Could a $300 baby sleep device be key to retaining working parents?

The maker of one such product, Owlet, certainly hopes so. The Owlet Dream Sock monitors babies’ pulse rates and oxygen levels while they sleep, and sends parents notifications if these levels are out of range. It’s a much-coveted item on baby registries, and it’s pricey, retailing at $299.99.

Now, the Lehi, Utah-based company is pitching its products to employers at a discount if they cover part of the cost for their employees.

Sleep deprivation can persist for years after parents have children, and in turn affect work productivity and performance, research suggests.

For more on how Owlet hopes offering its product as an employee benefit will help drive retention, keep reading here.—CV

Pick a word, any word, to describe the state of DEI in corporate America.

Attacked? Certainly. Abandoned? In some cases. But its status is far more complex.

“It’s evolving. And I don’t think that folks should necessarily view that as a negative. It’s always been evolving, from the affirmative action days,” Kristen Parisi, a senior reporter at HR Brew covering DEI, said during a recent episode of HR Brew’s People Person podcast, later adding, “Companies are still doing the work. They may call it something else, they may cut out the fluff…but they’re keeping the core of it.”

Her reporting suggests as much. So does a recent HR Brew survey about the state of DEI in corporate America, which found that 57% of organizations did not change their approach to DEI in 2025 as compared to previous years.

Parisi and Latesha Byrd, founder and CEO of culture consultancy Perfeqta, sat down with Kate Noel, SVP and head of people operations at Morning Brew, to talk about DEI, where it stands today, and what employers can do to make progress in the future.

For more from our conversation with Parisi and Byrd, keep reading here.—VV

Emotion AI—a category of tools that claim to read people’s feelings by measuring their tone and expressions—is slowly creeping into workplaces, according to a new report from the Atlantic. Your boss might not have to inform you they’re using it, which means you could be secretly judged by an AI for your concentrating-too-hard face.

What happened? The list of emotion AI tools on the market is rapidly growing: There’s an app called MorphCast that analyzes meeting participants’ emotions in real time—Zoom extension included. Slack now has an integration called Aware that monitors employee chats for “sentiment and toxicity.” One AI startup says its tools can analyze the emotional states of job interview candidates. The global market for emotion AI could triple to $9 billion by 2030, according to the Atlantic.

How we got here. Emotion monitoring on the clock isn’t new (see: the entire service industry).

For more on workplace surveillance’s emotional upgrade, keep reading on Tech Brew.—WK

If last year's news cycle felt like a non-stop barrage of corporate
layoff announcement, that's because it was. Learn more about this recent increase in the labor market.