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In today’s edition:
Support system
Warning signs
🗳 Reader poll: RT(N)O
—Kristen Parisi, Susanna Vogel
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Photo Illustration: Dianna “Mick” McDougall, Sources: Getty Images
Employee resource groups (ERGs) are like the cliques of North Shore High School—only in the broadest sense, and minus the Plastics, of course. There’s one for everyone, and senior leadership would do well to pay them more attention (trust falls not required).
ERGs have grown increasingly popular in recent years: An estimated 40% of employers report having had ERGs in 2021, up 9% from 2020, according to Sequoia. The surge was driven in part by employers wanting to connect disparate workers during Covid-19 and to increase DE&I efforts during the racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd. It has resulted in the emergence of a new role: ERG program director.
As ERGs have proliferated, employers, including Salesforce, Netflix, and Betterment, have employed ERG program directors whose sole focus is to advance ERG efforts. But for their programs to be successful, ERG experts told HR Brew that directors still need buy-in from senior leadership.
Shifting roles. ERGs have been around since the 1970s, but their role has shifted, according to Farzana Nayani, a DE&I consultant and author of The Power of Employee Resource Groups. They used to be formed by employees, “for social reasons,” Nayani said, without much budget or support from senior leadership. Eventually, program leaders emerged and were incorporated into the HR function, or under the umbrella of learning and development, explained Cecilia Persson-Ramos, a DE&I ERG leader at Intuit, “But it was never someone’s-full time job to actually manage [them].”
Long-term success. Nayani explained that programs should be “an organizational objective, with goals and values associated with that support.” As programs grow, “an explicit commitment from senior leaders” is critical to success, Persson-Ramos said.
The reporting structure of an ERG program should ultimately lead to the CEO, Nayani said. Keep reading here.—KP
Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @Kris10Parisi on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Kristen for her number on Signal.
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Tough stat incoming: 63% of tech employees quit their jobs in 2021 because of subpar wages.
If tech employers wanna defeat the aftershocks of the Great Resignation and meet the need to fill important roles, competitive pay needs to remain top of mind.
Wondering how the latest salary expectations and realities actually stack up? Get all the figures with Built In’s report, which covers current competitive tech salaries in today’s candidate-driven market.
Peep the salary ranges for 18 in-demand roles—all based on real candidate data—and read up on pay transparency and the shifting environment of tech compensation to ensure your org is aligned with what it takes to attract tech talent and stand out from your competitors.
Get the latest numbers here.
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Kieferpix/Getty Images
A Kroger worker, a Facebook employee, an Activision Blizzard finance manager. They are among the American workers who have died by suicide due to work-related events. Though suicide is complex and rarely attributable to a singular event, the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, which counts workplace fatalities for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), considers a suicide a workplace suicide if it occurred on the premises, while performing work-related duties, or can be “definitively linked back to work.”
Workplace suicides have been on the rise, up 50% since the BLS began tracking in 1992, even as total workplace deaths have declined. Earlier this month, OSHA and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) announced a two-year alliance intended to help prevent employee suicides. Here’s what people pros need to know.
What it is. The goal is to reduce the rate of workplace suicides through awareness. As a first step, the alliance will use social media, newsletters, and in-person events to raise awareness, as well as distribute workplace posters to HR departments across the country. AFSP will also provide employers with employee health and well-being guidance and update OSHA’s web page on preventing suicide, among other things, during the program’s first year.
What it’s not. HR departments have full discretion over whether they display posters, promote guidance, or incorporate the suggested training into their people processes, so the guidance is not mandatory.
What now? Though HR teams aren’t legally obligated to implement or enhance their suicide-prevention training, Kayla Follmer, an assistant professor and suicide-prevention researcher at West Virginia University, hopes they’ll consider following what seem to be best practices for combatting workplace suicide, according to her findings. Keep reading here.—SV
Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @SusannaVogel1 on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Susanna for her number on Signal.
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SpongeBob Squarepants/Nickelodeon via Giphy
HR professionals might have thought they were hallucinating last week when they saw workers working…in the workplace. But it was real! After months of trying (and often failing) to coax employees back to the office, occupancy rates hit 47.5% on average between September 8 and 14 across the 10 largest US metro areas—the highest seen since the pandemic began.
But the road to higher occupancy hasn’t always been easy. Some companies that mandated a return to office, including Apple, Google, and the New York Times, have faced significant—and public—pushback from discontented employees. Earlier this month, 1,300 New York Times employees signed a pledge opposing the company’s RTO requirement, arguing that without a raise, inflation made the cost of commuting to and eating at the office untenable, reported Fortune.
