From recruiting and retention to company culture and the latest in HR tech, HR Brew delivers up-to-date industry news and tips to help HR pros stay nimble in today’s fast-changing business environment.

HR Brew

Mikaela Cohen

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How to conduct layoffs in a hybrid environment

HR Brew talks with two workplace experts about the dos and don’ts of hybrid layoffs.

An actor in a Saturday Night Live sketch saying she hates her job and needs to quit.

What HR should know about the TikTok workplace trend ‘QuitTok’

“Like all good social media, it is exposing the things that we don’t often talk about or that are in the shadows of what happens in organizations,” Hannah Yardley, CHRO at software company Achievers, tells HR Brew.

Finger pressing a "Friday" labeled enter button

This employer is experimenting with eternal summer Fridays

“Soft Fridays [mean] that we are trusting each other to get our work done and log off when we can on Friday,” Alli Ray, Codeword’s chief of staff, tells HR Brew.

Two dots and an arrow connected by a curving line denoting HR strategy

HR Strategy

Time to say “out with the old and in with the new,” not just to last season’s styles, but to your approach to people analytics, too.

People analytics are good for more than just “creating facts”—they can help inform strategies and drive innovation, according to Cole Napper, VP of research at labor market research firm Lightcast and author of 

People Analytics: Using Data-Driven HR and Gen AI as a Business Asset

“I’d say 80% to 90% of what is people analytics today is just creating facts. ‘How many people do we have? How many people left? How many people did we hire? What are the demographic characteristics?’ and not much beyond that,” Napper said. “We’ve invested in a space as an HR function to be more data-driven for 10, 15, 20 years, and they don’t have much to show for it.”

Napper chatted with HR Brew about how to get the most out of people analytics, especially in the age of AI.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I really tried to focus on, “What are the challenges that I’ve had? What are the ways to do HR and people analytics, specifically in HR, effectively, and cutting through all the BS?” Because there’s a lot of talking points where I’ll hear, “People are your greatest asset,” and then companies don’t operate any differently…What does it really mean to treat people as an asset? What does it really mean to use AI effectively in 2025?...What is HR even going to look like in five or 10 years if AI truly proliferates the way we think?

What are examples of shortcomings with people analytics?

Let’s take the hardest one first, and that’s data-driven decision making. I think very few people are making data-driven decisions at all. Now, I think that there are data-informed decisions that get made…A lot of what has been called people analytics, up until this point, was actually what I call “creating a shared set of facts.” So analytics, in my opinion, is focused on the future, focused on diagnosis, focused on prediction, focus on prescription.

There’s a generational shifting of the guard in HR that’s going on right now…You have more of the folks who are digitally-native, and eventually going to be AI-native professionals, in the HR space that are eventually going to be holding chief people officer/CHRO roles, and that’s not really the case today, and it hasn’t really been the case, historically speaking…I think it’s time for fields like people analytics to step up to be the thing that’s driving the future…Being a thermostat, rather than a thermometer that just goes up and down with the temperature.

What else should HR pros know about people analytics in the future with AI?

There’s a whole section in the book I call, “Is people analytics a luxury? Is it just a phenomenon?” Like I chose some charts that show the relationship between the growth of people analytics and low interest rates…From roughly 2012-ish to roughly 2021-ish, where there was a period of functionally zero interest rates for corporate borrowing…What you see is the second interest rates started to go up, people analytics headcount started to go down, and so the question you have to ask yourself is: “Is this just the new designer purse for HR, that everybody wanted to do it because everybody else was doing it?”...If you only talk about it theoretically, you don’t put it into practice, what does that mean for an organization? What it means is it was a luxury item, and they were treating it as such. When times got tight, they were going to cut back.

