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

Adam DeRose

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Some companies are focused on retaining and engaging top talent in a leaner economy rather than looking to layoffs.

The unlikely key to surviving the recession: Keep your people

Aman Kidwai

Man in a suit looking out the window of an office.

Freelance platforms are trying to recruit your top performers

Retention is tough; the appeal of independent work might be making it even more difficult.

Freelance platforms are trying to steal your top performers

Young woman working in a grocery store as a cashier

As companies invest in job quality for frontline, hourly workers, they’re finding that retention is improving.

How better frontline and hourly jobs reduce turnover

Retention

Mikaela Cohen

Telling employees that they matter can feel stuffy.

But it’s become a crucial talent strategy to train leaders and managers on the skills that help employees feel like they matter, according to Zach Mercurio, leadership researcher and author of 

The Power of Mattering: How Leaders Can Create a Culture of Significance

Mercurio chatted with HR Brew about his book and why a mattering strategy 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

 last year. What new ideas did you bring into this book?

My first book was about the power of purpose, which is our contribution and knowing our use and usefulness, but it’s very difficult for someone to see their contribution if they don’t first believe they’re worthy of contributing, so I almost see this book, 

This is a book about how do you create an environment where the people around you actually feel worthy of contributing, and making sure that people feel valued, and then know how they add value, that they feel seen, and that they feel heard, and that they feel needed…In psychology, that name of that feeling…is called mattering, and it’s a distinct concept that can only be generated through interpersonal interactions.

There are several things that are happening that all point to a mattering deficit. One of those things is this idea of disengagement. As 

 in January of this year, engagement is at its lowest rate in a decade, and that’s despite millions of dollars being spent on engagement over the last decade….Almost 40% of people in that sample from Gallup indicated they didn’t think anybody at work cared for them as a person.

Another symptom of this mattering deficit is workplace loneliness. Almost eight out of 10 people indicate that they feel 

, but this is, again, despite connecting more...We’re actually communicating more than ever, but we’re still lonely. One of the things that we’re missing is that, when you look at the research on loneliness, it’s not the quantity of interaction that matters, it’s the quality…It’s feeling seen, and heard, valued, and needed, feeling that we matter.

What we’re seeing is not a disengagement crisis, not a loneliness epidemic, it’s really at its core a mattering deficit. People feel insignificant in their daily interactions, and you can’t solve that through more programs, perks, or platforms. You can only solve that through equipping people and leaders with the skills to show the person across from them how they’re significant to them.

What I would encourage HR leaders to do first is actually to do an audit of the skills that leaders are developing and being evaluated on that create the daily experience of feeling valued…For example, to pay attention and see a person, to conduct a meaningful check in, to actually create an environment where people feel that they can speak up, to listen deeply. Are [leaders] evaluated on and prepared to affirm people and show them the difference that they make and spot their strengths and cultivate those strengths?

These skills have been labeled as “soft”…When we see something as soft or simple, we tend to approach it with less rigor. So, if you think in an HR function, the rigor at which you approach compliance to certain policies and procedures, are you approaching the human skills and scaling the human skills so leaders can see, hear, value, and show people how they’re needed with the same rigor as you’re approaching compliance?

Two hands holding on opened book with text highlighted

An interview Zach Mercurio, author of ‘The Power of Mattering’

Why a mattering strategy matters to HR.

Do I matter? Your manager should make you feel like it

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

Paige McGlauflin

There’s no better feeling for HR pros than seeing the success of a well-used and well-liked employee program. No better feeling, indeed, except when the program also benefits your company's bottom line.

That’s the case for Hilton’s employee travel program. The perk, called Go Hilton, is a worker favorite, and brings in millions of dollars in revenue each year.

Using Go Hilton, employees and their friends and family members can stay at a Hilton property for steeply discounted rates. Team member rates include up to 40 nights per year, and the majority of hotels are priced at tiered flat rates, ranging from $40 to $80 per night. Friends and family rates grant 70 nights annually at 50% off the best available rate.

