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.

Companies are beefing up security for top executives in the wake of violent events targeting corporate leaders.

Personal security was the second most common benefit companies were considering offering to their executives when they were surveyed between April 30 and June 27, according to a 

 from Ayco, a financial planning and wealth management arm of Goldman Sachs.

More than one-quarter of compensation and benefits professionals surveyed said their organization offered its CEO personal security benefits, a 10-percentage point increase from 2023. Such benefits may include having at least one security person accompany an executive on business travel or during public events, hiring an armed driver and security company vehicle, or conducting a home security assessment.

This uptick comes as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is evaluating disclosure requirements surrounding executive perks, and considering whether security benefits should be subject to current rules.

A number of incidents that occurred since Ayco last conducted this survey in 2023 have seemingly prompted companies to take a closer look at their security benefits.

United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot last December outside of a Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan while he was making his way to a gathering for investors. More recently, four people 

 by a shooter who breached the entrance of an office building on Park Avenue, also in midtown Manhattan.

Following Thompson’s shooting, the board of animal health company Zoetis moved immediately “to establish a security function within our organization,” Roxanne Lagano, EVP, general counsel and corporate secretary, said during a Sept. 16 panel on executive compensation hosted by the Conference Board.

CEOs and other executives are much more visible today due to their presence on forums like social media, “so security has become much more relevant from that perspective,” Lagano said. She added that security is “not viewed as a perk,” but rather “as a necessary business expense.”

Though more companies are starting to see security as a necessary expense for its executives, it’s still generally considered a “perquisite” under current SEC guidance, and thus subject to the agency’s disclosure rules.

The SEC requires public companies to disclose how much they spend on executive perks like air travel, country club dues, or tickets to sporting events if the costs amount to more than $10,000 annually, unless a firm can demonstrate such benefits are “integrally and directly related to the performance of the executive’s duties.”

Some investors and representatives from public companies questioned whether security should still be considered a perk, though, when the SEC held a roundtable on disclosure requirements in June.

“There is a strong belief among many that security benefits…should be a separate disclosure,” said Jonathan Barber, Ayco’s VP and head of compensation and benefits solutions. He noted that although security is labeled as a perk, companies often mandate it for their executives after conducting a risk assessment.

“The thought is, is that really fair for a company to disclose something, and the expense to be scrutinized as a perquisite?” he added.

While the SEC may be mulling changes to these disclosure regulations, Barber said he wouldn’t expect to see any new guidance prior to 2027. Until then, he expects companies to emphasize their justification for investing in security-related benefits when disclosing them, especially when they involve air travel.

 for allowing their executives to use the company jet for personal reasons, such benefits hold more water from a corporate governance standpoint if they’re justified by concerns like security, Barber said. More than half (54%) of respondents to Ayco’s survey said their principal reason for letting executives use the company aircraft was security. Similarly, 64% said they offered executives a chauffeur for this reason. Respondents who said their organizations offered access to the company jet for reasons like convenience or efficiency were more likely to put limits on such benefits, Barber noted.

Police examine the location where United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot in midtown Manhattan.

Executive security benefits grow after United Healthcare shooting

Employers are investing in security for CEOs and other executives, but whether such benefits should be classified as a “perk” is a subject of current debate. 

More companies offer security to CEOs in wake of United Healthcare CEO shooting

Kathryn Larkin got her start in the world of total rewards as a lawyer, advising clients of companies like Deloitte on how to design benefits.

This involved a fair amount of problem-solving, Larkin told HR Brew. After a while, she said, “you wish that you could set things up so maybe you wouldn’t need to solve the problems,” she said. To design benefits with a solutions-oriented approach, she needed to be part of HR.

This desire for a seat at HR’s table led Larkin to take on a position as director of global benefits for Air Products, an industrial gas company, where she also served as their in-house employee benefits and executive compensation counsel.

After nearly 14 years with Air Products, the investment management company Vanguard tapped Larkin to be its head of global benefits in 2024. In this role, Larkin works with her team to educate workers so they get as much as they possibly can out of the benefits Vanguard offers.

