Hello, HR Pros!

The world of work isn’t just changing—it’s reinventing itself. This week, we explore how HR can lead that transformation: from personalized careers that evolve beyond ladders, to AI reshaping engagement and the rise of lifelong learning as a strategic advantage.

Each insight challenges a core assumption about how people grow, connect, and stay motivated at work—because the future of HR isn’t about managing change, it’s about designing it.

📰 Upcoming in This Issue

• 🧭 How HR and Business Leaders Help Employees (and Themselves) Manage a Personalized Career

• 📊 ADP Study Finds AI Is Changing Employee Engagement & Retention

• 📚 Lifelong Learning Cultures: How to Make Continuous Education Your Competitive Advantage

✨ Helpful HR Resources

• 🎁 Top HR tools & offers curated for The HR Takeaways readers

📣 Trending HR News

• Walmart halts job offers for H-1B visa candidates (BBC)

• CEOs are relying on recruiters to bridge skills gap and build future workforce, LinkedIn finds (Yahoo)

• Wells Fargo will pay $85M to settle claim alleging ‘sham’ diversity hiring practices (HR Dive)

🧭 How HR and Business Leaders Help Employees (and Themselves) Manage a Personalized Career

Careers are shifting from linear ladders to personalized, mobile paths. Ulrich maps the evolution—career stages → choices → mosaics → personalized routes—and argues that Millennials and Gen Z will expect ecosystems where moves across functions, geographies, and roles are normal.

He offers a practical coaching frame: define success, test what it takes to achieve it, clarify who benefits from your work, know when to stay or go, and manage transitions deliberately. HR’s role is to institutionalize mobility with routines—career conversations, onboarding that accelerates movement, IDPs with mobility goals, and smart boomerang hiring.

Key Takeaways:

• 🧭 Personalize growth at scale: Replace one-size ladders with mosaic careers; publish internal paths, skills, and sample moves so employees can self-navigate.

• 🧩 Use a five-question cadence: Coach employees to define success, test readiness, map stakeholders, decide stay/go, and plan transitions with milestone check-ins.

• 🔁 Operationalize mobility: Build quarterly career conversations, mobility-ready onboarding, IDPs with move targets, and a structured boomerang program.

• 💡 Tie moves to value creation: Require every move to state who benefits (customer, team, enterprise) and how outcomes will be measured post-move.

👉 Read the full 1,530-word post on LinkedIn by Dave Ulrich

📊 ADP Study Finds AI Is Changing Employee Engagement and Retention

ADP’s latest worker-sentiment data reveals a new paradox in the age of AI. Frequent AI users report the highest engagement and motivation, yet they feel less connected to colleagues and often struggle to translate enthusiasm into measurable productivity. Among respondents, 43% use AI regularly, while 42% use it rarely or not at all.

More concerning for HR, 30% of daily AI users are actively job hunting—double that of non-users—and 31% worry that AI could replace their role. For people leaders, the challenge is clear: channel curiosity and capability into sustained engagement while rebuilding trust, connection, and purpose in AI-driven workplaces.

Key Takeaways:

• 🔧 Bridge enthusiasm and outcomes: Equip AI adopters with clear productivity metrics, workflow redesign, and targeted enablement to turn engagement into impact.

• 🤝 Rebuild human connection: Create structured peer-learning circles, mentoring, and team rituals to offset isolation among heavy AI users.

• 🧭 Address AI anxiety: Communicate openly about how automation complements—not replaces—work; link AI adoption to career mobility.

• 📊 Track sentiment in real time: Monitor engagement, belonging, and turnover intent by AI-use frequency to refine retention and learning strategies.

👉 Read the full research by ADP here

📚 Lifelong Learning Cultures: How to Make Continuous Education Your Competitive Advantage

As per Gartner report, with 60% of jobs requiring new skills due to AI and automation, HR leaders can no longer treat learning as an annual event—it’s a daily habit. This HR C-Suite article lays out a data-backed playbook for embedding lifelong learning into workflows, not just classrooms. It links skill-building directly to productivity (+20%), retention (+25%), and innovation (+22%), proving that learning cultures are as much a performance strategy as an engagement one.

The future-ready HR leader is one who connects learning to business outcomes, makes it accessible through micro-learning and gamification, and builds accountability through measurable progress. Continuous learning isn’t just a perk—it’s the new currency of competitiveness.

Key Takeaways:

• 🎯 Make learning seamless: Embed bite-sized, job-relevant lessons into daily workflows through micro-learning, task-based upskilling, and peer knowledge sharing.

• 🔁 Link learning to results: Tie skill-building initiatives to specific business KPIs—like reduced project time or improved innovation metrics.

• 🧩 Personalize and gamify: Offer customized learning paths, challenges, and rewards to keep participation consistent and meaningful.

• 💡 Build measurement into culture: Track learning adoption, performance gains, and retention improvements through data-driven HR dashboards.

👉 Read the full 2,170-word article here

⚡️ Resource & Project Planning: What HR Teams Are Using Stay on Track

HR may not lead every project—but how work gets done often depends on how well it's supported. Whether it's onboarding timelines, training rollouts, or org-wide initiatives, helping teams stay organized is quietly becoming an HR advantage.

Here are two platforms HR teams are introducing to keep work moving smoothly:

• Monday.com
  A visual, flexible system that helps HR teams map resources & projects, track workloads, and reduce the chaos of cross-functional collaboration. It's perfect for replacing scattered spreadsheets and unclear ownership.

• Smartsheet
  For teams that need deeper structure, Smartsheet brings powerful project tracking, automation, and reporting—all in a spreadsheet-like interface teams already understand. Ideal for HR-driven programs that require accountability across functions.

Key Takeaways:

Explore Monday.com and Smartsheet for free help your team execute better with the right structure. These tools might quietly be your team’s new favorite support system.

The bottomline

The takeaway is clear: growth is no longer linear—it’s living. Whether it’s career mobility, engagement powered by AI, or embedding learning into every workday, HR’s influence now lies in designing systems where people and performance evolve together.

So as we head into next week, let’s lead with curiosity, build with intention, and keep making the future of work more human—one smart HR decision at a time.