Women make up more than one-half of the US labor force, but the road to the C-suite could be characterized as “one step forward, two steps back.”

The rate at which women advanced to senior leadership positions in S&P Global Total Market Index companies slowed to the lowest rate in more than a decade in 2023, according to recent research from S&P Global. Female representation in the C-suite also declined for the first time since the firm began tracking these trends in 2005. This data shows that HR departments still have work to do in order to support women seeking to advance to leadership positions in their companies.

Female representation in the C-suite drops. Growth in women’s representation for all senior positions in the S&P Global Total Market Index dropped to under 0.5% in 2023, compared to a 1.2% average in years prior. In the C-suite, women held 11.8% of about 15,000 available roles in publicly traded US firms. That’s down from 12.2% in 2022, the first decline S&P Global tracked in nearly 20 years.

How can HR support women seeking to advance? The “representation gap” evident in the C-suite “gets started very much earlier on down the corporate ladder,” Jackie Cook, Morningstar’s director of stewardship, product strategy, and development, told us, discussing her research on pay disparities in March. She pointed to phenomena such as a “broken rung” that keeps many women from progressing to manager-level positions.

Keep reading here.—CV

Shopping for a human resource information system (HRIS)? You need one that meets your org’s needs—and is ready to grow with you.

Want some help? BambooHR’s Complete HRIS Shopping Checklist covers everything you need to know about choosing a new HR software.

How to evaluate stakeholder needs?

How to get the scoop on vendor reputations?

Nothin’ like a handy tool to ease the pressure of software shopping. With this checklist at your disposal, you’ll have clear steps for evaluating and choosing the best HRIS for your org.

Find software that can grow with your business. Download the free checklist.

People management platform Lattice released new AI tools last week. Neha Monga, Lattice’s VP of products, told HR Brew the company is looking to “really infuse AI” into the company’s three pillars: automating workflows so HR pros can focus on strategy, helping people managers run high-performing teams, and supporting organizations’ talent processes.

The company released two iterative features that build on a release from earlier this year and together bring AI to its customers in ways that make the work easier.

One of those features, “key driver analysis,” builds on an AI tool the company launched in March that used generative AI to summarize comments from employee engagement surveys for people pros. The new tool uses AI to synthesize top themes revealed in survey data, relying on both open-ended feedback and engagement scores.

The company also rolled out a performance summarization feature for managers that summarizes peer reviews and extrapolates key takeaways.

Keep reading here.—AD

Welcome to HR 101. Class is now in session. Today’s discussion is all about Elton Mayo, aka “the father of HR.”

His story. Born in 1880, Mayo was an Australian psychologist, sociologist, and organizational theorist who conducted extensive research on human behavior in the workplace. Mayo began examining human behavior during WWI, when serving on government boards as an advisor on organizing work during the war. In 1922, he shared his research on issues in the way managers and employees related to one another on a US speaking tour. Some of his research on the workplace involved workers at textile mills in Pennsylvania. While observing them in 1923, he noted the impact that providing workers with breaks throughout the day had on their productivity.

In 1926, Mayo became a research professor at the Harvard Business School. Two years later, he started what would become his most famous research initiative, the Hawthorne studies, at the Western Electric Company’s Hawthorne Works in Illinois. Mayo, along with fellow Harvard professors Fritz Roethlisberger and William J. Dickson, studied how various changes in work environments impacted productivity.

Fast-forward. There’s still much to learn about the effect socialization can have on workers.

Keep reading here.—AS

Time to think holistically. In our siloed healthcare system, benefits strategies are often…you guessed it, siloed. That’s bad news for businesses and employees. But whole-person care is possible. Check out this live panel to learn how organizations can improve mental and physical health outcomes, plus reduce healthcare costs through a whole-person care approach. Join the conversation.