Early in her career, Sheryl Miller, a UK-based DE&I consultant and author of Smashing Stereotypes, worked for a bully—a man she told HR Brew was known around the office for being “quite aggressive” and patronizing towards female staff. She recalled one day when he “went off” on her in a team meeting and invited her colleagues to “pile in.” A couple, she said, did, though others stayed silent.

“Within about a day, at least…two people contacted me to apologize and say, ‘Those behaviors were not right,’” Miller remembered. “But nothing happened in the meeting.”

Miller said the experience chipped away at her confidence over time.

Her experience isn’t unique. Some 30% of Americans, an estimated 48.6 million workers, have experienced abusive behavior at work, according to the Workplace Bullying Institute’s 2021 US Workplace Bullying Survey. An additional 19% reported having witnessed it.

Some companies invest in bystander training to help employees recognize harassment and intervene, explained Sharyn Potter, professor of women and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire. Such programs—98% of organizations in the US have a policy forbidding harassment—aim to extend the eyes and ears of HR departments to every conference room, Zoom call, and Slack channel.

But that’s only if the training works, and evidence suggests it might not. A recent study from New Zealand found that though bystander training increased employees’ understanding of harassment, it did not prepare them to put the intervention tactics they learned into practice. Just 4% of employees who participated in the Workplace Bullying Institute’s survey said that positive actions by a coworker stopped a pattern of abuse. So, how can HR help workers find their voice?

Read more here.—SV

The Office’s Michael Scott had a strange relationship with Dunder Mifflin temp Ryan Howard. If the Scranton office was located just one state east in 2023, Ryan might have had a set of protections that would have sent him running to Toby Flenderson for redress.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed the Temporary Workers’ Bill of Rights into law last week, expanding workers’ rights to the Garden State’s 130,000 temp workers, and impacting staffing agencies and HR pros who rely on them.

The new measure prohibits staffing agencies from restricting temp workers from accepting jobs with client employers, and requires that they be paid at least the same average rate of pay as permanent employees and equivalent benefits. HR professionals at companies that rely on temporary workers may now have some additional homework calculating compensation and benefits averages.

Staffing agencies and client employers in New Jersey will also be prohibited from charging temp workers transportation fees to get to their job sites and taking deductions for meals and equipment that reduce their pay below minimum wage. Staffing agencies must also provide temp workers a document with information about their job sites, something that may require input from their client employers’ HR teams.

“Our temporary workers, regardless of their race or status, are key contributors to the workforce in our state,” Murphy said in a statement about the new measure. “Signing the Temporary Workers’ Bill of Rights establishes necessary guidelines for temporary help service firms and third-party clients to ensure that these workers are afforded basic protections and treated with the dignity they deserve.”

Keep reading here.—AD

It’s not your imagination: As HR Brew reported earlier this month, a lot of companies conducting layoffs are opting to cut between 5% and 7% of their workers. But as CFO Brew’s Kim Lyons recently wrote, it’s unlikely they’re taking their cues from each other.

“In my experience, the time it takes to announce and implement a layoff requires a lot of planning,” [Russ Porter, CFO of the Institute of Management Accountants] said. “I don’t think there are many cases where one competitor announces layoffs on Monday, and by Friday, another competitor is announcing theirs.” More likely, Porter said, is that all the companies were looking at the same market signals when they made the decisions to cut jobs near the end of 2022, then started implementing them in 2023.

“I also think there’s a couple of companies out there who are saying, ‘Hey, we wanted to expand into this area, or this product, or these services, and in an economic upcycle those look like great opportunities,” Porter added. But in an economic downcycle, companies decide what they could probably do without, he said; usually that’s an opportunity the company was chasing as opposed to an element of its existing business network.

Porter said a company laying off double-digit percentages of employees doesn’t necessarily equate to a problem, but might be a sign that the layoffs are happening because of an issue specific to that company, rather than the macroeconomic conditions. “It’s not something where it’s just trimming our sails and seeing which way the wind blows in six months.”

Keep reading on CFO Brew.—KL

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: 75% of workers surveyed said they have had a romantic relationship with someone from work—which, coincidentally, is about the same percentage that agreed with the statement, “There is nothing wrong with dating your colleagues.” (LiveCareer)

Quote: “Increasing the retirement age is a benefit cut.”—Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, on Social Security, 401(k) plans, and poverty rates among seniors (CNBC)

Read: A recent study suggests that managers who practice “transformational leadership” have the most significant positive impact on employees’ mental health. (Scientific American)

Financial wellness in focus: Betterment at Work’s recent survey found that employee financial wellness is trending down while financial anxiety is rising. Learn how to build a better financial wellness plan in 2023.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}