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

hr-brew.com

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

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

Paige McGlauflin

Ever worry about showing up to the wrong job interview?

That fear could end up being fortuitous. That was the case for Fran Katsoudas, Cisco’s chief people, policy, and purpose officer, who started her three-decade career at the digital communications giant after experiencing such a mix-up. She spoke with HR Brew about how that mishap led to her career, and how she’s thinking about opportunities for today’s entry-level talent amid AI’s labor upheaval.

Katsoudas, who had been working in business development for a startup, thought she was interviewing for a similar role when she discovered she was actually interviewing for an entry-level customer support job at Cisco’s call center, a position that would require her to answer as many as 80 calls a day once hired—many from unhappy customers.

While the gig was below the pay grade for the role she intended to interview for, and she wasn’t familiar with Cisco’s technology, something about the job called to her. “I recognized that it was just a really cool opportunity for me to learn something new. It’s funny, because I think it was the first time where I actually trusted my gut,” she told HR Brew.

Katsoudas took the job, and the next year was promoted to team supervisor. She was later offered a role as a director with that team, but turned down the opportunity. It worked in her favor.

“I passed on the role because my realization was I had never made decisions, up until that point, based on title or a level,” she said. “And it took me two years from that point to make director in a totally different area, which happened to be HR.”

Katsoudas moved to Cisco’s HR department in 2003. She said she was curious about the inner workings of HR, and liked the team’s focus on baking business strategy into HR—something they did years before it became 

“We were able to take elements of Cisco’s technology strategy and say, How does this then connect to decisions that you make around people, culture, your tool set,” she said. “I loved that problem. I thought it was really messy, and a good one to solve.”

Katsoudas became chief people officer in 2014, and chief people, policy, and purpose officer in 2021. During her decade-long leadership in HR, she’s focused on creating opportunities, like the ones previously offered to her, for early career talent.

“I just remember having a ton of gratitude for the zigzag of my career and feeling committed to helping others have their own zigzag that they could be really proud of or really energized by,” she said.

 from AI-driven automation. This is true of Katsoudas’s first role at Cisco. In 2022, the company 

 (which was upgraded this year) designed to answer low-level customer support inquiries that come into its Technical Assistance Center. The AI tech has now fielded more than 1 million cases, and Cisco has eliminated its level-one customer support roles.

That transition didn’t happen overnight, Katsoudas told HR Brew.

“What happened was the existing team started to get some help on particular types of cases with customers. As their volume was growing. AI stepped in, and then those people became second-level support,” she said. Now, entry-level call center employees are hired into second-tier support roles, which has prompted Cisco to rethink onboarding for that team.

“I feel like our onboarding approach is so much more robust than it used to be,” she said, adding that “you have to give them all of the learnings of level one because they’re stepping in where the technology couldn’t solve. Maybe a customer has two or three issues that they need help with. Maybe it’s not as simple.”

Currently, her team is focused on using AI to codify the skills and tasks required of every employee at Cisco, and understanding how that will shift as the technology evolves. “My goal for Cisco and for the organization is to leverage AI to help people navigate AI, and just to have as much transparency as possible around how we see the world changing,” she said.

“I don’t know of anyone who would say that the role that they’re in today was exactly the same as a year ago. Our roles are constantly evolving,” she said, noting that most jobs were evolving long before AI put those shifts under a microscope.

Despite this natural evolution, she said HR teams will have to be much more intentional with the opportunities they create for entry-level talent, whether through mentorship programs, new-hire communities, formalized onboarding processes, or other initiatives.

“I just think that people are all running so fast that if you don’t build programs around it, you may not get the impact that you want,” she said, noting that the 

 of a person’s job are critical to their longevity, performance, and satisfaction at a company. “I always laugh a little bit because they [new hires] are investments that you make as a company, but I’ve always seen that they return that investment and more as well.”

A portrait of Francine Katsoudas, Chief People, Policy & Purpose Officer at Cisco

Cisco’s CPO on starting in the call center, and creating opportunities for entry-level talent amid AI upheaval

“I just remember having a ton of gratitude for the zigzag of my career and feeling committed to helping others have their own zigzag.”

