind the note-taker and smart-glasses discussion. Massachusetts is one of roughly a dozen all-party consent states, and secretly recording a conversation can carry criminal penalties. For a plain-language walkthrough, the Digital Media Law Project's Massachusetts recording guide is a good starting point.AIM HR Helpline — AIM members can reach the helpline with questions like the ones in this episode by phone at 800-470-6277 or by email at [email protected], Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. ET. AIM HR Solutions Training CatalogAIM members can reach the HR Helpline at 800-470-6277 or [email protected] for inquiries Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (EST). Email requests will be responded to within 24 hours.

Employers love the idea of a hiring tool that does the hard work for them — a test that surfaces the right candidate before the interview even starts. But the gap between a useful assessment and a discrimination claim is narrower than most HR leaders realize, and in Massachusetts, the ground keeps shifting underneath them.This month, Terry Cook and Sarah Piscatelli walk Pete through the real stakes of pre-hiring assessments: what counts as job-related, what the EEOC has already shut down, and why the rise of AI-powered video interviews is creating a brand-new category of legal exposure. If your hiring process leans on any kind of test — physical, technical, behavioral, or otherwise — this is the conversation to hear before you run another candidate through it.Links & NotesAIM members can reach the HR Helpline at 800-470-6277 or [email protected] for inquiries Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (EST). Email requests will be responded to within 24 hours. AIM Blog - Ask the Helpline: Are Your Hiring Assessments Creating Legal Risk?Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures of 1978 Code of Federal Regulations AIM HR Solutions Training CatalogAIM members can reach the HR Helpline at 800-470-6277 or [email protected] for inquiries Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (EST). Email requests will be responded to within 24 hours.

Manufacturing is one of those environments that exposes every gap in your HR infrastructure fast. When you're covering three shifts, managing safety committees, handling workers' comp, and trying to get information to people who don't have a company email address, "strategic HR" starts to feel like a luxury. This episode, Terry Cook and Stacey Wenczel join Pete to talk about what it actually looks like to do HR in a plant environment — the strain, the workarounds, and the risks that quietly accumulate when no one's watching.The conversation covers a lot of ground: how shift supervisors end up doing de facto HR work on overnight shifts and why that creates its own resentment and risk; why safety committees work best when someone who doesn't work in an area is the one walking through it; and how accommodation requests in physically demanding roles force a more honest conversation about essential job functions than most HR professionals are used to having. Terry also demystifies donning and doffing — the question of whether the time employees spend putting on and taking off protective equipment is compensable — and why the location of your time clock matters more than you'd think.The episode closes with a discussion of safety training cadence, repeat workers' comp incidents, and what it takes to build a culture where employees trust HR enough to actually come to them. Terry and Stacey also share details on AIM's Supervisor Essentials training series, with upcoming sessions available this spring.Links & ResourcesFind the Perfect Training Resource in our updated 2026 Training Catalog!AIM members can reach the HR Helpline at 800-470-6277 or [email protected] for inquiries Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (EST). Email requests will be responded to within 24 hours.AIM HR Solutions Supervisor Essentials Training Upcoming public sessions available in April — virtual format, open enrollment https://aimhrsolutions.com/learning-development/ AIM HR Solutions Training CatalogAIM members can reach the HR Helpline at 800-470-6277 or [email protected] for inquiries Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (EST). Email requests will be responded to within 24 hours.