“Travel is core to what we do,” Lora Lawler, Hilton’s SVP of total rewards and HR technology, told HR Brew. “We have such a unique opportunity to use travel and our founding purpose to really engage our team members.”

The perk wasn’t always beloved, however. In fact, it was a source of major frustration before undergoing a revamp a decade ago.

The original team member travel program prompted consistent worker criticism in Hilton’s annual internal surveys.

“Year after year, this was the greatest dissatisfier that team members were talking about,” Rick Morrow, senior director of the Go Hilton program who led the program revamp, told HR Brew.

The biggest headache was the difficulty finding room availability. The system relied on hotel management to add unoccupied rooms to the platform—which often wouldn’t happen, according to Morrow. If employees managed to book a room, they’d need to provide written documentation stating which hotel they’re staying at and for how long, and sign off from their managers. Workers would forget the documentation, and get turned away by the hotel.

In 2016, Hilton introduced the Go Hilton program, complete with a new booking site and system for finding room availability. The process was made fully electronic, ditching the paper documentation.

To solve the lack of rooms problem, Morrow’s team centralized the process for adding availability to the platform. Working with Hilton’s commercial teams, it created an occupancy forecast model. Hilton’s reservation system contains historical data on what the occupancy was, and is, expected to be for each hotel. Using this data, the model calculates what rooms are most likely to go unsold during less busy periods that could be made available to employees at discounted rates.

The perk is not treated as a “set it and forget it” strategy. Lawler’s and Morrow’s teams have made changes to the program, primarily relying on employee feedback via an annual survey.

“We’re always looking at ways to improve the program. Even now, we haven’t reached perfection,” Lawler said.

For example, when they first introduced the program, the annual allotment for both the team member rates and friends and family rates were set at 30 nights each. Employees in early feedback said the friends and family rates were getting used up quickly, so Hilton expanded those rates to 70 nights per year and extended the team member allotment to 40 nights this year, following similar feedback.

Hilton also introduced a long-term tenure program, where team members who’ve been with Hilton for 10 years or more get lifetime friends and family rates, and after 20 years earn lifetime team members rates. That specific offering boosts employee retention.

“I don’t know how many times I can tell you, we’ve heard someone say… they’re thinking about maybe retiring or moving on, and they’re like, ‘No, no, I’m sticking around for another year or two because I want those team member rates for life,” Morrow said. “That’s how you keep good people.”

Since its revamp, more than 35.8 million rooms have been booked via Go Hilton. The perk has also proven to be a success for Hilton’s bottom line. Since its reintroduction, Go Hilton has generated nearly $3 billion in revenue. Last year was its most successful, earning almost $550 million.

For other HR leaders who want to introduce successful talent programs that boost revenue, Lawler recommends they hone in on a product or offering that’s valuable to their team members.

“The key to Go Hilton is making it not just work for our team members and our employees, but also for our business,” Lawler said. “I have worked at other places, or potentially worked at other places, where [I’ve thought] well, they must have a discounted version of you name it, and then you find out they don’t, because it’s potentially cost prohibitive. So I would just encourage HR leaders to get creative and think about the interesting ways to do that.”

Correction 04/16/2025: This story has been updated to correct Lora Lawler's title.

Beachside hotel resort with beach chairs outside

Hilton’s employee travel perk became a huge success following a revamp

The Go Hilton program is an employee favorite, but it wasn’t always that way.

How Hilton’s employee travel benefit went from being a headache to a major success after a revamp

Mentorship can be a career game-changer, leading to 

 to receive mentorship than men, and it’s becoming a big problem for women in revenue-generating roles, such as marketing, sales, revenue operations, and customer success, a 

Inadequate mentorship was the top challenge identified by women (44%) in revenue-generating roles, according to a survey of more than 750 women in such jobs from Women In Revenue, a nonprofit that advocates for the advancement of women in revenue-generating roles.

The issue of inadequate mentorship isn’t exactly new, but it’s become a bigger priority. Last year, for example, it was ranked by respondents as their fifth top concern.