People analytics needs to be focused on helping businesses understand their cost structure. If you go to any CEO right now, they’re trying to say, “How do we take costs out of the business? How do we be more efficient? How do we be more productive? How do we be more innovative?” And, people analytics historically has not focused much of their effort in that space, and so one of the ways that AI helps is, you can produce people analytics at a lower cost structure by having AI be that leap frog or be that force multiplier for a people analytics function. So, maybe historically, you needed 50 people and a $15 million budget to do people analytics effectively. Maybe now you could do it with AI technology and five people what 50 people used to do.

Two hands holding on opened book with text highlighted

An interview with Cole Napper, author of ‘People Analytics: Using Data-Driven HR and Gen AI as a Business Asset’

“I think it’s time for fields like people analytics to step up to be the thing that’s driving the future…Being a thermostat, rather than a thermometer that just goes up and down with the temperature.”

People analytics can be a powerful HR tool in the age of AI

Move over, Boomers and Gen Xers. Millennials and Gen Zers are ready to take over.

Nearly 80% of the global workforce will be made up of millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha by 2034, according to 

. And this year, millennials surpassed Gen X as the largest share of managers for the first time in the US, Glassdoor 

“Every time there’s a new generation that enters the workforce, there’s always this shift of style,” said Matt Poepsel, VP and godfather of talent optimization at talent software company the Predictive Index. “Even when Boomers entered…They were saying, ‘What do we do about this manager who’s showing up with bell-bottom jeans and mutton chops?’”

Now that millennials have transitioned into leadership and managerial roles, and Gen Zers are right on their heels, people leaders will need to adjust strategies to cater to their differences and preferences.

 Every generation faces similar challenges entering the workplace and advancing their careers, Poepsel told HR Brew, but they also have distinct characteristics and experiences.

“About every 15 years, you have this interesting dynamic where people have a similar set of lived experiences. They’re contemporaries, but they’re also a reaction against what came before,” he said, later adding, “When Gen Z showed up, they said, ‘We want to be heard’...and ‘We want you to change some things around here.’’”

Gen Z leaders will likely be more accountable and authentic than those from generations prior, Olivia Meyer, a member of the Gen Z networking group The Z Suite, told HR Brew. “We are a generation that, I think, is known for holding each other accountable,” she said. “We call out things that we don’t like, or different campaigns or different companies where we can clearly tell that they’re not being authentic.”

Poepsel agrees with Meyer. Gen Zers want the workplace to be real, authentic, and honest, he said, because they don’t want to pretend there aren’t issues. “They’re talking to each other about their diagnoses, and their dosages, and everything else, and they come to work, and we’re supposed to pretend like we don’t have any mental health issues at all?” Poepsel said.

Gen Z and millennials will lead differently, and it’s evident in their approach to work, said Tara Salinas, a professor of business ethics at the University of San Diego. Millennials, for instance, are known for their openness to new ideas, according to Salinas, while Gen Zers are more tech-savvy and adaptable.

But Salinas warned that Gen Z leaders, specifically, may need more learning and development (L&D) at work to unlock their potential.

Gen Z’s interpersonal skills have been stunted due to the pandemic and social media, Salinas said, so she said HR teams need to develop training programs for “seemingly basic” workplace conduct, like how to connect with coworkers and have thoughtful conversations.

“Instead of having them floundering and frustrated, from an organizational perspective, if you give them the tools, they’re in a better position, and your organization is in a better position,” she said.

Poepsel recalled a similar experience, when a Gen Z employee told him, “I don’t get email.”

“I thought it was entertaining at first, but then she said, ‘It really stresses me out.’ I thought, ‘Oh no, I don’t want you to be stressed out about email, something as silly as email’...That was a real opportunity to check my preconceived notions about, ‘Of course, everyone understands email or likes email.’ No, that’s not true,” Poepsel said.

HR teams can help Gen Z workers in situations like this by offering email etiquette training, Poepsel said. They can also train older generations to communicate via platforms that come more naturally to Gen Z, like Slack. But this isn’t the only L&D strategy that could use a revamp, he added.

“Is it mobile friendly? Is it unpolished? Because if not, it’s not trustworthy in Gen Z,” he said. “And how often do we see other Gen Z people in our training videos?”

