Where Workplace Risk Begins: Preparing Managers for the First Response

The conversations that matter most rarely feel important at the time.

Managers are coaching an employee, answering a question, resolving a conflict, or simply trying to keep work moving. The challenge is that some of those everyday interactions become much more consequential, and managers aren’t always prepared to recognize them.

Whether it’s a performance conversation, employee complaint, request for leave or accommodation, pay or scheduling question, interpersonal conflict, or early sign of misconduct, what a manager says, does, documents – or fails to recognize – can shape everything that follows.

That’s why manager readiness is just as important as the formal processes that follow. When the first response misses the mark, it changes the course of everything that follows, shaping employee trust, influencing whether concerns escalate, complicating investigations, and increasing legal and organizational risk.

By the time HR becomes involved, you may be inheriting not only the original issue, but also the consequences of how it was handled.

Join Lauren Lipari, Senior HR Business Partner at Spotify, Laura Crothers, Founder & CEO of Crothers Consulting, and Katherin Nukk-Freeman, Co-Founder and President of SHIFT, for a practical conversation on how organizations can better prepare managers for the moments that shape what HR ultimately inherits. Together we’ll explore how organizations can move beyond policy-based training to build greater consistency in how managers recognize risk, exercise sound judgment, and know when to involve HR.

Participants Will Learn How To:

✅ Identify the workplace situations managers are most likely to mishandle.
✅ Assess where manager readiness breaks down before HR becomes involved.
✅ Understand the organizational, cultural, and legal consequences of poor manager decision-making.
✅ Strengthen the communication, judgment, and compliance skills managers need to respond effectively.
✅ Improve how managers recognize, respond to, and escalate risk.

Who Should Attend:

HR, Employee Relations, Compliance, in-house Legal, and Learning & Development leaders responsible for manager readiness and workplace risk. This session is designed to spark cross-functional conversations, so invite your colleagues to join you.

Register here

Panelists

Lauren Lipari
Senior HR Business Partner, Spotify

Lauren is a Senior HR Business Partner at Spotify, where she works with technology leaders to build strong teams, develop leaders, and make decisions about how their organizations are set up. She helps leaders navigate growth and change while keeping both business goals and people in mind.

Before joining Spotify, Lauren held HR leadership roles at American Express, working across a large global organization. Throughout her career, she has focused on building strong leadership teams, working through complex organizational challenges, and helping leaders make thoughtful decisions about their people and businesses.

Laura Crothers
Founder & CEO, Crothers Consulting

Laura Crothers is a highly regarded speaker, author, and expert in leadership and HR. As Founder and CEO of Crothers Consulting, she has grown the firm over the past 16 years into a team of 24.

Her leadership was shaped in senior roles at Standard & Poor’s, CIT, Merrill Lynch, ADP, and EverBank, where she guided employee and company growth through numerous mergers and acquisitions. Known for pragmatic, innovative solutions, Laura builds genuine connections through a straightforward, approachable style.

At Standard & Poor’s, she led HR Mergers and Acquisitions, specializing in complex HR diligence and integration strategy. As Chief People Officer at USXL, she scaled the HR function for the startup as it grew to $1 billion in assets and from 8 to 250 employees within five years.

Laura was recently named a Woman of Influence by ROI-NJ and a Leading Woman in Business by NJBIZ, recognized among the Top 25 Leading Women Entrepreneurs, and honored in both 2024 and 2025 as the Most Innovative Leadership Training & HR Solutions Company in the Northeast USA.

She serves on the board of directors of ACG-NJ and is active in numerous community organizations. Laura also chairs the New Jersey chapter of the Women Presidents’ Organization (WPO), a roundtable for CEOs of multimillion-dollar businesses.

Outside of work, Laura enjoys traveling, entertaining, and skiing with her two sons and friends.

Katherin Nukk-Freeman
Co-Founder & President, SHIFT HR Compliance Training

As a practicing employment law attorney for over 30 years, Katherin has grown her highly successful Employment Law firm, Nukk-Freeman & Cerra, P.C., by focusing her practice on working with clients to proactively address and effectively manage workplace issues, including harassment and discrimination complaints and unconscious bias awareness. Katherin strives to avoid costly litigation and create more inclusive teams through high-quality training that helps employees be more mindful of their actions and decisions in the workplace.

In 2014, leveraging her years of experience as a trusted advisor to corporate leaders and organizations, Katherin co-founded SHIFT to provide innovative, engaging, and impactful online training services for employers of all sizes, from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies.

Katherin is the Co-Founder and President of SHIFT HR Compliance Training and a passionate advocate for building better workplaces. As a dynamic employment law advisor, training instructor, and industry thought leader, Katherin partners with clients to develop and implement learning journeys that educate and evolve workplace culture, incorporate strategies to manage risk, comply with the law, foster an inclusive workplace, and create a better workplace for all.