In June, when the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion in the United States after 49 years, LinkedIn was flooded with an outpouring of dismay, as corporate leaders spoke out against the decision.

“Feeling heartbroken today,” Holly Maloney, managing director at the venture capital firm General Catalyst, wrote. “Today is a rough day in the US, really rough,” echoed Chelsea Hunersen, a social media manager at the experience management software maker Qualtrics.

Many workers want to be employed by an organization with corporate values that align with their own, and leaders often make public statements of solidarity with social movements. Employees talk politics at work, too: Of over 52,000 workers across 44 countries and territories queried in PwC’s 2022 Hopes and Fears Survey, 65% said they discuss political and social issues with work colleagues frequently or sometimes, but only 30% said they believe their companies provide support to help them “work effectively with people who share different views.”

This can leave HR with the task of brokering compromise and making peace between employees who openly—and sometimes contentiously—disagree about politics at work. Accomplishing that might require conversations with employees who find themselves butting heads with colleagues, intervening when situations get heated, setting clear workplace boundaries, and a clear distillation of corporate values, according to HR practitioners who spoke with HR Brew.

Nothing new. In an increasingly polarized society, political disputes between workers can fester and bubble up, especially in election years. Kayla Moncayo, a senior manager of global people operations at an international tech firm, recalled to HR Brew one situation at a former employer. Keep reading here.—SB

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @SammBlum on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Sam for his number on Signal.

Suspend your disbelief for a moment and imagine a medieval knight introducing themselves in a modern office environment: “I am Sir Galahad, senior IT manager,” they might say, before mistaking the copy machine for a dragon and destroying it with an ax.

Titles and lineage were important for knights marauding through the medieval countryside, but throughout the pandemic, job titles became similarly crucial for US employers, as companies vied for talent in an increasingly competitive market. According to recent data compiled by the job market data analytics firm LinkUp shared with HR Brew, job listings for “senior” positions in the US jumped by 57% from August 2020 to April 2022, and they’ve only just started to decline.

Title inflation—defined by Cambridge Dictionary as “a process in which the names of employees’ jobs are regularly changed to make them sound more important than they are”—was rampant as the labor market entered a period of flux. (This isn’t to be confused with economic inflation, which hit 9.1% in June in the US, according to the most recent Consumer Price Index Summary.)

According to Bloomberg, adding a souped-up title to a job has been a means of luring talent when firms run out of money and other perks to offer candidates.

The data. LinkUp “indexes millions of job listings every day directly from employer websites” through proprietary technology, the company’s chief marketing officer, Lisa Lynch, explained to HR Brew in an email. Prior to the pandemic, job listings with a “senior” title comprised roughly 3.9% of job listings in the US. The peak was reached in April 2022, when 6.2% of jobs included senior titles. Keep reading here.—SB

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @SammBlum on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Sam for his number on Signal.

The James Webb Space Telescope images released last week were a beautiful reminder that maybe, just maybe, the universe doesn’t revolve around corporate America. And apparently there’s a lot happening in the world of work outside the US.

Trouble in Asia. Employment confidence in China has tanked, according to a Nasdaq report, reaching its lowest level in Q2 since the Great Recession as the job market flails and Gen Z struggles to find work after graduating.

Meanwhile, some South Koreans are going back to the office and getting a reminder of what they left behind. A June survey found that reports of “gapjil”—toxic workplace culture—have increased nearly 7% since March, according to CNN. Though gapjil declined following the passage of a 2019 anti-bullying law meant to stop harassment in South Korean workplaces, the survey found that as companies have returned to offices following the pandemic, workers (especially women, temporary workers, and those in the service industry) have increasingly faced inappropriate conduct.

Changes in Europe. Joining Taiwan, Indonesia, and South Korea, Spain may soon become the first European country to guarantee paid menstrual leave. Should the proposal pass, the Spanish government will be responsible for funding the program, as opposed to menstrual leave sometimes provided in the US directly by participating employers.

In October, Spain will also be the first European country to implement the EU’s proposed artificial intelligence legislation, Politico reported. 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.

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: Job satisfaction and engagement among federal workers is down 4.5% since last year, with just 64.5% of employees expressing positive sentiment. (the Washington Post)

Quote: “Moving forward, we need to be more entrepreneurial, working with greater urgency, sharper focus, and more hunger than we’ve shown on sunnier days.”—Google CEO Sundar Pichai, in an employee memo about the company’s hiring slowdown (The Verge)

Read: Remote work may have a negative effect on wage growth, as some employees choose to forgo raises for work-from-home flexibility. (CBS)

Peep key deets on employee engagement: Workday’s State of Engagement 2022 report digs into why employee engagement is taking a dip. Learn which areas of your biz can strengthen engagement here.*

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