Hello, HR Pros!

Remote work isn’t broken—but our playbooks are. Zapier’s transforming hiring and onboarding with their AI first approach, BambooHR exposes the AI fluency chasm, and HBR warns that hybrid isn’t working without serious redesign.

And while you’re rethinking workflows, here’s one other quiet drain to address: is your payroll system eating your team’s time and energy? Might be worth checking. Let’s dive in✨

📰 Upcoming in This Issue

• 🧠 AI Usage Report: Your Manager Uses AI More Than You—Is It Time to Adapt?

• 🧭 From AI-friendly to AI-first: How Zapier Is Transforming Hiring and Onboarding

• 💡 Why Hybrid Still Isn’t Working - by Harvard Business Review

📣 Trending HR News

• Goldman Sachs deploys AI software engineer (Yahoo)

• Intel plans to lay off 5,000 staff (The Register)

• AI-based salary research fuels inflated expectations (Yahoo Finance)

• Canva is Giving Its 5,000 employees a week to learn AI (SaaStr)

• Tech CEO caught in ‘affair’ with HR Head at Coldplay concert (Yahoo)

• OpenAI’s new ChatGPT Agent can control an entire computer and do tasks for you (The Verge)

💸 Payroll Silently Eating Up Your Time? Two Simple Solutions with Special Offers

Payroll quietly consumes hours of HR time, especially when juggling compliance, manual data entry, and tax reporting. Here are two payroll platforms HR teams frequently recommend to ease this frustration:

• OnPay streamlines payroll tasks, automates tax filings, and simplifies employee management in one easy-to-use platform—perfect for small-to-medium businesses.
  👉 Learn more about OnPay (your 1st month is free)→

  
  

• Patriot Payroll keeps payroll affordable, user-friendly, and accurate. HR teams appreciate its quick setup, straightforward payroll runs, and reliable tax compliance.
  👉 Start your 30 days free trial + 50% off for 3 months→

🧠 AI Usage Report: Your Manager Uses AI More Than You—Is It Time to Adapt?

Executives are already in AI overdrive—72% of VP/C-suite leaders use AI daily. Meanwhile, just 18% of ICs are doing the same.

This report reveals staggering divides in AI usage by level, gender, and generation, showing how top-down enthusiasm hasn’t trickled down. HR teams have a golden opportunity to bridge that chasm—with training, clear policies, and cultural permission.

Key Takeaways:

• 📉 Execs 4x more likely to value AI users: While 61% of execs reward AI adoption, only 13% of ICs believe it matters—highlighting a huge perception gap.

• 🛑 Only 32% of employees receive AI training: Despite 72% wanting to learn more, most training is concentrated among leaders and HR pros.

• 💬 Many think using AI is "cheating": 23% of ICs don’t disclose AI use, and only 28% believe it improves work quality—compared to 80% of execs.

• 💼 Small companies lag far behind: Only 21% of employees at firms under 50 people receive AI training, vs. 45% at companies with 500+.

Read the full 2,104-word article here → AI Usage Report (BambooHR)

📌 HR Projects Quietly Getting Out of Control? Quickbase Can Help

HR teams manage countless projects simultaneously—onboarding, compliance, training—and keeping everything on track isn't always easy.

Quickbase provides a customizable, no-code solution that helps HR teams automate workflows, centralize communication, and gain clear visibility into project statuses.

👉 Discover how Quickbase streamlines HR project management→

🧭 From AI-friendly to AI-first: How Zapier Is Transforming Hiring and Onboarding

Zapier isn’t just riding the AI wave—they’re rebuilding their entire hiring and onboarding system to surf it.

From baseline AI fluency expectations to revamping skills assessments and onboarding with a builder mindset, they’re giving HR teams a blueprint for what AI-first really looks like. It’s tactical. It’s cultural. And it’s coming for every role.

Key Takeaways:

• 🎯 AI fluency is now table stakes: Every new hire is evaluated across four fluency levels—from resistant to transformative—tailored by role.

• 🧠 Onboarding trains for AI builder mindset: New hires learn to automate tasks, identify use cases, and optimize workflows like customers do.

• 🛠️ Culture embeds AI in every expectation: Performance reviews now expect experimentation with AI and automation in day-to-day work.

• 📊 HR leads from the front: Talent teams redesign hiring pipelines, assessments, and L&D programs to prioritize AI comfort and strategic thinking.

Read the full 1,421-word article here → From AI-friendly to AI-first (Zapier)

💡 Why Hybrid Still Isn’t Working - by Harvard Business Review

Hybrid’s supposed to be the happy medium—but five years in, the cracks are starting to show.

From crumbling collaboration to awkward promotions and culture gaps, this article makes one thing clear: hybrid work requires more than hope and Slack emojis. It demands structural redesign. Fast.

Two paragraphs won’t fix your hybrid headaches, but the strategies here just might.

Key Takeaways:

• 📉 Hybrid is breaking team cohesion: Remote workers miss mentorship, while new hires can’t learn via osmosis—resulting in slower ramp-up and weaker culture.

• 📊 Virtual meetings are bloated & ineffective: Larger attendance, low engagement, and post-meeting meetings are draining productivity and morale.

• ⚖️ Promotions now favor individual KPIs: With limited visibility into team dynamics, companies are unintentionally promoting top performers, not top collaborators.

• 🧱 Anchor days only work with structure: Random in-office days don’t rebuild relationships. Mandated, well-coordinated schedules are essential for rebuilding team trust.

Read the full 2,207-word article here → Hybrid Still Isn’t Working (Harvard Business Review)

The bottomline

If there’s one throughline in this week’s reads, it’s this: ambiguity is the enemy of performance.

Whether it’s hybrid expectations, AI readiness, or onboarding strategy—when you make expectations clear, results follow.

Until next time, keep building better workplaces—one policy, one prompt, one person at a time.