Some business leaders have been eager to get employees back into the office since they were forced to adopt remote work en masse in March of 2020. Those looking to succeed need to build a business case for coming back into the office.

For employees, having a taste of full-telework freedom means they generally don’t want to be told to go back. They report being just as productive or more productive and happier than before. Experts point out many opportunities for inclusion, equity, and environmental sustainability (commuting takes a toll) from the expansion of remote work.

After multiple waves of RTO starts and stops, the battle continues. The economic climate and widespread layoffs have changed the tone of the employer–employee relationship, and those advocating for working in an office have more evidence of its value.

A shift. JPMorgan Chase made one of the strongest recent pushes for office attendance, requiring its managing directors to come to the office five days a week. Many other companies, including Apple, Amazon, Google parent Alphabet, and Meta are moving in a similar direction.

In the glory days of the Great Resignation, many workers felt comfortable refusing to return because businesses were afraid of missing out on the growth opportunities in a booming economy. Today, leaders are expecting layoffs and a less-friendly job market to soften RTO revolts. Lyft’s CEO has said he sees an opportunity for “cultural reset” at this time, while recent RTO mandates at Disney, Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta come in the wake of significant layoffs.

“This has been an interesting experiment for the past three years,” Jo-Ellen Pozner, associate professor at Santa Clara’s Leavey School of Management, told HR Brew. “It seems to me that many folks were hoping just because there was a disruption that created change, that the change would be permanent. But it has never struck me as the appropriate response.”

Keep reading.—AK

Employee engagement platforms don’t just measure overall engagement—they can also reduce turnover and increase productivity. In other words, these platforms sprinkle in the capacities HR pros need to succeed.

Ever ponder what kind of ROI your company could see from investing in such pertinent platforms? Workday’s got the figures behind their very own engagement product’s capabilities.

Download The Total Economic Impact™ of Workday Peakon Employee Voice, a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Workday, to learn about the cost savings and business benefits a composite organization achieved, including:

• achieving 224% ROI
• reaching $5.48m in net present value (NPV)
• achieving a 4% improvement in the attrition rate of frontline workers in year 3
• saving 504 hours in annual survey design and distribution

Intrigued? Inspired? Interested in making a change? Start with their study.

The head HR executive at magazine publisher Mansueto Ventures has been arrested for allegedly defrauding the company of $429,000 over the course of four years, Semafor reported Wednesday.

According to a criminal complaint filed on April 27, Nirvani Sabess, who according to her LinkedIn served as Mansueto’s director of people and culture since September 2018, has been charged with wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Sabess allegedly kept payroll active for employees who had been put on unpaid leave or left the company, but diverted their payment to her own personal bank account. Sabess was suspended without pay in April, according to the complaint.

An automatic reply from Sabess’s email states, “I am currently on leave without any access to voicemail or email.” Several emails to employees at Mansueto, the publisher of Inc. and Fast Company magazines, were not returned.

RoseMarie Terenzio, a spokesperson for Mansueto, confirmed the news to HR Brew in a statement via email: “Mansueto Ventures recently discovered that one of its former employees was allegedly committing financial fraud against the company, amounting to mid-six-figures.

“We immediately launched an internal investigation, then referred the matter to law enforcement and terminated the sole employee involved. As a result we are strengthening the security of all our systems.”

A representative for the US Southern District of New York, which is prosecuting the case, declined to comment.

As detailed in the complaint, Sabess “would have had the ability to obtain administrative privileges” over the company payroll system. She allegedly used this access to change employees’ passwords and security questions, then reroute their direct deposits to her own account.

Robert Tsigler, the lawyer representing Sabess, told HR Brew via email: “The Tsigler Law team will leave no stone unturned in the defense of Ms. Sabess. We ask that the public not rush to judgment and wait for [all the] facts and evidence to come out in court.”—SB

It all started with a tweet about removing a peanut-butter sandwich from a VCR. As the tweet catapulted across the web, the nonsensical musing caught Remi Silva’s attention. In it, a screengrab of a paragraph written in King James biblical verse provided actionable advice on, well, removing a peanut-butter sandwich from a VCR.

It was written by ChatGPT.

Spellbound by the machine-generated paragraph, Silva, the VP of marketing at the HR management platform AllVoices, was compelled to dig further into the AI alongside a colleague. “We both [dove] into GPT and started playing around with it and started talking about how does this apply to our jobs?” Silva told HR Brew.

That was last December, one month after the public release of ChatGPT, the generative AI developed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI. Flash-forward to this April, and AllVoices has leaned into the technology, partly automating several facets of its day-to-day content-generating operations, AllVoices employees told HR Brew. While viral hype swirls around ChatGPT and at least one study suggesting generative AI can increase productivity (especially for “novice and low-skilled workers”), some HR leaders have expressed caution, citing concerns about inaccuracy and bias. Still, AllVoices remains invested in using the tool.

Keep reading.—SB

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: 92% of college seniors say they were already actively looking and applying for jobs as of March and had completed nine interviews on average. (ZipRecruiter)

Quote: “Unless you have rare skills that are in demand, you are unlikely to get a special increase.”—David Buckmaster, a compensation expert, on the challenges employees are likely to face asking for bonuses amid downturns (the Wall Street Journal)

Read: The National Labor Relations Board overruled a Trump-era decision that made it easier for employers to discipline workers who make profane or abusive remarks while engaging in protected labor activity. (SHRM)

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