Cisco's HR chief is creating entry-level opportunities amid AI disruption

Layoffs have reached historic highs this year, and the AI arms race could be partly to blame.

There were 1,099,500 million job cuts between January and October, up 65% from the same period in 2024, a recent 

 from consulting firm Challenger, Grey, and Christmas found. And some of those layoffs affected HR departments. Amazon announced last month a 30,000-employee 

, affect HR pros. And Google earlier this year offered a 

 to employees in its people ops function.

 through RIFs, may now find themselves on the chopping block, experts told HR Brew. However, it’s not all doom and gloom.

As technology advances faster than it has in decades, Daniel Zhao, chief economist at Glassdoor, told HR Brew that people leaders should remain flexible and open-minded, because the exact skills and jobs needed in the future of work are still largely unknown.

“It’s important to be humble as we’re thinking about what changes might come down the line. There are people out there who are throwing out, like, very grand predictions about AI and how much of [a] change it’s going to have,” Zhao said. “But the fact of the matter is, we don’t know exactly what those changes will look like.”

Many people previously thought prompt engineering was going to be “the job of the future,” Zhao added, but “that really hasn’t panned out at all.” HR pros, however, should be ready to reskill and upskill when the time comes.

“Even if AI is not necessarily causing significant disruption, yet, I do expect it to be a significant factor over the medium term where it’s going to change what skills are important, what jobs are more or less valuable,” he said. “That’s very hard to predict what that looks like, but it is likely to have a significant impact over the medium term.”

 to reduce headcount, according to Zhao, it doesn’t necessarily mean the tech has already changed the way business is done—it’s more of an anticipatory measure.

 As companies increasingly incorporate more AI tools into their workflows, people leaders will be tapped to lead a workforce transformation, said Cole Napper, VP of research, innovation, and talent insights at research firm Lightcast.

Next year, HR pros should focus on AI as part of their workforce strategies, Napper told HR Brew. HR has an opportunity to redefine how work gets done in their organizations by “separating the wheat from the chaff of AI that’s really making an impact,” he said.

“The world is changing very quickly, and businesses need good ideas to come from all parts of the organization,” Zhao said. “It’s not just something that leaders can enforce from the top down. It really needs to be something that employees across the organization are bought into.”

A robot Customer Service AI Assistant typing on laptop

Will AI replace HR?

Short answer is “yes,” and “no.”

From increasing data literacy to investing in personalized learning and development (L&D) opportunities, workforce leaders at an October HR Brew event shared how people pros can help manage AI’s impact on the employee experience.

“You got to meet people where they are,” said Lucrecia Borgonovo, chief talent and organizational effectiveness officer at Mastercard. “How do you really make sure that you’re giving people that sense of comfort and confidence to use AI responsibly in the flow of work?”

 HR leaders should be involved in their company’s AI journey from the start, said Kim Morick, global HR technology offering leader at IBM. From there, she said, the entire workforce should be involved in building and experimenting with AI.

“Getting them involved in the process, excited about the process, innovating on the process, flipping the process on its head,” Morick said, is key. “It’s a creative project, so you have to involve them in the process. They need to understand what AI can do.”

HRB IRL-Clip-Personalizing the Employee Experience-video embed

Employees may be skeptical of or confused by AI, so Morick recommended encouraging them to embrace a forward-thinking mindset. “Continually getting them to think about what is next, and if you get excited about what is next, then you’re not going to be afraid about staying in the past,” she added.

Transparency around how AI may impact specific roles is also important, Borgonovo said, as is investing in L&D and AI literacy.

“How can you really proactively help people upskill and reskill for those skills that are going to become in higher demand?” she said. “For us, fluency for all, then role-specific, AI learning, and then like this upskilling and reskilling for the future roles, or the futures of skills, has become paramount.”

Long ago were the days of one-size-fits-all L&D offerings. Today’s employees need personalized, conversational training, said Mike Ciancio, chief marketing officer at performance management software company Centrical.

“If you bring AI into the job, everyone’s job is changing from a day-to-day basis. They’re going to have to learn different things. They’re going to have to learn different ways,” Ciancio said. “The learning capabilities that they need need to be bite-sized, need to be personalized, and they need to be effective, in order for them to be effective in their job, not now, but 12 to 18 months from now.”

