When HR pros need to fill a position, it’s not uncommon for them to look within their own organizations. As one VP of talent acquisition told HR Brew earlier this year, “There’s no greater talent pool than your own.” But when it comes to recruiting HR talent itself, internal mobility is trickier—particularly when a C-suite role opens up.

Chief human resources officers (CHROs) were more likely to report being recruited from outside an organization than from within, according to a survey by the Center for Executive Succession at the University of South Carolina conducted in May and June of this year.

Companies’ tendency to look outside their organizations for top HR talent has held true since 2009, when Patrick Wright, currently department chair of USC’s Darla Moore School of Business, first started surveying CHROs. These C-suite leaders are less likely to be promoted internally than CEOs or chief financial officers (CFOs), Wright’s research has found.

The trend may be seen as an indictment of the HR function, Wright told HR Brew. “If we’re in charge of talent development, and we aren’t developing our own talent…to be able to have internal successors…that says something about us as a function,” he said. But it’s also a reflection of the evolving nature of the CHRO role at public companies, where board experience is increasingly valued, and may help external candidates beat out internal talent, he said.

Keep reading here.—CV

The right employee holiday gift can give engagement and motivation a powerful boost. But the wrong gifts? They can leave your team as sour as a bad glass of eggnog.

Fear not, HR pros. Tremendous surveyed 1,500 employees across 10 industries to find out how employees feel about holiday gifts, whether there’s meaningful ROI in the right picks, and what teams really want (hint: It’s not swag).

Turns out, the gift of choice—and something as close to $$$ as possible—is unsurprisingly ideal. Tremendous’s 2023 holiday employee gifting white paper lays out all the deets so you can quit spending your budget in the wrong place.

PS: Tremendous can also help your employees choose from a range of gift and prepaid cards. Learn more.

Employers that are part of the Health Transformation Alliance (HTA), a coalition seeking to “improve patient care and economic value,” will have access to primary care services from One Medical through a partnership announced last month.

One Medical, which is owned by Amazon, offers in-person and virtual care services; it currently operates more than 200 primary care offices across nearly 20 metropolitan areas. More than 8,500 companies offer One Medical as an employee health benefit.

The hope is that the partnership will improve the patient experience and health outcomes while lowering costs. HTA cited a study published in JAMA Network Open that found employees who used One Medical for their primary care incurred total medical and prescription claims that were $167 lower per month, on average, when compared to employees using other primary care providers.

Zoom out. The partnership highlights efforts by employers to expand access to primary care in hopes of lowering health costs.

Keep reading here.—CV

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

Jamie Aitken’s entire HR career has been focused on transformations. She has worked on cultural transformations, business transformations, HR transformations, the works. Aitken said her fascination with solving puzzles led her down this professional path.

Aitken is VP of HR transformation at Betterworks, a tech company focused on refining performance management. Aitken is a little different from our typical coworkers featured in this series because she works with HR professionals to help them overhaul their performance management systems so they’re better aligned with business goals and have buy-in from employees, managers, and leaders. It’s exciting work because “sadly…we’ve been talking about changing this in HR for about a billion years,” she said.

What’s the best change you’ve made at work?

Ten years ago, mental health wasn’t being talked about like it is today, and I’d go as far to say it wasn’t even a priority in the workplace. When a client wanted to fundamentally shift their culture, specifically the relationship between line managers and direct reports, I helped them incorporate mindfulness, meditation, and critical thinking into the internal revamp to boost employee engagement scores. As a result, those managers became more self-aware and more open to an empathetic leadership style, resulting in employees feeling more understood, supported, and engaged at work.

Keep reading here.—AD

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: Around 64 million Americans (38% of the US workforce) freelanced in 2023. (Upwork)

Quote: “These companies are breaking the law in an attempt to get autoworkers to sit down and shut up instead of fighting for their fair share.”—Shawn Fain, president of the UAW, on the autoworker union’s unfair labor practice charges against foreign carmakers (CNBC)

Read: Five Republican state attorneys general and the conservative legal advocacy group that led the legal charge against affirmative action in college admissions are targeting law firms with the goal of dismantling corporate DE&I programs. (the Washington Post)

Makin’ a list: 46% of employees experience a boost in job satisfaction for 1+ year after receiving the right holiday gift. Tremendous’s white paper helps HR pros figure out what that gift can be.*

^{*A message from our sponsor.}

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