In a large hotel ballroom in San Francisco this summer, more than 80 VSCO employees gathered. Teams sat at colorful banquet tables strategically positioned around the room “like a wedding” to maximize interpersonal connection. Pipe cleaners served as concentration tools for silent fidgeting during long meeting sessions.

And the centerpiece? A large wall filled with colorful Post-it style notes connected with yarn—think A Beautiful Mind or a TV detective’s evidence board. This wall was why they all came to Frisco.

“We've really got the whole company focused on our future, our strategy, what's coming up in front of us, as well as a reminder of who we're doing it for,” said Karina Bernacki, VSCO’s head of people, adding that it happens in a “kindergarten classroom”-like setting.

When Bernacki joined VSCO, a photo editing app and sharing platform, in January 2021, she got to work addressing missteps in the company’s remote-first strategy.

“They were trying to replicate the office in the virtual world,” she said.

Keep reading here.—AD

To support your people through life’s pivotal moments—from having a baby to caring for a loved one to focusing on personal health—having the right leave management software is also pretty pivotal.

That’s why Cocoon’s leave management software uses first-of-its-kind tech to take the work out of employee leave. By automating the twists and turns of compliance, claims, and payroll, HR teams can shift their focus to caring for their people rather than wrangling logistics.

Eliminate hours of work, reduce legal risks—even as your team becomes more distributed across the US—and save an average of $10k per leave (!!!) with Cocoon.

Employees can privately plan their leave in minutes, easily file claims, and track their pay without hassle.

Request a demo before July 31 to get 50% off your implementation fee.

Companies like Meta, Amazon, and Citigroup have doubled down on getting workers back into the office, trying out various sticks and carrots to enforce stricter policies on in-person work.

Firms embracing remote work point to productive, satisfied workers as a major advantage of maintaining flexible arrangements. Yelp’s chief people officer, Carmen Whitney Orr, recently told HR Brew her company’s remote-first policy has also helped boost recruitment: The applicant pool for general and administrative roles grew by 200% between 2019 and 2022.

New data from Scoop Technologies, an HR and IT firm that advises organizations on hybrid work, provides further insight into the advantages fully flexible companies hold over others in recruiting workers, and suggests remote work continues to be an attractive benefit to prospective job candidates.

Keep reading here.—CV

Here’s this week’s edition of our Coworking series, in which we chat 1:1 with an HR Brew reader. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.

There’s not one tried-and-true path to HR. Many pros who speak with HR Brew about their work have had experiences that uniquely led them to their current position. For Abby Bartlett, the path from high school chemistry teacher to HR manager at Larissa Loden Inc., a Minnesota-based jewelry manufacturer, is unique.

After leaving education to raise her children, Bartlett began nannying for the jewelry company’s owner. She initially provided Larissa Loden with HR and admin work while the kids were napping or on the weekends as “sort of an internship.” Bartlett eventually took on more and more HR and bookkeeping responsibilities, while earning both a train-the-trainer certification through the Minnesota’s displaced homemaker program and an HR generalist certificate.

Through “a lot of grit and a lot of desire to learn,” Bartlett built out the company’s HR department from the ground up. Lately, she’s really relied on ChatGPT to help her out. She’s used the tool when recruiting, and even relied on it for constructing a Dr. Seuss-style poem/memo about a policy prohibiting dogs at the office, which had “everybody laughing, even though it was kind of bad news.”

What’s the best change you’ve made at a place you’ve worked?

I encouraged the leadership team to dig deeper on what was blocking one of our great employees from wanting to be full time and level up. After I asked the employee a few questions, leadership determined we could easily overcome her obstacle, and she is now part of our executive leadership team!

What’s the biggest misconception people might have about your job?

Some of them may think I only wait around for employees to ask questions and not understand what I do day to day.

Keep reading here.—AD

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: 98.2% of Fortune 500 companies use an application tracking system in the hiring process. (Jobscan)

Quote: “People are motivated to keep the arrangement, and so that motivation drives the productivity. They want it to work,” said University of Southern Florida professor Tammy Allen in a new report finding remote workers work more hours than their in-office counterparts. (The Hill)

Read: The era of remote work has some hotel companies betting on their extended-stay-style offerings rather than full-service hotels, with leaner housekeeping staff and fewer check-ins and checkouts. (the New York Times)

Learn: No two employees are the same—learn how to coach each player on your team, and keep it fair while you’re at it with our Building High-Performance Teams sprint. Register now.

Employee leave, modernized: Automate compliance, claims, and payroll—and save an average of $10k per leave—with Cocoon’s seamless employee leave management software. Get a demo before July 31 for 50% off your implementation fee.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}