When Danelle McCusker Rees’s team surveyed United Parcel Service’s (UPS) employees halfway through 2021, some reported calling out sick on a regular basis.

McCusker Rees, president of HR and operational training at UPS, looked closer at the issue and realized many of these absences were not actually due to illnesses, but rather issues with childcare.

“We found that people did not want to admit that they had a childcare problem. There’s this stigma that still exists,” she said. “If I’m sick, that’s one thing,” she added. “But it’s taken a different way if I’m saying that my child is sick, or I need to be there for my child.”

McCusker Rees was exploring this at a time when a significant share of US women were dropping out of the labor force, often due to childcare complications that worsened during the pandemic. Concerned that this trend was affecting UPS’s own workforce, Rees’s team decided to pilot an emergency childcare benefit for employees in northern California.

Keep reading here.—CV

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Tech execs predict a hiring spree may be on the horizon. Yep, you read that right.

According to a new report from General Assembly, the for-profit coding academy and tech talent company, execs predict an upswing in hiring—the “boom” portion of what the report dubs the “boom-bust” approach to hiring tech talent.

“Over 2023, we saw a lot of those sexy tech companies that hired tons of people in those tech roles…they’ve started to do the mass let-go of people,” said Catie Brand, who runs General Assembly’s employer solutions business. “Companies can only survive so long without technology talent, though.”

What’s HR to do? What’s clear to Brand is that it’s on companies and talent management pros to address the cyclical boom-bust strategy.

Keep reading here.—AD

The city of Chicago passed an ordinance on Nov. 9 that will double the amount of paid time-off workers receive annually, to 10 days.

Under the new policy, employees who perform at least two hours of work in a two-week period are entitled to up to five days of paid sick leave and five days of paid time-off each year. They may use paid time-off days for any reason.

Chicago workers are already entitled to five days of sick leave under a current ordinance. The new ordinance applies to any employee performing work within the city of Chicago, regardless of where their employer is located.

What Chicago employers should know. The new ordinance will take effect Dec. 31, 2023, and will likely require Chicago employers to change their policies before the end of the year, attorneys with law firm Littler wrote in a Nov. 14 post.

Keep reading here.—CV

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: About 75% of HR reps believe retaining employees who don’t want to work in an office is a problem, with 19% calling it a “major problem,” according to a poll conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. (Associated Press)

Quote: “Organizations have to ask themselves, ‘What is my risk calculus?’...There is a risk of challenge, risk of liability, the risk of reputational harm.”—Samia Kirmani, coleader of the corporate diversity practice for law firm Jackson Lewis, on a pullback in diversity hiring (Bloomberg)

Read: The end of new-employee “honeymoons” and long-distance work relationships may be contributing to many employees’ job dissatisfaction. (the Wall Street Journal)

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