The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals held a hearing this week in a case centered around a National Labor Relations Board ruling expanding the agency's capacity to force employers to pay for economic harm related to infringements of labor law. During the case, judges focused on the facts of the underlying dispute, which involved a company that laid off six workers.

Creating a great workplace culture requires a collaborative effort all around, and that starts with hiring the "most talented individuals out there and not be intimidated by their strengths and brilliance," says Cindy Scharringhausen, senior vice president of human resources at Camden Property Trust. "Hiring the best and the brightest, actively listening to them, and offering them growth opportunities helps cultivate an environment where they feel empowered to do their best," Scharringhausen says.

Employers can fix pay-equity problems by conducting a structured analysis that considers all factors, including experience, qualifications and job roles, according to researchers, who recommend reviewing pay gaps in each department and identifying the differences. "When organizations use the structured approach to address pay inequity, they can understand the core issues of pay gaps -- the locus of inequity in their salary structure and any associated systematic biases -- and remediate the issue more precisely, beyond looking at just those employees who appear to be most underpaid," write the researchers, who advise against simply increasing the pay of employees who earn less than their co-workers.

The hiring process is ripe for an AI overhaul because "like the first web browsers, people won't ignore a tool that can help them get their work done faster and easier," predicts CEO Hari Kolam of Findem, a talent search company. Companies that lag on adopting AI "risk getting left behind," Kolam writes.

Generative AI will pose challenges for HR leaders over the next 10 years, including potential short-term workforce layoffs and the need to retrain employees as the technology forces changes in people's job responsibilities, according to a new report, which points out the information systems, professional services and finance industries likely will face major disruptions. Hiring freezes and attrition can be used instead of layoffs to right-size the workforce, says the report from the Society for Human Resource Management and The Burning Glass Institute.