If you are hiring for remote IT jobs, do a real background check: North Korean IT workers are posing as Americans to score coveted remote jobs and use the salaries to pay for their country's missile program.  Remote hiring practices have made it dangerously easy for North Korean IT workers to dupe hiring managers who historically had relied on in-person interviews to detect imposters.  These issues could be exacerbated as AI technologies getting better at creating more realistic deepfake video and audio. Workers landed jobs at more than 300 U.S. companies — including an aerospace manufacturer, U.S. automaker, a Silicon Valley tech company and other Fortune 500 companies — as part of this specific scam.  North Koreans used the identities of more than 60 U.S. people in their job applications and relied on VPNs to disguise their computers' actual location. The workers are linked to the regime's Munitions Industry Department, which oversees its ballistic missiles and weapons production programs, according to the State Department. The U.S. government has been warning American companies about North Korean IT workers trying to get hired in remote jobs for at least two years.  Scary stuff.  Source:  Axios 5/20/24

PTO requests are increasing: Requests for paid time off (PTO) went up 9% in the past year — but accepted requests went down by 5%.  This is according to the latest Workforce Insights by BambooHR, which revealed a gap between the requests made and the ones accepted.  By region, Europe recorded the highest numbers of PTO requests, with 66% of employees there filing PTO requests in April. However, only 44% of them were approved, according to the report.  Nearly half of employees (48%) in the Middle East/Africa also filed a PTO request, but only 54% were approved there.  Latin America recorded the lowest percentage of employees filing a PTO request, with 31%. Despite this, the region recorded the highest approval rate with 62%.  North America had 39% request PTOP and 49% were approved. Anita Grantham, head of HR at BambooHR, said the high number of PTO requests might indicate that employees want to "escape" from the pressures of work or roles they're no longer excited about. "Post-pandemic workers prioritize mental health and wellbeing because it’s better understood and more needed, and time off is a critical component of rest," Grantham said in a statement. Source: HR Director 5/21/24

Yet in U.S. the question is whether to take or not: A majority, 78%, of U.S. workers say they don’t take all their PTO days, and it’s highest among Gen Z workers and millennials, according to a new Harris Poll survey of 1,170 American workers.  Younger professionals say they don’t ask for time off because they feel pressure to meet deadlines and be productive, and they get nervous requesting PTO because they don’t want to look like a slacker, says Libby Rodney, chief strategy officer at The Harris Poll. Younger professionals say they don’t ask for time off because they feel pressure to meet deadlines and be productive, and they get nervous requesting PTO because they don’t want to look like a slacker, says Libby Rodney, chief strategy officer at The Harris Poll.  That’s not to say they’re not taking breaks — they’re just not telling their boss. There is a growing movement afoot by American workers to push for European style vacations so work and home are not intermixed.  Source: CNBC 5/21/24

Minnesota passes pay transparency law: Effective Jan. 1, 2025, any “person or entity that employs 30 or more employees at one or more sites in Minnesota” must disclose in each posting for each job opening “the starting salary range” and “a general description of all the benefits and other compensation, including but not limited to any health or retirement benefits,” that will be offered to the applicant hired for the position. With regard to the salary range, this means that each posting must include “the minimum and maximum annual salary or hourly range of compensation” for that job opportunity with the employer at the time it posts the job. The salary range can be based on the employer’s good faith estimate but cannot include an open-ended range. Further, if an employer does not plan to offer a salary range for the position posted, the posting “must list a fixed pay rate.” The scope of this disclosure requirement is broad. An employer must include wage disclosure information in any solicitation posted electronically or in hard copy that includes qualifications for desired applicants and is intended to recruit job applicants for a specific available position. The requirement also applies to the employer regardless of whether it is doing the recruiting directly or through a third party.  Source: Jackson Lewis 5/21/24

The theme for NDEAM (October 2024) announced by ODEP: “Access to Good Jobs for All” will be the theme for National Disability Employment Awareness Month (“NDEAM”) in October 2024, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (“ODEP”) announced. “Our theme in 2024, ‘Access to Good Jobs for All,’ speaks to our commitment to expand the number of employment opportunities for people with disabilities and the quality of those opportunities,” explained Assistant Secretary for Disability Employment Policy Taryn M. Williams. “Good jobs change lives and all workers — including disabled people — deserve the opportunity to prepare for success in high-quality, good-paying jobs in workplaces free of discrimination.”   In 1945, the nation first designated a national week to recognize the contribution of people with physical disabilities. Designated by Congress as NDEAM in 1988, the commemoration evolved to acknowledge the importance of increasing the number of people with disabilities in the workforce. In 2001, ODEP was created and was given responsibility for NDEAM and for selecting and helping promote its annual theme. Source:  USDOL ODEP 5/13/24