HR Brew // Morning Brew // Update

HR STRATEGY

RTO shake out

The outline of a worker at an empty office desk

Anna Kim

Has in-office work fully bounced back?

The majority (87%) of job listings on career platform JobLeads are for roles that require workers to be fully onsite, according to January data from the site—7% offer a hybrid option and 6% are remote. The amount of occupied office space is also on the rise, reaching 55.1 million square feet in 2025 Q4, according to December data from commercial real estate firm JLL, up from 30 million at the end of 2020. (It’s still, however, down from 70 million in 2019.)

Many return-to-office (RTO) mandates represent a “mismatch” between what employees and companies want, Martin Schmidt, co-founder and managing director of JobLeads, told HR Brew. “American employers are being more aggressive on return-to-office,” he said, creating “tension” in the workforce.

For more on why corporate America is still talking about RTO, keep reading here.—MC

Presented By Paradox, a Workday Company

Nice to meet ya, Emma

After the COVID-19 pandemic, the hospitality industry was struggling to attract talent. For Great Wolf Lodge, that meant a major applicant drop-off for its 14k+ annual hourly positions. With fewer applicants, it had to be less selective, hiring nearly 50% of the applicants it received.

To improve the candidate experience and attract high-quality talent, Great Wolf Lodge turned to Paradox, a Workday Company for its core ATS. Powered by an AI assistant named Emma, Great Wolf’s new Conversational ATS helped them simplify everything from recruiting to onboarding.

In Paradox’s case study with The Josh Bersin Company, you’ll learn how Emma helped:

increase applicant volume by 300%
increase scheduled interviews by 400%
reduce time-to-hire from 31.5 days to just nine days
save $700k in annual recruitment marketing costs

Read the full story.

RECRUITMENT & RETENTION

Feedback loop

Jaime Petkanics

The last conversation HR has with an employee shouldn’t also be the first.

“By the time someone is sitting with me in an exit interview…we hopefully have a relationship in place, we have built trust, and ideally I’m not hearing about any big theme for the first time,” Jaime Petkanics, chief people officer at vitamin-maker Gruns, said during a recent episode of HR Brew’s People Person podcast. “An exit interview is great, all feedback is a gift, but ultimately the most useful feedback is the feedback you get when there’s still something you can do about it.”

She sat down with Kate Noel, SVP and head of people operations at Morning Brew, to discuss her exit interview strategy, and the one question she wishes she could ask outgoing employees.

COMPLIANCE

Time to settle

Walmart

Walmart is paying $100 million to settle allegations from the Federal Trade Commission and 11 states that it deceived delivery drivers about pay and caused them to lose tens of millions of dollars worth of earnings.

The complaint alleges Walmart made “false representations” to drivers in its Spark merchandise delivery service by inflating base pay, misrepresenting conditions for incentive pay, and falsely claiming drivers would receive 100% of tips going back to 2021. “Labor markets cannot function efficiently without truthful and non-misleading information about earnings and other material terms,” Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement.

In addition to the settlement, Walmart is required to implement a program to ensure drivers are paid the promised earnings and tips, prohibited from modifying base pay after the initial offer, and banned from misrepresenting earnings information sent to Spark Drivers.

For more on the allegations and settlement, keep reading on Retail Brew.—AV

Together With Stream

Finding financial wellbeing. Mindfulness and meditation won’t fix a broken pay cycle. A financial wellbeing package can seriously benefit your business’ holistic approach to wellness. Stream’s new guide explores how a comprehensive financial wellbeing platform helps improve employee financial wellbeing, and drive ROI. Download it here.

WORK PERKS

A desktop computer plugged into a green couch.

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: Only 35% of businesses report having an organization-wide data and AI upskilling program available to all of their employees. (DataCamp)

Quote: “The crisis at the Department of Labor is a crisis of leadership. Over the past few weeks we’ve learned that not only is [Sec. Chavez-DeRemer] not doing her job, she’s embroiling the department in scandal and possible criminal activity. It’s frankly embarrassing.”—Helen Luryi, former DOL employee with the agency’s Women’s Bureau, on the controversial tenure of President Trump’s pick to lead the department (the New York Times)

Read: The résumé—and new gen AI-powered tools that job seekers use to polish them—have largely become irrelevant when it comes to showcasing candidate fit, so much so that some recruiters aren’t even utilizing them, instead focusing on other indicators. (Business Insider)

HR’s AI assistant: When Great Wolf Lodge’s applicant volume dipped, it turned to Paradox’s Conversational ATS. By incorporating AI into hiring, Great Wolf Lodge reduced time-to-hire from 31 to nine days. Here’s how.*

^{*A message from our sponsor.}

Why unlimited PTO works in Europe

The collage shows one person in an airplane going on vacation while another person is at work with office buildings behind them.

Brittany Holloway-Brown

New data shows unlimited PTO leads to more time off in Europe—but barely moves the needle in North America. Here’s what cultural norms reveal about designing global time-off policies.

Check it out

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Written by Mikaela Cohen, Vicky Valet, Alex Vuocolo, and Adam DeRose

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