WTF is Business Casual
Buckle up for real HR stories that'll make you laugh, cringe, and thank your lucky stars you're not that guy.
WTF is Business Casual is the HR podcast where two seasoned consultants—Sarah Bursten and Jenny Lavey, co-founders of RiseHR—dish on wild workplace fails, toxic bosses, employee drama, and leadership gone wrong. With 35+ years of combined experience in HR, leadership development, and people management, they offer surprisingly useful advice wrapped in real talk and hilarious storytelling.
If you’re an HR professional, small business owner, people manager, or just someone who’s survived office politics, this show is for you.
Subscribe to WTF is Business Casual—because work is weird, leadership is messy, and people always be peopling.
Hosted by Sarah Bursten & Jenny Lavey | RiseHR
www.risehumanresources.com
WTF is Business Casual
WTF Meetings: Why Your Workplace Productivity Is Dying in Conference Rooms
Jenny and Sarah rip into the black hole of modern work life: meetings. Endless updates, back-to-back Zooms, and “quick syncs” that somehow eat your entire day. It’s no wonder productivity is tanking.
They break down:
- Why update meetings are the real productivity killers
- The hidden cost of meetings when you factor in salaries (spoiler: it’s a lot)
- How stripping recurring meetings off the calendar could actually fix workplace culture
With plenty of side-eye for the corporate “I’ll give you three minutes back” lie, Jenny and Sarah also share horror stories of leaders who confused talking with working.
If your team’s working nights and weekends because their days are filled with meetings, you’re not leading, you’re clogging the damn pipes.
And if your meeting could’ve been an email, it probably should’ve been.
Highlights:
[01:57] The one-hour meeting that inspired this rant
[04:39] What if meetings had a running cost ticker?
[09:45] Dropbox’s 3D model for meetings (debate, discuss, decide—or don’t meet)
[13:49] The “no update meetings” rule every workplace needs
[17:27] A company that wiped all meetings—and only brought back what mattered
[23:34] Why recurring meetings are the productivity death spiral
[30:36] Your end-of-year challenge: cancel everything and start fresh
🎧 Hit play, because your workplace culture isn’t broken, it’s just buried under bad meetings.
