Latest news with #Loveless
Business Insider
24-06-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
If you think your job is hard right now, try working in HR
Over the past 18 months, Evan Loveless has led seven rounds of layoffs, personally informing hundreds of his ad-agency colleagues that they were being let go. "It's a chronic feeling of sadness because it's so frequent for me," said Loveless, a senior human-resources partner in St. Louis. "It's like being stuck under a raincloud." Loveless recalled a particularly soul-crushing layoff conversation with a worker who thought he was reaching out with news about a promotion. "Sometimes the person's husband or wife also just lost their job," he said. "You see their faces and then their faces haunt you a little bit." Working in HR has never been glamorous, as the occupation often requires enforcing unpopular company rules and decisions. Now, HR professionals say the job is getting downright ugly. Unceasing layoffs, stricter return-to-office mandates, immigration raids in the workplace, and a sudden need to help everyone master AI are among the latest challenges upending their workloads. "It's a confluence of events that are occurring simultaneously, the likes of which and magnitude of which I never have observed in my more than 30 years of being a human-capital leader," Jim Link, chief human resources officer for the Society of Human Resource Management, told Business Insider. The new rigors come after another tumultuous period for HR workers. During the pandemic years, they suddenly had to develop and manage remote-work set-ups, grapple with anti-vaccine pushback, and deal with employee tensions and calls to action following murder of George Floyd. Today, HR teams are juggling even more, said Tracy Brower, a Ph.d sociologist who researches organizational behavior in Michigan. "The demands on HR today are significant, increasing, and intense," said Brower. Deportation fears One of the new tasks HR is having to deal with is the impact of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in the workplace. Several times a week foreign workers now come to Alexandra Valverde, an HR director for a midsize food manufacturer in the Southeast, with concerns about getting swept up in raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Some have tears in their eyes. "This is the hardest year I've had in HR," said Valverde, who's been working in the industry since 2019. "The fear I'm seeing from employees, even if their status is completely fine — that is something I hadn't experienced before." The steady drumbeat of layoffs is also particularly unsettling for HR workers at companies with staffers on H1-B visas, which allow foreigners to temporarily live and work in the U.S. if they meet certain criteria. "It's never easy to lay anybody off, but it's even harder when you're telling someone they're probably going to leave the country," said Mike Smart, an HR executive at a California tech company. Upon losing a job, H1-B workers typically have just 60 days to find another employer or face deportation. "Even in the best of job markets, 60 days isn't ample by any stretch," said Smart. As of May, employers have announced 696,309 job cuts this year, an 80% increase compared with the same period last year, according to a new report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Making matters worse, the cuts are coming at a time when company chiefs are warning of even more layoffs coming down the line due to the rise of generative AI and AI agents. Last week Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company's extensive use of the technology is expected to reduce its total corporate workforce, which totaled approximately 1.5 million last year. CEOs of other companies, including chatbot maker Anthropic, freelance-job site Fiverr, and payments provider Klarna, have recently issued similar declarations. 'You're a horrible human being' HR workers are used to taking heat for implementing policies that don't sit well with workers. But lately they say it's gotten a lot harder to keep their cool. In the second quarter, employees at organizations that experienced layoffs in the past year committed 67% more acts of so-called workplace incivility on average than those at firms without such cuts, according to new SHRM data. Those acts, which the trade group says includes silencing and excessively monitoring colleagues, were also 63% higher among workers at organizations with return-to-office mandates than at those without. David Gaspin, the head of HR for a commercial real-estate company in New York, said that at his previous employer he was hit with "some serious vitriol" from a colleague he thought he had a good relationship with after having to lay this person off last year. The tongue-lashing included comments such as "you're just a corporate tool" and "you're a horrible human being." "That's never easy to hear," said Gaspin. Given the more taxing landscape, it's perhaps no wonder that fewer people are looking for work in HR. Searches for HR jobs on in the first half of this year were down nearly 5% from the first half of 2024, and they've been declining annually since 2021, Indeed data show. Separately, a 2022 study from LinkedIn found HR had the highest turnover rate of any job function. (The job site hasn't updated the report since then.) Rebecca Taylor, a former HR professional in New Jersey who co-hosts a podcast called HR Confessions, said one reason she left the field is that she was tired of always being the office grinch. The final straw came after a worker she was tasked with laying off looked up her parents' landline and called them repeatedly to chastise her. "It was scary," said Taylor, 37, who uses a pseudonym partly because of that incident. If a disgruntled employee is angry enough, she added, what else will they try to find?