While 77% of respondents said they thought a mentor might be helpful, 69% said they don’t currently have one. The women who’ve had mentoring said the experience helped them navigate a challenge (54%), achieve better work-life balance (20%), find a new job (15%), and land a promotion (10%).

“It’s really helpful to be able to have folks who carved that pathway already, to be able to lend a hand and say, ‘Here’s how I got here,’” Jamie Wigand, Women in Revenue’s executive director, told HR Brew.

Women in revenue-generating roles are facing other challenges that may be preventing them from accessing mentorship opportunities. Job instability was the second most common concern cited by respondents, with 21% reporting being laid off from their jobs last year, and around two-thirds saying their teams had been subjected to staff or budget cuts. The third most common challenge cited was a “lack of women in leadership roles.” Mentorship tends to be of particular interest to professionals during periods of uncertainty, the report noted, but when there are fewer women leaders to facilitate it, the desire may go unfulfilled.

“It can be really difficult for women in senior roles to be able to carve out that time and that space if their employer isn't really making time for them,” Wigand said. “We’re all doing a lot, especially with the workforce feeling a little stretched thin generally, and then a lot of these women being in parenthood roles as well. It makes it a lot harder to make time for that. I think creating more of a priority around it would be really important.”

 inadequate career support as a motivator for wanting to quit.

Forty-three percent of respondents to Women In Revenue’s survey considered quitting in the last year. As respondents cited career progression and promotion as some of the most important benefits, second only to remote work, Wigand said employers can help boost retention by establishing clear advancement pathways and ensuring all employees are in the succession-planning pipeline—a simple, yet stark, reminder during an era when DEI rollbacks could impact such initiatives.

“We’re not asking for diversity hires, or diversity raises, or that it's just fair compensation. It's really best for the companies and their bottom line,” she said, 

 that businesses with greater gender diversity in leadership outperform those that don’t. “When we’re looking at profitability and consumer happiness…it’s always proven that women in leadership roles is good for the organization as well.”

Women cite lack of mentorship as biggest career challenge

It’s risen from being the fifth most common challenge to the top in just one year.

Lack of mentorship has become the biggest challenge for women in revenue-generating roles

If you managed to evade burnout last year, scientists may be interested in studying your resilience.

 in 2024. Around 82% of 1,500 white-collar, desk-based knowledge workers in North America, Asia, and Europe 

 by DHR Global reported being “slightly” to “extremely” burned out. Similarly, 39% of 2,100 global employees 

 by Skillsoft cited burnout and exhaustion as the top challenge they experienced in 2024.

But work probably wasn’t their only source of burnout. The term, while traditionally used in reference to occupational stress, can also describe 

“People were burned out in 2024, between coming out of Covid, elections, social media, and AI,” Lisa Walker, a managing partner at DHR Global, told HR Brew.

Despite feeling burned out, workers were also, confoundingly, engaged at work, with 88% of respondents to DHR Global’s survey reporting being “very” or “extremely” engaged. While only 23% of global 

 to a Gallup survey said they were engaged with their work in 2023 (the most recent year of data collection), that was the highest rate since the firm started tracking the metric in 2012.

 “It isn’t necessarily that I’m burned out in the ‘I’m working 24 hours a day’ way, but ‘I’ve been doing the same general thing for five years, and it’s just not energizing me anymore,’” Ciara Harrington, Skillsoft’s CPO, told HR Brew. “People like to be challenged by new things, and if you’re stuck in the same role, it can feel like that’s not happening,” she added.

On top of that, workplaces have undergone a seemingly never-ending parade of changes in recent years, from the rise of remote work to the explosion of AI tools. Some have seemingly overwhelmed employees, even if they are 

“There’s a lot of reasons to feel drained, and people react in different ways,” Walker said. Some workers may cope with stress by paradoxically throwing themselves even further into work, Walker noted. While 34% of respondents to DHR Global’s survey said burnout made them less engaged, another 44% said it made them 

Furthermore, as companies pulled back on hiring in 2024, it became a lot harder for workers to not only 

. Some 67% of respondents to DHR Global’s survey said that a tight job market increases their engagement, versus just 9% who said the opposite.

