Amid the disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic, some employers let performance reviews fall by the wayside—at least temporarily.

But they may be back with a vengeance, thanks to CEOs who became hyper-fixated on metrics like efficiency and productivity when the economy cooled last year.

The workforce platform Rippling set its sights on performance management for its latest product rollout, as well. COO Matt MacInnis said Rippling’s new product, which the company announced on May 8, is intended to help employers monitor performance on a more consistent basis, and free up HR to work on more complex tasks.

Why Rippling is investing in performance. In the current economic environment—one characterized by higher interest rates and elevated layoffs, particularly in Silicon Valley—“company leadership is trying to squeeze more productivity per dollar,” MacInnis said.

Keep reading here.—CV

Picture this: You’ve prioritized your employees’ mental health and made huge organizational strides, but your org isn’t—ya know—perfect. So there’s still room for improvement and better support.

Employees also keep evolving, and benefits and workplace culture should change alongside them. Enter Calm’s 2024 Voice of the Workplace Report. It’s filled with insights about employee mental health—and how you can support your team.

Dig into feedback directly from employees, including:

• the challenges facing specific populations
• five key trends in employee mental health and how benefits leaders are responding
• practical, actionable recs to improve workforce mental health

Get the full report here.

It’s been a busy few months in the HR world, with plenty of leadership shakeups. Read on for some of the industry’s biggest changes.

Boeing. Uma Amuluru took over as EVP of HR at the aerospace manufacturer on April 1, according to a press release. She now oversees global talent acquisition, compensation, and diversity initiatives. Amuluru joined Boeing in 2017 and most recently served as assistant general counsel. She took over the role from Michael D’Ambrose, who spent four years at the company and announced his retirement in July.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Bridgette Wilder was appointed the organization’s first chief people and culture officer in late March after spending a year as VP of people of culture, according to a press release. The newly created position oversees the previously dispersed HR teams, as well as employee relations, development and training, compensation, and employee resource affinity groups. Wilder has 30 years of HR experience, and previously worked at organizations including the California Institute of the Art, Albany State University, the City of Memphis, and Verizon.

Keep reading here.—KP

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.

Lehua Stonebraker worked in HR and recruiting at Gallup, TD Ameritrade, and Ceridian (now Dayforce) before finding herself now at SmartRecruiters, a global hiring platform. Stonebraker said, with her background in both HR and recruiting, that SmartRecruiters is “probably the best place to be,” because her executive leadership and board already speak the language of HR, and her HR team “get to be betas and really test out things” before a feature heads to market.

The HR leader oversees a global workforce of roughly 500 employees, and for the last 18 months her team has been building out a “foundation” for HR processes at the TA tech company.

“What that’s allowed us to do is propel to this next level where now we’re starting to create more enablement and empowerment across not only our managers, but our employees,” she said.

Keep reading here.—AD

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