As employees, and HR pros, develop their AI literacy, Morick said they’ll need to improve their data literacy, too.

“There’s data that’s locked all through different silos in different parts of the organization that you need to access in order to truly personalize an experience for an employee,” she said. “Once they understand that, then they’re less afraid, and you kind of have to push them to say, ‘This is our future,’ and they’ll be excited and come up with new things.”

HR pros can also encourage employees to take ownership of their AI L&D, Borgonovo said. This can help improve engagement.

“People are not going to use something that they don’t trust, and trust really comes from like collaboration, like transparency, creating an environment where people can experiment,” she said. “Your people leaders have to create that culture, and they also have to model comfortably for them. What does it mean to use AI in support of being a much more impactful and effective leader?”

HRB IRL-Clip-The Cornerstone of AI Adoption-video embed

 The hesitancy employees feel about AI today is eerily reminiscent of the hesitancy employees felt about the internet in the early aughts. Morick and Ciancio agreed there are lessons to be learned from how employees and leaders adapted to the digital age.

“We can’t imagine what the future is going to be…and I think that’s why it is important that we bring the people along that are a little resistant, because there will be a place for you in this new world,” Morick said. “You just have to upskill yourself and find that place, and it’s our job to help find that place for them in the organization, to build the roles of the future.”

Avoid “AI for AI sake,” Ciancio cautioned, noting that some companies may have made organizational changes too quickly just to say they were at the forefront of AI advancements. After all, he said, “there’s always the pendulum.”

“We went really, really far on one side on the AI thing, and I think we’re starting to come back a little bit to understand what the true power of AI is, but more so in the aspect of amplifying the human involvement,” Ciancio added.

October 2025 HR Brew Panel titled "Applying AI to Your Work: Building the Employee Experience"

AI can improve the employee experience—if HR uses L&D strategically

Leaders from IBM, Mastercard, and Centrical talked leveraging L&D to increase AI adoption at a recent HR Brew event.

This year will be remembered for many things…and layoffs will, unfortunately, likely be one of them.

 are each eliminating 1,000. US companies conducted 

 layoffs and discharges in 2025 as of August, up from 

 in May, and a 4.6% jump from August 2024.

 with AI, while others are responding to the economic volatility caused by the government shutdown, interest rates, and tariffs. Economists shared with HR Brew what recent layoffs might signal about the state of the labor market and economy.

 may not be a sign that a recession is around the corner, but rather a “weird mishmash of factors,” said Elizabeth Renter, senior economist at NerdWallet.

“When layoffs signal an economic downturn…they’re broad based and they’re across industries, and according to the data that we have—which is lacking, admittedly—there wasn’t red flags that they were heading northward and broad based across industries,” Renter said.

When growth didn’t lead to substantial profit gains after the pandemic-era hiring sprees of 2022, companies had to course correct with layoffs, said Daniel Zhao, chief economist at Glassdoor. Nowadays, trends like 

 have resulted in a “low hire, low fire job market,” Zhao added. Despite the recent layoffs, he said the US labor market remains fairly healthy.

“Employers are in a holding pattern because of the uncertainty, like we’re going to see how tariffs play out. We’re going to see how immigration impacts play out, and we’re just going to wait and see,” Renter said. “They’re saying, ‘Okay, well now, in the interest of what I don’t know about the future, I’m going to be conservative, and I’m going to cut some headcount.’”

When companies cite AI as a reason behind layoffs, it doesn’t necessarily mean the tech is currently changing the way they conduct business, according to Zhao.

“For one thing, that’s a pretty vague statement. Like, are companies using AI as a reason for layoffs because those jobs are being replaced by AI?” he said. “Is it because they need that money to redeploy, to hire other people, to implement AI? Is it because AI is fundamentally altering their business model and making it so that their traditional strategies are no longer profitable?”

 impact their workforces, Renter said. And some, Zhao added, may also be reacting to investor demands and competitor pressures.

“They might be incentivized right now to say that [layoffs are] because of AI, because they know that other companies are signaling this, and they know that investors are wondering whether they’re implementing AI at a time when all their competitors are,” Zhao said.

