Imagine an alternate universe where Captain Planet is not only real, but one of his superpowers is making businesses eco-friendly. Well, some companies, including Salesforce, Schneider Electric, and Deloitte, aren’t far off. They’re educating and reskilling employees with an eye toward sustainability.

While sustainability may strike some as being beyond the people function, consider this: 82% of global workers want to help their organizations become more sustainable, and three in five want to incorporate sustainability into their current role, a Salesforce survey found. As such, some HR leaders say that sustainability efforts have become inextricably linked to their job.

HR’s role. HR leaders can play a vital role in preparing employees for positions with a sustainability slant by understanding “the critical role that corporate values and culture and employee engagement play in driving business value,” Sunya Norman, VP of ESG strategy and engagement at Salesforce, explained.

At Salesforce, Norman has done this through co-founding Earthforce, a sustainability-focused employee resource group with over 7,000 members, and developing and deploying the company’s library of sustainability learning courses. Called Trailhead, it houses coursework on various sustainability skills, including sustainable product design and how to live a more eco-friendly lifestyle.

“HR has been a key partner in integrating sustainability in the entire employee lifecycle,” she said. “We have sustainability information in our onboarding…We have now brought in sustainability as a part of our executive compensation and that was a partnership with HR and the compensation team.”

While most businesses do not have as many resources or employees as Salesforce, Norman insisted that HR can still make it a priority. Keep reading here.—KP

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Elle Woods’s pink and scented resumé may have been the most over-the-top to have crossed Professor Callahan’s desk, but she wasn’t the first, or the last, to go out of her way to impress a hiring manager.

Just last week, job-seeker Karly Pavlinac Blackburn showed a cake she’d sent to a Nike company party in a now-viral LinkedIn post. On top of layers of what we’re hoping were vanilla sponge and buttercream was an edible picture of her resumé.

“It is about making things happen and taking a chance outside of the box,” Blackburn said in the post.

Since the stunt, Blackburn, who is looking for work in marketing or brand management, has been in talks with Nike and other companies, though she has not yet landed herself a sweet gig, according to media reports.

As candidates work to make their resumés stand out in the hopes of landing an interview and ultimately, a job, some are thinking about more than just its content—you know, like a fresh spritz of perfume that “gives it a little something extra.” Whether or not they’re actually impressing recruiters with their attempts seems to be up for debate.

Does it make a lick of difference? Reactions to Blackburn’s post were mixed, but New Jersey-based HR pro Matthew Prail commented, “I would want to meet the candidate! It’s creative and innovative—I’m definitely interested in talking to them.”

“Let them all eat cake! Well done!” replied Laura A. Brown, a Connecticut recruiter.

But creativity on its own doesn’t always cut it. Morgan Romero, an HR specialist at Haworth Marketing + Media, told HR Brew on LinkedIn that a candidate once sent her fortune cookies containing reasons why they were a perfect match for the job.

Unfortunately, according to Romero, the reasons didn’t highlight their experience. Keep reading here.—AD

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As many, including our very own President Joe Biden, declare the Covid-19 pandemic over, companies across the country are relaxing their health precautions.

Earlier this month, California ended mandatory testing for certain unvaccinated workers in the state, and ahead of the post-Labor Day RTO rush, Goldman Sachs removed its testing and vaccination requirements for in-person employees outside New York City. With “vaccination, improved treatments, and testing now available, there is significantly less risk of severe illness,” the company wrote in a memo.

These rollbacks may have been spurred by recent EEOC guidance clarifying the conditions under which employers can legally mandate testing and vaccinations. As law firm Fisher Phillips summarized at the time, “You can continue to administer viral tests as a condition of entering a worksite, so long as you can show your testing practices are job-related and consistent with business necessity.”

In a survey of HR Brew readers, 64% said they are rolling back testing or vaccination requirements, while another 6% said they are considering doing so. Some 30% said they are not changing their policies.

“Testing is expensive. It’s burdensome. It’s time-consuming,” Devjani Mishra, leader of Littler Mendelson’s Covid-19 task force and return-to-work team, previously told HR Brew. “There aren’t that many employers out there that really want to do more testing than they have to do.”

Despite these moves, WHO has cautioned against complacency, saying testing and vaccination remain key. With winter approaching, many experts are wondering if mask mandates should be reintroduced. However, Johns Hopkins medical professor Stuart Ray told ABC that he thinks there is “very little appetite” for masking and mandates.

“It’s a steep climb…unless there’s a particular context in which it’s important,” he said, adding, “If we were to come into a highly disruptive surge, then the appetite for a mandate might change.”—AK

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Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: 70% of economists believe a recession to be “at least somewhat likely” in the remainder of 2022 and 2023. (World Economic Research Forum)

Quote: “If I was to go gray, it would be an even more constant reminder that I’m older than every member of my team.”—Julie Marie Totsch, a 54-year-old software developer, talking about the anxiety of showing her gray hair at work (the Wall Street Journal)

Read: The CEO of a Florida company appears to have asked employees to come into the office with their kids and pets, as Hurricane Ian barreled toward the state. (Vice)

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