If organizations don’t help younger workers, then “what are our organizations going to look like in 10 years?” Salinas said. She recommended HR pros help millennials avoid falling into the old-school mindset of, “I had to figure it out, so you have to figure it out.”

“It’s not a useful attitude for developing an organizational culture that is supportive and that makes employees want to stick around,” Salinas said. “There’s always a risk when you say, ‘Oh, Gen Z is this. Millennials are that.’ Obviously there always could be outliers, but I think HR needs to take the line that this is what is good for the organization.”

Cutout of a man working on his laptop contained in a shape collaged next to a close up of stars on a desk name plate.

How HR can adapt to the up and coming generation of leaders

People leaders should focus on change management strategies as millennials, and eventually Gen Zers, take on managerial and leadership roles.

Adam DeRose

The National Weather Service reminded us this week that we’re still months away from clearing hurricane season, which runs through the end of November. The 

 Monday it is monitoring a tropical wave over a section of the Atlantic ocean (between the western coast of Africa and the Caribbean) with an 80% chance of forming into a tropical storm, which would be named 

Don’t worry, it’s not “Threat Level Midnight.” But natural disasters and severe weather events cause 

 each year and were responsible for “568 direct or indirect fatalities” last year alone, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Ahead of, and during, these events, HR teams and leaders could maximize internal comms tools and strategy to support both employees and the business.

“I think that transparency, honesty, integrity, even vulnerability, are really important for HR leaders and communicators together in these times, because it’s what creates or breaks the trust between the employee and that business,” said David Maffei, VP and GM at employee communications and experience platform Staffbase.

Yep. If you’re worried you’re sending out too much information, chances are you’re not.

“In these times of crisis, over-communication is accepted, and it’s actually required,” Maffei said “I think sometimes organizations fear over-communication, but the lack of communication leads to assumptions…and if you’re making assumptions around what’s happening and what it means for you, you are more often than not going to choose the wrong thing.”

If you’re not over-communicating with your employees, then you’re putting them in a situation where they need to guess the right choice, according to Maffei. He said this is true both for information communicated leading up to a potential crisis and during one.

“There are two things that are critical,” he said. “One, you need to have done the things ahead of time to prepare for the crisis, and it’s over-communicating ahead when it’s a thing that 

 happen but hopefully won’t. Then, you need to be able to communicate in that moment of where people are supposed to turn right, where they’re supposed to turn left…in terms of how to attack the problem head on.”

Communicate what employees need to know. And just that. 

But over-communication is not the same as blanket communications to everyone.

Internal communication must be personalized for employees in order to add value. “If it’s not personalized, then it’s not going to land, and the less personalized that the experience is, the more trust erosion will exist over time,” Maffei said.

An organization with offices in Florida and Kansas, for example, needs to communicate different preparedness plans with different levels of detail to the employees in those locations. He said evacuation plans or contingency plans for working without power, for example, lack the “context and relevancy” for Kansas employees who likely won’t be impacted by an emergency weather event in the same way as Floridians.

“The same thing happens once you get into the crisis,” he said. “If you’re not using the technology at your fingertips to personalize the output, then now you’re spewing a lot of information that’s not relevant for the user, and the less relevant it is the more disconnected they become, which starts to affect your culture.”

 Maffei and the Staffbase platform suggest HR pros value personalized and relevant content in their internal comms plans. It’s a shift in understanding the purpose for the function, he added, because “people typically in HR and comms are conditioned by the business” to create content because “it’s important to the business.”

But if you create content because it’s important to the employee, then you can actually have a dramatically different impact on employee-employer trust and company culture, he said.

Of course a potential hurricane is an important factor to consider in the course of business. But Maffei suggests that in a moment of preparing for an emergency, signal to employees that the business is providing them information to address their own needs.

Rather than broadcasting messages about why a potential hurricane may negatively impact the business itself, HR could provide employees with the relevant information and allow them to use that information to support the business, and their own careers.