In short, the recent layoffs may just be a sign of a normal business cycle, Zhao added. AI could very well be a red herring in the labor market. Only time will tell.

An illustration of a tech CEO cutting an employee's computer in half

What the recent slew of layoff announcements means for HR

And how AI could be a distraction from other factors impacting the labor market.

Loss is one of the most painful human experiences.

But it can also transform people, and their approach to work and leadership, according to Adrienne Shoch, founder of 5 to 1 Consulting. Shoch, who contributed to the anthology 

Lives Lost and Leadership Found: Lessons from Special Somebodies

, shared with HR Brew her personal experience with loss and how it helped her become a better leader.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

It’s representative of a number of stories of personal experiences with the loss of an individual and the impact on the business…I lost both of my parents in a span of two years, one from cancer, one from Alzheimer’s. I also had an experience of a hurricane in Nashville a year ago. I got divorced after 25 years, and what I was really looking at is, “Man, what happens when we experience loss, and when we lose people in our lives, and what can I do differently?”

One thing that I know and that I’ve learned very clearly, both inside an organization and my personal life, is, as a culture, we do not do loss well. We react to it, and we tend to hang on to it. We hang on to what we’re losing, which is exactly what the brain and the nervous system loves to do. It doesn’t like change. It doesn’t like surprises. So, really the question becomes, “How do we really prepare ourselves for this life that’s filled with change and uncertainty and loss?”

How did these experiences help shape your career?

There’s this concept called the appropriate response, and I learned it from the hospice workers…when a group of people are not sure what’s going to happen when someone’s going to pass, people talk about things, and say things, and want things to happen that may or may not serve the situation…This is something that the hospice nurses did so masterfully, which was they held space and they didn’t offer something from their own personal wish or experience, but it was what was in service of this experience.

The other thing…is what happens when we really lean into pain? What happens when we lean into the suffering of other people? What happens when we lean into our own suffering?...When I dropped in, and I suspended my desires and my wishes for something to look a particular way…It was compassion. I had access to compassion that I never dreamed of before.

My personal situation is a microcosm for this larger issue of change and transformation…In order to put ourselves in the space from which someone else is experiencing something, that’s empathy. Empathy has a very important part in any kind of organizational change…A lot of people don’t like it, and that’s how we’re designed. That’s how the nervous system is designed. It’s designed because we don’t like change…In HR, really looking at a reorg or a layoff…it’s the way that we communicate with others and the way that we’re sharing compassion in this change that’s going to change people’s lives in one way or another.

When people are seen and witnessed in their transition, they show up differently, but when they feel like they’re going through it alone and there’s a wall, they react to it differently…What we’re doing is we’re accelerating a learning curve, so people can understand how to manage, and experience loss, and transition differently, more effectively, so that the outcome can be better.

Two hands holding on opened book with text highlighted

An interview with Adrienne Shoch, co-contributor to ‘Lives Lost and Leadership Found’

“We do not do loss well. We react to it, and we tend to hang on to it…So, really the question becomes, ‘How do we really prepare ourselves for this life that’s filled with change and uncertainty and loss?’”

Loss can be painful—it can also be transformative for leaders

And, if that laughter is shared among colleagues, it can help boost productivity and engagement, according to Adam Christing, speaker and author of 

The Laughter Factor: The 5 Humor Tactics to Link, Lift, and Lead

Christing shared with HR Brew how people pros can encourage more laughter in the workplace.

Management and leadership is all about trust and connection, and that positive humor is a shortcut to trust. We feel closer working with people where we’re enjoying each other, and laughter is like a bridge that really connects hearts. Times are so challenging, and chaotic, and unpredictable, if we can laugh together, we can get through anything.

Did the book change from when you started writing it to when it was published?

I started off focused more on things that science keeps showing us. That laughter literally physically reduces stress, releases endorphins…But what struck me as I did deeper research was how studies are also showing that it creates cohesion.

One of my five humor tactics is called “in-jokes”...when we create this shared humor about our group and about our people. What surprised me in my research is the link between playfulness and productivity. We feel less judged. We feel more free to fail when we can laugh at ourselves and laugh with our colleagues.

