the friday 🖐️ : layoffs, lawsuits, and a $1M AI prize

what's happened this week in HR?

Howdy HR friends!👋

Happy Friday, HR friends! 🙌

Time for the Friday 🖐️ ! 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!

The employer-employee relationship has never been under more pressure. Between shifting immigration rules, headcount reductions, and workplace misconduct that too often goes unchecked, trust between companies and their people is being tested at every level.

This week's stories are a reminder that how organisations treat people, not just their AI strategy or their bottom line, is what will define them in the years ahead.

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👇️ Coming up

In today’s edition

💻 Dell's workforce quietly shrinks for the third year straight

🌎 Trump's immigration crackdown leaves 65% of businesses feeling the pinch

💰 SharkNinja drops $1M for employees to go wild with AI

🕵️ Disney exec claims HR used his coaching sessions as a spying tool

⛪ Sam's Club cashier says she was mocked for her faith, then fired on her work anniversary

💭The Friday Five

🫢 Layoffs, lawsuits, and a $1M AI prize walk into a newsletter...

💻 Dell lost 36,000 employees in three years — and barely made a sound. No dramatic layoff announcements, just hiring freezes, RTO pressure, and good old-fashioned attrition doing the heavy lifting. 🔗 Read more [Entrepreneur]

🌎 Nearly two-thirds of businesses say Trump's immigration policies are already hitting them where it hurts. Staffing shortages are biting hardest in tech and hospitality, with smaller firms least able to absorb the shock. 🔗 Read more [HR Brew]

💰 SharkNinja is handing out $1 million for employees to experiment with AI, no permission needed. The "Jailbreak" challenge is open to every function and region, with a $100K prize for the best application of the year. 🔗 Read more [The HR Digest]

🕵️ A Disney exec says HR secretly pumped his executive coach for information, then cut his bonus when he complained. The lawsuit alleges racial discrimination, retaliation, and a pretty spectacular breach of trust. 🔗 Read more [HR Dive]

⛪ A Sam's Club cashier says supervisors literally laughed when she reported faith-based harassment — and fired her exactly one year after she was hired. The suit claims the company never investigated and failed to follow its own disciplinary process. 🔗 Read more [HCA Mag]

For easy reading..

Today’s edition is presented by SelectSoftware Reviews

We're hosting this practical session where we’ll unpack the signals that it’s time to evolve your HR operating model, how to assess whether staying with a PEO still makes financial and strategic sense, and what it really takes to build internal systems that scale.

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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!

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