Amazon just hit its employees with an UNO reverse card.

CEO Andy Jassy announced on Monday that Amazon’s nearly 350,000 corporate employees will be required to work in the office five days a week, effective Jan. 2. It’s a move away from its current mandate of three days a week that it adopted in early 2023. Amazon was one of the first major corporations to call workers back into the office post-pandemic, and has said those who don’t comply will be denied promotions.

“Before the pandemic, it was not a given that folks could work remotely two days a week, and that will also be true moving forward—our expectation is that people will be in the office outside of extenuating circumstances,” Jassy said in his memo to Amazon employees, noting exemptions including sickness and business travel.

“It’s puzzling that [Amazon] would choose to move from essentially the most popular work arrangement to the least,” Joe Mull, keynote speaker and author, told HR Brew. Here’s how Mull and Deborah Grayson Riegel, a communication and leadership expert, recommend people pros help employees navigate a shift in RTO plans.

Keep reading here.—MC

Whether you’re privy to them or not, there are workforce signals at play that business leaders and CHROs can actually leverage to drive positive business outcomes.

So what are these signals exactly, and what’s their potential to transform into something vital? PwC spent the last year researching so you don’t have to. They present to you: Workforce Radar, a key report exploring five workforce signals that can empower your C-suite and workforce to drive enterprise-wide transformation.

The report outlines actionable steps you can take over the course of the next few years and also identifies their accompanying levers.

Ready to fine-tune your radar? Grab the report to begin.

The gap between what men and women in the US earn recently widened for the first time in two decades, according to a Census Bureau report drawing on 2023 data.

Men working full-time, year round earned a median $66,790 in 2023, a 3% change from the previous year, the report found. Women, meanwhile, saw wages grow by half that much, earning a median of $55,240, up 1.5% from 2022.

Overall, these women earned 83% of what men earned in 2023, down from 84% in 2022. It’s the first statistically significant annual decrease the Census Bureau has documented since 2003.

Pay transparency hasn’t yet closed the pay gap. A number of factors contribute to a persistent gender wage gap in the US, including the fact that women account for most of the low-wage workforce, and are less successful when negotiating their compensation than men. And the gap doesn’t get better as employees move up in their organizations.

Keep reading here.—CV

Leading HR at an organization that provides HR services has its perks.

That’s the case for Stefani Steinway, SVP of HR at Equifax Workforce Solutions, a subsidiary of the credit reporting giant that provides employment and income verification services to companies. She said that her team and the business unit have a symbiotic relationship, in which her team offers input and feedback on products, and benefits as a customer.

“Being able to have that influence and support on some of the products when talking to our employer services teams and that part of the business that serves those customers is pretty cool,” Steinway, whose team of 40 supports around 3,000 employees, told HR Brew. “Not many HR professionals get to have that hand on both sides.”

In recent years, data privacy concerns have crept into the workplace, and employees have come to expect their employers to step up their privacy protections. During Equifax’s September 2017 security breach that exposed the personal information of 147 million people, hackers also allegedly had unauthorized access to Equifax Workforce Solutions’ customer tax records between April 2016 and March 2017. When asked how her organization approaches data security with employees, Steinway said cybersecurity best practices are now baked into workforce strategy.

Keep reading here.—PM

Work wellbeing is linked to stronger business performance. That’s right—wellbeing is not just better for people, but better for business. This week, Indeed is launching the Work Wellbeing 100, an index of the top public companies that are excelling in work wellbeing and that collectively outperformed stock-market benchmarks. Learn more.