Robin Schooling

What Black History Month Demands of Us Now

In 1976, President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month, calling on Americans to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.” That year marked the expansion of what historian Carter G. Woodson had started fifty years earlier with Negro History Week in 1926 – a deliberate effort to ensure that Black contributions weren’t erased from the national narrative. This year, in 2026, we mark these anniversaries while the very foundations of historical truth are under assault.

If there was ever a year when Black History Month mattered more at work, this is the year.

The Weight of This Moment

For some leaders and HR professionals, Black History Month is a meaningful opportunity to center voices and stories that have been systematically marginalized. For others, however, it’s been nothing more than a checkbox exercise – a month of polite inclusion that makes people comfortable rather than driving the kind of systemic change that’s desperately needed.

But the discussion we’ve long encountered as HR leaders shouldn’t be whether to observe Black History Month or not. The question, rather, that we need to ask ourselves is “do our efforts reflect genuine commitment … or performative comfort?”

And the stakes, and how we respond to that question, are higher now than ever. When the current Administration is actively eroding the teaching of Black history, workplaces may become one of the few remaining spaces where adults can engage with this history at all! So now, in 2026, we cannot afford to treat February as a time for surface-level gestures; we need to lean in with intention, authenticity, and a willingness (especially if we are non-Black leaders!) to be uncomfortable.

What It Can Be

Now let’s be honest about what Black History Month at work often looks like: a guest speaker, a catered lunch, maybe a resource list sent via email. These aren’t inherently bad things, but if they’re the entirety of our effort, we’re missing the point.

Authentic engagement with Black History Month requires us to move beyond passive observation and toward active participation. It means elevating the Black community – not just learning about it from a distance.

Here’s what that might look like in practice:

Partner with Black-owned businesses. Order catering from a Black-owned restaurant for office events, host an expo or marketplace featuring local Black entrepreneurs, and make purchasing decisions that circulate dollars back into the community.

Amplify employee stories. Create space for Black employees to share their experiences, histories, and perspectives – if they want to. This isn’t about putting anyone on the spot or asking them to perform their identity for the comfort of others; but it is about offering a platform for those who wish to use it.

Invest in education. Bring in guest speakers who challenge assumptions and broaden perspectives. Curate reading lists, film screenings, or discussion groups that go deep and focus on the breadth and diversity of all Black experiences – not stereotypes, not oversimplifications, but real, complex humanity.

Commit year-round. This is perhaps the most important shift. Black History Month should be a moment within a broader, sustained commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. If February is the only time your organization talks about race, you’re not honoring Black history … you’re containing it.

The Limits of “Polite” Inclusion

There’s a version of workplace inclusion that prioritizes comfort over change. It’s the kind that keeps conversations pleasant, avoids controversy, and never challenges anyone’s assumptions. It’s what some might call “polite” inclusion – and it’s not enough. Real inclusion is often disruptive because it asks us to examine systems we’ve taken for granted, surfaces uncomfortable truths about who has historically held power (and why!), and demands that we reckon with how that history shapes present-day inequities.

This doesn’t mean we need to be confrontational, but it does mean comfort doesn’t have to be prioritized over making people think. We learn, and change, when we “dig deep.” This is hard for many – particularly when we have EOs from the Oval Office (by way of the Heritage Foundation), label just about everything as a “divisive concept.”

Yet, despite the challenges, despite the critiques, despite the ways this month can be co-opted or watered down – Black History Month remains vital.

We celebrate to remember the figures who have been erased, overlooked, or forgotten. Not just the names everyone knows, but the countless others whose contributions shaped the world we live in today.

We celebrate to educate. Not just about what happened in the past, but about how that past reverberates into our present. About how history isn’t a distant story but a living force that shapes workplace dynamics, hiring practices, promotion decisions, and whose voices get heard.

And we celebrate to show Black youth – inside our organizations and beyond – that their dreams are valid, their ambitions are possible, and their place in history is assured.

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Image by freepik

HR’s Groundhog Day: Don’t Retreat When Change Shows Up

Every February 2nd, a chubby rodent emerges from a burrow in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, squints at the crowd, and delivers a weather forecast that’s accurate roughly 40% of the time. Which, depending on your perspective, is either charmingly hopeful or spectacularly useless.

And yet we show up to see his reaction year after year.

The tradition dates back to 1886, but its roots dig deeper – back to medieval Europe, ancient Celtic festivals, and the Christian feast of Candlemas. February 2nd sits at the midpoint between the winter solstice and spring equinox, a time when people desperately sought signs that winter’s grip might finally loosen. Originally, Europeans watched bears and badgers for weather clues (because apparently, medieval folks had time for this). German immigrants brought the custom to Pennsylvania, swapped out the unavailable badgers for the plentiful groundhog, and Punxsutawney Phil became America’s most famous meteorologist – despite lacking any credentials whatsoever.

Here’s how the lore works: if the groundhog sees his shadow on a sunny day, he retreats to his burrow, predicting six more weeks of winter. If he doesn’t see his shadow – meaning it’s overcast – he stays out, signaling an early spring. The logic is charmingly backward: sunny days mean more winter, cloudy days mean spring is coming. It’s a tradition built on anxiety, hope, and the very human need to believe we can predict what’s coming next.