Vanguard tries to promote physical, personal, and financial wellness through its offerings, and sees this mission as an extension of its business, Larkin said. The company views its 20,000 employees as its biggest asset “because they’re the ones who are actually doing the work that provides the shareholder value.”

To that end, one financial benefit that Vanguard touts to its workforce is a Health Savings Account (HSA) seed and match. The company puts $500 toward individual employee HSAs, and $1,000 for those with families, as well as matches contributions by 1.5 times what the worker puts into their account. Vanguard encourages employees to view HSAs as a long-term savings vehicle for retirement, Larkin said.

Once individuals turn 65, they can use an HSA for anything, though expenses that don’t qualify as medical are taxed. Because HSA funds roll over into the next year, “it’s kind of a pressure valve for individuals, you’re building this kind of medical nest egg,” she said.

There’s a fair amount of education that goes into positioning the HSA—which is offered to employees on high-deductible health plans—as a tool for long-term savings. Vanguard says she understands that workers may need to use the funds for medical expenses in the near-term, but encourages them to tap into other benefits first if possible so they can save at least part of their HSA funds. The company’s flexible spending accounts, for example, can be used for dental and vision costs.

“You will have medical expenses in retirement,” Larkin explained, referring to items like prescriptions or hearing aids. “So think of it as your 401(k) for your medical.”

Larkin’s team has employees focused on both strategy and operations. She described the latter team members as “the engine that makes the benefits run,” with a focus on troubleshooting any questions or concerns that may arise from Vanguard employees.

Vanguard’s communications team monitors questions that come through ServiceNow and flags any “pain points” that come up in the benefits process, Larkin said. “They’ll sit with me and provide a report and say, ‘Do you realize a lot of people are asking questions about X? We think we need to get out in front of this, something doesn’t seem to be working.’”

One of the most common pain points that comes up concerns medical benefits—which isn’t surprising given 

 and complex this area of total rewards has become. When questions about medical plans arise, Vanguard can direct them to in-house advocates with Aetna, the company’s insurance provider. The idea behind hiring these contractors was to allow people with specific expertise to handle medical benefits-related questions, Larkin said.

Such efforts are ultimately in service of helping employees “get every ounce of every benefit we have,” Larkin said. Whereas employers were focused on cost-savings when she first entered total rewards, that perspective has shifted today, as businesses now view benefits as driving the “total value proposition” for their workers, she observed.

In Larkin’s view, the measure of a successful benefits program is one that’s “highly utilized and valued.” Given this philosophy, it’s not hard to see why Vanguard’s 401(k) program, for instance, has a 98% participation rate.

“If you have benefits that people aren’t using, you’re wasting money,” she added.

A portrait of Kathryn Larkin, head of global benefits at Vangaurd.

Vanguard’s head of global benefits on maximizing value

The investment management firm’s head of global benefits said her team aims to help workers maximize offerings such as HSA accounts. 

Vanguard’s Kathryn Larkin wants employees to squeeze “every ounce” out of their benefits

President Trump may have recently declared English as the official language of the United States, but the situation is more complicated in workplaces like hospitals, which serve patients with varying levels of English proficiency every day.

Language barriers can affect patients’ experiences with the healthcare system, and in turn their overall health, according to a 

. Adults with limited English proficiency were less likely to report their healthcare provider involved them in decision-making about their care, with 63% responding that this occurred in the last three years, compared to 82% of English proficient adults. And these adults were more likely to say they were in fair or poor health (34%) than those who were English proficient (19%).

In light of such challenges, HR leaders at healthcare organizations are incorporating language certifications into their learning and development programs. Such programs may not only help current employees better serve their non-English speaking populations, but also contribute to their own career development, sources told HR Brew.

Novant Health, an integrated health system headquartered in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, has employees who are interested in both English- and Spanish-language learning, according to Lauren King, VP, talent acquisition and workforce development.

Novant offers English as a second-language course through Future Forward, a training and advancement program it launched in August. Through the program, Novant pays up to $5,250 a year for full-time employees to take either degree or non-degree courses, including professional certification and English language proficiency classes.