The workplace in 2025 feels like it's moving at double speed. Federal contractors saw affirmative action requirements disappear virtually overnight. DEI programs have gone from top priority to barely mentioned in less than a year. AI is racing ahead of regulation, and states like Massachusetts are charting their own course while the federal government pulls in the opposite direction.Pete Wright sits down with Tom Jones and Kyle Pardo to make sense of it all. They walk through what the rollback of Executive Order 11246 means for employers still figuring out what they're required to track, how DEI is quietly shifting toward broader inclusion efforts, and why Massachusetts employers need to watch for changes to state average weekly wage calculations. The conversation also touches on what AI regulation might look like when the technology is evolving faster than lawmakers can keep up, and why remote work mandates are hitting morale harder than many leaders expected.But the biggest revelation comes from AIM's latest HR practices survey: for the first time in years, employee engagement and morale have become the number one priority for employers heading into 2026, surpassing even compensation. It's a signal that something fundamental has shifted in how organizations are thinking about their people. This episode offers a clear-eyed look at the year that was and what HR teams should be watching as they head into the next.AIM members can reach the HR Helpline at 800-470-6277 or [email protected] for inquiries Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (EST). Email requests will be responded to within 24 hours. Links & NotesExecutive Order 11246 (Wikipedia overview) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_11246 (historical context and 2025 repeal information)I-9 Central (USCIS) — https://www.uscis.gov/i-9-central (comprehensive I-9 compliance guidance)Form I-9 (USCIS) — https://www.uscis.gov/i-9 (current form and instructions)Handbook for Employers M-274 — https://www.uscis.gov/i-9-central/form-i-9-resources/handbook-for-employers-m-274 (detailed guidance for completing I-9)Massachusetts Workers' Compensation Rates — https://www.mass.gov/info-details/minimum-and-maximum-compensation-rates (official state average weekly wage information)Massachusetts PFML 2025 Updates — https://www.fisherphillips.com/en/news-insights/massachusetts-employers-should-prepare-for-2026-paid-family-and-medical-leave-updates.html (state average weekly wage and benefit updates)State AI Legislation 2025 (Future of Privacy Forum) — https://fpf.org/blog/the-state-of-state-ai-legislative-approaches-to-ai-in-2025/ (comprehensive analysis of state AI laws)NCSL Artificial Intelligence 2025 Legislation — https://www.ncsl.org/technology-and-communication/artificial-intelligence-2025-legislation (tracker of AI bills by state)State AI Laws 2025 (White & Case) — https://www.whitecase.com/insight-alert/california-kentucky-tracking-rise-state-ai-laws-2025 (detailed breakdown of enacted state AI laws) AIM HR Solutions Training CatalogAIM members can reach the HR Helpline at 800-470-6277 or [email protected] for inquiries Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (EST). Email requests will be responded to within 24 hours.

There’s a moment every HR professional remembers — that first email, that first conversation, that first tremor in the air when “return to office” stopped being a policy discussion and started being personal. Three years ago, the message was simple: Stay home, stay safe. Now it’s: Come back. And in between, everything about how we work — and what we value — has changed.In this episode of Human Solutions, Pete Wright sits down with AIM HR Solutions’ Tom Jones and Annette Dupree to explore the strange, often uneasy middle ground between flexibility and structure, empathy and compliance. It’s a story about the quiet negotiations happening in every workplace — between leaders trying to rebuild culture and employees trying to preserve the balance they finally found.Annette starts with something deceptively simple: mindset. What if return-to-office isn’t about control, but reconnection? What if the message isn’t we need you here, but we miss you here? From that shift, a thousand possibilities open up — from reimagining flexibility to reframing belonging.Tom, meanwhile, brings the legal lens: what happens when compassion meets compliance? When a doctor’s note becomes a line in the sand? He explains the fine print of the interactive dialogue — that delicate conversation between employee, manager, and HR that determines what’s possible and what isn’t. It’s the kind of process that sounds bureaucratic but, done right, can restore trust instead of eroding it.And then there’s the harder truth: sometimes, it isn’t about coming back. It’s about who comes back. Reductions in force test the soul of an organization. Tom and Annette walk through how to make those decisions — how to document criteria, avoid bias, and resist the all-too-human temptation to let frustration drive strategy. Because when layoffs happen, the work doesn’t end. It shifts.This is an episode about the messy, necessary work of being human at work — and the leaders who try, every day, to get it right. AIM HR Solutions Training CatalogAIM members can reach the HR Helpline at 800-470-6277 or [email protected] for inquiries Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (EST). Email requests will be responded to within 24 hours.

