HR STRATEGY

Courtesy of Deel

Deel, an HR tech startup with ambitions to go public, is willing to get creative as it seeks to build brand recognition.

The platform recently partnered with Snoop Dogg to help him hire a taste tester for his ice cream brand, Dr. Bombay. More than 300,000 people applied for the role, which was listed with a monthly salary of $10,000 a month. In a Deel ad that was shared around the time the job went live, the rapper lamented that “HR was a mess” before his company enlisted Deel. (The person selected for the job will be announced Oct. 27.)

Deel’s recent partnerships with professional sports teams are less of an anomaly in HR tech marketing. Companies like Paylocity and Paycom advertise their services with teams such as the Philadelphia Eagles, the New England Patriots, and the Los Angeles Football Club.

While Deel is a more recent entrant into the world of sports sponsorships, it’s inked two big partnerships in the last year. In May the HR platform announced a multi-year deal with soccer team Arsenal, the reigning champions of England’s Premier League. And this October, Deel rolled out a new partnership with Golden State, a basketball franchise which includes the Warriors, the Valkyries, and the Santa Cruz Warriors.

For more on the strategy behind Deel’s partnerships, keep reading here.—CV

      

Sponsored By Paychex

Regulations have a habit of changing while HR teams are busy doing approximately everything else. That’s where proactive support earns its keep.

By tracking evolving state and federal laws, businesses can catch important changes before they become fines, legal exposure, or one very awkward meeting with leadership.

Minimum-wage updates, tip credits, and other rules can hit the bottom line fast, so staying current matters. With more than 50 years of HR and compliance expertise behind the guidance, businesses can spend less time wondering what changed and more time running the operation.

The goal is simple: Stay compliant, stay protected, and avoid learning about a new regulation after it has already become a problem. Because “surprise” works for a birthday cake. Compliance departments? Not so much.

A trusted HR partner can help keep the rules in view, the risks down, and the “uh-oh” emails to a minimum.

TOTAL REWARDS

Lindsey Choo

It was 2010. Obama was president. Rihanna was on the radio. (Remember when she used to release new albums nearly every year?) And everyone was trying to get 10,000 steps.

This era of Millennial optimism was also the era of Fitbit. In the years after the step tracker device first came on the market in 2009, it also gained a foothold in corporate wellness. Employers like Target, Barclays, and Aon offered Fitbits to their employees in the hopes of incentivizing good behavior and, ultimately, better health.

Today, Fitbit is owned by Google. While employers are still incorporating wearable technology like Fitbits into their wellness programs, it’s hard to ignore how the emergence of GLP-1s for weight loss is affecting those offerings.

Like Fitbit, Weight Watchers is also retooling its programs for the GLP-1 era. It’s only fitting, then, that the two are now partnering together.

For more on how GLP-1s are shaping a new era of wearable benefits, keep reading here.—CV

      

RECRUITMENT & RETENTION

Cali Williams-Yost

Think you have a skills gap? Maybe. But maybe not.

“When an HR leader says, ‘we have a skills gap,’ what they’re talking about is a gap between the skills they believe that they need to execute the strategic priorities of the business,” Cali Williams Yost, founder and CEO of the Flex+Strategy Group, told HR Brew during an October virtual event. But, she added, “Sometimes it is really something else.”

That something else might be an onboarding process that’s not creating the conditions for new hires to succeed, or a leadership program that’s not properly preparing managers to lead across timezones and technologies. And then there’s the elephant in the room: AI. “How are you training the domain experts in your organization to be able to apply AI to their jobs? You can hire in that experienced person with the AI skills, but if everybody else is floundering, it’s not going to make much of a difference,” she said, later adding, “These are things beyond the skills gap that have to really be looked at, so that it’s the holistic picture.”

Now, if you have checked these boxes and still think you have a skills gap, put down the job posting and step away from LinkedIn. Williams Yost, drawing on her decades of experience helping organizations build high-performing, engaged workforces, shared with us what HR leaders should consider before they buy, build, or borrow talent.

For more from our conversation with Williams Yost, keep reading here.—VV

      

Sponsored By Empathy

Reassessing grief support. Grief doesn’t run on a calendar. And it certainly doesn’t stop once an employee returns from bereavement leave. Join Empathy and Google’s global benefits team on Nov. 12 to learn how HR teams can provide benefits that support employees experiencing grief and loss. Save your spot.

work perks

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: Men made up 51% of claims for California’s paid family leave program in 2025, up from just 18% when the program launched in 2004. (NPR)

Quote: “There was just no way I could do that…That was just not feasible.”—Melody Stephens, a nurse at an assisted living facility, explained why she couldn’t afford her employer-sponsored health plan, which cost $1,000 a month (KFF)

Read: Audi is forging ahead with a plan to build a $4 billion factory in Georgia, even as parent company Volkswagen is cutting jobs and closing factories across Germany, where the automaker is headquartered. (the Guardian)

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