The Quiet Part Out Loud: When People Work Gets Deprioritized

I was quoted in Business Insider this week. It was my first mention there, and fittingly, the topic was how talent attraction and retention are being deprioritized in this current moment of work.

That framing stuck with me, because it’s something I’ve been seeing across companies for a while now.

As we finally start really circling back after the new year, I want to say the quiet part out loud. People work is being deprioritized. And that decision is already costing companies more than they realize.

When I say people work, I don’t just mean HR or recruiting. I mean the systems, behaviors, and decisions that shape how people experience your company at every touchpoint. Hiring. Interviewing. Onboarding. Leadership. Collaboration. Communication. Growth.

People aren’t just employees. They’re candidates. They’re customers. They’re the ones shaping your reputation in public and in private. When organizations pull back on how they invest in people, the impact shows up fast. Hiring slows or breaks entirely. Trust erodes. Employer brand weakens. Engagement drops. Eventually, revenue follows.

What makes this especially risky is that the early signs are easy to dismiss. Fewer inbound candidates. Less enthusiasm in interviews. More skepticism from employees. Talent communities quietly disengage long before companies realize what’s happening. And by the time leaders feel it clearly, they’re often trying to fix a problem that’s been building for months or years.

This is why I do the work I do at Equity Activations.

My work sits at the intersection of people strategy and business outcomes. I help companies stop treating people strategy like a nice to have and start treating it like what it actually is. A business lever. One that directly affects growth, stability, and long-term success.

That work can take a few different forms depending on what’s needed most. Equitable and effective talent acquisition that improves decision-making and candidate experience. People and culture operations that actually support how the business runs instead of creating friction. Inclusive leadership and collaboration workshops that help teams work better together, especially in moments of pressure or change. Targeted audits that surface what’s working, what’s broken, and what’s quietly getting in the way.

More recently, I launched The Interview Arc, a program designed to help interview teams move past gut feel, pattern matching, and vague impressions and actually assess candidates. The goal is better outcomes on both sides. Stronger hiring decisions for the company and a clearer, more respectful experience for candidates.

If you’ve been reading The Way We Work for a while, you’ve already seen pieces of this thinking. We built a micro-fiction series around interviewing and hiring that lives in past editions of the newsletter. Those short stories weren’t just creative exercises. They were a way to surface the real, often invisible moments candidates experience in interview processes, the assumptions we make, the power dynamics at play, and the quiet signals that shape trust or erode it. That series directly informed how The Interview Arc came together.

All of this matters because deprioritizing people might look efficient on a spreadsheet in the short term. In reality, it’s a long-term risk. One that shows up in missed hires, disengaged employees, damaged trust, and brands that quietly lose relevance.

If any of this feels familiar, my DMs are open. I’m always happy to talk about what’s breaking, what’s fixable, and what actually moves the needle for your organization and how we can help.

There’s no need to let your talent problems continue. Recruiters are busy recruiting but we can solve your training challenges to ensure you are getting the best candidate assessments you need to make your business stronger.

Our target audience is everyone at work—from interns to CEOs. We fundamentally believe that conversations need to happen across levels for real change.

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