We like to think the workplace is a place of routine—a clock in, clock out kind of world. But for many immigrants, and for the employers who hire them, work has become a legal maze. Today, we look at what it means to operate in the shadow of ICE, to lead in the face of changing rules, and to humanize the labor force behind the policy headlines. Welcome to this special episode of Human Solutions: Simplifying HR for People who Love HR from AIM HR Solutions. I’m Pete Wright, and today, we’re pulling back the curtain on one of the most misunderstood and under-discussed aspects of the American workplace: immigration. Our focus is on just policy, sure. But even more important: it's people. It’s fear. It’s the daily decisions business leaders have to make without a clear map. Joining us to help navigate this are two remarkable experts: Ana Cristina Chavez, Corporate Engagement Specialist at MIRA, and AIM's Senior Vice President Employer Services Terry Cook.Links & NotesGovernor's Office Guidance for Employers Regarding Immigration and Work AuthorizationNew Americans in MassachusettsNational Immigration Law Center • What to Do if Immigration Comes to Your WorkplaceModel Workplace Policy for Responding to Immigration and Customs enforcement • Asian Americans Advancing Justice AIM HR Solutions Training CatalogAIM members can reach the HR Helpline at 800-470-6277 or [email protected] for inquiries Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (EST). Email requests will be responded to within 24 hours.

This one’s a little different. You asked what’s keeping you up at night—and Pete, Sarah, and Terry actually answered.From the deceptively simple (Can someone choose unpaid time off?) to the maddeningly vague (How do we roll out new policies when everything’s constantly changing?), Terry Cook brings the practical, and Sarah Piscatelli brings the legal. Together, they walk a clean line between “it depends” and “you’d better document that.”Topics include:Why employees sometimes request unpaid time even when PTO is available—and when you can (and should) say no.What it takes to communicate and track policy changes when your workforce reads less email than your average raccoon.Why shift-based resentment and hybrid friction aren’t just cultural challenges—they’re legal minefields.Plus: clear advice on what tools to use for policy sign-offs (spoiler: DocuSign’s not a bad start), when a bathroom-stall poster isn’t enough, and why “assume goodwill” should probably be in your code of conduct.In classic Human Solutions fashion, it’s fast, useful, and just human enough to make you feel like you’re not alone out there! AIM HR Solutions Training CatalogAIM members can reach the HR Helpline at 800-470-6277 or [email protected] for inquiries Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (EST). Email requests will be responded to within 24 hours.

When we talk about workplace culture, we often focus on perks—remote work, flexible schedules, and ping-pong tables in the breakroom. But underneath it all, there’s something far more consequential that speaks volumes about what an organization truly values: how openly it talks about pay.Pay transparency has moved from taboo to table stakes. As new laws roll out for us in Mass... and in states beyond... and as employee expectations evolve, you might be feeling pressure to adapt policies, retrain managers, and communicate with clarity—all while maintaining fairness, trust, and compliance. It’s no longer about being reactive; it’s about being strategic.To help us navigate this changing landscape, we’re welcoming back Kyle Pardo, friend of the show and Executive Director at AIM HR Solutions. With over two decades of experience supporting organizations through HR transformation—especially around compensation, compliance, and culture—Kyle is the person we turn to when we need to learn how to make these difficult conversations practical and she’s back with us today to unpack the realities of pay transparency, from practical implementation to culture change. AIM HR Solutions Training CatalogAIM members can reach the HR Helpline at 800-470-6277 or [email protected] for inquiries Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (EST). Email requests will be responded to within 24 hours.