Even when employees agreed to come back to the office, HR had headaches over how to accommodate everyone. At Tesla’s San Francisco office, for example, employees told CNBC that there weren’t enough parking spaces, desks, and tech, like dongles and charging cords, to support their three-day-a-week RTO. The shortages reportedly led leadership to scale back the requirement to just two days.
Still, some employees are happy to be back. Mick Magsino, who works in media sales, told the New York Times he was ready to return to the office two days a week to talk sports with colleagues and for a “change of atmosphere.”
HR Brew asked readers if their office returns have gone according to plan. About half of respondents (49%) said their companies are still working from home. The remaining respondents were divided: 25% said their RTO plans have been going well, and 26% said it hasn’t been smooth sailing.
Chime in: What made your plan work? What would you have done differently? Reply to this email with your thoughts.—SV
Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @SusannaVogel1 on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Susanna for her number on Signal.
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TOGETHER WITH EDEN HEALTH
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Fight high costs with high quality. Without reliable, *accessible* preventative care, healthcare costs will continue to rise. The good news? Eden Health offers employee healthcare solutions to help you invest in your team’s well-being—while keeping costs at bay. Get your cost-containment guide here.
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Today’s top HR reads.
Stat: The average Black woman working full-time had to work more than nine extra months to catch up to what the average white man earned last year. (Time)
Quote: “No matter how gig companies choose to classify them, gig workers are consumers entitled to protection under the laws we enforce.”—Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, on the agency’s vow to protect gig workers from unfair business practices (MarketWatch)
Read: Meta and Google are cutting costs, but they’re not yet issuing pink slips (we see you, Snap). Instead, they’re giving some affected staff a window to apply for work elsewhere in the company. (the Wall Street Journal)
Offer more: Market research shows the Galleri multi-cancer early detection test is *the* top-ranked healthcare benefit by employees over 40.† To learn more about building a benefits package that meets your older workers’ needs, click here. See important safety info below.*
*This is sponsored advertising content.
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The Fed raised its benchmark interest rate by 0.75% (again), a move Chair Jerome Powell warned would likely lead to layoffs and an uptick in unemployment.
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Target announced plans to hire an additional 100,000 seasonal workers ahead of the holiday season.
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Amazon has been accused of selectively enforcing workplace rules to target union organizers, according to an NLRB complaint filed this week.
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California rolled back testing requirements for unvaccinated workers in settings like schools and hospitals as Golden State health officials signal a “new phase” of the pandemic.
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Ever wonder how big-name companies handle the ever-changing workforce? Join us Sept. 28 at 2pm ET for a virtual event sponsored by Microsoft. We’re sitting down with Otto Krusius, Intuit’s VP of Workforce and Workplace Strategy, to learn how Intuit is navigating these changes. Sign up here.
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Catch up on the top HR Brew stories from the recent past:
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✤ A Note From Galleri
†Visit our page for market research.
Important safety information
The Galleri test is recommended for use in adults with an elevated risk for cancer, such as those aged 50 or older. The Galleri test does not detect all cancers and should be used in addition to routine cancer screening tests recommended by a healthcare provider. Galleri is intended to detect cancer signals and predict where in the body the cancer signal is located. Use of Galleri is not recommended in individuals who are pregnant, 21 years old or younger, or undergoing active cancer treatment.
Results should be interpreted by a healthcare provider in the context of medical history, clinical signs and symptoms. A test result of “No Cancer Signal Detected” does not rule out cancer. A test result of “Cancer Signal Detected” requires confirmatory diagnostic evaluation by medically established procedures (e.g. imaging) to confirm cancer.
If cancer is not confirmed with further testing, it could mean that cancer is not present or testing was insufficient to detect cancer, including due to the cancer being located in a different part of the body. False-positive (a cancer signal detected when cancer is not present) and false-negative (a cancer signal not detected when cancer is present) test results do occur. Rx only.
Laboratory / Test Information
GRAIL’s clinical laboratory is certified under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 (CLIA) and accredited by the College of American Pathologists (CAP). The Galleri test was developed, and its performance characteristics were determined by GRAIL. The Galleri test has not been cleared or approved by the Food and Drug Administration. GRAIL’s clinical laboratory is regulated under CLIA to perform high-complexity testing. The Galleri test is intended for clinical purposes.
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