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!

This week's theme? The gap between how things look and how things actually are. Fair-sounding policies that favor the status quo, progress that's real but still leaving too many people behind, and a growing dependence on systems, that weren't as solid as everyone assumed.

In short, good intentions aren't enough anymore. The workplaces winning trust right now are the ones willing to look past the surface and ask whether what they're doing is actually working.

Today’s edition is presented by SelectSoftware Reviews

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In today’s edition

🥜 Employers are spreading raises like peanut butter

💸 the gender pay gap widens the older (and wiser) you get

🏖️ paid leave is finally reaching more workers, just not all of them

🤖 Claude went down and exposed how dangerously AI-dependent we've become

⚖️ a former Amazon manager is suing after being labelled a "DEI hire" and pushed out

💭The Friday Five

Claude went down for a bit and entire teams forgot how to function

🥜 Everyone gets the same raise. Yes, even Dave. 44% of employers now plan to give all staff identical pay rises in 2026 — great for fairness optics, not so great for your top performers wondering why they bothered. 🔗 Read more [The HR Digest]

💸 Women's salaries hit a wall in their late 30s — and men's keep climbing. Glassdoor's 2026 report shows the gender pay gap grows from 12% at career entry to 25% after 30 years, driven by structural bias, not just career choices. 🔗 Read more [HR Dive]

🏖️ A record third of US workers now have access to paid leave. Fourteen states have passed paid leave laws since 2002 — but without a federal policy, millions of low-wage workers (mostly women) still fall through the cracks. 🔗 Read more [The 19th]

🤖 Claude went offline and developers forgot how to code. A surge in users knocked Anthropic's AI down twice in one week — exposing just how deeply embedded these tools have become in daily work, with zero backup plans. 🔗 Read more [HR Executive]

⚖️ Amazon dismissed his racism complaint. Then upheld his colleague's near-identical one. A former Black manager is suing Amazon, alleging he was labelled a "DEI hire," blocked from promotion, isolated on return from medical leave, and ultimately pushed out. 🔗 Read more [HCA Mag]

For easy reading

Today’s edition is presented by SelectSoftware Reviews

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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! 🧠

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Have a great weekend!