“One of the No. 1 courses we see people enrolling in right now is actually Spanish-speaking for healthcare careers,” King said at an Oct. 6 panel during WBR Research’s HR Healthcare conference in Boston. Such opportunities appeal to “our care workers who want to be able to communicate with their patients at a different level, and maybe some of their team members and peers,” she said.

JPS Health Network reimagined its qualified bilingual staff program to give more employees the opportunity to apply their language skills in the workplace, CHRO Ashley Ridgeway-Washington said during a separate HR Healthcare panel. Her team found that a large share of Spanish-speaking employees were providing informal translation to patients with the network, which is based in Fort Worth, Texas. Since making it easier to become certified as an interpreter, the organization has seen a 23% increase in the number of qualified bilingual staff, she said. Pursuing a language certification “gives them the opportunity to provide more robust interpretation for our patients, and also get a differential for that when they’re doing it.”

JPS is also developing a program that allows employees to take on additional shifts to work as interpreters, Ridgeway-Washington said. The network typically spends seven figures each quarter on remote interpretive services, but finds “that the outcomes are much better with on-premise, in person interpretive services,” particularly in departments for trauma patients or maternity, women, and children. “So we’re really working hard to build a stronger bench of interpreters,” she added.

Workers in the healthcare sector may enroll in language courses for a variety of reasons, Katie Brown, founder and chief education officer for EnGen, a language upskilling platform, told HR Brew. She said her organization sees internationally trained healthcare workers seek out English courses so they can feel more comfortable talking with colleagues and patients. At the same time, clinical healthcare workers may seek to learn any number of languages—from Spanish to Haitian Creole to Ukrainian—to better serve their patient populations.

“The common theme is that we need to be able to deliver care in the language that reflects the communities that we’re serving. And that’s a ‘both, and’ situation.”

Whatever approach HR teams land on for incorporating language learning into their benefits, Brown said it’s a good idea to make sure these efforts are aligned with talent acquisition strategies. This is particularly true for sectors like healthcare, where employers continue to struggle to fill certain roles, and may be overlooking promising internal talent.

“There are opportunities to leverage existing infrastructure to help people get foundational skills…that could then be leveraged within the workplace to promote people from within and build talent pipelines,” she said.

Close up of a healthcare professional holding a tablet with a floating globe icon inside a speech bubble.

Why language upskilling is vital to healthcare employers

Healthcare organizations are finding new ways to upskill their workers in light of language barriers that can affect both employees and patients.

Language skills are increasingly in demand for healthcare professionals

Kristen Parisi

Employers in the UK are limiting how much salary information they share with job applicants, according to recent data from 

In August, just 56% of job listings analyzed by Indeed had salary information, down from 65% in September 2024.

While the European Union issued a pay transparency directive in 2023 that will take effect in June 2026, employers in the UK are not obligated by law to share salary information in job listings. The decline in transparency observed by Indeed could be related to the 

 the UK is experiencing. Now, more workers are “job hugging,” and just 1 in 10 employers plans to hire before the end of the year, HR Brew 

“Some hiring managers are being reigned in a bit whenever they get into negotiations around recruiting people just because of the broader context where organizations might be having to think about redundancies or hiring freezes,” David Lorimer, partner and specialist in pay transparency at Lewis Silkin, told Bloomberg.

Even with the decline, employers in the UK are more likely to advertise salary ranges for open positions than US employers (56% vs. 48.2%, respectively), according to Bloomberg.

The US has taken a piecemeal approach to pay transparency. There are at least 

, plus Washington, DC, with pay transparency laws on the books, requiring companies to share salary ranges in job postings, which some research and many pay equity advocates have said can help reduce the 

Companies that don’t provide pay information upfront could miss out on Gen Z talent, according to data from 

, which polled 2,000 Gen Z Americans about their attitudes toward finances and found that 58% of respondents would not apply for a job that did not list a salary.

