Usually when you leave your job on good terms, your colleagues might stop working an hour early to celebrate and commemorate your time on the team. There may even be a sheet cake and a hastily-signed card.

But what if your former employer also gave you thousands of dollars to start your own business?

That’s what Nylas, a communications technology company based in San Francisco, is doing. Called the Nylas Alumni Fund, it plans to contribute $20,000 to current or former employees’ seed-stage funding, provided they meet a three-year tenure requirement.

The policy has been in place since April 2022 and no term sheets have been finalized to date, Nylas spokesperson Jason Sophian said in an email. However, Sophian wrote, Nylas has had discussions about potential deals with current and former employees.

“If we believe in you enough to be in the company here, obviously we believe in your potential and success when you go somewhere else,” Gleb Polyakov, co-founder and CEO of Nylas, told HR Brew. In his view, it’s an acknowledgement that the company hires great people, and that those people have potential beyond their contributions in a singular role.

“We’d love to ride your coattails,” Polyakov said.

Recruiting boost. Nylas leaders told HR Brew that the program has led to numerous benefits, in addition to matching up with other elements of the company culture.

“A lot of people want to start their own company someday,” Christine Spang, co-founder and CTO at Nylas, told HR Brew. “As an organization that is recruiting and hiring people, the kind of people that want to start their own company someday are the kind of people that we want on our team today.”

Nylas, which has about 150 employees scattered across the US and other countries, has also seen benefits in recruiting. Keep reading here.—AK

New year, new Congress. Lawmakers are declaring their new session resolutions, and HR Brew is watching for how they could affect the people profession in 2023.

Emily Dickens, chief of staff and head of public affairs at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), told HR Brew that the organization is eyeing three pieces of workplace legislation: the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), and Immigration Act of 1990.

“We think those are three key pieces of legislation that need to be modernized so that the workforce can benefit,” Dickens said.

As for lawmakers, the agendas of the newly ascended chairs of the Senate Committee on Health, Labor, Education, and Pensions (HELP), Sen. Bernie Sanders, and the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Rep. Virginia Foxx, might offer some insight into what Congress is planning to prioritize.

Workforce development and the skills gap. Lawmakers got started quickly last month to address workforce development, eyeing a path to equip more workers with job-ready skills as recruiting challenges persist for many in HR.

In January, the House passed the bipartisan Chance to Compete Act, which updates the federal hiring system to include skills-based assessments. Republicans also introduced a bill that would expand access to PELL Grants to workforce development education programs.

Dickens said she’s hopeful for bipartisan efforts on workforce development, noting that it seems to be a priority of both Democrats and Republicans.

“We don’t solve the problems we have with our economy without figuring out how to acquire, train, [and] retain the talent that we need as our businesses are evolving in this country,” she said. Read more here.—AD

The four-day workweek is the not-so-radical overhaul of everything we know about a full-time working schedule, yet few companies have taken the plunge. Employees love it, and perhaps to the surprise of productivity hawks in the C-suite and beyond, working one fewer day a week hasn’t portended disaster for the organizations that have tried it.

To gauge where HR Brew readers stand on the idea, we asked whether they’d consider a four-day workweek.

Among respondents, 77% said they were open to it, 13% said they’d never try it, while 10% said their companies were already on a four-day schedule. That pales in comparison to the results of a recent EY poll, which found that 40% of companies have either hopped on the bandwagon or are planning to do so.

As HR pros previously told us, cutting eight hours from the workweek can be an enticing prospect for organizations looking to retain talent. Who wouldn’t want more time away from the pings, dings, bells, and whistles that keep us glued to our computers?—SB

Snap poll: How full is your office on an average day?

5–25%
25–50%
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Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: 20%. That’s the percentage of employees Yahoo reportedly plans to lay off as it restructures its ad tech department. (Axios)

Quote: “I view it as a chance to learn a little bit more because I’ll be next to my manager or partner…Obviously, everyone has to fight the traffic, wake up a little bit earlier, pick an outfit, but we’re professionals.”—Alec Agana, a senior associate at KPMG, explaining why he comes into the office more often than required (the Wall Street Journal)

Read: How widespread layoffs spark fear and anxiety for the workers who still have jobs. (BBC Worklife)

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