It’s no secret that executives at Silicon Valley companies, including Tesla, Apple, and Google, as well as Wall Street leaders, want workers back at their desks, despite the current waves of Covid-19 and some employees’ disinterest in returning. If the CEOs of some of America’s largest companies had Tony Soprano-style therapy sessions, they might spend them punching air and bemoaning their inability to coax employees back to the office.

With a recession potentially looming, and some tech companies instituting layoffs or hiring freezes, CEOs might sense that workers’ bargaining power for flexible work arrangements stands on shaky ground.

Just last week, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, ordered his employees back to the office. If they don’t want to return, Musk tweeted, they can “go pretend to work somewhere else.” We asked workplace experts from SHRM, LinkedIn, Gartner, and Korn & Ferry to weigh in about whether we could start seeing other companies use the current economic uncertainty as leverage to finally end the so-called Great Resistance to RTO.

Party Work like it’s 2019

SHRM president Johnny C. Taylor Jr. and Dan Kaplan, senior client partner at Korn Ferry’s CHRO practice, believe a recession could help some CEOs put an end to remote work.

“CEOs don’t like it. Period,” Taylor said, referring to remote work.

Taylor said that in conversations with CHROs, they’ve expressed that while they recognize that employees can work at home, they view the arrangement as suboptimal. He said employees who are used to working from home are “about to run into a wall, because the companies are going to draw the line,” potentially using an uncertain economy for leverage.

“Based on what I’m hearing from everyone, you’re going to see more companies lay it down and say, ‘Listen, you can’t make the argument that it’s unsafe, because you’re doing everything else you want to do,’” Taylor said. “‘You’re flying, you’re going to malls, you’re doing everything else. So you can come to work.’”

Kaplan agreed that the CEOs who may have “very reluctantly agreed” to hybrid work arrangements while “desperately” wanting workers in the office could take advantage of a “tightening labor market and a tightening economy.”

“It’s been purely an employee- and candidate-driven market for the last 20 months or so. When the market shifts, it becomes a company-led market, and so it puts the control back in companies now,” Kaplan said.

In Taylor’s opinion, leadership could potentially frame the call back to work as a bid to survive an economic downturn. Keep reading here.—SV

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @SusannaVogel1 on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Susanna for her number on Signal.

If an employee’s menstrual cycle is so severe that it’s interfering with their ability to work—and they’re not just saying that in a “I don’t want to run laps” in gym class kind of way—they could be entitled to job-protected leave under the Family Medical Leave Act or to reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Donna Walton, founder and president of the Divas with Disabilities Project, an organization dedicated to increasing the participation and representation of brown and Black women with visible disabilities, told HR Brew that employers might not be familiar with “every medical condition,” including Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD). Walton said that PMDD is not a disability that is “going to always be on the radar.” However, once an employee asks for accommodation, Walton said, that’s when HR can turn to disability program managers to “give ideas of what an accommodation could be.”

We talked to consultants about what PMDD is, how HR can accommodate employees through their worst symptoms, and why there are barriers to seeking support in the workplace.

What’s PMDD? PMDD, a chronic condition related to PMS that can cause severe tension and irritability, depression or anxiety and pain, headaches, joint/muscle pain, fatigue, and difficulty focusing, affects 3%–8% of people with PMS.

How’s HR involved? During a May Job Accommodation Network training on accommodations for reproductive disorders and pregnancy, Tracie DeFreitas, principal consultant and ADA specialist, walked viewers through the hypothetical case of Ally, a fictional worker who experienced “severe anxiety and difficulty with time management, focus, and memory” as a result of her PMDD.

DeFreitas rattled off a litany of potential accommodations, from allowing a support animal, to modifying the work environment (performing tasks remotely or in a hybrid format), to the timing of work (offering flexible scheduling or uninterrupted work time), to the structure of work (providing “written instructions and checklists”).

What could be stopping employees from asking for help? The consultants we interviewed for this piece said that people suffering from PMDD have a weighty decision to make about disclosure. There are potential risks to doing so—including those universal to disclosing any disability, such as the potential for illegal retaliation and discrimination, and those specific to broaching a topic that’s long been considered taboo. Keep reading here.—SV

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @SusannaVogel1 on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Susanna for her number on Signal.

On Wednesdays, we schedule our weekly 1:1 with HR Brew’s readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Georgia Smith is manager of recruitment marketing and employer brand at Delta Air Lines, where she’s worked since 2019. In our recent conversation over phone and email, Smith discussed the importance of recruitment marketing and employer brand, and how she sees the HR industry changing and expanding.

How would you describe your specific job to someone who doesn’t work in HR? My team builds the bridge between HR and marketing. When you look at the talent acquisition funnel, we are at the top in the awareness, consideration, and interest piece. We attract candidates to Delta and then pass them off to our recruiters to hire them and then they are passed to HR to retain them. We’re [at] the front of the candidate life cycle.

What does a typical day look like for you? Our team—[employer brand and recruitment marketing]—supports every division, so we support the marketing for pilot hiring, all the way to our ramp-agent hiring, and even our corporate roles.

So my day-to-day is really spent working with our talent acquisition leadership team on understanding what they’ve been asked by their business partners to deliver for them, whether that’s the deficits that they need to fill per station, the brand awareness that needs to be built in a market that we’re growing into, or even just keeping the brand awareness going through markets that we’re establishing. So my day-to-day a lot of cross-collaboration and a lot of partnership.

What’s the best change you’ve made at a place you’ve worked? We used to be more behind the scenes, with our recruiting/TA partners being at the forefront of the conversations with our business partners. With the competitive landscape of today’s talent marketplace, having recruitment marketers as part of conversations from the beginning of hiring has led to a greater understanding of our work and the impact we have on the holistic recruitment and HR processes.

What’s the biggest misconception people might have about your job? Keep reading here.—KP

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Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: Nearly six in 10 working adults surveyed said their employer offers “summer Fridays” (a shortened day or day off during the summer months), and eight in 10 of those with the benefit said it makes them “much happier” at work. (OnePoll via Zenger News)

Quote: “These stories of CEOs (Better.com) laying people off on Zoom just make me wince. These are human beings who spent their lives helping your organization grow. They deserve a fair, respectful, and transparent process.” —Josh Bersin, workplace analyst (JoshBersin.com)

Read: High wages and good job offers are proving to be as enticing as they’re meant to be—luring some of America’s young adults into the workforce and away from educational pursuits. (the New York Times)

Onboarding, organized: HR Brew spoke with GitLab’s senior director of talent to get an inside look into what makes for a smooth and welcoming onboarding process for their organization—and what, er, doesn’t. Read on here.

Help us out, and you might score a cool $250: All you gotta do is take this quick survey. It’ll help us improve our brand-partnerships game, and you’ll be entered in a raffle to win a $250 Amex gift card.*

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Is your org tossing around a 4-day work week? Is non-remote culture dead? Next Thursday, HR Brew talks to Sharon Steiner, CHRO of Fiverr, to discuss the 21st-century workplace.

Learn how Fiverr approaches upskilling, AI, and evolving employee expectations around what a workplace should be. RSVP here. Don't miss it.