As air travel rebounded post-pandemic, airport restaurant and retail chain company OTG Management faced a challenge: Recruiting enough workers to fill jobs available at one of the 11 airports in which it operates throughout North America.

Even as the labor market has cooled, job openings in the US labor and hospitality sector are still higher than most other industries, and as of July the turnover rate stood at 4.2%, nearly double the national average. In the background of this challenging hiring market, OTG is growing, recently expanding at the Denver International Airport, with plans to hire 100 additional workers. The company currently employs 4,500 workers, and makes about 350 job offers a month, mostly for hourly roles.

Over the last year, OTG has focused on automating its recruitment process in order to free up its HR professionals to spend more time speaking with job candidates, Kelly Licciardi, an SVP and partner with the firm, told HR Brew.

Keep reading here.—CV

Your fellow HR pros, that is, because Marsh McLennan Agency recently reached out to HR pros from all over to understand what their leave policies are lookin’ like.

You can get all the details right here in their 2024 Absence, Disability, and Leave Benchmarking Report. Their report features 1,200+ responses from employers across 17+ industries.

Wanna see how your leave policy stacks up? Get the report to check out the trends across regulatory leave and leave management, bonding leave, short-term disability, medical maternity leave, and PTO/sick time. Learn the little details like:

• how employers are expanding access to bonding leave
• whether unlimited PTO is a fit for your organization
• how other employers tackle absence, disability, and leave compared with your own practices and policies

Download the full report.

Retail workers in New York will be entitled to a number of additional safety protections under a law signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul on Sept. 5.

NY law mandates panic buttons for large employers. The law, titled the Retail Worker Safety Act, applies to businesses with at least 10 retail employees working in a retail store. Employers covered by the law must adopt a written workplace violence prevention policy detailing factors that may put retail employees at risk of workplace violence, as well as methods to prevent it. The policy must be publicly available on the company’s website, and provided to employees when they’re hired, as well as annually each year thereafter.

Retail workers face heightened violence post-pandemic. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union held a rally in Albany earlier this year to voice its support for the legislation Hochul signed. During the Covid-19 pandemic, retail workers were sometimes targeted by customers over masking policies, Retail Brew noted, and these employees have also faced active shooter threats, including the deadly 2022 shooting at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo.

Keep reading here.—CV

Slack is taking a cue from BuzzFeed with a new personality quiz that aims to understand how modern office workers use AI.

In a survey of 5,000 full-time desk workers across six countries, the Salesforce-owned office chat platform sorts workers into five broad buckets depending on their usage of and sentiment toward generative AI tools in the workplace.

From “The Rebel” to “The Maximalist,” the company claims this classification system will help business leaders better organize teams to use AI effectively. (Want to see where you fall on the spectrum? Take the quiz.)

“[The personas] are a reflection of the different ways that employees are using and not using AI, as well as an understanding of the variety of emotions and experiences that people are having surrounding AI at work,” Christina Janzer, Slack’s SVP of research and analytics, said in a press briefing. “We really wanted to recognize that there is no one-size-fits all approach when it comes to your experience with AI.”

Keep reading on Tech Brew.—PK

The must-haves vs. the nice-to-haves. Finding a balance with your payroll needs and wants can be tricky. Thankfully, this guide from Paylocity can help. It explores automated payroll management and compliance with practical tips and tools to help you select the solution that fits your needs now + in the future. Grab your guide.