In March 2020, Cassandra Worthy’s consulting business was undergoing a rebrand. Just days before Covid-19 shut down the world, she was hoping to take her change consultancy, Change Enthusiasm Global, to the next level—the irony of running such a business amid radical change wasn’t lost on Worthy. “[The] mess was bleak,” she told HR Brew, but it was also “serendipitous and fortuitous.”

Worthy, who is also the author of Change Enthusiasm: How to Harness the Power of Emotion for Leadership and Success, shared with HR Brew what led her to start a change consulting business and why every people leader should know how to embrace change in the workplace.

Path to change. Worthy started speaking engagements as a side hustle in 2017, after beginning her journey of sobriety. “My journey of sobriety is what led me to start pursuing curiosity, because I had already had this intuition that had been, like whispering to me all through corporate…‘There’s something better you need to be doing with your gifts and your talents,’” Worthy said. “I drowned it out in my alcoholism, but after I got sober, the whisper became a shout, and I couldn’t ignore it.”

She started with small sessions helping individuals through times of personal change. But, after a few events, Worthy said she was advised by Reid Tracy, a mentor and president and CEO of self-help publisher Hay House, to expand her business and go at it full-time.

Keep reading here.—MC

With open enrollment in full swing, a familiar question may be on your mind: How can I better help employees make one of their biggest decisions of the year?

Most employees (55%) said they don’t understand the options available to them, according to a recent MetLife report. That’s especially true for Gen Z (60%) and millennial (64%) workers. Regardless of generation, 60% of employees wish their companies did a better job informing them about their enrollment options.

HR pros can help ease the “analysis paralysis,” Missy Plohr-Memming, SVP and head of national accounts at MetLife, told HR Brew. “Employees live with such uncertainty. Uncertainty has never been higher than the environment we’re living in right now, and that really manifests itself in the HR space around benefits, and particularly around this open enrollment season,” she said.

Plohr-Memming, and Julia D’Amico, VP of benefits at HR platform Justworks, shared with HR Brew how people pros can make the open enrollment process easier for employees.

Keep reading here.—MC

People don’t like being told what to do, especially when it comes to where they work.

While workers may compare HR teams enacting return-to-office (RTO) policies to hall monitors micromanaging school attendance, they’re also tired of the same old RTO debate. That’s according to more than a dozen HR pros who told us RTO is a workplace fad they’d like to leave behind in 2024.

“I would love to see the return to office debate left behind as we enter the new year. The pandemic forced the workforce to adapt out of necessity, but also illuminated nuances in how different settings can maximize distinct types of work. As long as people are being productive, it’s important to move away from policing where employees work and instead shift managerial responsibility to focus on their overall growth, especially in the tech industry where change happens so quickly.”—Julia Braun, CHRO, SoftwareOne

Time for change. It’s not always possible to embrace a fully remote policy. But organizations that do call workers back to the office can take these steps to make the transition as seamless as possible.

Keep reading here.—PM