Gone are the days when stitching was the purview of seamstresses and doctors, and duets were reserved for Diana Ross and Lionel Richie. Thanks to TikTok, HR pros like Daniel Space can do both regularly on his account @dan_from_hr.

Space is using his years of professional HR experience and knack for social video shorts to change people’s opinions about hiring and the workplace, as well as to correct the abundance of bad advice on the internet.

After college, when Space didn’t secure any lucrative work in his field of study, classical saxophone, Space landed his first HR gig in leave-of-absence administration. He later earned a master’s in HR management and spent more than a decade at WebMD, Electronic Arts, and Spotify in a number of HR business partner-aligned roles.

He left in-house work in early 2020, ready to start a consultancy. And then came the lockdowns.

“The pandemic made me feel isolated. I was living by myself in this small little basement studio and I was like, ‘Alright, let me just download TikTok’…and started just mindlessly scrolling,” he said. “Then I typed in, ‘career advice’…and I just saw so much bad advice, video after video after video.”

Then he spotted one video that would inspire him to join the world of content creation.

Keep reading.—AD

Since the pandemic normalized widespread remote work, several companies have seemingly tripped and stumbled through various ways of executing layoffs. McDonald’s may have turned a page in the Long Book of Post-Pandemic Layoffs earlier this month when it sent workers home from its US corporate offices to lay some of them off remotely.

It’s a strategy that baffles Shane Spraggs, CEO of the remote-team building company Virtira. He expressed concern to HR Brew at the method’s seeming lack of consideration for employees’ mental health. “If you’ve had to wait for an important call, whether it be a job interview, job offer, or potentially being fired over the weekend…you don’t sleep, you stress about it. And it’s really bad for people’s emotional well-being,” he said.

As tech companies have encountered turbulence, they’ve laid off workers via Zoom and email. But the McDonald’s playbook seems to have pushed layoffs into less chartered territory that may become an increasing norm, explained Kathleen Quinn Votaw, CEO of the recruitment firm TalenTrust. “Companies are going to continue to be colder and more inhuman and more robotic about job cuts” as they become more reliant on digital communication tools, she said.

Keep reading.—SB

Increased board diversity has been linked to improvements across an organization in culture and representation, which in turn has been linked to better company performance. But recent corporate board movement in the last year has found a “step back” from the push for diverse and multi-skilled boards of directors that we saw in recent years.

According to a recent report from executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, Fortune 500 companies made fewer board changes than in any of the last four years. Additionally, the share of seats going to first-time directors, women, and directors from diverse ethnicities dropped, while the share of seats going to directors with CEO and CFO experience increased.

“These shifts may be the result of a perception that CEO and CFO expertise, in particular, are helpful as society and businesses navigate the aftermath of the events of the past three years and manage ongoing economic and political uncertainty,” the report’s authors wrote.

According to the report, 40% of new Fortune 500 board seats went to women and only 34% went to racial or ethnic minorities in 2022, compared to 45% and 41% respectively in the previous year. The number of seats going to Black and African American directors was 17% in 2022, compared to 26% in 2021.

Diversity of skills. According to the report, previous years also saw emphasis on experience in talent strategy, technology, and even cybersecurity on corporate boards. This has slowed, which is to the detriment of companies, according to Heidrick & Struggles.

“It is critical that boards’ succession planning should return to including a better balance of backgrounds and a wider range of skill-sets as well as ensuring board composition is representative of the communities in which the company operates—all in the context of strategic needs and not box-ticking,” the authors wrote.—AK

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: The NLRB reported a 16% rise in unfair labor practice complaints in the first six months of fiscal year 2023. (National Labor Relations Board)

Quote: “When preparing messaging about returning to the office, you know you’ll receive some backlash from employees. Instead of pretending that feedback isn’t coming, get ahead of it—accept the fact that not everyone will be pleased about this change.”—Sarah Clausen, corporate communications director at a Kansas property management services firm, on communicating RTO policies to employees (Human Resources Director)

Read: Meet the “Mom-preneurs”: women who started businesses while on maternity leave. (the Philadelphia Inquirer)

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