Sound familiar?

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HR has its own version of Groundhog Day, and it happens every time something new shows up on the horizon.

We emerge from our burrows – tentatively, cautiously – and glance around. Maybe we’re talking about new or emerging technology, shifting workplace norms, or the latest trend-complete-with-a-buzzword that everyone’s suddenly treating like gospel. And then, like Phil spotting his shadow, we freeze.

Oh no. I refuse to use AI in my day-to-day HR work!

Wait – allow people to work from home indefinitely?

Did someone say quiet quitting? Again?

And just like that, we scurry back underground. Back to the safety of what we know. Back to the comfort of our spreadsheets, our policy manuals, our “this way has always worked just fine” protocols.

We retreat because the sun feels too bright, or the cold feels too biting or, quite often, the conditions feel too uncertain. Change is relentless in HR and it’s exhausting, so our very human instinct to duck back into the burrow feels less like cowardice and more like self-preservation.

But remember this about Punxsutawney Phil – his “prediction” doesn’t change the weather. Winter’s going to winter (whether he sees his shadow or not), and hiding doesn’t make spring come any faster.

The irony of Groundhog Day – the tradition, not the Bill Murray movie – is that it’s rooted in hope. For centuries now, people have gathered in the dead of winter, looking for any sign that warmth was coming. Rather than hiding from it, they came outdoors, squinted into the light and made their plans accordingly.

That’s what HR needs to do.

Come out and look around! Yes, it might be cold. Yes, people will be staring at you. Yes, you might see your “shadow” – the manifestation of your doubts, your fears, and your reasonable concerns. But come out anyway and prepare for what’s coming.

Because winter’s going to end eventually. The question is whether you’ll be ready when it does.

Lifestyle Spending Accounts: From Gym Perks to Groceries

If you’ve been around the HR block a few times, you may think you know all there is to know about benefits. Even If you’re a small business and you’re building an HR function from scratch or evaluating your first dedicated benefits strategy, you’ve likely heard about HSAs and FSAs. But there’s a newer player gaining serious traction: Lifestyle Spending Accounts (LSAs). And according to recent data, they might be exactly what your organization needs in 2026.

What Are Lifestyle Spending Accounts?

Think of an LSA as a flexible, employer-funded account that helps employees cover the expenses they encounter in daily life. Unlike the more rigid HSAs and FSAs that focus exclusively on healthcare, LSAs cast a wider net and cover everything from gym memberships and mental health services to childcare, groceries, professional development, and even pet care.

Here’s what makes them different: you design them. As an employer, you decide:

How much to contribute (there are no IRS-mandated caps)
Which expense categories qualify
Whether unused funds roll over or follow a “use it or lose it” model
How and when funding occurs (monthly, quarterly, annually)

The catch? Most LSAs are post-tax benefits, meaning employees typically pay income tax on distributed funds. However, certain categories – like tuition assistance up to IRS limits or required cell phone reimbursements – can qualify for tax-advantaged treatment.

Why LSAs Appeal to Employers

The Compt 2026 Benchmark Report reveals a striking trend: 64% of their customers with LSAs now offer one that is all-inclusive – and that is up from 55% in 2024. That’s on top of research from Mercer that found that 9% of their survey respondents offered LSAs in 2022 and it went up to 13% in 2023. This isn’t just feel-good HR theater anymore – it’s strategic!

Here’s why employers are leaning in:

Cost control: You only pay for what employees use. With a reimbursement model, unused funds stay with you, helping maintain predictability while still offering competitive benefits.
Administrative simplicity: Rather than juggling separate wellness stipends, commuter benefits, professional development budgets, and meal allowances, you consolidate everything into one program. One system, one set of rules, one reporting structure.
Competitive differentiation: Employers offering an easy to use and flexible LSA position themselves ahead of the curve for talent attraction and retention.
Ideal for SMBs: Small companies offer 2.6x the per-employee funding of large organizations.
Measurable impact: Because LSAs are flexible, they absorb shifting employee needs without requiring constant program redesigns. Quarterly funding saw 85% utilization versus 52% for monthly programs – showing that when you fund matters as much as how much.

What Employees Want

The employee spending data tells a compelling story about what people genuinely need versus what we think they want.

Nearly 1 in 10 LSA dollars now goes to grocery retailers. Yes, groceries. Six of the top 10 vendors offer grocery or household essentials. This isn’t about perks anymore; it’s about financial stability during sustained economic pressure.

Wellness remains strong (85% participation when embedded in LSAs), but it’s evolved beyond gym memberships. Employees are directing wellness funds toward:

Mental health services and therapy
Nutrition and supplements
Preventive care not covered by insurance
Recovery tools and equipment

And here’s the flexibility advantage: the same employee might use their LSA for groceries one month, a gym membership the next, and childcare support during a family emergency. The benefit adapts to life as it happens – not as HR designs policies around it.

The Professional Development Pivot: From Conferences to AI Tools

One of the most striking findings from the Compt report centers on professional development spending because it signals a fundamental shift in how employees are approaching skills growth.

