Latest edition / 3 October 2026

Writing for people
who hire

Independent articles on the full employee lifecycle for HR professionals on both sides of the Atlantic.
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BROWSE ARTICLES

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Restructuring background screening protocols ahead of automated record sealing mandates

The New York Clean Slate Act takes effect on November 16, 2024, joining twelve other states in automating criminal record expungement. HR teams relying on cached screening databases face severe compliance risks and maximum FCRA penalties of 1000 dollars per violation. Here is how to overhaul background check operations to ensure real time accuracy in North America and strict GDPR Article 10 compliance in Europe.

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30 September 202610 min readBrendan J.Employer brand

Reconciling career site narratives with auditable workforce disclosures

New corporate reporting directives mandate public disclosure of turnover pay gaps and workforce demographics. HR leaders must audit and revise employer brand materials to ensure marketing claims match the raw data filed with regulatory bodies over the next eighteen months.

27 September 202611 min readBrendan J.Compensation and benefits

Replacing non-compete agreements with deferred compensation structures

As jurisdictions across North America and Europe invalidate traditional non-compete agreements, compensation leaders must transition their retention strategy from legal restrictions to structural financial incentives. This requires deploying targeted deferred cash plans, restructuring equity vesting cliffs, and auditing geographic garden leave requirements before the next wave of regulatory changes takes effect.

24 September 202612 min readBrendan J.Internal mobility

Restricting internal project marketplaces to enforce statutory working time limits

Internal talent platforms encourage employees to take on fractional projects outside their core roles. Under the European Working Time Directive and the US Fair Labor Standards Act, unmonitored extra hours create serious wage compliance risks. HR teams have twelve months to configure these internal platforms with hard hour caps. Systems must require manager approval workflows before regulatory agencies target internal mobility software during payroll audits.

21 September 202610 min readPaul B.Performance and development

Stripping passive skill inference from performance and development plans

Internal talent marketplaces and performance suites often infer employee skills from digital exhaust. As the European Union AI Act and localized North American privacy laws classify employment algorithms as high risk, organizations have eighteen months to audit platforms like Workday Skills Cloud and Gloat. HR teams must replace automated profiling with active, manager-verified performance milestones by late 2025.

18 September 202611 min readBrendan J.Candidate experience

Building manual candidate experience tracks for algorithmic screening opt outs

Candidates now hold the statutory right to bypass automated screening tools. Talent acquisition departments must design parallel human review processes that deliver equal processing speeds without overwhelming existing recruitment staff. The compliance window closes in 18 months.

15 September 202610 min readPaul B.Offboarding

Structuring cross-border physical asset retrieval during remote offboarding

Remote employee departures leave organizations with distributed physical assets across multiple tax jurisdictions. When a two thousand dollar laptop is abandoned in Spain or Canada, the unreturned hardware becomes a taxable benefit and a statutory data risk under the General Data Protection Regulation. HR teams must rebuild their 30-day offboarding sequences to automate hardware retrieval, calculate write-off tax liabilities, and trigger remote device wiping before regional tax authorities mandate steep payroll penalties.

Topics

All topics

Candidate experience
How applying to a company feels from the outside, and the small operational choices that decide it.
Compensation and benefits
Pay bands, equity, benefits design and the conversations that come with them.
Employer brand
What candidates learn about you before they apply, on both sides of the Atlantic, and what to do about it.
Hiring process
Structuring interviews, scorecards and decisions so the process holds up under pressure.
HR compliance
Hiring law, pay transparency and data protection in day-to-day recruitment, in Europe and North America.
Internal mobility
Promotions, lateral moves and building a talent market inside the company.
Offboarding
Exits, redundancies, alumni networks and leaving people with their dignity intact.
Onboarding
The first ninety days: ramp plans, buddy systems, paperwork and the handover from recruiting to the manager.
Performance and development
Reviews, feedback, career frameworks and the training budget nobody spends well.
Retention and engagement
Why people stay, why they quit, and what surveys will and will not tell you.
Sourcing
Finding and approaching candidates who are not reading job boards.
Workforce planning
Headcount, org design and forecasting: deciding what roles a company actually needs before anyone opens a req.

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