Vacations just don’t hit like they used to.

Research suggests that workers should return from paid time-off refreshed and ready to grind, but that may not be the case: 42% of the 1,000 US employees surveyed by MyBioSource earlier this year said they dreaded returning to work after time off, and 41% reported experiencing post-PTO burnout. While this may seem like a new flavor of employee engagement issues plaguing companies, experts say it’s likely related to some challenges that HR professionals are all too familiar with.

What’s driving post-PTO burnout? Employees may not be recharged upon returning from vacation because the muddled distinction between professional and personal life has made it more difficult to stay offline during non-work hours. A 2022 Qualtrics survey of more than 1,000 full-time US workers found that 49% spend an hour or more per day on PTO focused on work-related tasks. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 27% said they didn’t feel rejuvenated after vacation.

“I think remote work has totally blurred the lines between what’s work and what’s home life or personal time,” Carly Holm, CEO of consulting firm Humani HR, told HR Brew. “And it goes both ways. We hear stories of people doing work on the golf course because they can respond to emails and Slack, but then the same thing happens where the expectation is: ‘Well, I know your email’s on your phone, so just respond to it, even though you’re on vacation.’”

Keep reading here.—PM

Conversational AI is making a name for itself in the HR world. It’s transforming everything from daily manual tasks to recruiting—and it’s making them a whole lot easier. Let’s talk about it.

Paradox CEO Adam Godson chatted with global industry analyst Josh Bersin to dig into how conversational AI is disrupting HR tech and giving recruiting a well-deserved efficiency boost.

They discussed all things recruiting and AI, including:

• how approaches to recruiting are changing
• how AI-driven tools are boosting productivity + efficiency by reducing paperwork
• the power and complexity of conversational AI systems
• how pretrained models can help make AI context-aware

Tune in to the full conversation here.

The global CrowdStrike IT outage in July caused widespread chaos and financial damage to businesses large and small. Thousands of flights were canceled or delayed, an Alaskan 911 system was temporarily unavailable, broadcasters went dark, and for HR pros, the outage left many employees with the infamous “blue screen of death” and even upended payroll systems for some companies.

The meltdown served as a painful reminder of the vulnerability of technology that organizations rely on for basic functions. But cyber experts also see the high-profile outage as an opportunity for HR to deepen employees’ relationship with colleagues in the IT department, and reinforce employee best practices.

CompTIA’s chief technology evangelist, James Stanger, acknowledged that the CrowdStrike outage “was not something that individual users could do a whole lot about.” But he told HR Brew that the incident reinforces the importance of protecting any work-related technology—and educating employees about proper tech hygiene.

And while many organizations do have good tech hygiene policies, in some cases it’s dated—or as Stanger said, it’s “good hygiene for 10 years ago.”

Keep reading here.—AD

The topic of immigration can spark different conversations, especially in the workplace.

The percentage of all US workers who are foreign born reached 18.6% last year, or over 30 million people, up from 18.1% in 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Immigrants and their children will likely add another 18 million US workers by 2035, according to Pew Research Center.

As the number of immigrants working in the US grows, leaders should be looking for ways to revamp their company’s culture, according to Ukeme Awakessien Jeter, author of ImmiGRIT: How Immigrant Leadership Drives Organizational Success.

Leaders can support a multicultural workforce, she told HR Brew, by having open conversations that entail asking questions like, “What is the immigrant experience in the US?” and “Do our employees reflect the customers that we’re serving?”

Jeter, who’s also the mayor and council president for the City of Upper Arlington in Ohio, shared with HR Brew what people pros can learn from her book.

Keep reading here.—MC

Revved-up recruiting. Candidate experience is much more than an HR buzzword—it can affect your org’s ability to attract and retain top talent. How is your company perceived? Figure out which experience metrics matter most (and how to improve yours) in Paylocity’s new guide. Give it a read.