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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

Courtney Vinopal

hr-brew.com

Graphic on attitudes on the future of fertility benefits

Graph showing attitudes about employer fertility benefits.

Graph showing the share of surveyed employees who receive fertility benefits.

Democrats hold a press conference on IVF.

Firms likely to expand fertility benefits after Alabama IVF ruling

While fertility treatments remain a rare employer benefit, 63% of US respondents say companies should offer them, according to a HR Brew/Harris Poll survey.

Most HR pros say companies are likely to expand, not reduce, fertility benefits

An office manager sitting at a desk in front of two computers with money floating around her

Tech is changing the game for compensation managers

An explosion of data coupled with advancements in tech means auditing compensation is now a year-round endeavor for HR. 

Heart shaped sticky note labeled "out of office" on a calendar

Why Crunchbase gives employees time off to volunteer 

Crunchbase, a private company data provider, has been offering “volunteering time off” (VTO) to its employees since 2018.

A present icon denoting total rewards and compensation

Total Rewards (Comp & Benefits)

An illustration of reporter Courtney Vinopal's headshot.

As the war for AI talent continues, it’s become pricier than ever.

At least that’s the case for a small group of companies seeking to capitalize on the revolution that proponents of the technology are promising.

Meta, which is going all-in on AI investments with the creation of a “superintelligence” lab, is reportedly offering multi-million dollar pay packages to poach top AI talent from competitors like OpenAI. At least one offer reached $1.5 billion, but the prospective hire turned it down, according to 

Some of the companies Meta is looking to poach AI talent from are outside the tech firms it has traditionally competed with for workers. To field his superintelligence team, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reaching out to employees not only from OpenAI, but also Anthropic and Thinking Machines Lab, which OpenAI alumni founded and only launched in the last five years.

While not all HR leaders can afford to hire AI talent for the price Meta is paying, they may well be taking a similar approach in their hiring strategy, forming separate AI “peer groups” to understand where top talent works, and what they earn, according to compensation experts.

How companies use peer groups to recruit workers, set salaries. 

Establishing peer groups is a longstanding practice in executive compensation. When determining executive pay packages, compensation committees will look at market data from a select basket of companies they typically compete against (at Meta, for example, this group included Alphabet, Microsoft, and Netflix in 2023, according to a 

When determining peer groups, employers typically “look at [their] competitive labor market for this pocket of employees that [they’re] thinking about,” Jonathan Jebson, compensation insights director with the compensation software firm Compa, told HR Brew. They ask themselves, “who are we hiring from? Who is hiring our people?” Companies also take into account factors like size and industry when selecting a peer group.

While this practice is common when setting pay for executives, it’s also used by companies seeking “more granular benchmarking data” for a broader set of employees, Jebson explained.

Such data is particularly valuable for companies hiring for AI-related roles as the field is fairly nascent, said Tom McMullen, senior client partner with Korn Ferry. “It’s not a mature space,” he said. “The technology is new…organizations are figuring out how to use it.” While employees may be using AI in their jobs, their roles may not be entirely dedicated to it, he said.

“When you don’t have firmed up roles…the published compensation surveys aren’t going to survey those jobs because the jobs aren’t firm,” McMullen explained, though he added that HR professionals may be able to glean how companies are paying for AI roles through job postings, given the increasing 

To help determine what pay might look like for roles requiring AI skills, compensation teams are identifying peer groups that look different from the set of organizations they would typically compete against for most roles, said Compa CEO and co-founder Charlie Franklin.

Compa sees many companies “explicitly targeting” Magnificent 7 firms for their AI peer groups, he said, referencing a term to describe a group of tech companies with large market capitalizations that includes Microsoft, Meta, and Nvidia. Organizations are looking not only to these firms, but also “some of the largest, most famous, private AI companies” to pull AI talent from, he added.

Once HR teams identify an AI peer group, they have to figure out if their company can afford talent from the firms they’re targeting, sources told HR Brew.

 for certain AI skills means engineering and HR teams are having to strike a balance in discussions about talent, Jebson said. While an engineering lead might be hoping to hire a candidate that hails from OpenAI, Anthropic, or a big tech company, the compensation team must then ask, “Can we effectively afford this?” and consider how hiring an elite machine learning engineer may affect internal pay equity.