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
‘I left really frustrated' — Mother of Bayles Lake crash victim not feeling heard
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (WCIA) — Months of back and forth with the Iroquois County Highway Department have left a mother exhausted. Her daughter was hurt after she crashed into Bayles Lake last year. Amanda Loveless wants more safety in the area to prevent crashes like her daughter's. In December, 18-year-old Elaine Carman-Loveless was driving down County Road 200N in Loda when her SUV hit a patch of ice. It hit the guardrails, continued to slide and ended up in the lake. Carman-Loveless was able to get out of the SUV through the back and survived. 'I'm not the only one,' Carman-Loveless said. 'My mom's the one who expressed concerns.' 'People say enough is enough' — Citizens Utility Board fighting record-breaking gas rate hike Ever since that cold December day, Carman-Loveless and her mother have been asking for new safety equipment to be installed. On Thursday, Loveless went to the ICHD's meeting in Watseka to see if there were any updates on safety measures. This was the first meeting since Iroquois County State's Attorney Michael Quinlan sent a letter to Charles Alt, the Transportation and Highway Committee chairman, and Alan Hardwood, the Iroquois County Highway Engineer. In the letter, Quinlan said the county would not be held liable if they decided to put up new safety equipment. But that doesn't mean they're going up, and Carman-Loveless and her mother feel they aren't being heard. 'It's more hurtful to me than anything to feel very disregard and ignored as another human being' Carman-Loveless said. Assumption City Council votes to shut down cat rescue until they get a main facility The two said they've reached out to the Iroquois County Transportation and Highway Committee multiple times. Loveless has been to all but one meeting this year. At the meeting Thursday morning, she said it reached a boiling point. 'I was told that they had only five minutes,' Loveless said. 'They had somewhere to be, which was really frustrating because I take off work to be at these meetings. But then also, they just stated, 'Hey, wait, we aren't discussing this.'' Loveless said Alt said there were no future plans to discuss the issue. He did not respond to WCIA 3's requests for comment, and Harwood declined to comment. Village of Savoy approves redevelopment contract in downtown plaza project When asked if she had a message for the board, Carman-Loveless had this to say: 'If this was your child or if this was you, you would feel the same way I do and you would be up at night reading every comment that's hurtful towards you,' she said. 'And they would play in your head every time you're driving.' Despite being frustrated, Loveless and her daughter said they're both going to continue to push for changes to be made to the road. Loveless said she wants the county to apply for an IDOT grant to fix county roads. The deadline for that is mid-June. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Yahoo
Skeletal remains of missing son found in backyard tree house days after father dies in scuba accident
Days after an Atlanta man died in a scuba diving accident in Hawaii, authorities said they found the skeletal remains of his son who had gone missing four years prior in a tree house in his backyard. Henry Frantz, 74, died while scuba diving off the coast of Maui on March 10, the Atlanta Pipe Band said in an Instagram post on March 14. 'A founding member of APB in 1970, past Pipe Major, and dedicated member for 55 years, Henry's impact on our band and the piping community was immeasurable,' the group wrote. It is unclear what caused the accident. The Maui Police Department did not immediately return a request for comment to confirm Frantz's death. Frantz's family could not immediately be reached for comment. The Decatur Police Department said in a statement that on March 16, six days after Frantz died, his family found human remains in a backyard tree house at Frantz's home in Decatur, Georgia, about six miles northeast of Atlanta. Beoncia M. Loveless, the director of operations for the Dekalb County Medical Examiner's Office, told NBC News in a phone call on Thursday that the remains belonged to Frantz' son, 32-year-old Henry Hank Frantz. Loveless said that her office has not yet determined a cause of death. Local reports said that son went missing four years prior. A Decatur police spokesperson told NBC News in a phone call that the son was never reported missing to the department. A case for Frantz's son was not in the Department of Justice's National Missing and Unidentified Persons System as of Thursday. Loveless said her office has not yet determined when the 32-year-old died. Although the remains were mostly skeletal, she said that some tissue was still present on the body. This article was originally published on
NBC News
27-03-2025
- NBC News
Skeletal remains of missing son found in backyard tree house days after father dies in scuba accident
Days after an Atlanta man died in a scuba diving accident in Hawaii, authorities said they found the skeletal remains of his of his son who had gone missing four years prior in a tree house in his backyard. Henry Frantz, 74, died while scuba diving off the coast of Maui on March 10, the Atlanta Pipe Band said in an Instagram post on March 14. 'A founding member of APB in 1970, past Pipe Major, and dedicated member for 55 years, Henry's impact on our band and the piping community was immeasurable,' the group wrote. It is unclear what caused the accident. The Maui Police Department did not immediately return a request for comment to confirm Frantz's death. Frantz's family could not immediately be reached for comment. The Decatur Police Department said in a statement that on March 16, six days after Frantz died, his family found human remains in a backyard tree house at Frantz's home in Decatur, Georgia, about six miles northeast of Atlanta. Beoncia M. Loveless, the director of operations for the Dekalb County Medical Examiner's Office, told NBC News in a phone call on Thursday that the remains belonged to Frantz' son, 32-year-old Henry Hank Frantz. Loveless said that her office has not yet determined a cause of death. Local reports said that son went missing four years prior. A Decatur police spokesperson told NBC News in a phone call that the son was never reported missing to the department. A case for Frantz's son was not in the Department of Justice's National Missing and Unidentified Persons System as of Thursday. Loveless said her office has not yet determined when the 32-year-old died. Although the remains were mostly skeletal, she said that some tissue was still present on the body.
