The friday 5: AI budgets, papal encyclical, sick leave

Happy Friday, HR friends! 🙌

Uber's engineers were told to go all-in on AI coding tools. They did. So enthusiastically, in fact, that the company burned through its entire 2026 AI budget by April.

There's a lesson in there somewhere about what happens when you tell people to adopt a technology without putting guardrails around it first, and this week's edition has a few more of those lessons too.

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IN TODAY’S EDITION

• 🙏 Pope Leo XIV issued a stern warning about AI at work. HR may be fielding accommodation requests next.

• 💸 Uber burned through its entire 2026 AI budget in four months and just hit the brakes

• 🏦 Wells Fargo's CEO says AI's impact on jobs is "complicated" — and he's not wrong

• 🏆 How PwC is using $5K awards and pop-up coaching hubs to drive real AI adoption

• 📋 Virginia just passed a paid sick leave law — here's what employers need to know now

THE FRIDAY 5

AI hit the Vatican, the earnings call, and the expense report, all in the same week

🙏 When the Pope calls AI "an instrument of domination, exclusion, and death," employment attorneys start paying close attention. 

Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, landed last week with a direct warning about AI's expansion in the world of work. Some employees, particularly Catholics, may now have a theological road map for filing religious accommodation requests under Title VII to limit or avoid AI use at work. The practical advice: engage in interactive dialogue, evaluate how essential AI actually is to the role, and don't confuse accommodation with accepting lower performance standards.

🔗 Read more — HR Brew

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💸 Uber burned through its entire 2026 AI coding budget in four months and responded with a $1,500 monthly cap per employee per tool. 

President and COO Andrew Macdonald raised the alarm publicly, noting that heavy use of agentic tools like Claude Code and Cursor needed a clearer line to actual business value. Microsoft has also reportedly begun canceling most of its direct Claude Code licenses, pushing engineers back to GitHub Copilot CLI. The lesson for HR and finance leaders: AI adoption programs need budget guardrails built in from the start.

🔗 Read more — The HR Digest

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🏦 The Wells Fargo CEO: AI will both create and destroy jobs, and those things won't happen to the same people at the same time. 

Wells Fargo has cut headcount from roughly 275,000 to 201,000 since Charlie Scharf joined in 2019, and analysts estimate about one-third of banking jobs could eventually be affected by AI. His message to HR leaders is to get ahead of the mismatch between who gets displaced and who benefits by investing in retraining now, not after the fact.

🔗 Read more — HR Dive

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🏆 PwC is handing out $5,000 to employees who can prove they used AI in ways that actually moved the needle. 

The firm's Chief People and Inclusion Officer, Yolanda Seals-Coffield, is steering an adoption strategy built around closing the gap between access and actual use. With nearly 900 nominations already in for PwC's new [A]mplifying [I]mpact Awards, the firm is surfacing real use cases and spreading them across all 80,000 employees. It also deployed pop-up "genius bar" coaching hubs in cities across the US, where employees bring real work problems and get hands-on support building custom agents. The pilot returned 100% positive feedback.

🔗 Read more — Human Resources Director

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📋 Virginia employers just got a new compliance deadline on their calendars, and the clock is already ticking. 

The Virginia General Assembly signed a new paid sick leave law on May 20, 2026, requiring employers to offer one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked, starting from an employee's first day. Accrued hours carry over year to year, with an optional employer cap of 40 hours annually. Businesses with 50 or more employees must comply by July 1, 2027, with smaller employers phased in through 2029. HR teams in Virginia should be reviewing policies and updating tracking systems now — not next summer.

🔗 Read more — The HR Digest

That’s it for today!

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