🎯 Year-End Workforce Checkpoint, 3.5-Day Work-Weeks, Minimum Wage Increase - Nov 12, 2025

On today’s agenda:

🎯 Year-end workforce planning

📊 LMS ROI Calculator

🤖 Shorter work-weeks with AI

🏦 Minimum wage increase

QUICK POLL

THE HR SPOTLIGHT

🎯 Year-End Workforce Checkpoint: Your 2026 Game‑Plan

As the year winds down and the holiday shuffle begins, now’s the perfect moment for HR leaders to ensure their workforce strategy is locked and loaded for 2026. Before out-of-office emails take over, let’s check your plan.

🍁 The situation: With strategic workforce planning now a top priority, and AI and skills shifts accelerating, workforce readiness becomes urgent. If you don’t anchor the plan before the Thanksgiving week decouples everyone into leftovers and out‑of‑office, the momentum may vanish.

🔧 What HR Can Do: Here’s your quick checkpoint to lock it in before the holiday rush:

• Skills gap scan – identify which roles need upskilling or replacing by mid‑2026.

• Succession plan refresh – map who’s ready, who’s stretch‑ready and who’s a flight risk.

• Headcount alignment – tie planned roles back to business goals & budget (don’t simply replicate last year).

• Compliance updates – double-check compliance deadlines, and update records and policies as needed.

Organizations aligning HR, finance, and ops in workforce planning gain a unified view of talent and risks. Align your initiatives, sharpen your levers and sprint toward a workforce strategy that’s ready by the time everyone’s back from pie and faux‑parades.

📊 LMS ROI Calculator 

🪵 HR on the Chopping Block — HCA Mag

• What’s unfolding: A survey found that about 30％ of companies plan to replace HR or recruiting roles with AI in the coming year, and nearly half of those expect 10–45％ of their workforce to be impacted.

• Why it matters: This signals a shift from operational to strategic roles — it’s vital to upskill in AI literacy and focus on uniquely human capabilities that automation can’t replicate.

• What’s unfolding: A recent survey from Wounded Warrior Project shows that veterans face high underemployment rates despite strong workplace potential.

• Why it matters: HR leaders should expand talent pipelines to include military-experienced individuals, adapting role descriptions, onboarding and credential recognition to tap this underserved pool and boost diversity and resilience.

• What’s unfolding: UK research shows 25％ of employees have thought about quitting due to relentless change, with 39％ reporting increased stress and over a third feeling less motivated.

• Why it matters: HR must manage how change is communicated, paced, and supported. Listening to employee concerns, providing clarity around “why” and involving staff can reduce fatigue and turn change into opportunity.

COMPLIANCE CORNER

• What’s unfolding: While the federal minimum wage remains $7.25 per hour, unchanged since 2009, multiple states have taken action to boost worker pay in response to rising living costs and inflation.

• HR implications: HR leaders must audit pay structures to ensure they meet local living-wage expectations and anticipate pressure from low-wage employees asking for raises or job redesigns.

• What’s unfolding: A UK draft legislation proposes to expand dismissal protections for pregnant employees and new mothers, meaning HR must update policies ahead of implementation.

• HR implications: HR must review current maternity and pregnancy-related protections, revise procedures as needed, communicate changes proactively, and prepare line-managers for the new framework before it becomes law.

• What’s unfolding: Condé Nast fired four unionized employees shortly after a confrontation with its HR head over layoffs, triggering a union backlash and federal labour complaints.

• HR implications: Ensure any workforce or union-related action is legally sound, transparently communicated, and carefully managed to avoid claims of retaliation or unfair treatment.

BREAKROOM

📬 Missed Monday’s issue ‘Organizational Sensing’? Read it »