Count small talk among one of the many things we forgot how to do during the Covid-19 pandemic. In April 2023, as many companies were calling workers back into the office, Google searches for “what to talk about at work” grew.

The problem isn’t unique to the US. In 2022 Georgie Nightingall, founder of London-based firm Trigger Conversations, told the Guardian that demand for her conversational training courses had quadrupled within a year.

“There is concern, partly due to the pandemic, that people are just losing these skills,” she told the paper.

As much as some employees loathe small talk, research suggests it’s beneficial, as it can help workers feel reenergized. It can also serve an important purpose at a time when Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is calling attention to an “epidemic of loneliness and isolation” in the US.

HR Brew spoke to two experts to find out how HR can help foster better conversation among employees, even in a hybrid or remote setting.

Keep reading.—CV

Is your company built to evolve as your workforce does? Don’t get caught in a tight spot—get the scoop on how to find the scalable software your employees actually want to use with Paycom’s 6 Tips for Evaluating HR Tech Providers.

In the guide, Paycom shares expert advice on evaluating potential HR and payroll tech providers. It’s full of the info you need to identify the vendor that best meets your org’s needs, including how to:

• understand the differences among providers
• find software that supports your brand and hiring strategy
• vet HR tech for compliance peace of mind

And when you’re ready to enhance your business, explore Paycom’s tech—powered by a single software and an industry-leading service department.

Get the full guide.

The US labor market, like that first-year-of-college fling, continues to send very mixed signals about where it stands. The government keeps publishing data that looks promising for both job-seekers and employers, yet layoffs are still in the headlines most days.

Job site ZipRecruiter announced in a May 31 filing it plans to lay off 270 employees, representing about 20% of its workforce, in response to “current market conditions.” In a May earnings call the company’s CEO, Ian Siegel, said ZipRecruiter had observed a slowdown “across industries.”

“We see employers paring back their hiring in response to the uncertain economic backdrop we now face,” he said. Indeed and Glassdoor, both ZipRecruiter competitors, have also laid off workers in recent months, citing a slowdown in job openings.

The same day ZipRecruiter said it would lay off workers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) published new data showing an increase in US job openings to 10.1 million in April, surpassing analysts’ expectations. Hires increased, while layoffs decreased to 1.5 million, representing just 1% of the workforce. The US added 339,000 jobs in May, according to the most recent BLS figures; analysts had estimated just 195,000.

Labor market moderating. What explains recent rounds of layoffs in the recruiting industry, even as government data points to a still-robust labor market?

Keep reading.—CV

As executives wrestle with return-to-office policies, there’s no shortage of data available to help inform their decisions.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic pushed many companies to test out a large-scale work-from-home experiment, researchers have been tracking how global working patterns have evolved. But not all data is created equal, researchers at MIT Sloan School of Management discovered, when they set out to track work-from-home trends among Americans in 2020.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics may have underestimated the rate of Americans working remotely during the first year of the pandemic by up to 25 percentage points, according to a working paper recently published in the National Bureau of Economic Research and authored by the MIT researchers, along with scholars at Stanford, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania. The paper points to differences in research methodologies that affect our understanding of remote work rates in the US.

It’s all in the methodology. One major reason for the government’s conservative estimate lies in the way the BLS worded its survey questions in the Current Population Survey, according to Hong-Yi TuYe, a fourth-year PhD candidate at MIT who coauthored the paper. Between May 2020 and September 2022, the government asked CPS respondents if they’d worked from home “because of the coronavirus pandemic.” In doing so, the survey excluded respondents who were already working remotely prior to Covid-19 or working remotely for a reason other than the pandemic, he explained.

Keep reading.—CV

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: 10% of Credit Suisse employees have left the company in the last few months after an acquisition by UBS. (Bloomberg)

Quote: “It’s always been a key to being able to actually make a living off of these [delivery] apps. You have to be willing to work in the weather conditions that nobody else wants to work in.”—Josh Woods, an Uber Eats delivery biker, on working through the wildfire smoke in New York City (CNBC)

Read: Childcare workers in California are in crisis, with licensed centers closing and providers turning to gig work when regular wages are not enough. (the Los Angeles Times)

Stay curious: Cinephiles, history buffs, and techies, assemble! Curiosity Stream has the documentaries, films, and shows you won’t find anywhere else. Plans start at just $4 a month and new content drops weekly. Sign up.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}