# Calling out bad practice — from Elon Musk to blanket emails

- **Episode:** [230](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/230.md) (2025-09-09)
- **Type:** other
- **Tags:** bad-practice, elon-musk, email-etiquette
- **Time:** 34:07–40:09 (start 2047s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/230?t=2047](https://truthliesandwork.com/230?t=2047)

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[34:07] Al Elliott: Yeah
[34:08] Leanne Elliott: It's not okay to make tens of thousands of layoffs in a blanket email that we saw from Elon Musk. Those practices aren't okay, and it has a serious impact on the human experience, but also organizational effectiveness and success. So for us, we started This Week in Work, and it's mainly 3 segments that we've settled into, is looking at the news stories of the week. So we had one recently that we got some great feedback on around BrewDog, which is a company in the UK that makes beer. They've had a very problematic culture for the last 2 years, open letters from previous and current employees calling out a fear of culture, um, all the ways that they're being discriminated against, um, not treated fairly. Nothing's changed. That was over the series of 2, 3 years that a letter would come out each year. And they announced last week that they're training 200 mental health first aiders to improve wellbeing. And it's like, that's not right. That's not okay. And that's not how you fix a toxic culture for a whole host of reasons. If only that, that's, that's not what mental health first aiders are for. They're not there for prevention. They're there for a point of crisis, helping a person in a, in a really difficult moment. But you're also again, putting the emphasis on the individual to try and solve a systemic organizational problem
[35:26] Al Elliott: Yeah
[35:26] Leanne Elliott: And that is just not okay. So it's calling out bad practice like that that is being promoted in mainstream news that this is a great thing an organization is doing. It's not. And this is why. So that's kind of what we talk about this week in terms of the news. We also highlight fresh voices or hot takes from people who maybe aren't as well established in their industry, but have something great to say. So it's giving them spaces for that. We've had occupational psychology students on there. We've had—
[35:53] Al Elliott: Yeah
[35:54] Leanne Elliott: brand new entrepreneurs on there. Yeah, people who've got something interesting to say or a cause that they want to push forward. So, we had somebody talking recently about pay inequality and how the business they're setting up is helping to support that in terms of providing extra care support. And then we have the Workplace Surgery, where we actually have questions from listeners who will email in, get in touch through socials, and they're experiencing a problem in work. And a lot of those problems are actually now coming from Employees rather than necessarily business owners that we set out to be our core, our kind of core audience. We've had all sorts. What have we had, Al? There's so many
[36:29] Al Elliott: Uh, should I employ my spouse was one of them, which was quite funny because we both work together. Um, we've had all sorts from—
[36:36] Leanne Elliott: My ex-boyfriend has just become my new boss
[36:38] Al Elliott: Yeah, there's some really, really interesting ones. The main thing that I hope that people are getting from the podcast as it matures, because every single week We're doing 2 episodes a week, and every single week we try and make it just 1% better. And some weeks we make it 1% worse, some weeks we make it 10% worse. But you know what it's like being a podcaster. You're just like fanatic about the sound, about the editing, about keeping it tight. But the core thing I think we want people to get is that culture isn't about having the perfect workplace. It's about just trying to be a decent human being. Whether you are a manager, whether you're a business owner, whether you're HR, whether you're just on the ground pulling the, you know, pulling the cord, just be a decent human being and try your very best. And over time, it will get better. As long as you keep listening to Truth, Lies and Work, of course. Of course
[37:30] Leanne Elliott: I mean, if you haven't smashed the subscribe button and rated them 5 stars and left a review, what are you doing?
[37:36] Al Elliott: Thank you
[37:36] Leanne Elliott: I think another thing that we have tried to do over over the years as well is try and pursue ideas that are introduced to us through our Thursday episodes when we speak to an expert guest and have that inform our content. Um, so I think probably one that we've, that did really well was we spoke to, um, Dr. Sarah Hughes from Mind, CEO of Mind. Yeah, Dr. Sarah Hughes. Um, CEO of Mind, a huge mental health charity in the UK. And she was saying about how the conversation around mental health at work needs to expand Beyond people being mental wellness and mental illness. We're not talking enough about how we support people with schizophrenia in the workplace or bipolar in the workplace, post-traumatic stress in, in the workplace. So she kind of almost positioned this to us as a call for action. As content creators, we also need to be part of expanding that conversation. So since then, we've interviewed, we've had a guest on who calls himself the schizophrenic hippie, who's doing incredible advocacy work about how to live and work with schizophrenia. We've had an expert in psychopathy come on and talk about actually how we have, there is 1% of our population is psychopathic. Therefore, if you're an organization of 10,000 people, there's a fair chance you're going to have some people in there that are psychopathic. How do we navigate that? Is it the worst thing? Is there maybe some roles that these people could be great in? So, it's moments like that as well. It's picking up what we learn from people who are infinitely smarter than we are. And figuring out ways and how we as podcasters can expand that conversation for our learning and for our audience as well
[39:08] Al Elliott: That sounds to me like an amazing mic drop moment. Leanne, can you remind us again where people can find the podcast?
[39:17] Leanne Elliott: Yeah, you can head over to truthliesandwork.com, or we're available wherever you find your podcasts on our This Week in Work episodes. And we also post on YouTube. So, if you wanna watch us as well as listen to us, you can head over to there, Truth, Lies and Work. Truth, Lies and Work. Truth, Lies, and Work
[39:33] Al Elliott: Truth, Lies, and Work. It's like, it's Truth, Lies, and Work on everything. Thank you so much for your time and your generosity to share your experiences. Oh, well, thank you so much for having us. You ask such great questions and leave such great pauses. Time flies and it's a genuine pleasure being on. It is
[39:49] Leanne Elliott: It's such a pleasure. And you are, you're such great interviewers and you know the buttons to push to get both of us on, on our little soapbox for a little while. So yeah, thank you for holding, holding this session for us and making it so much fun. Oh, it was such a good chat with Nick and John. They're such amazing podcasters. I mean, listening back, there was so much in there