DE&I

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Maceo Owens was ready to quit her job. It was late 2019, and the dasher experience specialist at DoorDash felt ready to move on. Then, she stumbled upon the company’s Black employee resource group (ERG) and suddenly felt as though she had found her community.

By early 2020, she had become a co-chair of Black@DoorDash, but her excitement was quelled by the social upheaval caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and police murder of George Floyd. DoorDash wanted the Black ERG’s guidance, and Owens didn’t quite know what to do.

“With DoorDash, they donated $500,000 to Black Lives Matter, and then they gave another $500,000 to the Black ERG to donate to wherever they wanted, and it was like, ‘How do we do [that]?’” Owens told HR Brew. “Being basically told [to] determine how we’re going to donate $500,000 was like…what?”

DoorDash wasn’t the only company paying more attention to its ERGs. In 2020, despite 31% of companies offering ERGs, according to Sequoia, many ERG leaders were not compensated, didn’t receive administrative support, and didn’t have a sustained budget, Forbes reported. As a result, Owens said she taught herself how to lead an ERG. At the time, she had no idea then that she would someday use this knowledge to start her own business, the ERG Movement, to help companies build effective ERGs.

Keep reading here.—MC

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HR 101

PTO priorities

Welcome to HR 101. Class is now in session. Today’s discussion will focus on unlimited paid time-off (PTO).

The history. Policies around time off can be pretty straightforward. Staff have a set number of sick, vacation, and personal days that they can take each year and may increase with their tenure. Before WWII, PTO was often only available to employees in white-collar jobs, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, although 85% of workers who belonged to unions could also count on receiving PTO in 1944.

But employers didn’t start to offer unlimited PTO—which doesn’t accrue and is open-ended, according to Bamboo HR—until the 21st century. Netflix was an early adopter of unlimited PTO, adopting the policy in 2003, according to Inc. Though the streaming giant initially struggled to manage the influx of employees taking time off, especially during busy periods for the business, its founder and former CEO Reed Hastings told Inc that the company learned from its mistakes and worked out the kinks.

Fast-forward. In 2019, only 6% of US employers offered unlimited PTO, according to SHRM data. By 2023, that number had grown ever so slightly, to 8%. Unlimited PTO has been the topic of debate, with some arguing it does workers more harm than good.

Keep reading here.—AS

STARTING UP

Restarting “Starting up”

We’re back! Each week, we get into the weeds with the founders of HR tech startups. Want to tell us about your company? Get in touch here.

Jocelyn King is the founder and CEO of VirgilHR, a compliance software startup that leverages automation and a “smart chatbot” to help HR pros navigate the complex world of compliance across federal, state, and local labor and employment law.

The idea for VirgilHR dawned on King while working in HR at a multi-state tech outfit that was designing an app using conditional logic programming. King—who was struggling to manually add changes to laws to an Excel spreadsheet—thought it would “be so interesting if somebody built a tool that leveraged conditional logic programming to really analyze what laws are applicable and given scenarios, which is exactly what we did.”

Since its founding in February 2021, VirgilHR has raised $1.85 million, according to King, including $1.5 million in pre-seed funding from Squadra Ventures, Techstars, SHRMLabs, and TEDCO. The company was also a Pitchfest finalist at last October’s HR Tech conference in Las Vegas. VirgilHR launched its product in March 2023, and notable clients include SmartRecruiters and Piedmont Airlines, a subsidiary of American Airlines.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What product or service does your company offer?

We offer an HR compliance product that provides instant employment and labor law guidance to HR professionals to help with day-to-day tasks. Our automated technology analyzes applicable laws and provides prescriptive instructions to help HR stay compliant, real-time, without the need to conduct research or speak with attorneys. We also offer a resource center, which includes an employee handbook builder, multi-state comparison tool, legal updates, templates, and more.

Keep reading here.—AD

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