With 2024 in the rearview mirror, it’s time to take stock. Did those resolutions get tackled? Were those goals accomplished? Any needed changes in order to thrive in the next annum? HR pros are no strangers to reviewing what’s happened over the year.

At HR Brew, we thought now was also a good time to take stock and assess the myriad changes and development of HR technology, specifically the AI tech finding its way into organizations across the globe.

More than half of HR Brew readers surveyed for this story are using AI tech in HR. Some 53% of respondents currently use AI for their HR work, with 51% loving it. Another 35% are interested in adopting new AI tech. Only 13% of those surveyed have not incorporated AI into their HR workflows, according to the survey.

According to a recent report from the Workforce Lab at Slack, employee AI adoption is plateauing, and now is the time for HR pros and company leaders to focus on training and education on the technology to both improve their organization’s culture when it comes to using AI at work, and upskill employees to use it.

Keep reading here.—AD

Another banner year for digital technology (lookin’ at you, AI) has got us thinking about the oldest HR stereotype in the book…paper pushing. In reality, large swaths of the HR workflow live in the cloud, and very few instances remain where paper is critical.

“A lot of the times, HR departments are understaffed, so they’re trying to do the most amount of impact in their organizations with the least amount of people…they might just default to things that are familiar to them, and what’s more familiar than a piece of paper and a pen,” said Will LaSala, field CTO for Americas, OneSpan, a cybersecurity company that helps businesses with user verification and electronic signatures.

So we asked HR pros: Where does paper still show up at work? One reader suggested paper documentation is useful for tricky scenarios, when hard evidence might be required to explain a company’s action, such as a termination.

Keep reading here.—AD

“Victory.” That’s how America First Legal (AFL), a conservative non-profit, began a Dec. 17 press release claiming an airline had ditched its alleged “discriminatory hiring practices” following a complaint AFL filed against the company. However, the fine print suggests this may not be the whole story.

AFL filed a complaint with the EEOC in Nov. 2023, claiming American Airlines (and other airlines) had discriminatory hiring practices that supposedly favored women and people of color, Bloomberg reported.

The Department of Labor (DOL) issued a letter on Dec. 13, outlining the resolution to AFL’s complaint. While the non-profit claimed that American Airlines will “end illegal hiring discrimination,” the DOL did not indicate that the airline will change any policies or that it engaged in any illegal hiring practices.

Instead, the letter said that American Airlines “understands” that they cannot engage in hiring quotas, and that placement goals are simply a benchmark and shouldn’t “be interpreted as a ceiling or floor for the employment of a particular group of persons.” It also said that the airline will make necessary changes “if” it has any problem areas with hiring. The DOL did not say that American Airlines had been found to have any current DE&I policies that needed to change.

Keep reading here.—KP