Expanding leave programs in the next few years: Nearly three-quarters of U.S. companies plan to expand their leave programs in the next two years, according to research released by WTW, a global advisory, broking and solutions company. These investments are driven by a focus on improving employee experience (67%) and upping attraction and retention (60%), WTW found.  The investments are in multiple forms of leave, including parental, bereavement, and caregiver leave, the report found. Of the 585 employers surveyed, more than 4 in 5 provide parental leave, and 16% plan to enhance those programs, WTW said, while 18% of employers expect to either increase the duration or broaden the eligibility requirements of their bereavement leave. Caregiver leave is predicted to nearly double over the next two years, growing from 22% to 39%, the report found.  Investment in unlimited paid time off also is climbing; 15% of companies provide the benefit to exempt employees now, an increase from 12% two years ago, and 18% plan to in the next two years, WTW said.  Source: HR Dive 1/29/26

Do higher CHRO salaries indicate economic health of employer? When Edward Watts, an assistant professor of accounting at Yale, and his colleagues gained access to a trove of data on CHRO compensation from Equilar, a leading provider of executive compensation intelligence, they wondered what those numbers could tell them about a firm’s prospects. The CHRO compensation level is one way of capturing how much the company prioritized effective management of its employees. “Does strategic human capital management seem to lead to better outcomes?” Watts asks. His new study, with David Larcker of Stanford University, Charles McClure of the University of Chicago, and Shawn Shi of the University of Washington, suggests that “the answer is yes,” he says. Firms that paid their CHROs relatively high wages appeared to more actively hire innovative, productive workers with better credentials and drop ineffective ones. Company culture also thrived, yielding better employee ratings in areas such as values and work-life balance. The team concluded that it would be helpful for investors to know the CHRO’s compensation as part of firm disclosures, so they can price that information into the company’s expected value. “This is telling us something really important,” Watts says. “It’s a fairly useful predictor of outcomes within firms.”  Source: Yale Insights 1/28/26

Employers missing hiring goals due to operational challenges: 90% of U.S. companies said they missed their hiring goals, with 1 in 3 reporting they missed those goals by a wide margin, according to the fifth annual Hiring Insights Report from recruiting software company GoodTime.  The independent study, which surveyed more than 500 U.S. talent acquisition leaders at companies with more than 1,000 employees in November 2025, found that recruiters spend 38% of their time scheduling interviews, meaning “scheduling remains the biggest operational tax on hiring,” per the report. While 99.8% of TA teams said they either use or plan to use AI agents, the report noted an uptick in “fraudulent” or AI-assisted candidates — making fraud the most anticipated hiring challenge in 2026. The hiring market is under an “unprecedented strain,” GoodTime researchers said, with 60% of organizations seeing time-to-hire increase in 2025, and only 1 in 9 companies saying they had reduced time-to-hire. Likewise, a June report from Robert Half found that 93% of hiring managers said the hiring process took longer in 2025 than just two years ago.  Top-performing TA teams reorganized roles and workflows around AI instead of adding recruiters or relying on top-of-funnel automation, per the report.  Source: HR Dive 1/27/26

Meeting cancellation elation: You know the feeling: You’re replying to emails, navigating open tabs, responding to direct messages, when suddenly, it happens—your standing weekly 2 p.m. gets canceled abruptly. “Giving everyone 30 minutes back today,” the organizer says. A rush courses through your nervous system: You’re free. Nothing about this recurring meeting is particularly onerous or necessarily stressful. And yet, at this moment, you feel like a burden has been lifted. Maybe you even audibly sigh in relief. That sudden sense that all is right in the world has a psychological cause, Dr. Wilsa Charles Malveaux, a psychiatrist in Los Angeles, explains to Fast Company. Weekly catch-ups, as harmless and banal as they may be, could actually activate “an elevated sense of threat” tied to anxieties around “being on time, or having to show up and present a certain way in a meeting,” she adds. “When you no longer have that, you feel that release.”  Data shows that many meetings truly do waste time and drain workers to be less productive. Sometimes a meeting can just be an email, and if removing it from workers’ calendars can lower stress levels, why not do it?  Source: Fast Company 1/14/26

NLRB brings back previous Trump administration’s joint employer rule: The National Labor Relations Board formally republished a 2020 rule last Thursday narrowing the circumstances in which it tags employers with liability to another firm's employees, in what it called a "ministerial" step to clarify its consistent policy.  The final rule rescinds and replaces in the federal regulatory code a vacated 2023 rule that made it easier for workers and unions to show that firms such as franchisors and staffing company users are joint employers with franchisees and labor suppliers. Under the final rule, the board treats firms as joint employers under the National Labor Relations Act if they exercise "substantial direct and immediate control" over certain key job terms of another firm's direct employees, including pay, benefits, hours and discipline.  Source: Law360 2/26/26

Background checks in New York will be changing: Beginning April 18, 2026, New York State employers will be restricted from using an applicant’s or employee’s consumer credit information when making employment-related decisions. S.B. 3072, signed by Governor Kathy Hochul as part of an end-of-year legislative push, will extend statewide credit history protections similar to those already in effect under New York City law. Interestingly, the law also prohibits consumer reporting agencies (such as companies in the business of compiling background check reports) from providing, for employment purposes, consumer reports that contain consumer credit history unless the employer or position is exempted from the law’s protections. The law further permits employers to request or receive consumer credit history information pursuant to a lawful subpoena, court order, or law enforcement investigation. Source: Proskauer Rose 12/30/26