First one is surprise, and I call it “SAD.” You actually want your people to be sad, and by that I mean you want to “surprise and delight” them. Another one is called poke. This is the trickiest of [them]—I also call these the five laugh languages—You want your humor to be sharp enough to pop a balloon, but never to break a heart. And, so the key on poke is really learning if managers and HR leaders can learn the power of self-effacing humor where you really make fun of yourself.

Word play, and that’s for the lovers of dad jokes, and puns, and clever quips, and when you find someone on your team who’s really into that, you can have so much fun…The last one is called amplify, and this is the power of exaggerating stories and situations. A professional comedian might call this ranting…It just becomes dramatic and funny, and so this one applies most to people who are good at telling stories.

How can HR leaders find humor if it doesn’t come naturally to them?

It’s a real misnomer when people say, “I don’t have a sense of humor.” Every human being has a sense of humor. In fact, I put it this way, I say, not only do you have a sense of humor, but a sense of humor has you. The challenge is, when we think of laughter, we think of like the comedian on the Netflix special or the comedy club, and you don’t have to be a professional comedian to tap into your laugh language.

The first thing is to find your funny. Usually, what makes you laugh is a good indication of your own sense of humor. So, if you’re really into dad jokes, it might be that you love word play. If you’re really into receiving a surprise, like if somebody throws you a surprise party or brings you an unexpected gift, chances are that’s also your go-to way of being funny is surprise.

For HR leaders, it’s also key to listen your way into laughter instead of trying to talk your way in. And, by that, I mean notice in meetings, notice in email exchanges, what other people are saying or doing that creates fun and enjoy that. Like, you don’t have to be up there like the life of the party, but if you draw out their humor and their fun side, you’re really more, asa leader, an orchestrator than an entertainer.

An interview with Adam Christing, author of ‘The Laughter Factor’

“What surprised me in my research is the link between playfulness and productivity. We feel less judged. We feel more free to fail when we can laugh at ourselves and laugh with our colleagues.”

How laughter can boost employee productivity and engagement

When was the last time you were productive for eight hours straight? (No need to lie, we’re all friends here! We know it’s probably been a long time…)

If it makes you feel any better, just 18% of global workers 

 by Kickresume in July said they’re productive for seven to eight hours a day. Another 39% reported being productive for five to six hours, while 29% said the same for three to four hours. Makes you wonder why the work day is still eight hours, right?

“The premise of the eight-hour workday itself is already kind of unrealistic, like people aren’t actually working for eight hours straight, non-stop, with no breaks, with no unfocused time,” said Ashley Janssen, a productivity consultant at her consulting firm.

After the Industrial Revolution, manual laborers often logged at least 12-hour shifts and 80-hour workweeks. But as the labor movement grew in the 1920s, the idea of the eight-hour workday was born and embraced.

But the challenge with the eight-hour workday, Janssen told HR Brew, is that it was designed for manual work and may not align with knowledge work, and the problem-solving and creativity required to do it productively.

“An organization has never really tried anything else…that’s the norm, and there’s never been any push to change it,” Janssen said. “Even though it actually doesn’t suit the kind of work that knowledge workers do.”

When Janssen consults on employee productivity, she said she has leaders and employees to “map out what an average week in their life looks like,” including tasks like getting dressed, cooking, commuting, running errands, and attending appointments.

“Most people are shocked, because they actually see a visual of what’s actually happening over the course of each day…and funny enough, it’s actually probably that five or six hours is where the gaps are,” Janssen said. “Their expectations that they’re going to be able to get all of these things done over the course of their ‘eight- or nine-hour day’ versus all the things they’re trying to jam in, which were actually not even possible to begin with.”

HR pros can help employees set reasonable expectations for their workday, she said, by thinking of juggling their personal and professional tasks like “juggling plastic and glass balls.”

“We’re all juggling 55 balls every day, and some of them are as simple as making lunch in the morning all the way to a big project that’s due for work, and sometimes you have to drop some balls,” she said. “What are the plastic balls? What are the ones that, if we drop them, it’s okay. They’re not going to break…versus the idea of the glass ball that if you drop that ball, something’s going to happen. It’s going to break. It’s going to hurt a relationship. It’s going to hurt a reputation.”

It all boils down to being intentional and thoughtful when prioritizing what can be achieved in a day, Janssen said.