Few things have aged HR pros more quickly than Covid-19.

Five years ago this week, the World Health Organization declared the then-emerging virus a pandemic. The world changed in practically the blink of an eye, forcing businesses to scramble to keep up.

“Very few organizations had a pandemic playbook in their strategy planning, where they had a binder they could pull out and be like, ‘Okay, so here’s what we do.’ It had to be made up on the fly. It had to be adapted,” Emily Rose McRae, senior director analyst at Gartner, told HR Brew. “You could have had preparation for supply chain disruptions, you could have had preparation for: ‘We need to shut down this factory,’ and you still wouldn't have been prepared for that scale and the global element of it.”

Stay-at-home mandates ushered in unprecedented spikes in remote work—and unemployment claims, as workers were laid off and furloughed—while healthcare and other essential industries had to navigate working in-person in dangerous environments. And functions that had previously been overlooked as strategic players were thrust into the spotlight—including HR.

For more on how Covid-19 changed how HR responds to crises, keep reading here.—PM

In the less than 60 days since President Trump took office, his administration has made multiple threats against companies that continue with DEI initiatives, including an executive order targeting one of the largest law firms in the US. For now, though, it appears that America’s biggest law firms aren’t changing course, and one expert told HR Brew that it’s because they know their practices are lawful.

Catch up. Trump last week issued an executive order against the law firm Perkin Coie, in an attempt to strip its employees of security clearances and work with government contractors. The president cited the firm’s DEI practices, along with its work with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, as the main reasons for the executive order.

Legal experts warned that Trump is setting a dangerous precedent by going after a private company, and on Mar. 12, a judge temporarily blocked the executive order, NPR reported. The US District Judge overseeing the case said the order “likely violates its [the firm’s] First, Fifth, and Sixth amendment rights.”

How law firms are reacting. While dozens of employers, from retail giant Walmart to tech companies like Meta, have been quick to erase mentions of or rebrand their DEI efforts, the biggest law firms in the country appear to be going in a different direction.

For more on how some of the country’s biggest law firms are moving forward, keep reading here.—KP

Another Gen Z-inspired work trend has entered the chat.

As many employees return to the office, some have started “task masking,” or pretending to be busy, Fortune reported. Some tactics include typing loudly, rushing around the office, or joining a (nonexistent) virtual meeting.

Employees are likely task masking due to RTO mandates, said Jennifer Moss, workplace strategist and author of Why Are We Here?: Creating a Work Culture Everyone Wants.

“[Employers are] putting people back into the office [and] a lot of it has to do with control, and this idea that, if you’re present, that means you’re productive,” Moss told HR Brew. “So, it’s all about just the visibility of people, which is a false metric for us to measure productivity.”

For more on what HR needs to know about task masking, keep reading here.—MC