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Human Times helps you stay ahead of the latest news and trends that impact the HR industry. Every weekday, our unique blend of AI and team of expert HR and employment editors and researchers monitor 100,000s of articles, and social posts to create summaries of the most relevant and useful content to help you lead, innovate and grow. The award winning Human Times newsletter has four geographical editions with news tailored to your region.
From HR leadership to diversity and inclusion, hybrid working, organisational data, performance management, and retention strategies, Human Times is the only trusted free online news source dedicated to covering the most up to date headlines, articles, reports and interviews to make sure you’re abreast of changes in the HR industry.
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Recent Editions
Human Times
North America
Food delivery company DoorDash is to pay $131.5m to settle a New York City government investigation that found it underpaid or waited too long to pay workers. DoorDash will provide nearly $115m of relief to about 264,000 workers; the median payout is about $48. The firm accepted a $16.7m civil fine. Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the settlement was "part of a larger commitment to hold delivery companies accountable." Through its use of "greedy algorithms," Mamdani said DoorDash failed to comply with the 2023 city law intended to improve pay for delivery workers. "For years, DoorDash failed to count every hour worked by delivery workers," he said. "This was not a rounding error or an accidental mistake."
Full Issue
Human Times
UK
Former John Lewis chairman Sir Charlie Mayfield has told The Times he wants to see a shift in workplace culture over sick leave. He says employees should directly inform their managers when unwell to foster open dialogue. Mayfield, lead author of the Keep Britain Working review, said: "It's very important that you're immediately establishing a contact, a dialogue, between the employer and the employee . . . So you can't just text, send a WhatsApp, or send an email. You've actually got to ring somebody up. It gives you the opportunity to have a conversation." He says workers will need to feel safe talking to their line manager, observing: "Some people worry they'll lose their job, or not get a pay rise, or be seen as someone who's not going to be as good an employee in the long term." But, he notes, employers are fearful too. "In the UK we have become very procedural and risk aware in terms of the cost of a complaint or a grievance, let alone a tribunal . . . And so you actually have quite a lot of situations where people will be advised not to contact employees when they're off sick."
Full Issue
Human Times
Europe
Mercedes-Benz could close facilities and make redundancies, including the engine and powertrain facilities at its Untertürkheim plant in Stuttgart where the company has its headquarters. Michael Schiebe, the carmaker's production head, said operations in Germany were not competitive by international standards because of high labour costs. Schiebe told workers: "Our clear goal is to maintain all of our German locations. If we are unable to do this, we will have to close one German assembly plant and one German powertrain plant." An official in the general works council said: "Threatening plant closures is no way to shape the future. Anyone who resorts to such threats must expect our determined resistance. If the management board believes it can pressure employees with the ultimatum of [workforce] concessions or plant closures, our answer is a clear: 'Not on our watch'." The company said in a statement: "We need framework conditions that boost productivity in Germany."
Full Issue
Human Times
Middle East
Gulf-based digital businesses and investors are increasingly setting up in Hong Kong and Singapore as the Iran war drags on. Analysts have noted growing adoption of a "dual-hub" model whereby secondary Asian bases are established to hedge against geopolitical risk. “We are not seeing an outright exodus from the Gulf, but we are witnessing an accelerated shift towards proactive geopolitical hedging,” said Paul Bratby, the founder of xBratAI, a Dubai-based AI-powered trading signals platform that expanded to Hong Kong earlier this year. “Major digital and tech enterprises are no longer content with relying on a single operational anchor.”
Full Issue
Read the latest HR highlights
How HR is Tackling Long Covid?
Fingers remain tightly crossed around the world that the rampant hospitalization and fatality stage of the Covid-19 pandemic has generally peaked. Vaccination programmes are accelerating, and restrictions are gradually being lifted...
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ESG Is Not Just Another Name For CSR
Back in the distant 1980s if you wanted to demonstrate your environmental and ethical credentials it was sufficient to shop at or purchase shares in retailer The Body Shop. The charismatic Anita Roddick, founder of the “hippy” tinged retail chain, heralded a new age of environmental concern, caring capitalism and corporate awareness that evolved into what became known as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). CSR was much talked about and lauded, but in reality often ended up being a lot of a hot air (excuse the pun) and often never progressed much beyond a footnote in the annual report.
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Have Older Workers Paid The Highest COVID-19 Price?
Across the world the pandemic is slowly but surely moving into its next phase. Recovery beckons. As furlough schemes across the U.S. and U.K. are being wound down, restrictions eased or lifted, and workforces moving back up the gears, early signs indicate that older employees are more likely to be casualties of the pandemic aftermath than their younger colleagues. Here at the we have witnessed an increasing number of stories supporting the growing belief that older workers are disproportionately paying the highest Covid-19 price.
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Bosses. What's not to like? Plenty, say employees
“You’ll never have another boss like me, someone who’s basically a chilled-out entertainer”
So said, David Brent, the fictional manager of Slough-based paper merchant Wernham Hogg in the seminal TV comedy The Office. Ricky Gervais’s portrayal of Brent as a flawed, narcissistic, incompetent, and deluded manager was so well observed that many (including me) believed it was a genuine fly-on-the-wall documentary when they alighted accidentally on the first ever episode.
Rolling with the Payroll
To mark National Payroll Week the team at the Human Times has provided some insight into the industry that we hope you’ll find useful.
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