Compensation teams lean on peer groups to guide these conversations, Jebson said. If the market for pay looks too high for a very narrow peer group, they may point to a different set of companies where talent is more affordable.

Paying top-of-market salaries for AI talent may be out of the question for many smaller startups, but Kaitlyn Knopp, founder and CEO of the compensation management software firm Pequity, encourages them to consider other factors that may drive talent to their company. A generous equity offer, work-life balance, and the opportunity to “work really hard at cool, new problems” are all things that could hold sway over a promising candidate, she said.

To price top AI roles, HR teams are leaning on peer groups

Companies have long relied on peer groups to help inform their hiring strategy, but their competitors are evolving as the war for AI talent continues.

To nab top AI talent, companies are pricing roles against a new set of competitors

Mikaela Cohen

AI skills are in demand, and HR will need to fork over higher salaries to recruit this talent.

Adding AI skills to job descriptions could cost employers 28% more in annual compensation, a 

 from research firm Lightcast found. AI-related skills can include expertise with large language models (LLMs), like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, as well as prompt engineering, text summarization, and more.

A Lightcast analysis of over 1.3 billion job postings in 2024 found roles advertising at least one AI or generative AI skill offered $18,000 more in annual compensation on average than those that did not. Some 51% of these AI roles were not in tech-related industries, up from 44% in 2022.

“AI is becoming more and more pervasive throughout all of the job descriptions that we’re seeing for virtually any different career area,” Cole Napper, VP of research at Lightcast, told HR Brew.

No longer are AI skills only associated with tech or IT roles, Napper said, and the roles that are seeing the biggest rise in AI skill demand are recruiters and HR pros.

Companies that don’t keep up with this trend, he said, could miss out on talent.

“There is a divergence that’s going on between employers who are saying, ‘We’re not leaning into this space. We’re not really seeing the need to do that,” Napper said. “It’s better to recruit sooner than later, because if you try to play catch up later, this is going to cost you even more.”

It’s a supply and demand issue, Napper added. More employers are demanding AI skills, but the supply of employees with these skills has stayed consistent, he said. He suspects the workforce will adjust through upskilling and reskilling, but this will take time.

“There is always a lagging effect, because it takes time for people to build skills,” he said.

AI robot arms reaching towards the sky with lots of money falling around them.

AI talent costs nearly 30% more in annual compensation

An estimated one-quarter of American workers perform some form of “gig work,” (roughly 42 million) and some economists believe the number of US gig workers may be much higher.

This type of temporary or freelance work has caught hold of American workers who are drawn to the flexibility that comes with contracting for platforms like Uber or Instacart. But there are downsides to gig jobs as well—namely the fact that they don’t typically come with benefits such as healthcare or paid time off.

“The way that our current system in the United States is set up is that all benefits and protections are tied to employment status,” said Regan Parker, chief legal and public affairs officer for ShiftKey, a platform that supports contract workers in the healthcare industry. While workers may value the flexibility and independence that comes along with contract work, they struggle with “no social safety net,” Parker added.

Some companies are seeking to change this dynamic by offering so-called “portable benefits,” which allow independent contractors to access healthcare or retirement savings without being tied to a full-time employer. One such company, DoorDash, recently released promising results from a pilot program offering portable benefits to workers in Pennsylvania.

 it was partnering with Stride Health to give workers in Pennsylvania savings accounts that could be used to fund retirement savings, health insurance, or time off, among other things.

Workers with the food delivery app who earned at least $1,000 before tips in the second quarter were eligible to participate in the pilot program, and DoorDash agreed to contribute 4% of participants’ pre-tip earnings to the accounts each month, HR Brew previously reported.

Over the course of the year-long program, nearly two-thirds (66%) of participants “who didn’t already have access to all the benefits they wanted or needed gained access to benefits they would not otherwise have,” according to 

 DoorDash commissioned from ndp analytics, a research firm based in Washington, DC.