“With Gen Z becoming a larger part of the workforce, it may be time for those employers to reconsider their choice,” Alex Beene, financial literacy instructor at the University of Tennessee at Martin, told 

. “More importantly, it may not just be Gen Z in the years to come, as more employees across generations are desiring to have a better picture of pay because of current inflationary pressures.”

Fewer UK employers are sharing salary information upfront

The decline could indicate an employer shift in hiring in a stalled economy, Indeed finds.

World of HR: Fewer UK employers are sharing salary information in job listings

As many companies head into open enrollment season, the gap between employer offerings and employee understanding is widening, according to recent data from insurance company MetLife.

Fifty-seven percent of full-time employees 

 said they “fully understand what their benefits cover.” That’s the lowest level since the company began tracking this issue in 2020; at that time, 66% of respondents said they had a full understanding of what their benefits do and do not cover.

A few factors may be at play here, according to Todd Katz, head of US group benefits with MetLife. Benefits are becoming more expensive and complex, and as a result, plan design may be changing. Employers are grappling with 

 that mandate they provide benefits like paid leave to workers in certain jurisdictions.

At the same time, employees are feeling more disengaged and less connected to their work compared to previous years, the survey found. As a result, employees may struggle to understand their benefits, as well as “access those benefits the way that they were intended to be used at the time of need,” Katz said.

To address this disconnect, MetLife is encouraging employers to double down on personalizing the benefits experience for workers, as well as adopt an “always-on” communication strategy.

The concept of offering workers enrollment tools to help them make better decisions about their benefits is likely familiar to many total rewards leaders. Companies like MetLife have doubled down on such solutions in recent years, 

Such platforms typically rely in part on employees’ medical and financial data (provided they elect to share it) to deliver “curated recommendations” for workers, Katz said. Allowing “employees to add personalization at every touch point where they possibly can” may help them feel confident in their decisions without having to study up on the entirety of their employer’s benefits offerings, he suggested.

Once employees elect benefits, HR teams can think about how to communicate with workers throughout the year to ensure they’re actually using them, Katz said.

“Whatever way you’re communicating to your employees, you’re nudging them to use the benefits the way they’re supposed to be used,” he said. Ideally, the process of using the benefit should be easy, even if it’s administratively complex on the back-end—as may be the case with paid leave, for example.

An effective benefits communication strategy should be “proactive and year-round,” Tim O’Connor, VP of HR technology partnerships & enrollment services with Prudential Group Insurance, told HR Brew via email.

HR teams should consider how communication styles and access to technology may differ across their employee populations. Ideally, he said, they’ll communicate about benefits across multiple channels, and ask workers how they’re doing throughout the year. He added, “HR leaders should regularly revisit not just 

, then measure effectiveness and ask for employee feedback.”

Communication isn’t one-size-fits all. 

Overloading employees with benefits information is certainly possible, a separate survey from Alight Solutions, a benefits technology platform, suggests.

That survey found 46% of workers were overwhelmed by the amount of communication they received about pay, benefits, and well-being. This was particularly true for respondents in HR (67%) and senior management (69%), but not individual contributors (25%). This suggests that while decision-makers who are steeped in this information might not see the need for additional communication about benefits, lower-level employees are “actually craving a little bit more,” said Laine Thomas Conway, Alight’s VP for delivery, enablement, and engagement.

Ensuring that employees fully understand their benefits, then, may require leadership to consider how their needs may differ from rank-and-file workers, she said.

MetLife, Prudential stress year-round communication on benefits

The share of employees that fully understand their benefits has dropped, according to one survey, likely due to factors like cost and complexity. 

Benefits industry leaders stress personalization and always-on communication ahead of open enrollment 

Remote work in Europe doubled between 2019 and 2024, with more than one in five workers in the region now working remotely at least one day a week. Despite the popularity of remote work, 

 from the European Central Bank (ECB) found that remote and hybrid workers wouldn’t take a pay cut to keep their current schedule.

 Roughly 34% of workers in Europe are remote at least one day a week, and 10.6% are fully remote, according to the CEB. Most workers prefer a hybrid schedule.

