🔍️ 47% of employees unofficially ended the year by Dec. 15

Hey HR Pros!

As the year winds down, so does motivation across teams. Nearly half of employees had mentally checked out by December 15, changing how productivity plays out in the final weeks of the year.

This shift can be due to a number of things such as cognitive fatigue, generational mindset, and a silent signal that your Q4 strategy might need a reset.

Upcoming In This Issue:

• 🔍️ 47% of employees unofficially ended the year by Dec. 15

• 📊 Only 23% of L&D pros said AI ownership was “very clear”

• 💬 PwC UK embedded resilience and communication training into its Gen Z onboarding

• 🤖 How P&G is rebuilding its workforce around AI

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 🔍️ 47% of employees unofficially ended the year by Dec. 15

According to a national survey, December 15 marked the last truly productive day for nearly half of employed Americans. Rather than resist the slowdown, many teams leaned into it, consciously or not.

The numbers revealed more than holiday fatigue; they captured an annual behavioral rhythm shaped by cognitive overload and generational attitudes.

Key Insights

• 🔎 47% of employees unofficially ended the year by Dec. 15, quietly shifting from execution mode to holiday autopilot.

• 🧠 Gen Z led the early slowdown, with 54% easing up — while only 37% of Boomers reported dialing things back before year’s end.

• 📉 “That can wait until next year” was said 16 times, on average, by each worker — well before the calendar flipped.

• 🛠️ Teams that reframed December as a “review window” helped employees wrap up the year productively — without burning out or checking out.

read the full 388-word article here

📊 Only 23% of L&D pros said AI ownership was “very clear”

As AI tools became more embedded in our day-to-day work, L&D professionals found themselves at the center of a growing divide: one side led by executive strategy, the other by employee-driven curiosity.

Balancing the urgency of upskilling with the autonomy learners wanted became essential for performance, retention, and organizational alignment.

Key Insights

• 📊 Only 23% of L&D pros said AI ownership was “very clear,” exposing a major governance gap that slowed confident implementation across organizations.

• 🎯 74% of employees believed AI personalization was as effective—or better—than human-designed learning, signaling a trust shift in digital-first development.

• 💡 Nearly 7 in 10 professionals used AI weekly, but just 14% considered themselves advanced — a sign of broad interest, shallow confidence.

• 🧭 62% of organizations reported a disconnect between planned learning and actual engagement, showing executive strategies often miss real learner behavior.

read the full 1,534-word article here

HR LOLs

💬 PwC UK embedded resilience and communication training into its Gen Z onboarding

As Gen Z entered the workforce in greater numbers this year, the friction between digital-native expectations and real-world demands only became more visible.

Degrees and technical skills got them in the door, but that didn’t mean they were fully prepared to navigate feedback, client pressure, or workplace complexity.

This raised a critical question for HR leaders: Are we investing enough in the human side of onboarding? One major firm decided to answer that question by offering resilience training.

Key Insights

• 💬 PwC UK embedded resilience and communication training into its Gen Z onboarding — part of a six-month skills ramp-up for new grads.

• 📊 By 2030, Gen Z is expected to hold 30% of U.S. jobs, making emotional agility and soft skills a strategic L&D priority now.

• 🧠 Only technical training won’t cut it — resilience, conflict management, and communication are equally crucial for long-term performance.

• 🌱 Only 23% of companies say AI training is paired with soft skills, exposing a readiness gap in how organizations future-proof talent.

read the full 1,113-word article here

🤖 How P&G is rebuilding its workforce around AI

Too few organizations had the internal systems, structure, or skills to scale AI in a way that delivered business impact. But some, like P&G, were already building the infrastructure for AI maturity before most companies had even defined it.

And instead of isolating AI in tech teams, they embedded it into every function, from R&D to customer service, all while upskilling thousands to work alongside it.

Key Insights

• 🏭 P&G’s “AI Factory” cuts deployment time by six months, streamlining how algorithms move from prototype to real business applications.

• 👥 Over 4,000 executives completed an 8-week AI strategy program, boosting enterprise-wide fluency and cross-functional experimentation.

• 🧪 Fragrance R&D accelerated 5x using AI tools that predict top-performing scent profiles based on millions of consumer data points.

• 🤖 Teams using generative AI outperformed all others in an internal experiment — even beating traditional teams solving the same business problems.

read the full 2,128-word article here