Mixing Business and Humor: unconventional thoughts on standard business practices

This is the Not Safe for Work Podcast. Produced by WorldatWork and hosted by Charles Epstein, Workspan’s and #evolve’s NSFW columnist and co-host of Work in Progress.

The NSFW podcast is based on the NSFW column written by BackBone’s Charles Epstein. The column provides a counterintuitive, humorous slant on the business issues of the day.

The NSFW pod is basically stuff that didn’t make it into the column either due to time constraints or because it wasn’t safe for NSFW (what a concept!).

But the main reason for this pod is to let people know that the column exists first which is an important first step in getting people to read it. For those of you who can’t vote or would rather not this should be the next best thing.

NSFW:  Now that You’ve Been Warned, Please Proceed  

The NSFW warning label accompanying an email, text, tweet, or Snapchat usually means: “be careful, if anyone sees this, you better have an explanation.” Management, however, has a far broader definition of what is or isn’t safe for work. Their concerns extend beyond inappropriate digital communications to making sure employees are focused, productive, safe from bodily harm, abuse, and unfair/unequal treatment.

As applied to HR specifically, this includes the patchwork of landmines and trap doors HR needs to safely navigate, from sexual harassment to opioid misuse, to looming threats such as a rise in intergenerational conflict and the inexorable rise of our robot overlords (“Let me introduce you to our new compliance offer, Hal2000”).

In today’s COVID world, maintaining a safe workplace is the first order of business. But that doesn’t always mean “playing it safe” – indeed, it often demands the opposite: “unsafe” thinking and experimentation that challenges the status quo and even your own foundational beliefs. This is actually the point of the NSFW and podcast: taking on the day’s most pressing issues with a disciplined disregard for received wisdom and undeterred stabs at humor that may not always be safe for work – or WorldatWork! But to paraphrase a former President, we do these things not because they’re easy or safe, we do them because they’re hard…if occasionally ill-advised.