While workers enjoy working remotely, 70% said they don’t love it enough to take a pay cut. Those who are willing to sacrifice some of their salary said they would accept a 2.6% decrease, while 8% would take a 6%–10% reduction.

The report noted that remote work can inhibit workers’ ability to be recognized and socialize at work, which may make some unwilling to take a pay cut. But younger workers and those with children at home reported being more likely to accept a pay cut, as did those with longer commutes.

“For some employees—particularly those with children or long commutes—working from home is highly valued, as it can help them balance their work and personal life,” the authors concluded. “Remote working flexibility can therefore play a role in attracting and retaining workers, especially in tight labour markets where skilled staff are scarce.”

 Workers in the US may be more willing than their European counterparts to give up some cash to work remotely, according to recent surveys from 

Fifty-five percent of fully in-person workers said they would accept a pay cut in exchange for a remote or hybrid option, Youngstown State University found. Many respondents said they would accept up to an 11% pay cut to work a hybrid schedule, while just one-third of current remote and hybrid workers said a pay increase could lure them into the office full-time. Meanwhile, 69% of respondents to FlexJobs’ survey said they would take a pay cut to work remotely, up 11% from 2024.

Maybe US workers could be persuaded to give up work-from-home days if they had European benefits, according to 

 from CNBC—universal healthcare and four weeks of PTO a year is quite alluring.

Most workers in Europe would not take a pay cut to continue working remotely

Parents and people with long commutes are more likely to take a pay cut to work remotely, study finds. 

World of HR: Workers in Europe like working remotely—but not enough to take a pay cut

Parentaly, a platform that helps companies and employees navigate leaves of absence, recently announced it’s appointing an advisory board to help businesses better navigate challenges surrounding this benefit.

The board, which includes former CHROs and chief people officers from companies including Mastercard, Xerox, and MetLife, is coming together at a time when more employers are expanding their paid leave policies—either due to local laws, shifting expectations among workers, or both.

But even as businesses roll out more generous paid family and medical leave policies, they’re not always thinking about how to manage the challenges that arise when employees take advantage of these benefits, Allison Whalen, Parentaly’s CEO and co-founder, told HR Brew.

“When people are going to step away from work for the longest period they will ever step away, we need to make sure that there are systems within the organization set up so that that doesn’t backfire, meaning the work continues effectively,” and workers feel supported in their careers when they return, she said.

Some of the top challenges Whalen sees employers experience when workers take a leave of absence is team burnout, as well as business disruption. “When you remove a person, what happens to the priorities and the business deliverables?” she said. While companies typically have business continuity plans for events like natural disasters or data breaches, “they don’t think about business continuity plans when it comes to parental leaves, which are very frequent and predictable,” she added.

The CHRO board will tackle these types of issues through thought leadership and research, as well as advise Parentaly about its product, Whalen said.

Just over one-quarter (27%) of private-sector workers had access to paid family leave as of March 2023, up 17 percentage points from 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. More recent figures from SHRM show 39% of employers offered paid parental leave as of this year. As employers have rolled out more generous leave policies, HR teams have developed different strategies for handling 

These concerns are becoming more pertinent to the C-suite as larger shares of employees (including 

) gain access to leave, and workers become parents later in life, Whalen noted. “There are just more people leaving, and it’s becoming more problematic, and so that then becomes escalated to a more senior level.”

Leave benefits present an interesting challenge for organizations from a risk-management perspective, Tiffany Stevenson, former SVP and chief people officer at WeightWatchers, who is joining the board, told us. She said she hopes the board can explore how to “bring other decision-makers into this conversation, specifically the CFO, COO, and CEO.” Such C-suite leaders may help organizations think about their “operational effectiveness, the long term talent strategy, and direct impact on business continuity” amid leaves of absence, she said.

Illustration of a person with two children looking at a calendar, with hand holding money in background.

Former CHROs join board to advise businesses on parental leave

Former HR leaders from Mastercard, WeightWatchers, and others will help advise companies on navigating challenges that arise when workers take time off.