Employee leave requests rose for the third consecutive year, with 57% of organizations reporting that more workers asked for extended time off in 2024, according to a survey released earlier this month by AbsenseSoft.

The pace of the requests is slowing, however. Requests increased by 62% in 2023, after swelling by 96% in 2022. An AbsenseSoft spokesperson speculated that the 2022 jump may have stemmed from the “tail-end of Covid impacts”, while the increase in 2023 may have resulted from the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which went into effect that year and gave more workers the ability to request leave.

Employees’ desire to care for their mental health seems to have been a cause of the jump, said Seth Turner, co-founder and chief strategy officer of AbsenseSoft. Nearly half (47%) of employees cited mental health as a reason for needing the leave, making it the second most-named justification, the survey found. Turner said that employees are more comfortable discussing their mental health needs than they were even five years ago.

For more on what’s causing the continued spike in leave requests, keep reading here.—TA

It seems people around the world are feeling pretty hopeless, and they’re looking to their leaders for help.

Hope ranks as the top need that people have of their leaders—including their workplace leaders—according to a recent Gallup report. Some 64% of global adults want leaders who instill in them a sense of hope, followed by trust (27%), compassion (5%), and stability (5%).

“When people can see their future in the midst of a crisis, they can get through that crisis a lot easier. They can see their way through it, and it takes a leader to help people with that,” Jim Harter, chief workplace scientist at Gallup, told HR Brew. Amid times of uncertainty, he said employees need leaders who can help them focus on what’s next for them and their organization.

For more on the hullabaloo over hope and what HR can do to help, keep reading here.—MC

If you want to build a booming china shop, you don’t unleash a bull. And if you want to build a booming labor market, you don’t lay off thousands of federal workers.

Employer layoffs surged to 275,240 in March, according to new data from job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That’s a 60% increase from last month, when 172,017 cuts were made, and a 205% jump from March 2024, the month with the most layoffs last year.

Last month’s layoffs marked the third-highest monthly total ever recorded by the firm, following April and May 2020, when 671,129 and 397,016 cuts were recorded following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Not only is March an atypical month for high-volume layoffs, but these cuts weren’t widespread.

For more on these DOGE-led layoffs and their impact on talent acquisition, keep reading.—PM