Despite a surge in layoffs over the past year, just one-quarter of HR pros at US companies surveyed in Q3 by recruitment company Randstad said their firms offered severance packages to all employees. That’s lower than counterparts in the UK, 54% of whom reported offering severance to all employees, or Germany, which averaged 47%.

Labor protections for departing employees are less strict in the US than in some European countries, which helps explain why US firms are less likely to offer severance, said Lindsay Witcher, global managing director with Randstad RiseSmart, an HR arm of the company.

Overall, severance packages this year look less generous than they did in 2021, when 64% of respondents surveyed said their organizations offered them, according to an email from Randstad’s James Warnette. Facing more difficult financial headwinds, firms are “juggling with wanting to do the right thing in some cases and wanting to offer severance, but not being able to afford to do so at maybe the rate that they were doing during the pandemic,” Witcher said.

While severance is most often associated with a cash payout, there are other benefits HR can consider offering to employees to ease the sting of layoffs. One solution that’s becoming more popular with employers is redeployment, an internal mobility program geared toward affected workers.

Keep reading here.—CV

More than 70% of Americans oppose AI’s use in final hiring decisions. Despite this, nearly 1 in 4 organizations plans to increase their use of AI tools in hiring and recruitment. Even with all the praise for automation, it seems like workers miss the human element.

HR professionals should take note of this report from Tech Brew that dives into how applicants respond to new hiring tools like personality tests and chatbots. This report can give insight into establishing standards for objectivity and avoiding bias in algorithms. Check out the statistics and implications here.

What’s your worst nightmare? Is it having 90% of your workforce threaten to quit? Or is it having to figure out what to say to them when they do?

Following the recent firing of OpenAI’s co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, over 700 of the company’s 770 employees threatened to quit—unless the board resigned and reappointed Altman, the New York Times reported. Five days later, employees’ wishes were granted, and Altman announced his return.

During such a tumultuous time, it was likely a challenge for the Silicon Valley startup’s HR team to communicate change after change to its employees. We spoke to one communications expert who offered advice for how HR leaders can handle messaging during a crisis

Something > nothing. During times of change, Teal Pennebaker, co-founder and managing director of comms firm Shallot Communications, said HR leaders are often limited in what they can share. But they should still try to be as transparent as possible and share top-line information about what’s going on and what it means for them.

Keep reading here.—MC

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.

It’s not every day a flash mob changes the trajectory of a career, but that’s exactly what happened to Kate Smiley. Smiley started as a teller at Park National Bank, but after she organized a flash mob with bank employees at a local arts festival, leadership noticed her creativity and willingness to go the extra mile. Smiley moved from teller into a role where her creative side could flourish, organizing the bank’s travel program. She then joined National Park’s HR team in 2019, bringing a “mentality of…white-glove service and concierge to HR” before being hand-selected as one of its core four in-house recruiters.

On the recruiting team, Smiley is “obsessed with good communication,” being “quick and efficient” and “as transparent as possible.” She says she has practiced over the course of her career remembering names. It’s one of her “superpowers.” Her approach to the candidate experience is simple: “I’m going to meet you at the door. I’m going to tell you about Park. I’m going to tell you about the department, who the people are, what benefits come along, the total rewards package, and I’m going to tell you that in the first conversation.”

What’s the best change you’ve made at work?

I communicate as quickly and authentically as possible with every candidate that interviews. If you interviewed on Monday morning, my goal is to have feedback and recommendations or your next interview scheduled by Monday afternoon. It takes time management, detail recall, and setting expectations with the manager...It baffles me that the industry standard is possibly no response at all, but it does make it easy to exceed people’s expectations.

Keep reading here.—AD

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: Companies that are leaders in disability inclusion are 25% more productive than their competitors. (Accenture)

Quote: “Businesses appreciate the privacy and convenience for their users, who can access physical locations and software assets with just a hover of their palm.”—Dilip Kumar, VP of Amazon Web Services Applications, in a statement on the company’s new palm-scanning technology for employers (CNBC)

Read: Block, a fintech company run by Jack Dorsey, is getting rid of annual reviews and replacing them with a three-grade rating system. (Business Insider)

Wanna infuse AI into your HR processes? Learn IBM’s 5 recommended pillars of AI ethics to help introduce responsible AI to your org. Learn more about IBM.*

^{*A message from our sponsor.}

Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC, Member NYSE, SIPC, 900 Salem Street, Smithfield, RI 02917

© 2023 FMR LLC. All rights reserved.

1120216.1.0