“Don’t talk about the business. Talk about the employee. Solve that problem, and it will serve your business back in reverse,” he said.

A swirling hurricane cloud with a red notification badge.

When the forecast calls for crisis, HR can step up the internal comms game

HR could help shape company culture and employee trust with “relevant and contextual” internal comms.

Kristen Parisi

The UK is in the midst of economic slowdown, and it’s hitting employers and workers, according to 

 The UK job market has been unstable since October 2024, and employers are struggling. Just 11% of UK employers plan to hire before the end of the year, the sharpest recruitment decline in the world, according to a 

“The UK economy has stalled and with it so has hiring,” Petra Tagg, workforce solutions director at ManpowerGroup, told 

. “The labour market has been moving at an almost glacial pace for months and, while there remains some movement in roles for the highly skilled, we’re very far off the 30 percent hiring outlooks we saw in early 2022.”

Businesses in the UK have to decide if they want to invest in new workers or AI and automation, according to Tagg, and are looking to reduce costs and use “flexible hiring arrangements” to adapt to the new economic reality.

Workers are seemingly reacting in kind, with more than half recently saying they are more focused on job security than career ambition, according to the Independent. The trend (because everything needs a name these days) is referred to as “job hugging.”

“Workers are facing a difficult balancing act—while pay growth remains strong, inflation continues to eat into real wages, and job opportunities are thinning out,” Nina Skero, economist and chief executive of the Center for Economics and Business Research, told the Independent.

 Job hugging isn’t just happening in the UK—workers in the US are also holding onto their jobs for dear life. August was the latest in a string of disappointing months for the US jobs market, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. After jumping to bigger ships in 2022, employees are staying put, waiting for calmer waters, the Wall Street Journal 

. Most don’t see opportunities outside of their current role and expect to stay in it for at least the next six months, according to a report from Eagle Hill.

“A more substantial downturn…[is] not a guarantee, but especially with the increasing unemployment rate there are more signs that the job market is weakening in an unhealthy manner,” Daniel Zhao, chief economist at Glassdoor, 

Experts warn that job hugging isn’t necessarily good for employers, because a certain amount of turnover is necessary for motivated and engaged teams, according 

Matt Bohn, a senior client partner at Korn Ferry 

 that the consequences are a mixed bag, as employers can train tenured workers for career paths directly within their firms. However, “firms run the risk of becoming comfortable perches from which workers can jump when the time’s right.”

UK businesses are hiring less and employees are holding on

Hiring has slowed down and workers may be afraid to look for new jobs amid economic uncertainty.

World of HR: Workers in the UK are job hugging

Ingrid Hu Dahl’s journey to becoming a great leader started when she noticed how different she was from her peers.

Sun Shining on Morning Snow: A Memoir of Identity, Loss, and Living Boldly

, the leadership coach and speaker shares how grappling with her identity impacted her career, and why she hopes other leaders and HR pros will approach leadership with empathy.

“This is a leadership book. It’s a book about how I came to become a leader, from the lens of identity, and choice, and choosing to learn every step of the way and to choose to connect with people despite all of the series of projections,” Dahl told HR Brew.

We chatted with Dahl about more insights from her book.

I absolutely wrote this book to lay bare my authentic journey and invite people to step into my shoes as I experienced xenophobia, and how I slowed down as a child being inquisitive about being asked the question, “What are you?” every day by typically white adults. And this search for identity and trying to fit in, but not belonging anywhere. I didn’t belong with the white kids or along with the Asian kids, and it continued throughout my life, and so I got really comfortable being an outsider. But I was very bold, and there’s been also a lot of rejection and loss in my life, which a lot of people can relate to. And, so, I’ve just been seeing a lot of people say, like, “Wow, I really saw myself in her story,” and this is a cis-white Jewish man down the street who’s in his 70s.