The most common reason participants tapped into their portable benefits accounts was to take time off from work, with 35% of respondents saying they used their account for this purpose. Twenty-one percent of respondents used the funds for emergency savings, while 9% used them for health insurance, and 3% used the account for retirement.

Though the share of respondents using the accounts for healthcare might seem low, Parker pointed out that gig workers may receive insurance through a partner or the Affordable Care Act.

“Often what we’re hearing is that they want an emergency fund or that paid time off,” she said, citing a 

 that ShiftKey conducted last year which found missing major life events such as holidays, graduations, or funerals was a major contributor to burnout for nurses and other healthcare workers.

Recognizing that gig work is popular but precarious, some policymakers are advocating for legislation that would make it easier for independent contractors to access benefits.

 to pass a law allowing employers to give workers portable benefits while keeping them classified as independent contractors. Since Utah legislators passed that law in 2023, other states—including Alabama, Tennessee, and Wisconsin—have followed suit.

The issue has also caught the attention of lawmakers at the federal level as Republican senators released a 

 in July aimed at creating more pathways for portable benefits. One 

 that Sen. Bill Cassidy introduced would give safe harbor to employers who want to contribute to benefits on behalf of independent contractors.

Such proposals have their critics, though. Employers are drawn to hiring contractors in part because they don’t have to contribute to benefits on their behalf, and Jeff Worthington, president of Utah’s AFL-CIO, 

 that the state’s law would spur more businesses to contribute.

 about portable benefits, Sen. Bernie Sanders argued the Republican-sponsored legislation would not be as effective as programs ensuring universal healthcare or defined benefit pension plans for all workers. The Republican proposals, he argued, would “make it easier for large corporations to misclassify workers as independent contractors in order to avoid paying them decent wages and decent benefits.”

Companies like DoorDash are promoting portable benefits

DoorDash released results from a pilot program that gave Pennsylvania workers a benefits savings account to fund things like PTO, healthcare, and retirement.

Why tech companies and some lawmakers want to fund gig worker benefits

In 2026, US employers are expected to grant employees raises that are largely in line with what they’re receiving this year, according to a 

Economic concerns drive smaller compensation budgets. 

The report, which draws on a survey of more than 1,500 Payscale clients conducted in May and June, finds respondents expect workers will see their base pay go up by 3.5% next year, on average, down just 0.1% from this year.

But for organizations planning to shrink their compensation budgets, economic concerns loom much larger than in previous years. Of the respondents who said their 2026 budget for salary increases is expected to be lower than their 2025 budget, nearly two-thirds (66%), said they were “concerned about future economic conditions or business performance,” up 17 percentage points from last year.

This isn’t necessarily surprising given the economic backdrop. Inflation rose by 2.7% in June, reaching its highest level since February, and the Trump administration recently imposed 

 on trade partners, potentially hampering businesses’ appetite for hiring and raising worker wages.

These tough economic conditions have the potential to affect workers, too, noted Ruth Thomas, chief compensation strategist with Payscale. “It’s going to be a really challenging time,” she said. While 

 wage growth now exceeds inflation, Payscale’s survey suggests workers “are still feeling a hangover from the high level of inflation that we had previously.” What’s more, she said, tariffs may affect how much employees are spending on goods.

When navigating discussions with employees who are seeing lower pay raises than previous years, Thomas recommended “setting the economic context for them,” and explaining how industry trends affect compensation budgets. As a result of pay transparency, “employees are a much more informed audience now, so you have to be ready to inform them,” she said.

She also encouraged organizations to use their budget for pay increases “discerningly” in light of the fact that it may be the lowest it’s been in several years. Rather than grant 3.5% raises across the board, employers should consider rewarding “key talent,” particularly if they’re in a sector with lower demand for labor, such as tech.

HR should consider “the talent that’s going to drive transformation in your business next year, because they’re going to be the key talent that you want to keep, and which is the talent that is most at risk in your business,” Thomas said.

