🤖 How Mastercard Is Using AI to Reinvent HR

Good Morning!

AI in HR is often hyped, but at Mastercard, it’s quietly becoming the backbone of a smarter, faster, more human-centered people strategy.

In this edition, we break down how Mastercard is applying product thinking to HR, where they’re choosing to build vs. buy, and what the future looks like when 90% of HR transactions are handled by virtual assistants.

⬇️ Upcoming In This Issue

• 🚨 Red Flags in Remote Work: Why Employees Are Losing Patience

• 🤖 Case Study | How Mastercard Is Using AI to Reinvent HR From the Inside Out

• 🤒 Behind the Sick Day Spike: What HR Needs to Rethink

• 🤔 What Happens When You Flatten the Org Chart?

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🚨 Red Flags in Remote Work: Why Employees Are Losing Patience

From entry-level hires to late-career Boomers, the desire for adaptable schedules and work-from-anywhere options is surging.

Yet, the findings from Mercer’s latest Health on Demand 2025 report, a sharp contrast emerged: while workers clamor for more autonomy, many HR leaders aren’t prioritizing it.

Here’s what stood out most from the data:

Key Insights

• 📉 Only 1 in 3 HR leaders consider flexible work a priority, despite it being among employees’ top-valued benefits.

• 🧠 69% of hybrid workers say they’re thriving — outperforming both fully on-site (63%) and fully remote (58%) colleagues.

• 👶👵 Both Gen Z and Boomers rank flexibility among top benefits — younger employees want autonomy, while older ones want phased retirements.

• 🏡 Flexible work boosts loyalty — employees who can personalize benefits are 2.7x more likely to feel cared for by their employer.

read the full 572-word article here

🤖 Case Study | How Mastercard Is Using AI to Reinvent HR From the Inside Out

In today’s digital world, employees expect the same ease from HR as they do from booking a ride or reserving a table. At Mastercard, that expectation is becoming a reality with AI reengineering the very foundation of HR.

From streamlining processes to creating personalized, data-driven employee experiences, AI is a strategic core.

Here’s what stood out:

Key Insights

• 🤝 Balancing compliance with experience — HR solutions meet legal standards and deliver fast, intuitive employee service journeys

• 🎯 AI investments are prioritized where they solve high-friction pain points for both the business and the workforce

• 📱 Consumer tech inspires HR redesign — employees navigate HR tasks like they do apps: with minimal steps and maximum clarity

• 🚀 Internal talent marketplaces driven by AI match people to opportunities and drastically reduce the need for external hiring

listen to the full episode here

😄 Comic Relief (HR Edition)

🤒 Behind the Sick Day Spike: What HR Needs to Rethink

Sickness absence is on the rise again and while the rate has steadied, the impact on employees and organizations is far from flat.

According to new national data, 148.9 million working days were lost to sickness in the UK last year. Behind that headline is a clear call to action for HR: supporting health at work is about reshaping how illness is managed, discussed, and destigmatized.

Key Insights

• 📈 Sick days surged 19% since 2020, averaging 4.4 days per worker — but Gen Z still reports far fewer absences than Boomers

• 🧓 Boomers’ sick leave jumped 53% since 2020 — highlighting age-related health needs that may be underserved in current benefit offerings

• 🗣️ Leaders should normalize sick leave — openly discussing health challenges can help dismantle the “indestructible boss” myth

• 🧩 Return-to-work success hinges on managers — even the best plan fails without skilled, supported line managers to carry it through

read the full 742-word article here

🤔 What Happens When You Flatten the Org Chart?

When companies restructure for agility or autonomy, they’re often chasing speed, innovation, and flexibility, but what happens to the people inside those systems?

Flattening the hierarchy subtly rewires the workforce, attracting traits like openness and conscientiousness, while alienating others. But the biggest shift? It doesn’t happen during hiring, it happens through attrition.

Let’s understand the impact.

Key Insights

• 📉 Flattening drives attrition more than attraction — structural shifts lead to departures, not new types of hires, shaping teams over time

• 📊 Workforces get more agreeable, open, and conscientious — de-layered firms saw a 3.6% rise in agreeableness and 2–3% in other key traits

• 🔁 Outcomes vary widely by execution — companies that lacked integrated leadership or failed to support top performers saw declines in skills and morale

• 🧩 CHROs must shape structure, not just react to it — aligning people strategy with org design is critical to making flatter models sustainable

read the full 2,583-word article here