HR Brew // Morning Brew // Update

February 04, 2026

Hello, fabulous HR pros! Curious what the bots who won’t be taking all the human jobs in a few years are musing about in their free time? Well, there’s an app for that!

Actually, it’s a new AI agent-only social media platform, Moltbook, and it’s interesting, but terrifying. Among the many, many, conversations Clawbot agents on the app (powered by AI platform OpenClaw) are exploring are myriad Reddit-style threads contemplating the thing businesses have hated since before Samuel Gompers was born: organizing. So union busting (sorry, we mean union avoidance trainings) will also look different in 2026. What else, universe? What else?

In today’s edition:

What’s in a name?

Coworking

Deepfake detection

—Mikaela Cohen, Adam DeRose, Brianna Monsanto

HR STRATEGY

Call me by my job title

Seesaw representing "Job" outweighing "Title"

Francis Scialabba

Do job titles matter?

Well, Deloitte thinks so, and by June, it said it will change the job titles of its nearly 182,000 US employees to reflect how it’s prioritizing AI transformation across its consulting practice, Business Insider reported.

Deloitte is “modernizing our talent architecture to provide a more tailored experience reflective of our professionals’ broad range of skills and the work they do,” a spokesperson told Business Insider. (Deloitte didn’t respond to HR Brew’s request to comment by the time of publication.)

“With all that’s going on in the world…the unsettled social, economic, political environment, this is not a little thing,” Susan Legar Ferraro, founder and CEO of her consulting firm G3 Works, told HR Brew about Deloitte’s announcement. “This organization influences probably millions of people…They have an opportunity to do something really good here and to be an example to the rest of the world.”

For more on what HR can learn from Deloitte’s move to change job titles, keep reading here.—MC

Presented By Paycor

Taking HR trends to heart

People in the HR world want to do right by their employees. That’s why they get into the field. So what better way to help them than to understand what they’re looking for?

Paycor’s 12 HR Trends to Embrace in 2026 helps you do just that. Paycor compiled a list of this year’s biggest shifts in one place so your team can best implement the ones that fit.

For example, Paycor found that:

Flex work models are here to stay.
Employee well-being and mental health are key elements of engagement and retention.
AI use has become the industry standard.

These insights help HR teams assess what’s important to their peers and how to approach them in the new year. Get the full report.

HR STRATEGY

Coworking with Steven Starace

Steven Starace

Here’s this week’s edition of our Coworking series. Each week, we chat 1:1 with an HR Brew reader. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.

With more than 20 years of experience inside the IT and business consulting firm CGI, Steven Starace knows the business inside and out. Starace worked on the business and finance side of the company before moving into its top HR role leading people operations in 2023, “which was shocking to me,” he said. “It was never on my radar.”

For CGI, he told HR Brew, it actually was a great fit. “They wanted to make sure that HR was not HR for HR, that HR was not process centric, that HR was really about empowering the business,” he said. “Who better to have that perspective than people who lived and operated in the business, and especially, in a professional service organization, everything we do is about talent.”

Starace’s approach to HR doesn’t abandon policy and process management or compliance. Rather, those are simply tablestakes, and he’s looking to further evolve the function into a strategic growth driver. Employees at CGI need to grow their people skills, soft skills, and leadership, he said, because in many ways that’s what they’re selling to clients.

RECRUITMENT & RETENTION

Something seems off…

Illustration and interpretation of a deepfake detector

Francis Scialabba

Many people start off the new year with fun, low-stakes resolutions. Jason Rebholz, co-founder and CEO of Evoke Security, had a more unusual beginning to his 2026: He inadvertently interviewed a deepfaked candidate for a security researcher role.

It all started with a LinkedIn post. In January, Rebholz used LinkedIn to promote a few vacant roles at his AI security company. He received a message from an individual who claimed to know just the right person for an open security researcher position.

“It wasn’t somebody that I had known before, but this is kind of the nature of dealing with posting things publicly,” Rebholz said.

But as Rebholz continued to chat with this new LinkedIn contact, certain details didn’t line up.

For more on Evoke Security’s experience with a deepfake job applicant, keep reading on IT Brew.—BM

Together With Form Health

Is wellness working? Chronic conditions require clinical solutions. That’s why Form Health is introducing a new all-in-one cardiometabolic platform that utilizes a clinician-led approach to manage conditions such as type 2 diabetes, pre-diabetes, and obesity. It can reduce employer costs and improve employee health outcomes. Learn more.

WORK PERKS

A desktop computer plugged into a green couch.

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: Three-fourths (75%) of Americans say that when it comes to career success, “hands-on skills” and “practical experience” are more important than formal degrees in today’s world of work. (Business Insider)

Quote: “As things evolve every decade, new jobs will emerge. You can’t even plan for a job that will be there 10 years from now, or 20 years from now, or even two years from now.”—HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan said of the job disruption companies and their employees are facing amid the AI transformation (Fortune)

Read: For the fashionista’s in the HR department: As younger workers increasingly turn to the trades as career opportunities tighten and businesses and governments look to bolster digital infrastructure, clothes and footwear associated with mechanics, builders, and electricians are becoming fast-growing apparel markets. (the Wall Street Journal)

Treasured trends in HR: Paycor’s 12 HR Trends to Embrace in 2026 helps you do just that. They’ve compiled a list of this year’s biggest shifts in one place. Get the full report here.*

^{*A message from our sponsor.}

Civic duty without the stress

A side-by-side graphic of a gavel and a close-up image of hands passing a white business envelope

Adobe Stock

Serving on a jury is an important obligation. But when employees miss work (and pay) for it, both workers and employers feel the pinch. This story breaks down how HR teams can design paid jury-duty leave, why it matters for employee trust and morale, and what to consider when turning the benefit into policy.

Check it out

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Written by Mikaela Cohen, Adam DeRose, and Brianna Monsanto

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