Inflation and tariffs could dent worker raises in 2026

Nearly two-thirds of organizations said they’re shrinking their compensation budgets for 2026 due to concerns about the economy or business performance, according to Payscale.

Economic anxiety is causing more employers to pull back on budgets for raises 

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

Paige McGlauflin

 for working parents. And while some employers 

So, it’s probably no surprise that Denise Reeb, an HR generalist at Sauder Manufacturing, considers securing funding for a childcare subsidy pilot program to be one of her most rewarding achievements.

Reeb is the HR rep for some 150 employees at an Indiana-based plant for the company, which has 500 workers total. The subsidy perk, created in partnership with the Northeast Indiana Early Childhood Coalition, is similar to Michigan’s Tri-Care program, where the organization, Sauder Manufacturing, and the employee each pay one-third of the costs of childcare.

Reeb notes there are some restrictions to the program, like limits on earnings. But despite that, she’s already confirmed interest from at least five employees at her plant alone. If the pilot succeeds, she says the company may be able to roll out the program to more workers.

“We’re one of the first companies that can offer this to our employees. So we’re trying it out, getting funding and budgeting,” she said. “We’re really excited about it. There’s a lot of buzz in the whole area. That’s one of my proudest accomplishments here so far.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

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

When I started my current job in 2022, we had sky-high turnover and very low morale. They were using temp workers that had no intention of building a good product or staying with the company. When I raised awareness of our employee referral program and started hiring only direct employees, we quickly saw a major improvement in stability, quality, and morale. We are currently at around 2% monthly turnover and employee stay interviews have almost no action items that haven't already been addressed.

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

That my job is to hire, discipline, and fire people. That is only a small portion of a generalist's role.

There’s a lot more. [There’s] the strategic part, working alongside the executives and the other managers here to make sure they're making the right decisions and being there for advice. [And] taking on these pet projects and making sure that we have a nice, safe, comfortable workplace here. I’m not just here to be a cop, good or bad. There’s just so many things that HR touches, and a lot of people just don’t understand that.

What’s the most fulfilling aspect of your job?

Getting positive feedback from employees about a project or program I’ve set in place. When I see employees that use resources, either here or in their personal lives, that I’ve given them, I get warm and fuzzy. Is that a normal HR feeling? :-)

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

The trend towards more strategic roles. When I started (a long time ago), HR was seen as administrative party planners. Now I get a seat at the table and am asked for input on business and operations matters.

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

AI. Although I use AI frequently as a helper, using it as a replacement for tasks without human oversight is very risky. I look forward to a future where AI has boundaries and is more functional. But until then, its use should be kept to a minimum.

Denise Reeb for HR Brew's Coworking series

One HR pro shares how she launched a childcare subsidy at her manufacturing company

Childcare benefits can be out of reach for many employers. This HR pro landed funding for a pilot program at a manufacturing facility.

How one HR pro at a manufacturing company landed funding for a childcare benefit

Since President Donald Trump took office in January, his administration has moved to crack down on a large migrant labor force that helps employers in industries like agriculture, service, and healthcare operate.

The administration has put certain green card applications 

to vet them for issues such as fraud or national security concerns, and 

 that had allowed workers from countries including Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to temporarily work and live in the US. It’s also 

 to the H-1B visa program, which grants around 85,000 visas to highly skilled workers from other countries each year, and is 

Even as the White House seeks to curb legal pathways for migrants to work in the US, employers are more willing to provide immigration-related benefits to their workers than they were five years ago, recent data from Indeed suggests.

 visa support, such as sponsorship for green cards or visas, was up 257% from the pre-pandemic baseline (February 2020) as of May.

This precipitous jump started back in mid-2021, and can be explained in part by the incredibly tight labor market that affected employer hiring strategies in the years following the pandemic, said Allison Shrivastava, an economist with the Indeed Hiring Lab.

“People had a really difficult time attracting and holding on to employees. We saw wage increases at almost 10% year over year. It was just an incredibly competitive time for employers to find employees,” she said. As a result, employers became more open to hiring foreign-born talent. This willingness to sponsor visas has lingered in certain sectors, Shrivastava added, even as the labor market has softened.