Think about trust. Trust is the invisible currency of the workplace. It’s the unspoken agreement between employer and employee that we’ll act in good faith, that we’re all playing by the same rules. But what happens when that trust is tested?Imagine this: An employee requests bereavement leave, but the employer isn’t sure if the request is genuine. Can they ask for an obituary as proof? Or picture this—an employee hands in a doctor’s note that just doesn’t seem right. Can an employer challenge it? And then there’s the secret recording: a conversation captured without consent, used as evidence in court. In Massachusetts, a two-party consent state, how does that even happen?These are not hypothetical situations. These are real, messy, and sometimes uncomfortable questions that employers face every day. And today, we’re unpacking them.Joining Pete Wright this week are Tom Jones and Terry Cook from AIM HR Solutions. They spend their days in the trenches of workplace policy, helping employers navigate the gray areas of HR with clarity and confidence.In this episode, we’ll explore how businesses can balance compliance, fairness, and trust in the workplace. From bereavement policies to questionable doctor’s notes to the new realities of workplace surveillance, we’re diving into the tough questions—and the answers you need to know.AIM members can reach the HR Helpline at 800-470-6277 or [email protected] for inquiries Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (EST). Email requests will be responded to within 24 hours.Links & NotesSecret Recording of Supervisor Admissible in Civil CaseAsk the Helpline: Is this doctor's note fake?Sample Massachusetts Earned Sick Time Policy: For employers navigating Massachusetts' Earned Sick Time requirements, this sample policy from the Attorney General’s Office outlines accrual, usage, and documentation rules. Employers should review and tailor it to fit their business needs while ensuring compliance. AIM HR Solutions Training CatalogAIM members can reach the HR Helpline at 800-470-6277 or [email protected] for inquiries Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (EST). Email requests will be responded to within 24 hours.

How much money do you make? If just hearing that question makes all the little hairs stand up on the back of your neck, you might be a Gen X HR manager. This week on the show we’re talking all about Pay Equity and and the proposed legislation on Pay Transparency that might just have an impact on the way we talk about pay at work. Joining us are our own industry experts Kyle Pardo and Sarah Piscatelli to help you plan for the coming changes — and challenges — in recruitment and beyond. Links & NotesComprehensive Compensation ServicesS2 E5: Is Your Company Ready for Pay Transparency?Link to AIM HR’s Recruiting ServicesLink to AIM HR’s Audit Services --In a world where businesses face constant change, there's one partner ready to tackle any HR challenge with you. AIM HR Solutions. We're not just any HR firm; we're your personalized problem-solving team, dedicated to customizing solutions just for you. From talent management to compliance, training to onsite services, our approach is tailored to meet your unique needs. With AIM HR Solutions, you're backed by a powerhouse of professionals, ready for proactive planning and immediate challenge. Learn more at AIMHRSolutions.com.

This week, Pete Wright digs into the complex and sometimes contradictory world of workplace wellness programs with guest Jen Moff, VP of Learning Development at AIM HR Solutions.Pete and Jen examine a controversial study from an Oxford researcher who found that, with the exception of volunteer work, most workplace wellness initiatives provide little to no benefit for employees' wellbeing. The study suggests companies should instead focus on core practices like schedules, pay, and performance reviews.Who are these programs really serving? How can companies authentically embody the values behind their wellness offerings? And is it possible to build an impactful program that employees will actually engage with?The study, and this episode, challenges assumptions about the role and efficacy of workplace wellness programs. It also offers more questions than answers, but a frank discussion is key for any HR professional grappling with these complex issues themselves. Links & NotesWorkplace Wellness Programs Have Little Benefit, Study Finds • New York Times --Step into HR success with AIM HR Solutions! As your trusted partner, we're here to empower you on your HR journey – whether your team is small, in transition, or simply seeking extra support. Introducing our dynamic contract HR services, designed to bring ease and efficiency to your operations. Imagine the peace of mind knowing you have a dedicated partner handling compliance, employee relations, and more. Let AIM HR Solutions be your guiding light toward HR success. Visit AIMHRSolutions.com for more information.

Ever wonder what the most common questions HR professionals grapple with are? In this episode Pete sits down with AIM HR Solutions team members, Tom Jones and Terry Cook, who bring their expertise to the forefront on pressing HR issues. The discussion is centered around the popular topics we often hear about on our helpline. We navigate topics like understanding Massachusetts's PFMLA and its implications for employers, including how to handle leave requests and navigate adverse actions. Discover effective strategies for managing layoffs while exploring alternatives like the Work Share program. Plus, unravel the complexities of drug testing in the workplace, especially in the era of legalized marijuana. --Ready to unlock your team's full potential? AIM HR Solutions, rooted in the heart of Massachusetts, brings you tailored coaching and talent development services designed to elevate your business. With our personalized approach, you're not just investing in HR services – you're investing in the growth of yourself and your team. Discover the power of personalized coaching at AIM HR Solutions. Head to AIMHRSolutions.com to learn more and start your journey toward success today.