I ultimately wanted this to be a couple of different things. One was, how do we help, through my story and my lens, bring us closer to humanity?...There’s also such a huge reconciliation story between a mother/daughter anchored in sexuality. I absolutely struggled with my mother, who did not want me to be gay, and I’m absolutely a lesbian, and she struggled with that…It’s also this painful connective point around coming out, coming of age, losing my mom, because I’ve chosen myself, not what she wants, but what I who I am, and before she ultimately passes from cancer, which is a really beautiful, dramatic part of the book. She has, and we have, this beautiful, transformational experience together of forgiveness and healing, and intergenerational healing.

How did those experiences impact the work you do?

Being somebody who’s been in learning and development for about 20 years, and leadership development for the more recent five years being an executive coach, I have connected with a lot of people and have experimented with a lot of different learning solutions around behavior, and around what does good leadership, or empathetic/high emotional intelligence, high self-awareness, look like in the workplace. How do leaders actually create conditions for people to thrive?

People were like, “Why didn’t you write a leadership book, or a book around inclusive leadership, or something that reflected your expertise?”...All of the vignettes that make us who we are continue to shape how we lead, and how we choose to belong, and how we model to our teams, how to interact with one another.

What are some HR takeaways from the book?

When I work in these corporate settings and run teams, I tend to be known for my empathetic leadership and people want to follow and be in my teams…We choose to believe in one another, and I recognize and value that that is a choice every day that you’re making, and sometimes you’re going to have a day where you’re like, “I feel like shit. I don’t like the company, or I just am cranky.” And, that’s okay. But to be seen and to be able to show up full of your fallibility, or mistakes you might make, not knowing how to do something and need to ask for help—those things are important to feel safe.

For people who are curious about this particular way of leading from somebody’s perspective who grew up as, “the outsider, the other,” is a very telling example of transformational leadership from this point of view, and to lay there and understand all of these things that made me who I am, that shaped my lens. I hope it will be inspiring to people who are leading differently, and have come up, from growing up, multiracial, multicultural, bilingual…I felt like sharing that story from the beginning to present was more important than writing a straight up leadership book.

An interview with Ingrid Hu Dahl, author ‘Sun Shining on Morning Snow’

“All of the vignettes that make us who we are continue to shape how we lead, and how we choose to belong, and how we model to our teams, how to interact with one another.”

Growing up as an outsider made this leadership coach a better leader

An illustration of a photo of HR Brew reporter Paige McGlauflin.

Paige McGlauflin

Have you ever gotten into a Soho House? Neither have we.

This week, though, Lauren Goodman, regional director of people and development at Soho House, gave us an inside look at her job at the 

Goodman handles HR for two of the private club’s largest operations: California and New York. She joined in 2022, about a year after the company went public during a period of transition, she said. (Last month, it reached 

 after a multi-year streak of poor stock performance.)

While the company still thinks of itself as a “30-year-old startup,” its public offering necessitated establishing structured HR processes, which were either non-existent or inconsistent, according to Goodman. She was tasked with formalizing processes and policies for background checks, employee form storage, interview guidelines, performance management, and terminations.

Another focus was ensuring that frontline staffers understood the culture and history of Soho House and its importance for long-tenured members.

“Our frontline hourly employees, they make or break our culture. So we have to take so much care of them and listen to them, but also make sure we’re setting them up for success and saying on the first day, ‘These are our values. This is why these are our values,’” she said. “Because, if not, we’re walking them in and we’re setting them to fail, which isn’t fair for anybody.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What’s the best change you’ve made at a place you’ve worked?

Changing the perception of HR from being purely administrative to being a partner.

What’s the biggest misconception people might have about your job?

That HR just hires and fires people and is there for admin support.

It’s way more than that. Employee engagement, to me, is a big piece…especially knowing that our servers don’t want to be career servers…We know this is a job, and they’re working at Soho House to, hopefully, meet the right connection…[However,] how do we keep them as engaged as possible when they’re at work?

What’s the most fulfilling aspect of your job?

Taking care of my team and the employees.

