What I Didn't Expect — And the 5 Mistakes I Made Anyway By Lisa Carr, The CompAlchemist | 8-minute read | Career & Leadership I led schools for 19 years. I ran classrooms, managed staff, navigated union negotiations, built culture from scratch, and sat across from parents who were not happy. I thought I'd seen everything. Then I walked into corporate HR. And I made five mistakes so fundamental, so embarrassingly avoidable, that I now think about them every time I sit acro

By Lisa Carr, CCP® | CompAlchemist Let me ask you something uncomfortable. If an employee comes to you with a cancer diagnosis, you mobilize. You activate the leave process, you connect them to benefits, you check in regularly, you document everything carefully. You are the HR professional you were trained to be. Now that same employee comes to you and discloses a substance use disorder. What happens next? For a lot of HR professionals—and I say this having lived in this fiel

Why “Market Median” Pay Is Costing You Your Best People Most organizations believe paying at the 50th percentile makes them competitive. It doesn’t. It makes you average. And if you’re building anything that depends on performance, capability, or leadership—you cannot afford to anchor your compensation strategy to average. What the 50th Percentile Actually Means The 50th percentile (market median) simply reflects what the middle of the market is paying for a role. It does not