This issue of HR News Roundup includes items on rightsizing HR, Student loan benefits, leadership, difficult conversations, and much more.
What’s the ‘Right’ Number of HR Employees?
Elissa Tucker, Human Resource Executive
In this article, we highlight cross-industry data related to HR staff productivity, provide guidance for how to benchmark productivity and discuss five areas where you can invest resources to enhance the productivity of your HR employees.
At the median, HR functions can serve around 105 employees per HR full-time equivalent (FTE). Organizations at the 25th percentile serve the fewest employees per HR FTE (68.5 or fewer), while those at the 75th percentile serve the most (190.1 or more).
What JFK learned about leadership from a NASA janitor
Barry Conchie and Sarah Dalton, Big Think
Most leaders get the psychology of human motivation all wrong — here’s how a presidential encounter with a leaf-sweeper puts it right.
Articulating a vision helps differentiate one leader and one organization from the next. Leaders should communicate a company mission that makes all team members feel their jobs are important. The observations of Karl Marx, JFK, and multiple analysts suggest that employees derive meaning from their work by providing real value to themselves, their company, or society at large.
New Bill Seeks to Permanently Extend Tax-Free Student Loan Repayment Benefit
Kathryn Mayer, SHRM
New legislation would permanently allow employers to help employees pay off some of their student loans tax-free.
The bipartisan bill introduced July 25 in the U.S. House and Senate, called the Employer Participation in Repayment Act, would permanently enable employers to provide up to $5,250 of annual tax-free, student loan repayment educational assistance as a voluntary benefit to their employees under IRS Section 127. The legislation was introduced by Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va.; Sen. John Thune, R-S.D.; Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif.; and Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y.
This legislation would permanently extend a provision in the Consolidated Appropriations Act signed into law in December 2021 as part of pandemic relief efforts that allows employers to contribute up to $5,250 per employee annually toward student loan assistance without increasing the employee’s gross taxable income. It’s set to expire on Jan. 1, 2026.
Don’t retaliate against unionizing employees
Jon Hyman, Ohio Employer Law Blog
Under the National Labor Relations Act, employees have the right to organize, form, join, or assist labor unions and engage in collective bargaining. Retaliation against employees for exercising those rights, including termination, is a violation of federal labor law. It’s also just plain dumb.
If you want to avoid a labor union, you need to act like you don’t want your employees to form a labor union. This means treating them with respect and dignity, listening to their concerns, paying them fairly, and not retaliating against them.
How to talk about social issues and crises internally
Sean Devlin, Ragan Communications
With the news cycle moving faster than ever and access to a wide array of information at our fingertips, controversial social and cultural issues that could once be left on the newspaper page or the television screen are now an ever-present part of our daily discussions. Whether it’s wars abroad or politicized social issues at home, communicators need to remember that the conflicts and problems in the world can impact them.
Employees look to their leaders as a stabilizing force during conflicts far beyond the workplace’s walls. By hitting the right notes, you can create an atmosphere that communicates and holds up company culture as a stabilizing guide to meet the many issues of our modern world.
While on the topic of communication, here’s a thoughtful video clip on difficult conversations by Jefferson Fisher, who is an excellent and persuasive communicator – a good person to learn from!
HR News Roundup: Quick Takes
- IRS boosts health savings account contribution limits for 2025
- 5 key voluntary benefits to watch in 2025
- Adolescent girls face alarming rates of intimate partner violence
- Workplace safety priorities include targeting repeat offenders: OSHA head
- The Tricky Connection Between FMLA & Overtime
- What Business Leaders Can Learn from Olympic Coaches
- A guide to filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) financial aid form for the upcoming school year
- Are your co-workers annoying — or downright toxic?
- 20-Somethings Are in Trouble
- How the Heat Is Changing Us
- Why Taking A Vacation Makes You A Better Leader. Really.
- 3 in 5 US workers report living paycheck to paycheck, survey finds
- The New 2024 ‘Brat’ Trend In The Workplace And What It Means
- Employers embracing direct contracting and bypassing insurers: survey
- COVID Drops to Tenth Leading Cause of Death in the U.S.
From the Lighter Side …
- Pick a category – everyday life, industry, curiosities, and more – then pick a time frame and watch the rate that everyday life events happen in real time. The Scale of Life.
- Tired of corporate jargon and looking for alternatives? Web developer Matt Watson felt that most of the alternatives to the corporate cliches lacked flair, so he suggests some “swanky alternatives from English of a bygone era.” See Epic corporate jargon alternatives.
- If you feel like common food and household products you use often are getting smaller and smaller, you aren’t wrong. The word that describes this is “shrinkflation” and while it’s not new, it seems to be accelerating. Here’s a rather fascinating deep dive that someone did on the shrinkflation of our toilet tissue rolls. See more: Shrinkflation 101: The Economics of Smaller Groceries (temporary NYT gift link) and Shrinkflation explained, with definition and examples.
- Of course, some products have improved. Take technology. Check out the Wifi of the 1980s (link to YouTube) and be glad you don’t have to carry all that equipment around.
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