TOTAL REWARDS

Credit: Hunter McRae

Stream, a financial wellness vendor, held its inaugural US conference at a time when American workers are feeling particularly unwell about their finances.

The UK-based company, which offers earned-wage access, gathered some 150 attendees in Dallas on Sept. 29 to chat about topics like financial health and open enrollment.

Stream’s conference, called FinWell, occurred the same week the Commerce Department released data showing inflation remained high in August, due in part to the ongoing war in Iran. US wages aren’t keeping up with rising prices, and the high price of fuel is making worker commutes more costly. The Federal Reserve recently raised interest rates for the first time in three years, meaning borrowing costs for purchases like homes and automobiles will go up, too.

HR leaders in attendance at the conference said they’re considering a variety of ways to help workers feel better about their finances. But in the end, the most effective action employers could take to do this—raising wages—may be off the table.

For more on the ways in which HR leaders are trying to help workers feel better about their finances, keep reading here.—CV

      

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Early alignment on consent, data retention, and data residency helps teams evaluate solutions with confidence. The HR leader’s checklist can prep your team for the conversation with stakeholders by outlining helpful requirements for evaluating candidate verification solutions.

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TECH

HR Brew

For HR leaders and recruiters who work in the LinkedIn ecosystem, changes are coming. LinkedIn announced the next generation of its AI agent for recruiters, Hiring Assistant 2, at the company’s Talent Connect customer event in New York City this week.

LinkedIn’s new Hiring Assistant 2 is fitted with what the company claims to be better advanced reasoning, memory, and personalization for recruiters. The aim is to deliver better candidate recommendations based on companies’ and recruiters’ historic data, inputs, and preferences. Each requisition, candidate, and hire improves the system because the agent learns recruiters’ preferences and habits.

The agent does “not just do what I told it to do. It does what I meant to tell it. That’s a big difference. Do what I meant, not what I said,” Dan Reid, LinkedIn’s VP of product management, said at the event. “Quite simply, it understands more about how you hire, not how everybody hires, but how you hire.”

The news comes as LinkedIn expands its roster of connected apps, so members can connect their user activity from external partners such as Base44, Fiverr, Duolingo, and Hubspot with their profiles.

For more on what HR pros can expect from LinkedIn’s new tech, keep reading here.—AD

      

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HR STRATEGY

Morning Brew Inc, Photo: Adobe Stock

When starting a company, head count at first is simple—just you, maybe a co-founder or two. But as a company scales, increasingly complicated questions can eat up a founder’s time.

How should I classify certain employees? How do I attract talent and then keep them from leaving? When is it time to hire a HR person?

To help answer that last question, Founder Brew spoke with Katie LaFranchi, an HR expert with over two decades of experience in technology and startups.

After starting her career in HR with small Seattle-area tech companies, LaFranchi eventually moved on to massive organizations like Google and Amazon. In 2024, the Austin, Texas-based LaFranchi started working as a fractional HR exec for startups across consumer products, wellness, and semiconductors. Currently, she serves as the chief people officer at agentic AI startup NinjaTech AI. LaFranchi offers a road map for founders.

For more from the conversation with LaFranchi, keep reading on Founder Brew.—DL

      

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work perks

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: Uber wants to bring you to work, and feed you while you’re there, acquiring workplace catering platform ezCater for $2.3 billion. (Quartz)

Quote: “We must never lose sight of what matters most: our people. We will build a culture where people feel respected, empowered, supported and proud of the work they do.”—David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz, co-CEOs of the newly formed Skydance, in a joint memo to employees after the Warner Bros. Discovery merger with Paramount (Business Insider)

Read: Pope Leo XIV assured Vatican labor associations that he would not allow AI to replace human work, describing work as “inscribed in the human condition.” (EWTN)

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The old hire-train-backfill playbook is breaking as talent gets scarcer and AI reshapes recruiting. HR Brew and talent leaders offer a framework for when to build, buy, or borrow skills.