As HR leaders continue to prioritize retention in 2025, Walker said it will be crucial that they avoid putting more pressure on hard workers who may be at their limits. This can create a toxic cycle of overworking employees who are running on fumes, and may force them to leave for greener pastures if given the opportunity this year.

“You don’t want to find the work horse and abuse them,” Walker said.

For starters, HR leaders should look at what’s driving burnout within their own workforce. No company or department is the same, and all have different stressors.

“A burnt out employee maybe doesn’t have as many choices as they would have in a world where the market is more open,” Harrington said. “As the market opens up, we all have this window to get to those employees in advance of that and really understand: What would it take to get you more engaged? What do you think is causing your burnout? And how can I help you?”

At the corporate level, Harrington and Walker mentioned the importance of ensuring clarity around company strategy and culture.

“Define who you want to be and what you want your culture to be. Be very clear about the advantages and disadvantages of that,” Walker said. “Invest to get better at what you’re already good at, so you keep that advantage, and if you’re not good at something, invest in that to bring it up to a median level. You don’t have to be best at everything.”

Worker running on hamster wheel. Credit: Illustration: Anna Kim, Photos: Adobe Stock.

Employers should be worried about 2024’s burnout problem

A recent survey identified a potentially dangerous combination for HR leaders: an overlap between burnout and engagement.

Burnout was on the rise in 2024, but so was engagement. That could spell trouble for employers in 2025

Non-compete agreements had some highs and lows in 2024.

 non-competes last April, arguing that they limit employees’ earnings and hamper innovation. The ban was 

 by a federal judge in August, only for the FTC to appeal the ruling in October. Even as the future of non-competes remains foggy, they still impact roughly one in five Americans, according to 

Many companies use non-competes as a way to retain workers. Hedge fund Citadel recently extended its non-compete for some portfolio managers to 21 months, Bloomberg 

, longer than the average 12 months required by its competitors, in an effort to retain these employees amid the industry’s hiring war.

A spokesperson for Citadel declined to comment on the news to HR Brew.

While non-competes may make some employees think twice before quitting, said Cy Wakeman, best-selling author and founder of leadership consulting firm Reality-Based Leadership, if they want to leave, they’re going to go.

“Non-competes aren’t a retention strategy,” said Joe Mull, keynote speaker and author of 

Employalty: How to Ignite Commitment and Keep Top Talent in the New Age of Work

. “Retention strategies are the things that we do, not to trap people, but to make them want to stay and be a part of our organization.”

Non-competes are most effective at retaining senior-level employees and executives, Wakeman told HR Brew, because these professionals sometimes have “clawback bonuses,” or other stipulations, in their contracts that make leaving a company, before a certain period of time, less enticing.

But a company’s real objective with non-competes is often protection, Wakeman said. High-level employees usually have access to company assets, intellectual property, or otherwise sensitive information, she said, so they’re frequently wielded not necessarily as a retention strategy, but as a way to safeguard the business.

“For the company, it’s not trying to limit your ability to work. It is saying that because you designed the system, part of my IP is inside your brain, and I have the right to protect my IP,” Wakeman said, later adding, “a lot of people are calling it the retention strategy, and it’s really a protection of assets.”

When non-competes should not be used for retention.

 hair styling and medicine, have asked workers to sign non-competes. Even fast-food chain Jimmy John’s once had its sandwich makers sign such agreements (it 

 the practice after legal push-back in 2016). But when it comes to individual contributors or non-senior employees, Steven Nevolis, labor and employment attorney at law firm Ellenoff, Grossman, and Schole, said companies generally shouldn’t use non-competes just to retain workers.

Nevolis told HR Brew that some companies may view their non-competes as “protecting a real interest” and not a way to seemingly “enforce” it against employees who “would not actually cause a significant impact.” Instead, he said, employers might consider asking workers to sign confidentiality or non-disclosure agreements to prevent them from sharing sensitive information without limiting their ability to work elsewhere.