Healthcare stands out as an industry where employers are still keen to sponsor visas for potential hires. As of May, more than three-quarters of job postings that listed immigration benefits were in this field, according to Indeed.

It’s worth noting that Indeed’s data isn’t necessarily reflective of sectors that rely heavily on immigrant labor, but use more informal methods to hire workers, such as agriculture or construction. Industries that would be more liable to hire unauthorized immigrants likely wouldn’t advertise jobs online, according to Shrivastava. That doesn’t mean these job seekers aren’t interested in finding an employer that will sponsor their visa: Data shows the highest share of job-seekers (13.6%) using visa sponsorship-related terms in their job searches from June 2024 to May 2025 were in the food preparation and service sector, which typically has a large number of undocumented workers.

Over the past few decades, employers have 

 on foreign-born workers to fill their talent pools, with the number of nonimmigrant visas (i.e. those granted to immigrants who plan to stay in the US temporarily) issued to workers rising to 1.3 million in FY2023, from just under 160,000 in FY1989, according to State Department data.

Sponsoring a foreign-born employee’s visa can be costly, with an initial H-1B petition costing anywhere from $4,535 to $17,885, according to 

The fact that an increasing share of employers are willing to incur these costs suggests that jobs advertising immigration-related benefits are ones that companies struggle to fill with talent based in their own countries, Shrivastava said.

While this data shows employers are still open to sponsoring visas, policy changes in the US could affect job-seeker interest in these roles, Shrivastava noted. Job searches with visa sponsorship-related keywords have dipped slightly since the beginning of January, when Trump took office on an anti-immigrant agenda.

“We’ll have to see if people are willing to take those jobs,” given immigration policy is changing so rapidly, she said.

The exterior of a US Citizenship and Immigration Services building.

Employers want foreign-born workers despite immigration crackdown

The Trump administration is seeking to curb legal pathways for immigrants to work in the US, but recent Indeed findings show employers still support visas.

Employers open to sponsoring worker visas despite immigration crackdown

Kristen Parisi

From Japan to the US, and many places in-between, employee healthcare costs keep rising, as the talent skills gap grows simultaneously.

 Employers in several Asian markets, including Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan, are figuring out how to enhance their benefits packages without breaking the bank, 

 the WTW Benefits Trends Survey of roughly 2,000 employers.

Among the survey’s findings, health and wellbeing are the biggest benefits priorities for Asia Pacific (APAC) employers. Roughly 50% of those surveyed said they want to improve health and mental health benefits over the next three years. As more workers age, they’re also taking care of their aging parents in APAC, so one-in-three employers said that caregiver leave will be added to their benefits packages.

Even as employers enhance their healthcare offerings for employees, the cost is still a headache, according to the survey. Some 38% anticipate using “targeted programs” to help with expensive health conditions, like women’s health and cardiovascular disease. Employers will try to save money by removing some benefits, based on employee needs, although the report did not specify which benefits could end.

While competition for talent has been a steady driver of benefits strategy, inclusion and diversity fell off the top five in this year’s survey, replaced by the rising cost of benefits and financial pressures.

“Employers in APAC markets face diverging priorities. They will need to recalibrate, doing less of what does not work and more of what does,” Royston Tan, head of health and benefits, Asia Pacific, at WTW, said in a statement. “Companies need to invest in employee needs with greater precision, improving experience and choice, and using benefits to communicate who they are and what they stand for.”

 Employers in the US are also navigating rising healthcare costs, which were the main cost impacting benefit strategies in 2025, HR Brew 

. Some companies are reconsidering which vendors they use for their insurance carriers or pharmacy benefit managers for maximum value.

And as expensive treatments like GLP-1 medications (to treat Type 2 diabetes and obesity) add more costs for employers, some may have to put the burden on their employees, CNN 

Beth Umland, director of research at Mercer, told CNN that some employers may be at their breaking point. “Employers are thinking, we’re at a point where we can’t do another year of not passing along some of the cost increases.”