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.

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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

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.

Most employees aren’t productive the whole workday. HR can help them get the most out of it.

The eight-hour workday is so two millennia ago.

An illustration of reporter Courtney Vinopal's headshot.

Courtney Vinopal

President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) will pull back federal funding from health and science-related initiatives and is challenging HR leaders in the healthcare sector to consider how such decisions will affect their budgets, and in turn, in their workforces.

Changes to Medicare and Medicaid that are 

 in January of 2026 have already triggered layoffs at health systems like Providence, Adventist Health, and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

Medicaid is the most common form of health coverage in the US after employer-sponsored insurance, and hospitals are set to lose a 

 of revenue should patients lose coverage due to provisions included in the OBBBA. The roughly $900 billion cut to the federal health insurance program included in the bill could result in annual job losses of more than 300,000 by 2034, according to an 

At the same time, HR leaders at healthcare institutions that have historically depended on federal research grants to fund their work are seeing that money dry up, as well. The Trump administration canceled an 

 in medical research funding allocated by the National Institutes of Health earlier this spring as part of its efforts to halt support for DEI-related initiatives.

How two health organizations are navigating federal funding cuts. 

Boston Children’s Hospital, which is the largest recipient of NIH funding for pediatrics in the world, is keeping a close eye on how the administration’s actions might affect its workforce, EVP and CHRO Lisa Abbott said during an industry panel hosted at WBR Research’s HR Healthcare conference on Oct. 7.

“We’re really trying to think very strategically and creatively,” Abbott said. She added her team leans heavily on data to inform where they need to do targeted outreach for hard-to-fill roles, such as radiology techs, while being careful not to “over-staff” in areas where the number of patients hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Boston Children’s hasn’t yet had to lay off workers as a result of federal funding cuts and is “trying to put a strategic lens on our hiring” to avoid doing so, she said.

About 600 employees have already been laid off from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), which was the largest public recipient of NIH funding last year, according to David Jones, interim associate vice chancellor for HR.

UCSF currently employs some 45,000 employees, 80% of which are represented by a union. It’s also part of the University of California system, which has its own rules and regulations, adding another layer of complexity. In preparing to respond to cuts, Jones said he’s worked on “mobilizing teams, getting in rooms, bringing design thinking and other innovations into the conversation, trying to figure out: How do we navigate this? How do we get ready for something we’ve never dealt with before? How do we ensure the organization can survive through this?”

AI offers one potential solution, he said. Jones’s team is looking not only into how the technology might help make employees more productive and efficient, but also how it can help the organization “navigate significant and major cost reductions.” This might mean leveraging applications to “cut out chunks of work,” improve data insights and analytics, and “help inform how work is done.” UCSF is even experimenting with AI in the clinical space to improve administrative tasks like documentation, he said.

Norma Tirado-Kellenberger, CHRO of Access Community Health Network, similarly said her organization is exploring ways to leverage technology in light of cuts.

“We’re losing funding from the federal government very quickly,” she said of her organization, which is one of the largest federally qualified health centers in the US. “So we have to make sure that people understand how important it is to have high levels of productivity…that helps us deliver care in a financially sustainable way. There are no really clear answers to that right now, but I do believe some of that is going to come with how we use technology.”

Boston Children’s, UCSF navigate federal funding cuts 

A number of health systems have already laid off workers due to current or anticipated cuts to programs such as Medicaid or NIH research funding. 

Federal funding cuts are already rippling through the healthcare workforce

Adam DeRose

If it’s been a decade or more since you sat in on an anatomy class, you may not remember much about connective tissue. It functions as the glue that connects muscles to bones and keeps organs in the right spot.

Some heavy lifting for a part of the body that doesn’t get enough recognition.

Paulo Pisano, CHRO at Booking Holdings and CPO at its flagship property, 

, knows that connective tissue holds a great power, albeit in a much different context: the workplace. It can bring different people and businesses together and keep company values and identity in the right spot.

That’s why since 2020, when he joined booking.com as CPO, and later as the conglomerate’s top HR exec, Pisano says he has worked to build connective tissue at the digital travel and tourism company.

“As you build more connective tissue, as people talk more to one another, there’s something, I think, that happens organically,” Pisano said. “How can you do things organically, rather than through ‘policy’...You’re shaping culture. You’re shaping ways of working, and you can do that in a subtle way. It may take a little bit longer when you do it subtle, but it lasts longer. It becomes more sustainable, because it becomes more embedded.”

“Booking Holdings grew through acquisition, like many companies in this market,” he said. “The approach Booking (Holdings) took is keep brands independent.”

The benefit of keeping Booking Holdings’ brands independent was threefold, according to Pisano: It kept the companies autonomous, focused on the market and the customer, and without major operational changes to properties following acquisitions that might have distracted the workforce from delivering for customers.

But the organization realized over time that it “might be leaving value on the table” by not collaborating more effectively.