“There’s a view amongst a lot of people that confidentiality and non-solicitation of customers may be enough to achieve what a non-compete is looking to achieve without stopping someone from actually getting a job,” Nevolis said.

Mull said non-competes potentially make sense in competitive markets when sharing information “would inflict lasting and significant harm on a past employer” but notes we must acknowledge this is not the case for most people.

Wakeman said there are other, more effective strategies for retaining employees, especially younger and entry-level ones, like focusing on company culture, mentorship, learning and development opportunities, and career mobility.

“As an employer, I want volunteers, not hostages. At companies that retain people via better wages, a better culture, better working conditions, these are organizations that consistently outperform their peers,” Mull said. “It’s the difference between saying, ‘We’re going to create an environment that you want to be a part of and don’t want to leave,’ versus saying ‘We’re going to create systems that trap you here.’”

Employees want to be treated as humans, Mull added, making the most effective retention strategies those that improve their overall quality of life.

“Non-competes are just another way that employers treat workers like a commodity to be leveraged. No employer should have that much influence over the long-term careers and lives of their workers,” Mull said. “There’s just no good reason to tell a cook, or a plumber, or a call center worker that you either work for us or nobody else…It’s the exact kinds of tactics and approaches that people are rejecting in this new age of work.”

Correction 01/10/25: This piece has been updated to reflect that Citadel CEO Kenneth Griffin has not commented on the non-compete extension, and that it applies to some portfolio managers.

Close-up of a hand filling out a noncompete form. 

Are non-compete agreements an effective retention strategy?

Spoiler alert: Not really.

Amid a cooling labor market, it can be hard to tell if retention strategies are actually working. But Yelp may have found the key to keeping its employees around.

Yelp’s average employee tenure increased from 2.8 years in 2022 to four years in May—that’s notable, 

 the average tenure in the information industry is 4.2 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“It certainly has been a pretty significant increase…in a pretty short period of time,” Carmen Amara, Yelp’s chief people officer, told HR Brew.

She attributes the boost to three internal programs, including revamped approaches to employee feedback, career development, and embracing flexible work.

Since the start of the pandemic, but particularly in the last two years, Amara’s team has been reworking Yelp’s employee feedback mechanisms.

The company solicits feedback from employees via an annual engagement survey (at the corporate level), focus groups, meetings, and other sources like Slack channels.

This feedback has influenced much of Yelp’s HR strategy, including its flexible work model, leadership development programs, and benefits offerings—such as its wellness reimbursement benefit, which can be used for gym memberships, massages, running gear, or other health and wellness purposes.

Employees interviewed by HR Brew spoke positively of the company’s receptiveness to feedback regarding benefits.

“Within the last year or two, because they were listening, a lot of us more middle-aged employees were like, ‘Hey, we would love some support with perimenopause and menopause,’ and they added on that benefit,” said Jennifer Jones, an associate regional manager for Yelp’s community team, who has been at the company for nine years.

Yelp, like many companies, pivoted to remote work at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020. But bucking the return-to-office trend, the San Francisco-based company 

 in June 2022 that it would remain distributed after an internal survey found that 86% of employees preferred working remotely most or all of the time.

Yelp’s longstanding embrace of flexibility certainly helped: Kadecia Ber, a senior director of sales planning and account strategy who’s worked at Yelp for more than 16 years, went remote nine years ago after deciding to move herself and her kids closer to family in the Midwest.

“Because there’s enough trust in the work that I did and how I accomplished what I was able to accomplish, I was completely supported to go remote,” Ber said.

And it’s been a boon for recruitment, Amara said, particularly as other tech companies have 

 their remote and hybrid arrangements. In 2023, Yelp saw a 183% year over year increase in visits to its career pages, and a 103% increase in applications for sales roles, and 52% increase in applications for general and administrative roles compared to 2021.

In 2022, after hearing that employees wanted more opportunities to learn from senior leaders, Yelp created a leadership development curriculum, open to all staff, featuring conversations with executives, education on effective communication, and peer-to-peer learning sessions.