25% of all professional development expenses in 2025 were for online tools an d productivity software, and here’s the nuance: 62% of those expenses were AI-related – think ChatGPT subscriptions, Cursor, Grammarly, and other hands-on applications.

This signals a move away from the traditional professional development model of conferences, formal courses, and credentialing programs – although those are still occurring of course – and toward continuous, embedded learning. Instead, employees are essentially building their own personal “AI tool stack” that helps them upskill in real time – experimenting and adapting as job expectations evolve rather than waiting for top-down training initiatives or corporate funding to use a specific tech tool.

This is a fascinating shift as it demonstrates that your employees don’t want another learning management system or even an annual conference budget. Raher, they want the autonomy to adopt the tools that make them more effective right now – and LSAs give them that flexibility without requiring you to predict which specific platforms or subscriptions will matter six months from now.

What This Means for Your Business

LSAs offer a pragmatic foundation for any company’s benefits program; they scale across different employee types (hourly workers show 89% utilization!!! – higher than many salaried programs), work globally, and require minimal ongoing administration when run through the right platform.

Start with these questions:

What scattered stipends or reimbursement programs could we consolidate?
Are we solving for today’s pressures (childcare, groceries, mental health) or yesterday’s perks?
Can our current systems handle flexible benefits, or are we building on infrastructure that will create manual work?

The data is clear: employees want flexibility, employers want predictability, and LSAs deliver both. The companies making this work aren’t the ones with the biggest budgets – they’re the ones who designed benefits around how their employees live and work.

Download the Compt 2026 Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report here.

Star-Struck: HR and the Big O

SHRM finally got her.

After fifteen-plus years of breathless speculation in press rooms, blogger lounges, and Duke Street conference calls, Oprah Winfrey will keynote the 2026 SHRM Annual Conference. The announcement sent ripples of excitement through some (though not all) HR circles – people are beside themselves.

Sure, sure – Oprah is a force. She built an empire as a brand, an entrepreneur, and a cultural touchstone. She’s mastered media, publishing, and influence in ways people can only study from a distance. There’s genuine substance there – beyond the celebrity shine.

But … she’s also a billionaire who probably hasn’t personally signed a paycheck or worried about meeting payroll in decades. Her workplace reality – the one she’ll speak from – exists in a stratosphere most HR professionals will never occupy. Her insights on leadership and culture are filtered through resources, reach, and power that bear little resemblance to the world where HR professionals are trying to make flexible work policies function with a two-person HR team and a CFO who still thinks “culture” means free coffee.

Celebrity vs. Substance

There’s something revealing about how desperately SHRM has chased this moment. For years – years – having Oprah on this conference stage has been the ultimate “get.” The proof that HR matters, that our profession deserves A-list attention.

But why does HR need that proof?

Lawyers don’t seem to spend their annual conferences breathlessly awaiting Taylor Swift. Accountants aren’t holding out for Beyoncé to validate their strategic importance. Yet HR has been in a years-long courtship with celebrity credibility, as if the right famous face on stage will finally convince the C-suite that we belong.

When we treat celebrity keynotes as the pinnacle of professional development, isn’t it like we’re admitting we don’t quite believe in the substance of our own work?

Inspiration vs. Information

Oprah will be inspiring of course. She’ll be warm, charismatic, and she’ll tell stories that make everyone feel special. Twenty-six thousand HR professionals will sit in that cavernous hall, and many – probably most – will leave feeling energized, moved, and maybe even transformed.

But will they leave with anything they can use?

Will they know how to have a harder conversation with a resistant manager? Will they understand the fundamental changes AI is bringing to work and HR? Will they get ideas about how to build trust in a team when the employees feel invisible? Will they leave better equipped to advocate for resources when leadership sees HR as a cost center? (I can guarantee the line “because Oprah said so!” is not going to fly.)

Probably not.

Because while inspiration makes us feel good in the moment, information changes how we work tomorrow. Next week. Next month.

HR conferences have always walked this line – balancing the emotional uplift of the big-name keynote with the practical workshops that move the needle. But lately, it feels like we’ve tipped too far into spectacle with the clamoring for Instagrammable closing night concerts and celebrity headliners.

Meanwhile, the conversations about the unglamorous work of building functional systems and supporting struggling employees are happening in breakout rooms with forty people and a projector that may or may not work.

What Brings HR Pleasure?

What makes HR sigh with delight? Is it sitting in an arena with 26,000 colleagues to hear a billionaire share heartwarming anecdotes? Is it paying $18 for a drink in a cavernous convention hall to watch Janet Jackson perform while standing on concrete for two hours? Is it puppies in a cage, at a vendor booth, in the Expo Hall?

Or is it something quieter and harder to monetize?

For me it’s always been about finding my people. The ones who don’t buy into the corporate bullshit. The ones who care about doing work that matters and are trying to build something real. The ones who know that credibility doesn’t come from celebrity adjacency; credibility comes from doing the right thing and operating in an ethical, moral and humane manner. And SHRM has failed those tests many times over. I wonder if the Big O knows the rest of that story?

La petite mort indeed.