“We realized that independence is amazing, but interdependence can be even more powerful,” Pisano said. “We don’t have to solve it through organizational design. We can solve it through building connective tissue.”

 Pisano told HR Brew the journey has been a bit like beginning a new routine at the gym: You don’t know exactly when it happens, but at some point, you start seeing results.

For the HR teams at Booking Holdings’ brands, it’s through communities of practices. L&D leaders at Priceline, Kayak, and OpenTable regularly come together to share resources and best practices, for example, he said.

“That’s the benefit where you have a bunch of companies that are peers, but we are not in competition with one another, so we can openly share,” he said. “So we started building those connecting points through our teams.”

Booking Holdings also builds connective tissue by running HR programs across the organization, and sharing resources for leadership or management development, conferences, or learnings from experimentations or pilot programs. It’s more of an exchange of ideas and learnings, rather than an edict from a corporate entity.

For other business units, the connective tissue helps with product development. Or marketing teams, for instance, can share campaign experiments, impacts, challenges, best practices.

“There are, for example, brands like Priceline, Booking, and Agoda, which are more similar in the nature of what they do. They have different ways of marketing,” he said. “Sometimes it’s about replicating, sometimes it’s about not replicating the same mistake, and sometimes it’s about complimenting or not replicating, and saying, ‘Hey, you do you, and I do me.’”

Three young designers using a laptop together at work.

This HR pro builds ‘connective tissue’ to impact culture and connect the workforce

Creating moments of connection for employees across different brands and businesses can help organically shape how work gets done.

Kristen Parisi

The federal government keeps changing US immigration rules, often without notice. This has created extra stress for employees and employers, especially smaller ones without teams and resources dedicated to navigating the changes. But lawyers tell HR Brew that there are steps employers can take to protect themselves and support their employees.

“Everyone’s wanting to be above board,” J. Mike Sevilla, an immigration attorney and partner at Dorsey and Whitney told HR Brew. “It’s probably impacting smaller employers in a larger way, just because of the resources allocation required to kind of spend time in, in terms of figuring out a complex situation.”

. “It feels like every day there’s a new announcement, there’s a new policy,” Stephen Blaker, immigration attorney and partner at law firm Blaker and Granet, told HR Brew. “On a Monday you could file your naturalization application and then be told on Wednesday that there’s a new civics test.”

Perhaps the most publicized recent rule is the administration’s 

 H-1B visa, increasing the application fee for new holders from $4,500 to $100,000. The US grants approximately 85,000 H-1B visas a year, largely to tech and healthcare workers. The government hopes the change encourages employers to hire US-born workers instead of foreign talent, HR Brew previously 

Since the announcement, the government has updated its language several times, resulting in panic among employers. Sevilla said he’s received “questions from clients about what exactly it means, and we’ve gotten some clarity on some points, but there’s still certain areas where we’re waiting on practical guidance.”

“Employers have really tried to stay on top of what’s the latest. And certainly with litigation, there are last minute changes based on how a judge will decide,” Sevilla said. For example, the administration has, in recent months, pulled the temporary protected status (TPS) for thousands of immigrants from Syria, Venezuela, and Haiti, leading many employers to seek legal counsel.

Also in September, the administration announced a new rule for non-immigrant visa applicants, causing confusion for many immigrants and their employers, according to Blaker. Previously, immigrants who needed to update their EO-1 or H-1B visas could visit their closest consulate or embassy; now, they must return to their country of origin to complete the process, potentially keeping them from their US jobs for weeks.

“It is a major headache,” Blaker said, for both employers and employees, explaining that it’s especially cumbersome for Indian nationals, who hold 71% of H-1B visas. “Now they are basically required to travel back to India. So there’s two headaches there.”

 These new realities could have some employers on edge. “The difficulty is that these policies aren’t always announced,” Blaker said, noting that sometimes the American Immigration Lawyers Association only becomes aware of a change because of adjudication changes.

Sevilla also relies on resources like US Citizenship and Immigration Services [USCIS] and SHRM to stay abreast on rule changes.

Blaker recommended that employers understand their legal rights and have a plan and point person in case ICE comes to the office. “The employer only has to allow access to the public areas of the office,” he said. “So if ICE comes and wants to visit a full office and visit somebody’s private office or a storage room, the employer doesn’t have to allow ICE to access any of that unless there is a warrant that is signed by a judge.”

Foreign-born workers, no matter where they are from or what industry they work in, are likely very stressed. Employers should show them that they’re supported, Blaker said. Monthly town meetings, he said as an example, can be a good way to keep employees informed about policy changes.

“Employers are having to go the extra mile to provide resources, to provide those town halls, or to let employees know that the employer has their back,” Blaker said. “Nobody can check themselves fully at the door and then just be a worker. We’re always our full selves, and so it certainly creates stress and anxiety if you have this looming over your head.”