While it was well received, Amara’s team noticed a drop off in participation as employees progressed, so they introduced another program, in which managers serve as coaches and support in-the-moment development opportunities through regular occurrences like one-on-one meetings.

Jones said she has benefited from coaching support from her previous manager. Prior to being promoted into her current role in August 2023, she expressed interest in becoming a manager to her then-supervisor. Challenged to strengthen her leadership skills, she revived and led Yelp’s 

“That helped me as I was building that internal résumé. When I could interview for this [open role], it was another example of something I’d done outside of my day to day role to help the company,” she said.

Today, she manages a team of community ambassadors based in several West Coast cities.

Yelp’s tenure increase coincides with the trend of US workers staying put in their current jobs due to fewer opportunities and economic uncertainty. Joel Kennedy, a senior product designer who’s worked at Yelp for more than three years, noted that these macroeconomic factors could be influencing Yelp’s tenure rate, particularly among tech workers, who have been 

 by the hundreds of thousands since 2022.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty for sure,” he said, before noting he isn’t anxious about layoffs at Yelp. “People are less bullish in looking for other opportunities, there’s also just a flood of solid candidates on the market, competition when it comes to these tech jobs.”

Amara acknowledged that while increased tenure can have positive effects, like increased productivity, it can also pose its own challenges.

“We want to make sure that we’re continuing to keep our employees engaged,” she said. “So it’s an opportunity for us to continue to evolve our development and engagement strategies.”

Close-up of sign on facade at headquarters of travel and restaurant rating company Yelp in San Francisco, California.

How Yelp’s boosted its employee tenure in less than two years

“It certainly has been a pretty significant increase…in a pretty short period of time,” Carmen Amara, Yelp’s chief people officer, says.

Yelp increased employee tenure by over a year after taking these three steps

A sweet salary and benefits package isn’t cutting it anymore, especially for Gen Z employees. That’s according to a recent SurveyMonkey 

Gen Z employees are more likely to value work-life balance than their millennial and Gen X colleagues, with 32% ranking it as the most important aspect of a job, versus 28% and 25% of the older generations. Millennial and Gen X respondents, meanwhile, said compensation and benefits are most valuable, with 30% and 29% ranking it in first place, compared with 20% of Gen Z employees.

 Gen Z employees’ likelihood to value work-life balance over total compensation reflects shifting expectations about how work fits into life, Wendy Smith, SurveyMonkey’s senior manager of research science, told HR Brew. Work-life balance wasn’t a significant topic of conversation when Gen X and millennial employees were younger, she said, but in 

, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and popularization of remote work, it’s come to the forefront.

“People didn’t really talk about work life balance. You had work and then you had your life, and depending on how much you wanted to be successful, you would dedicate all of your hours to your job,” Smith said. “And so, I think with new attitudes and fresher culture coming in with the younger generation, it’s changing things.”

 about their career paths than their employers. For example, 22% of Gen Z respondents ranked career growth as important in a job, compared to 13% of millennials and 9% of Gen X respondents. Meanwhile, just 8% of Gen Z respondents said they value company culture, compared to 10% of millennials and 15% of Gen X respondents. And in a separate SurveyMonkey survey, 55% of Gen Z respondents admitted to spending more than one hour of their shifts on non-work activities, versus 48% of millennials and 30% of Gen X respondents.

But don’t assume younger workers don’t care at all about their jobs, Smith cautioned.

“They want to show up. They want to learn from older generations. They want to grow in their careers. It’s just that they have, maybe, a different way of approaching things,” she said. “They are used to multitasking a lot more. They’re not the company people, buying into some of the corporate culture [that] companies have promoted for so long.”

 HR professionals hoping to attract Gen Z candidates may want to rethink recruiting tactics that emphasize company culture as a selling point.

“I would imagine the free meals and ping pong tables at work would be less appealing to Gen Z, who want more flexibility, want more work life balance, who want more time off,” Smith said. “I see with the shifts with generations, that for recruiters, it would be more important to focus on the more individualistic aspects of the benefits of taking a job.”

Young person in casual workwear standing in front of photoshopped background looks down at a folder they're holding