The Must-Read Articles for Talent Professionals This Week

Flexible, hybrid, or full-time in the office.

If you had to pick one of the above policies to increase your company’s headcount, which would you choose?

If you chose flexible — Ding ding ding! — new research from Scoop and People Data Labs suggests you’re correct.

“Over the past 12 months,” Fortune says in its analysis of the two companies’ report, “fully flexible companies grew headcount by 5.6%, which dropped slightly to 4.1% for hybrid companies. Meanwhile, full-time in-office companies grew by 2.6% — less than half the rate of flexible firms.”

This doesn’t mean employees are completely averse to commuting to a brick-and-mortar office — they’d just prefer having a choice. “The more in-office days an employer mandated,” Fortune notes, “the more it struggled to hire staff.”

To learn more about this study and what it could mean for your company’s growth and potentially the future of work, be sure to check out the top spot in our list below of must-read articles for talent professionals. And further down our list, you can learn how Socrates and his ilk can help in the age of AI; why L&D professionals shouldn’t assume a training request is the best course of action; and why the restaurant industry could be leading the charge in a shift to the four-day workweek.

Here are the must-read articles from this week:

1. Forcing Workers Back to the Office May Be Backfiring: Flexible Workplaces Are Hiring Talent Twice as Fast as Those Requiring Full-Time Attendance (Fortune)

2. Why Hybrid Work Can Become Toxic (Harvard Business Review)

3. Diversity Recruiting and the Supreme Court Ruling on Affirmative Action (LinkedIn)

4. Philosophy Is the Secret to Thriving in the Age of AI (Fast Company)

5. Another Training Request? Assume This (L&D Must Change)

6. 7 Workplace Personality Tests That Can Help Improve Your Team (LinkedIn Talent Blog)

7. Recruiting During a Hiring Slowdown (ERE)

8. It Shouldn’t Be This Easy for Companies to Walk Back Their DEI Commitments (Quartz)

9. Why Vacation Is Boomers’ Joy, but a Real Struggle for Gen Z (Workforce Insights)

10. Can the Dream of the Four-Day Workweek Start with Restaurants? (The New York Times)

Here is the must-listen podcast:

What Does It Mean To Be a Human-First Leader? (Redefining Work)