Howdy HR friends!👋

We’re pretty much half way through August and the HR industry seems to be moving as quickly as ever!

We hope you all enjoyed Tuesday’s edition where we looked at gen Z and their “situationship” with their employers.

Today we’re continuing with our new format for the end of the week: the Friday 5!

Five articles, five takeaways. Five minutes away from the chaos to grab a coffee and get caught up on everything that’s been happening in HR this week!

Let’s jump in shall we?

🚦Coming up

In today’s edition

🏢 Office visits bounce back in some cities, 👁️ HSBC goes full Big Brother mode, 🤖 Workers secretly use banned AI tools, 💰 Companies let staff cash in vacation days, 📉 NYC hiring hits the brakes hard

Today’s edition is presented by

Hubspot

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💭The Friday Five

When going back to the office means going back to being watched

🏢 Some Cities Are Actually Seeing Pre-Pandemic Office Traffic Again New York and Miami are leading the charge with office visits matching or exceeding 2019 levels, while other cities still lag behind significantly.

🔗 Read more [HR Brew]

👁️ HSBC Plans Massive Surveillance Upgrade With Biometric Scanning Bonanza The bank is quadrupling cameras and doubling biometric readers at its new London HQ, plus requiring staff to install tracking software on personal phones.

🔗 Read more [HR Grapevine]

🤖 Nearly Half of Workers Admit to Using Banned AI Tools at Work Despite company policies, 45% of employees are going rogue with ChatGPT and similar tools, often sharing sensitive company data in the process.

🔗 Read more [HR Dive]

💰 Companies Now Let Workers Trade Vacation Days for Cold Hard Cash New PTO conversion programs allow employees to swap unused time off for student loan payments, 401(k) contributions, or straight-up money.

 🔗 Read more [HR Dive]

📉 NYC Job Market Hits the Wall With Hiring at 20-Year Low The Big Apple added just 956 private-sector jobs in the first half of 2025, the slowest growth outside a recession since 2003.

🔗 Read more [New York Times]

For easy reading

Today’s edition is also presented by

Superhuman AI

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That’s it for today.

Thanks for reading to the end and we hope today’s edition helped saved you a few hours in scouring the web for the latest news! 🧠

We know you’re super busy and as ever, we really appreciate you saving some room for us in your inbox 😀

Have a great weekend!