Workplace strategy with real-room texture.
HR Happy Hour Network follows the changing shape of work through interviews, roundtables, and specialty series across HR and business. Episodes move from AI systems and labor markets to neurodivergent hiring, small-business influence, employee experience, and the occasional sports-side detour.
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HR Happy Hour Network is a workplace strategy feed with the shape of a media network rather than a single narrow show. It covers human resources, leadership, business technology, labor markets, employee experience, and inclusion with a conversational style that stays close to real examples. The episodes often begin with a plain question. Then they let the guest or co-host work through the mess. In the enterprise technology conversation, Chris Leone from Oracle talks about assistants, systems of record, agentic applications, sourcing command centers, RFQs, and human-in-the-loop automation. The topic is technical, but the frame is practical: what actually changes when software can move work forward across an end-to-end process. A European labor-market episode takes a different angle, looking at AI, hiring slowdowns, economic uncertainty, routine white-collar work, graduate hiring, reskilling, and mobility. It is not alarmist. It is also not dismissive. The show is comfortable saying that displacement, redesign, and augmentation can all be true at once. Inclusion is another major lane. Episodes on neurodivergent workers and people with disabilities challenge familiar hiring signals like eye contact, small talk, and traditional interview performance. They return to the same practical question: what would change if employers looked harder at job skill, support, enthusiasm, and fit? Small-business HR gets its own attention through a discussion of influence from the middle, where HR teams want strategic voice but are still treated as tactical support. Culture is treated with the same working-level lens. Marcus Buckingham’s appearance around Design Love In turns “love” into a business conversation about the value people want to add at work. A year-review episode steps back to connect AI, psychological safety, performance, equity, and the conversations shaping 2026. The network also has lighter edges, including Play-by-Play’s March Madness bracket talk with Jack McFarlane and Nick Schlemmer. That variety can feel wide, but the through line is clear. HR Happy Hour Network is interested in how people, systems, incentives, and managers actually behave when work is changing quickly.
Made for: Built for HR leaders, people managers, workplace technologists, recruiters, small-business operators, and business listeners tracking how work is changing. It especially suits people who want examples they can take back to an organization.
What sets it apart: The network format gives it more range than a single HR interview show, moving between enterprise technology, labor-market analysis, inclusion, employee experience, and lighter workplace-adjacent conversations. Its strongest moments translate big workplace trends into concrete hiring, management, and culture decisions.
At Work in America, the longest running and top downloaded HR podcast, focuses on human resources, management, leadership, and workforce technology. The show is hosted by Steve Boese, the Co-Chair of the HR Technology Conference and Trish Steed, CEO of H3 HR Advisors.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
HR Happy Hour Network connects workforce strategy to the hiring, technology and inclusion decisions that determine how organizations actually operate.
HR Happy Hour Network treats work as an operating system shaped by hiring practices, technology, labor markets and the choices managers make. Steve Boese and Trish Steed favor guest conversations that move from broad principles to decisions inside actual workplaces, including…
This is where your hiring handshake gets cross-examined and AI agents meet the org chart.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A practical look at enterprise automation, anchored in workflow and outcome.
Chris Leone's turn on System of Record makes a steady case for putting automation where the work already lives: inside the system of record, with context current and transactions able to change in real time.
A hiring conversation that treats inclusion as operational, not decorative.
The episode frames inclusion as a practical workplace choice, not a slogan, and it moves from neurodivergent hiring to the interview habits that can hide real job skill.
A measured look at AI, graduate hiring, and flexibility in Europe's shifting labor market.
HR Means Business places Europe's labor market in the uneasy space between slower hiring and stubborn skills shortages, with Mervyn Dinner tracing how economic uncertainty, AI, and automation are changing work and recruitment.
A loose, funny bracket debate where BYU becomes the clearest test of bias.
March Madness gives Play-by-Play Podcast a useful pressure test: how much confidence can anyone really bring to a bracket built on uncertainty?
A grounded conversation about disability employment, real jobs, flexible schedules, and assumptions about who can work.
Workplace inclusion gets a practical stress test in this conversation with Lloyd Lewis, CEO of Bark Thrift Stores in Colorado. Rather than treating disability employment as an abstract principle, the discussion stays close to jobs people can actually do.
A grounded look at how ordinary interview rituals can hide the skills a workplace actually needs.
The ROI of Kindness in the Workplace reframes a familiar workplace virtue as a hiring and inclusion issue. It looks at how interview habits such as eye contact, a handshake, small talk, and weather chat can get mistaken for job readiness, then brings the point back to a useful…
A warm year-end Spotify roundtable where global artist rankings lead into what the team actually listened to.
A year-end PlayNext roundtable turns Spotify listening data into an easygoing music conversation, led by Jack McFarlane and Nick Schlemmer with Carly McFarlane stepping in from her usual behind-the-scenes role.
Practical HR conversations for changing workplaces.
Steve Boese and Trish Steed host Tara May, CEO of AspiroTech, a nonprofit tech services company with 95% autistic employees.
Hosts Jack McFarlane, Nick Schlemmer, and producer Carly McFarlane review 2025 across categories like top news stories, music, movies, sports, and businesses.
On the HR Means Business Podcast, David D'Souza connects AI adoption to the future of the HR profession.
Steve Bowes has Trish Steed with him on System of Record, where they bring in Oracle's Chris Leone to talk about automation that lives inside the system of record instead of hovering beside the workflow.
The episode opens with a sponsor read from WorkHuman and then shifts into a friendly back-and-forth about HR's fast-changing role and why leaders who move beyond administration into true business leadership have the edge.
Julius Probst, Senior Economist at Upcast and Director of Research at Recruitonomics, joins Mervyn Dinner on the HR Means Business podcast to unpack European labour-market pressure.
This episode discusses practical strategies for HR professionals in small businesses to gain influence and move beyond administrative roles to become true business leaders.
This episode features an interview with Marcus Buckingham about his new book 'Design Love In' and explores why love should be considered a crucial metric in employee experience and business success.
Hosts Jack McFarlane and Nick Schlemmer preview March Madness on the HR Happy Hour Network's Play-by-Play Podcast, naming Duke's Cameron Boozer, Kansas's Darren Peterson, Miami's Nigel Peck, and North Carolina's Caleb Wilson as players to watch.
Lloyd Lewis, CEO of Arc Thrift Stores of Colorado, explains how hiring 450 employees with intellectual and developmental disabilities helped the nonprofit post 17 record revenue years out of 18 since he joined in 2005.
This episode is a year-end wrap-up and preview show discussing upcoming workplace trends for 2026, including AI, psychological safety, performance, and equity, sponsored by WorkHuman.
The hosts and a special guest discuss their annual year-in-review episode, covering various categories and sharing insights on favorite things from the year.
This episode discusses how AI-powered real-time recognition transforms workplace culture and business outcomes by analyzing people data.
This episode discusses the transformation of higher education through digital HR strategies, focusing on AI applications and operational insights from Oracle AI World.
This episode discusses how AI is transforming HR through data-driven insights, featuring a conversation with Laura Maffucci about GP's new product GIA and its impact on workplace dynamics.