HR Brew // Morning Brew // Update

December 17, 2024

Happy Tuesday, HR Brew readers! The weather outside is frightful, but the office holiday parties everyone is hosting this week will be so delightful. (If there are no shenanigans that make you have to put your HR hat on after hours, that is.)

In today’s edition:

A storm is coming

Deal breaker

AI agents

—Mikaela Cohen, Adam DeRose, Patrick Kulp

HR STRATEGY

Let’s talk about it

Split image of a desk in two different weather conditions.

Illustration: Anna Kim, Photos: Adobe Stock

Let’s address the elephant in the room: Climate change.

Extreme weather events resulting from climate change pose a threat to the health of over 65 million “nonelderly” workers, according to research from health policy nonprofit KFF. While 81% of executives are concerned about how these weather events might impact the workplace, only 62% have a response plan, a recent report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found.

Whether wildfires in California or hurricanes in North Carolina, extreme weather events happen all around us, said Tracy Watts, senior partner and national leader for US health policy at consulting firm Mercer. “So many things happened last year, I felt like that really brought climate to the forefront…as something that is a true threat to worker health,” she told HR Brew.

Bruce Tracey, Blanchard professor of HR management at the Nolan School of Hotel Administration, Cornell University, who works with companies on weather protocols, agrees with Watts—adding that it’s important for companies to recognize how these events can impact employees, in order to develop responsive plans.

Keep reading here.—MC

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TOTAL REWARDS

Leave

image of pregnant woman on phone at work station

Visual Generation/Getty Images

A new survey from leave management software company Cocoon shows just how impactful paid leave policies are for both US job applicants and employees.

The survey found that paid leave is a must-have for many candidates, with 60% of respondents reporting that the lack of a competitive paid leave package would be a deal breaker when considering a new job. An additional 29% of respondents signaled that it “might” be a deal breaker.

“I hope that this is a call to action for folks…I hope that this is a tool that they can use to the industry at large, to better support, you know, the people that rely on us as companies,” said Amber Zeise, director of people at Cocoon.

What’s HR to do? Simply complying with state or local regulations on leave requirements doesn’t always mean a company’s leave policy meets the leave needs of employees.

Keep reading here.—AD

TECH

What’s next

Ece Kamar

Teamwork makes the dream work for the myriad specialized AI agents that may soon be joining offices everywhere.

One of the key questions driving Ece Kamar’s research as managing director of Microsoft’s AI Frontiers Lab is how to coordinate networks of these agents—AI systems that can perform autonomous tasks beyond the scope of chatbots. Late last year, her lab developed AutoGen, a popular open-source tool for creating multi-agent networks, and Microsoft turned it into a low-code studio for businesses earlier this year.

But it’ll likely take a lot more than that for businesses to be comfortable handing over swaths of their operations to fully autonomous systems. Indeed, Kamar, whose 2010 doctorate focused on human-AI collaboration as well as multi-agent systems, said human oversight and accountability will be key.

With the concept of agents ubiquitous on 2025 AI prediction lists, we spoke with Kamar about the future of this tech, the safeguards needed, and the year ahead in AI research.

Keep reading on Tech Brew.—PK

Together With Zendesk

Need a boost? HR ops teams, this one’s for you. Tune in Jan. 29 to learn how Dutch Bros Coffee increased productivity by 212% with Zendesk. Dutch Bros’ Mike Buzan, VP of People Ops + Strategy, and Samantha Ramirez, Employee Experience Administrator, will enjoy a stimulating discussion on streamlining employee services across a distributed workforce. RSVP here.

WORK PERKS

A desktop computer plugged into a green couch.

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: Annual employee turnover fell to 135% in 2024, down from 215% in 2023. (ZipRecruiter)

Quote: “Call it what you want to call it, as long as the intent of the work is still there.”—LaTricia Hill-Chandler, chief DE&I officer at Southern Bancorp and a former diversity manager at Walmart, on the latter changing its DE&I programming following pressure from conservative activist Robbie Starbuck (Bloomberg)

Read: Amazon allegedly ignored internal research that found a link between high work quotas and high injury rates in its warehouses. (the New York Times)

Nurturing talent: Guild empowers HR leaders to be difference-makers, boosting employees’ skills + filling the roles their orgs can’t succeed without. Education benefits, academies, and targeted skilling drive individual and business impact. Learn more.*

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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.

Manager, People and Culture at Entertainment Software Association (hybrid)
People & Change Senior Manager at a global consulting firm (hybrid)
Senior HR Business Partner at Energy Exemplar (in person)

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