COMPLIANCE

HR Brew

A Virginia jury this month unanimously found SHRM liable in a disability discrimination lawsuit involving a disability accommodation request. The jury’s verdict awarded $400,000 in compensatory damages to the plaintiff.

The civil lawsuit, Torres v. Society for Human Resource Management, filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia last December, alleged SHRM discriminated against plaintiff Fiona Torres after she was offered a full-time position as a senior specialist in its product management department in 2024. In her complaint, she alleged SHRM violated both the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Virginia Human Rights Act (VHRA) when it withdrew her offer and failed to accommodate her request to bring her medical alert dog to work to manage her type 1 diabetes.

According to court documents and trial testimony, Torres, after receiving a conditional offer from SHRM, notified the HR industry group of her accommodation request to bring her trained medical alert dog to work so he could detect sudden changes to her blood glucose levels which she sometimes experiences due to her type 1 diabetes. SHRM denied Torres’s request, instead offering her a set of “alternative accommodations” it believed would address her needs and allow her to perform her work duties without her medical alert dog.

Context is key. Ashley Herd, an employment attorney who founded and runs the manager training program Manager Method and hosted the now-retired HR Besties podcast, followed SHRM’s lawsuit this year and spoke with HR Brew about lessons HR leaders can draw from the lawsuit. Herd is not involved in the Torres case.

For more on what HR leaders can learn from the SHRM lawsuit, keep reading here.—AD

      

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DEI

Inclusion work has faced an identity crisis in recent years. As companies limit budgets and change focus, HR and inclusion practitioners find themselves getting left out of important decisions about AI deployment.

The Center for Talent Innovation (formerly Coqual) surveyed 173 organizational decision-makers to understand who is responsible for inclusion moving forward, and how they can work with technologists to ensure humans are still centered. It detailed its findings in a new report, “Borrowing from Tomorrow,” released today.

“Went out looking for the future of inclusion, and our research led us to this much, dare I say, juicier, more existential question about how leaders, in their haste to to keep up, to change for this AI-powered era, how they are transforming with humans in mind or not, [and] we found a story about designing with intentionality,” Emily Gawlak, co-executive director of Coqual’s Global Lab, told HR Brew.

There’s no “right way” forward, she said, and with AI in the chat, inclusion practitioners are “fundamentally rethinking their operating models. They are changing workflows, job architecture. They’re, in some cases, going so far as removing entire bands of management.”

For more on the role of technology in the future of inclusion, keep reading here.—KP

      

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HR STRATEGY

HR Brew

If there’s one person on staff who ought to have a solid understanding of what everyone inside the company is thinking, it’s the HR pro, according to author, researcher, and vulnerability and leadership expert Brené Brown.

“The irreducible partner, the impact player,” Brown told HR leaders gathered at LinkedIn’s Talent Connect customer event in New York last week, “would be the HR leader.”

Becoming “irreducible” in HR starts with becoming indispensable to the business’s performance and its outcomes. The HR pro is able to understand what’s on the “hearts and minds” of the people in the company and its leadership better than nearly anyone else, and that’s a critical job, especially amid so much change and uncertainty across the broader world, she said.

If “the CEO doesn’t see the HR or CHRO as a performance partner, I’m not interested because we will accomplish nothing without people,” Brown said, adding she won’t work with companies unless their CEO and CHRO are “absolutely in lock step.” For HR leaders, that means knowing what is happening across the organization.

For more on Brown’s advice for HR leaders, keep reading here.—AD

      

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work perks

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: The unemployment rate among workers aged 20–24 years old was 8% last month, compared to 3% for those aged 25–54. (Spectrum News)

Quote: “We are going on strike because we know the Newsom administration can and must do better…They must return to the table and bargain in good faith toward a contract that allows state workers to afford groceries, childcare, rent and other necessities.”—Anica Walls, president of SEIU Local 1000, the largest union for California government workers, on state workers’ strike over RTO mandates, compensation, and benefits (the Associated Press)

Read: Autism-therapy workers at private equity-backed clinics report feeling pressured to lengthen sessions with patients in an effort to bill them for more hours. (the Wall Street Journal)

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Jobs

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• HR Manager at Lumin8 Transportation Technologies LLC
• HR Manager at UpdatePromise
• HR Manager at Addison Group
• HR Manager at Edgewood Manor Health Care Center
• HR Manager at SCA Innotive tech Inc