At the beginning of the year in LA, we had the wildfires, and it was a really hard time for a lot of our team…We have Soho Home, which is our retail space, and our head of Soho Home reached out and said, “Hey, we’re able to provide $10,000 to each employee who lost a home once they’re ready to purchase new furniture, and we’ll do it at an employee discount.”

Also, we worked closely with the team on furloughing. We had to do some furloughs for several months for our Malibu location, because there was no way in or out, and a lot of our members lost their homes, too…Just being there and listening and offering our employee assistance programs and our mental health resources through Aetna. And then we also protected our employee hours, so we made sure that everyone would stay at a full-time status for those months, even if their hours weren’t there, so with our ACA audit, so that way it wouldn’t become a detriment to them to lose benefits.

What trend in HR are you most optimistic about? Why?

I am most optimistic for HR to be a strategic player, have a seat at the table and be part of key decisions. I think HR is integral in an organization and provides an insight on how to motivate the team while minimizing legal risk.

What trend in HR are you least optimistic about? Why?

I am currently least optimistic about the increasing complexity and pace of employment law changes. In states like California, we’ve been trained to continuously keep an eye out for changes. However, there seems to be pace increasing for local jurisdictions and it can be tough to access the information. In tandem with the employment law changes, the growing polarization in workplace culture—including political, social, and generational divides—is putting a lot of pressure on human resources and the employee’s manager to be culturally sensitive and legally sound. Leading with integrity, empathy, and innovation is going to be key, coupled with understanding how different groups define and will respond to this type of leadership.

A portrait of Lauren Goodman, an HR Director at Soho House, an international private members' club.

How this Soho House HR director created processes while staying true to the company’s culture

The members-only club is still thought of as a “30-year-old startup,” but its public offering in 2021 necessitated structured HR processes.

The HR director who established culture-friendly policies for the exclusive Soho House

More and more companies are putting managers on the chopping block.

Between May 2022 and May 2025, the number of managers and executives at public companies fell by 6.1% and 4.6%, respectively, 

 from Live Data Technologies, reported on by the Wall Street Journal. Google, for instance, reduced its management headcount by 35% between 2024 and 2025, 

“What they’ve done is taken a hard look at that middle layer of management and are trying to determine what is more efficient for their business models and make cuts there,” said Karan Ferrell-Rhodes, CEO and founder of consulting firm Shockingly Different Leadership. “That was an area that…over the last three to four years, has been ripe for reevaluation for companies.”

 Susan Leger Ferraro, CEO of consulting firm G3 Works, told HR Brew that companies may be scaling back middle management to cut costs, ineffective managers, and layers of corporate bureaucracy.

“There is this lack of communication that happens, and breakdown in communication, based on there being too many cooks in the kitchen, there being too many leaders, mid-level managers between executives, and the information not being passed properly,” Ferraro said. “If I was a CEO, me doing this and downsizing my middle-level managers would resolve for those things.”

While many managers are effective at leading people and hitting KPIs, some are not, Ferraro said, so it might make sense for a large company to reduce its managers by 20% to 30%. From an operational and financial standpoint, a ratio of one manager to five to eight direct reports is reasonable, she added.

If people leaders are presented with a plan to reduce managers, Ferrell-Rhodes said they can either counter with alternative cost-cutting measures, or prepare by prioritizing employee engagement and morale efforts.

“You have to balance the financial pressures with the realization of what is needing to be done,” Ferrell-Rhodes said. “They’ve got to be change agents with that, either be innovative in finding a better alternative…or they’ve got to find a way to make it happen with the least negative impact possible.”

Before moving forward with a reduction in headcount, Ferraro said HR pros should ask employees for feedback about their managers, because they work most closely with them. And since middle managers are often an organization’s “wisdom point,” she recommended strategic consideration be given before any eliminations.

“Before I made the decision, I would be working with them. If you gave me six months to do that, I would be working with them closely,” she said. “So that I had my finger on the pulse of who was actually performing consistently that we wanted to keep on the team.”