HR Brew // Morning Brew // Update

February 11, 2025

Welcome to Tuesday! There’s a secret class of workers engaging in what may sound like a nightmarish activity to HR pros: power napping on the clock. But maybe catching a wink on company time isn’t so bad. After all, some leaders, like Arianna Huffington, have embraced the trend, saying it can improve productivity and creativity. Shall we give it a try?

In today’s edition:

Exhausted, yet engaged

Superworkers

AI agents

—Paige McGlauflin, Adam DeRose, Patrick Kulp

RECRUITMENT & RETENTION

We’re cooked

Illustration: Anna Kim, Photos: Adobe Stock

If you managed to evade burnout last year, scientists may be interested in studying your resilience. Burnout in the workplace reached an all-time high in 2024. Around 82% of 1,500 white-collar, desk-based knowledge workers in North America, Asia, and Europe surveyed by DHR Global reported being “slightly” to “extremely” burned out. Similarly, 39% of 2,100 global employees surveyed by Skillsoft cited burnout and exhaustion as the top challenge they experienced in 2024.

Burned out and… locked in? 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 respondents 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.

Why? “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.

What’s the risk? 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.

Keep reading here.—PM

presented by Paylocity

From planning to payroll

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Check out the full Playbook here.

TECH

It’s a bird, a plane, a superworker

image of shadow that looks like a hero behind a silhouette of a person

Afry Harvy/Getty Images

There’s Superman, Superwoman, Supernova girls (at least there were in the Disney Channel original movie Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century), supermodels, super foods, and even Supercuts. When something is super, it’s above; it’s beyond or exceeding the normal noun it precedes. We like Superman and super foods, and Zenon really loved Supernova Girl singer-songwriter Proto Zoa.

According to HR industry analyst Josh Bersin, the world of business is emerging on the cusp of a new “super”—the superworker.

“Rather than thinking of our companies as large collections of human beings, with all the management issues, of course, that we have to deal with, we need to think about our companies as collections of digital agents and digital assistants, with people operating as superworkers on top of this AI level of intelligence,” Bersin said last month on his eponymous podcast. “Of course, nobody’s there yet…but there’s no question now, given the rapid maturity and the huge amounts of investment that are going into this, that this is going to change the nature of every job in the company.”

Bersin coined the term “superworker” to describe employees who apply AI tools to “dramatically enhance their productivity, performance, and creativity.”

Keep reading here.—AD

TECH

Have your agent call my agent

An AI Agent's hand reaching out to press a button labeled

Amelia Kinsinger

The AI world might feel a bit like Hollywood at the moment: Everybody has an agent.

We’ve been told for months that agents are the next big thing in the generative AI revolution. And prognosticators say 2025 will be the year they become a reality. These (more) autonomous systems can act beyond the realm of a chatbot to plan and perform multi-step tasks.

But what exactly does that mean? Are code generation and text summarization—things that chatbots have been able to do since ChatGPT’s early days—not tasks or actions, too?

With all the hype floating around, we wanted to attempt to determine a concrete definition of what constitutes an AI agent and how it’s different from other types of AI systems.

Keep reading on Tech Brew.—PK

together with Paylocity

Huddle up. When it comes to headcount management, finance, HR, and hiring teams need to be on the same page. That’s where Paylocity’s Headcount Management Playbook comes in. Learn how to build a scalable strategy, align company goals with workforce plans, and even improve collaboration. Get the Playbook.

WORK PERKS

A desktop computer plugged into a green couch.

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: International hiring volume increased 42% YoY in 2024 for tech companies using background check provider Checkr. (Bloomberg)

Quote: “DEI programming grew popular because it was responding to real challenges organizations were facing…Basically they’re being told to do nothing about these problems. That seems nonviable from a legal standpoint.”—Musa al-Gharbi, a sociologist and assistant professor at Stony Brook University, on the Trump administration’s attacks on corporate DE&I programs (the New York Times)

Read: Women are altering their email diction to sound more like their male colleagues as part of an emerging TikTok trend. (WorkLife)

Plan ahead: Are your new hires driving your org towards its goals? Grab Paylocity’s Headcount Management Playbook to learn what it takes to build a scalable strategy and boost efficiency. Check it out.*

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JOBS

Looking for a job where your values and skills are understood? CollabWORK links you with roles curated within trusted communities, from niche Slack workspaces to industry newsletters like HR Brew. Discover new opportunities without the job-board fatigue—join CollabWORK today, or click here to browse jobs chosen for HR Brew readers.

Human Resources Supervisor at a professional services organization (hybrid)
Interim Human Resources Director at HR Soul (hybrid)
People and Culture Generalist at an innovative and growing biotech organization (in person)

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