Washington Post
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Lydia Loveless is happy to play second fiddle — er, bass — for a spell
Patterson Hood had only one candidate in mind when he needed a duet partner for what was to be the first single from 'Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams,' the Drive-By Truckers co-front man's first solo album in 12.5 years. The singer was Lydia Loveless. The song was 'A Werewolf and a Girl,' an unsentimental, down-tempo reflection Hood had written in 2021 about a formative encounter with his high school sweetheart some 40 years earlier. Loveless might seem like a surprising choice to sing the part of Hood's long-ago partner for several reasons, not least that the prolific Ohio singer-songwriter is Hood's junior by 26 years. But she'd been a fan of the Drive-By Truckers, Hood's hard-touring, critically adored rock outfit, since she was 16, and on friendly terms with Hood since she'd opened some dates on the tour for Hood's prior solo record, 2012's 'Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance.' Hood was confident that given their mutual respect, and Loveless's lyrics that address sex and relationships in her own frank terms, she was the singer for the job. Loveless tracked her vocal remotely, the day after Hood sent her the song. 'I think he was impressed by how quickly I got it finished,' she says. That unstudied, extemporaneous quality gives the recording a visceral impact, and Loveless's brassy, Loretta Lynn-inflected voice contrasts with Hood's raspier, more conversational instrument better than you might've guessed. When I describe the youthful experience addressed in 'A Werewolf and a Girl' as seminal, Loveless jumps in to say, 'Literally!' 'It was funny because he was like, 'I don't know if you're going to find this song creepy, because it's kind of personal and a little sexual,'' Loveless recalls. 'And I was like, 'Oh, whatever.' It wasn't until after the song came out and I was listening to it that I was like, 'Oh, wow, this does go pretty deeply into some stuff.' But I didn't even think of it while I was working on it.' Loveless, whose most recent album of new music was 2023's 'Nothing's Gonna Stand in My Way Again,' will open 14 dates on Hood's 'Exploding Trees' tour, including a weekend stand at D.C.'s cozy Atlantis, with solo sets accompanying herself on guitar and piano. Last year, she put out 'Something Else,' which rearranged the songs from her 2014 album 'Somewhere Else' as piano ballads, so we'll probably hear several of those. The Columbus, Ohio-based roots rocker is gearing up to write her next full-length, and in the meantime, she's releasing a new song each month on Bandcamp. Last month, a new Loveless ballad called 'Accolades' followed January's release, a cover of Irving Berlin's 1923 torch song 'What'll I Do.' She's also playing bass in the Sensurrounders, the band Hood has put together to back his headlining sets, which means learning a lot of new material. (Sensurround was a short-lived precursor to modern-day movie surround sound, a floor-rattling novelty rolled out with the 1974 disaster film 'Earthquake.') Bass was Loveless's instrument way back when she was playing in a band with her dad and her sisters, starting at age 13. She also played bass on much of her 2020 album 'Daughter,' but it's been a long time since she worked as a bassist in front of a paying crowd. She says she's learning the songs in a way her old piano teacher used to scold her for — playing by ear, rather than using charts. In her recollection, stepping in as Hood's bass player was her idea. 'I was pretty buzzed,' she says, laughing. 'I think it was Hemingway who said, 'Always do sober what you say you'll do drunk, and it will teach you to keep your mouth shut.' But I don't know, I'm pretty stoked about it.' March 22 at 7:30 p.m. and March 23 at 6:30 p.m. at the Atlantis, 2047 Ninth St. NW. $35 (Saturday sold out).
