January 2026 Newsletter
Jan 5, 2026
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January’s Featured Training Topic:
How to Build Loyalty & Engagement in 2026
Want to know an effective way to build loyalty and engagement in your organization?
While you likely have forecasted sales, planned expenses, and budgeted for 2026, did you budget for your people’s learning and development?
Here are the top five trainings we recommend for people leaders and all staff to boost loyalty and engagement in the new year!
1. Manager Foundations
Explores the fundamentals of employee management and reinforces expectations for effective leadership. Emerging managers gain clarity on their role as leaders, while experienced leaders get a timely reminder of the impact they have on their people and teams.
2. Communication Foundations
Helps leaders better understand their own communication style (and others’), so they can build trust faster to motivate their teams. Brings awareness to common communication pitfalls and offers strategies for providing clear, effective communication.
3. Coaching & Effective Feedback
Teaches leaders how to provide clear and meaningful feedback to coach, redirect, motivate, and recognize employees.
4. Progressive Discipline & Documentation
Helps leaders recognize when it’s time to shift from coaching to formal correction. Offers practical guidance on choosing the right level of action, documenting appropriately, and having face-to-face performance conversations.
5. Conflict Resolution
Explores leaders’ responsibility in ensuring that all voices feel safe, comfortable, and represented in this work. Equips leaders with the tools to support effective conflict resolution in the workplace.
1. Respectful Workplace For All: Anti-Harassment & Discrimination
Instead of assumptions or misinformation, employees gain confidence and understanding about the legal definitions of harassment, discrimination, protected classes, confidentiality, retaliation, employee and employer responsibilities, and more.
2. Communications Foundations
Empowers employees to embrace the goals of effective communication and shares awareness of diverse communication preferences, styles, and norms.
3. 5-Star Customer Experience
Examines customer service philosophy and the culture and business impact of providing a high-level experience to your external and internal clients. Staff gain usable tools to deliver excellent service and to enhance the overall customer experience.
4. Workplace Safety
Leverages your organization’s safety plan and emergency procedures to instill confidence in your team and reinforce leadership’s role in making safety a valued priority.
5. De-Escalation Skills
Teaches staff how to de-escalate heightened human instances. Provides tips on knowing when and how to seek additional help, staying calm, and not fanning the flames during unpredictable encounters.
We can bring these trainings to your team as live, facilitated sessions or as online courses. Want it customized to your organization? We can do that, too!
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Close the Gaps: Aligning Your HR Strategy for 2026 Success
A great way to game-plan for the year is to review your current HR processes. We can help with a custom HR Gaps Analysis!
What’s an HR Gaps Analysis?
This is the first step in helping to optimize your HR infrastructure. It identifies the differences (gaps) between your current practices and your organization’s goals, highlighting what’s missing or misaligned. We balance compliance with local, state, and federal laws with developing a strong workplace culture and maintaining industry best practices.
Why complete a Gaps Analysis?
An HR Gaps Analysis helps ensure your workforce is supported, well-equipped, and aligned with your long-term strategy and goals. By identifying and bridging gaps, you can streamline your processes, improve efficiency and performance, target training and development, and proactively plan for future needs.
What’s involved?
We meet and assess each of the areas within a typical HR infrastructure to create a customized analysis and recommendations. The recommendations are framed using the employee life cycle as well as prioritizing areas of compliance.
If you’re an existing client, we can review a past Gaps Analysis to see if any updates are needed. This is an excellent time of year to ensure expectations are set across your organization and plans are made for future projects and HR initiatives.
HR Annie can help you build a roadmap that covers the bases for your employees throughout their lifecycle.
Click the button below to schedule your custom HR Gaps Analysis!
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Thank You, Sesame Collective & Straightaway Cocktails!
We’re excited to welcome Sesame Collective and Straightaway Cocktails to our very first Engagement Series session of 2026 and open house on January 14th.
A huge thank you to Sesame Collective for providing delicious bites and to Straightaway Cocktails for supplying their iconic canned cocktails. We’re so grateful for their support as we warm up our new office space and kick off this series together!
About Sesame Collective
Sesame Collective is a locally owned and operated restaurant group in Portland, Oregon. They offer Mediterranean-inspired fare, and each of their five locations has its own personality and provides a unique dining experience. They also have a burger concept that’s sizzling its way through the Portland metro area!
About Straightaway Cocktails
Straightaway Cocktails specializes in ready-to-serve canned drinks made with locally sourced ingredients in Portland, Oregon. After years of perfecting their recipes for friends and family, they founded Straightaway so more people can enjoy a world-class cocktail with the same ease as opening a bottle of wine or a can of beer.
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2026 Action Items
- Partner with FCRA-compliant background check vendors (like BackgroundBrief) who monitor evolving state regulations.
- Review your hiring policies to ensure consistent, non-discriminatory criteria across all candidates.
- Train HR professionals and hiring managers on current Ban the Box regulations and record-sealing requirements.
- Conduct an annual compliance audit of your disclosure forms, authorization processes, and adverse action procedures.
94% of employers conduct pre-employment screening…thorough due diligence is not optional.
It’s essential for risk mitigation, regulatory compliance, and informed hiring decisions that protect your workforce and reputation.
Click the button below to get in touch to ensure your 2026 pre-employment due diligence process is compliant, role-appropriate, and candidate-friendly without increasing risk!
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Blog / News
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