‘Maxed-out’ Managers Need Backup: 4 Moves for HR
Jen Colletta – HR Executive
A new report from Korn Ferry bolsters such headlines. The survey of 16,000 global employees found that 42% say their organization has cut back on the number of managers in the last year. That figure sits at 49% for those in first-level supervisory and management roles.
The so-called “Great Flattening” is leaving retained managers strapped: Globally, 62% of employees surveyed say their workload has increased in the past year, while that figure sits at 70% for managers. Managers are the most likely to report being too busy to deliver meaningful results and to be stretched beyond their capabilities.
Why Your Healthcare Cost Strategy Is Failing – and What to Do
Steve Randall – HRD (Human Resources Director)
Paul Pruitt, founder of SHARx, a specialty pharmacy cost management firm based in St. Louis, Missouri, and a former benefits broker with more than a decade of experience advising employers on group coverage, argues that most organizations are responding to rising costs in ways that will not work – and that the root cause lies not in the benefits plan itself, but in how leadership engages with it.
“If we focus on the cost of insurance, we’re looking at the wrong problem,” Pruitt told HRD. “The insurance price and what it costs is a function of how it’s used, how your members access care. Those are the areas where meaningful impact can actually be made.”
Why Soft Skills Development Is Your Ultimate Competitive Strategy for 2027
Pamela Eyrin – HR Daily Advisor
Constant digitalization, remote work, and now outsourcing communication to AI have created an empathy and soft-skills deficit. Inevitably, when you spend all day interacting with a machine that gives you instant, frictionless answers, you begin to treat human colleagues the same way.
As a result, workplace conversations and customer interactions become brief, blunt, and highly transactional.
… When every company has access to the same software, offers competitive pricing, and provides identical product features, technical proficiency is no longer a sufficient differentiator. The things that separate a good company from a great one are judgment, relationship-building, conflict resolution, and trust.
In other words, protocol intelligence (or soft skills) is the ultimate differentiator.
Mathing the Overtime Calculation for Bonuses and Incentive Comp
Jon Hyman – Ohio Employer Law Blog
If you pay incentive or bonus comp to your employees, here is a handy FAQ that explains all of the ins and out of legally paying bonus and incentive comp to your non-exempt employees without running afoul of the FLSA.
The Most Underrated Succession Planning Bench? People Who Already Work There
Caroline Colvin – HR Dive
Only 4 in 10 respondents to an Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) survey said their organizations are effectively building “bench strength” or maintaining a pool of strong, qualified internal candidates who can step up into a leadership role, per a report released Wednesday. The survey tapped close to 800 global business and HR leaders for their opinion.
Speak Up at Work: 5 Things Leaders Miss When Employees Stay Silent
Joel Garfinkle – SmartBrief
Some of the best ideas in your company will never be heard. They are sitting inside the heads of employees who see why customers are frustrated, know what isn’t working and spot opportunities leaders have missed. The problem isn’t that employees don’t have something valuable to say. It’s that they too often don’t say it. When employees stay silent, the cost can be steep: leaders make critical decisions without the vital intelligence already sitting in the room.
Telling employees to “speak up more” does not solve this. Leaders must build an environment where contributing is expected, safe and worthwhile. Here are five valuable contributions leaders miss when employees stay silent, and what you can do to bring those voices forward.
Liberty Mutual: Overexertion Costs Employers $13 Billion Annually
Guy Burdick – EHSLeaders
Lifting heavy loads—overexertion involving outside sources—costs U.S. employers $13.07 billion a year, according to Liberty Mutual’s recently released annual Workplace Safety Index (WSI). Additionally, U.S. employers spend more than $58 billion a year on workplace injuries, Liberty Mutual says—more than $1 billion a week. The top five causes of workplace injuries, including overexertion, account for 65.1% of the total cost.
Related: Liberty Mutual Workplace Safety Index – Interactive site with the top 10 Risk Exposures and a deeper dive by industry
What Dolly Parton Taught the Business World about Building a Legacy
Patrick Mashburn – The University of Tennessee Chattanooga
What can business students learn from Dolly Parton? According to faculty at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s Gary W. Rollins College of Business, quite a lot.
Dolly Parton built a business and media empire worth well over $500 million, while giving much of it away through philanthropic efforts like the Imagination Library, which has distributed more than 330 million free books to children worldwide. Following her passing, six Rollins College of Business faculty members shared what her career can teach the next generation of business leaders.
Related: Five Lessons from Dolly Parton’s Extraordinary Life
Related: The Dolly Parton Effect: Why Celebrity Loss Feels Personal
HR News Roundup: Quick Takes
- Employee Health Benefits to Spike 9.5% in 2027
- More US Employers to Drop Weight-Loss Drugs in 2027, as Healthcare Costs Increase
- 6 Tips to Stop a Thief Within Your Business
- How Can Employers Boost Workers’ 401(k)s? Student Loan Matching
- FLSA Brain Twister: How to Determine When Breaks are Compensable
- Unpaid Overtime, Illegal Tip Pools, Child Labor Violations: Employer Pays $718K
- 14 Fun Fall Team-Building Activities Employees Will Love
- Why People Keep Making the Same Mistakes
- 15 Life-Saving Facts Everyone Should Know
- ‘But Enough About You …’ How to Survive in a World of Monologuists, Interrupters and Trauma Dumpers
- Public Speaking Fear? — Here’s the One Thing You Should Be Thinking
HR News: From the Lighter Side …
- Work Chronicles is a webcomic that showcases the joys and frustrations of the workplace. The comic has been running for about 4 years. It is created by Bob, a former tech worker who most obviously understands the corporate work world.
- Whether you write for a living or just tackle occasional work reports, you may enjoy the confrontation between Grammarian vs Errorist, which creator Elle Cordova calls “a supervillain showdown.” She has more from this series and others you might enjoy on her YouTube channel. Elle says she is a “writer of words, maker of videos, lover of the cosmos, sci-fi tv/movies, and literature. On this channel you’ll find everything from space poetry to sketch comedy to short stories about curiosities.”
HR News – Blog posts you may have missed!