More companies are calling employees back into the office five days a week, but workers aren’t convinced full-time RTO is the right move, numerous studies suggest.

Some employees would rather lose a romantic partner or get a divorce than return-to-office five days a week, one LiveCareer survey found. Other surveys show remote work ranks high on the list of benefits workers receive from a job; in some cases they’d even take a pay cut to keep it.

Even so, large employers like Amazon, JPMorgan, and AT&T are forging ahead with full-time RTO plans. One smaller firm, Cameo, is betting that workers will comply with a four-day-a-week policy, thanks to a raise.

“Elegant solution” to the RTO problem. Cameo, a platform where customers pay for personalized videos from celebrities, had not had a formal RTO policy since its employees began working from home five years ago due to the Covid-19 pandemic, CEO Steven Galanis told HR Brew. But upon realizing its sales team was more efficient working from the office, it started to reconsider its approach to fully remote work.

For more on Cameo’s new RTO policy, keep reading here.—CV

“Strategy” has been a big HR buzzword over the last few years. (We even have a section of our website dedicated to the topic.) But is it possible to be too strategic?

If you ask Rocki Howard, chief people and equity officer at Textio, HR heads at small and midsize businesses must find the right balance between being strategic and involved in operations.

“You can’t be too strategic and lean only on those skills, and you can’t be too operational, and lean only on those skills,” she told HR Brew. “There has to be a balance to get the outcomes that you need for people and for the business.”

Howard, who stepped into her role in February, after serving as a senior HR advisor, is excited about several initiatives, including ensuring Textio’s people and DEI strategy is aligned with business imperatives, in part by hosting one-on-one meetings with the company’s roughly 65 employees. This has required her to balance strategy and operations.

For more on how Howard balances strategy and operations, keep reading here.—PM

A database containing thousands of healthcare related records was left open to the internet, a researcher found.

Staffing agency app ESHYFT, which provides professionals with a mobile platform on which to connect to long-term care centers for per diem work, had a 108.8 GB, 86,341 record database publicly exposed and free of password protection for an unknown amount of time before Cybersecurity Researcher Jeremiah Fowler discovered it.

Red alert. Fowler, reporting on the breach on Website Planet, said that he alerted ESHYFT of the breach and that it was closed “over a month later.” Fowler added that he did not download any of the data and that there was no sign that anyone had accessed the information.

Travel time. ESHYFT is available in 27 states. While the demand for traveling nursing is no longer at the peak it was during the pandemic, the traveling nursing market dropped 40% in 2023 from 2022. Akin Demehin, the American Hospital Association’s senior director of quality and patient safety policy, noted last year that full-time work is becoming more of a priority to healthcare centers.

For more on the implications of the data exposure, keep reading on IT Brew.—EH

Cyberthreats are evolving, and employees—and their families—are more vulnerable than ever. With AI-driven scams and data breaches on the rise, identity protection is now a must-have benefit. HR leaders play a key role in securing both company data and employee well-being. Join us on April 9 to learn how addressing these challenges is crucial for overall security.

From LinkedIn’s launch (2003) to the rise of #MeToo (2017) and HR’s pivotal role during COVID-19, the past 25 years have reshaped the workplace. This quarter-century project explores the defining moments that transformed HR from paper-pushers to strategic leaders. Discover how the past informs the future of work.