The Baseball Cap Approach to Culture

On episode 90 of the HR Famous podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Jessica Lee, and Kris Dunn come together to discuss characters on HBO’s Succession, wearing company-branded apparel on Zoom calls to attempt to build culture, and increases in health-insurance costs.

Listen (click this link if you don’t see the player) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!

Show Highlights

2:45 – JLee had a call with her chief legal counsel and she forgot she had a hoodie on and felt underdressed.

4:15 – JLee is late to the Succession game but now she is obsessed. Tim and KD are longtime fans. JLee asks, “Who is the least worst of the Succession siblings?”

9:40 – Tim didn’t realize while watching Schitt’s Creek that Catherine O’Hara (Moira Rose) was the mom in Home Alone.

11:30 – A recent Business Insider article reported that a CEO of an established company expects all employees to wear baseball caps/hats on Zoom calls to represent being a part of the company.

16:45 – Tim mentioned that when he worked at Applebee’s, they loved when their employees wore their logo on the clothes they wore to work and often gave out clothing with the logo.

19:30 – JLee just realized she’s a perpetrator of this because she bought every member of her team the same hat on a team outing.

26:00 – JLee has noticed that benefits rates are going up and she’s curious about how companies are communicating to their employees why the rates are increasing. Tim said his rates were going to go up by 34%.

28:00 – Tim says that during the pandemic, health-insurance companies had really low utilization and so it looks like this is a cash grab.

32:00 – Tim has often run into a problem with Blue Cross where they always try to make you pay more than you actually need to and then employees need to fight back against the insurance company.

35:00 – JLee is a brand loyalist, even when it comes to medicine!