🎂 Turning 30 buys you a day off.

Every PTO policy is built on a theory: give people enough vacation days and clear rules, and they will use them sensibly throughout the year. 

New data on how people actually book time off suggests that theory does not hold up in practice.

The real patterns behind vacation requests, when people book, why certain days disappear from the calendar faster than others, look less like rational planning and more like a mix of habit and culture.

COMING UP

• 🎂 26% of workers take PTO on their 30th birthday, only 20% do at 31

• 🤖 One hiring AI touches 900 million candidate profiles, and wrote its own bias report

• 🍽️ Sodexo's AI plans a season of menus in 1 day, down from 4 weeks

• 📈 4,065 training hours mapped to a jump to 91.4% succession at one staffing firm

Enjoy A Free Lunch Break While SSR Handles Your HR Software Search

You shouldn't have to choose between a real lunch break and hours of HR software research.

SSR's HR Software Advisors do the scouting for you: pricing, comparisons, all of it. And they'll bring back a list of the best fit HR software that makes sense for your organization needs.

Book your call and step out for lunch on us, a $100 DoorDash gift card, while we handle the rest!

 📰 Latest in HR News

• JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs walk back RTO—but only for the World Cup

• Target is rolling out a new attendance tracking system for store and warehouse workers

• Thousands could bear the brunt of the rumored 2026 layoffs at Microsoft

• Director claims Equinix staged layoff to mask race, age bias

🎂 26% take PTO on their 30th birthday. Only 20% do at 31.

The idiosyncrasies behind when people actually take a day off rarely show up in an engagement survey, but a new dataset from Deel's platform makes them visible.

Round-number birthdays, bridge days next to public holidays, and how far in advance people book vacation all shape staffing gaps more than most PTO policies account for.

The PTO Booking Quirks Behind Every Calendar:

• 🎂 PTO spikes again at 40, hitting 27%, mirroring the round-number effect seen at 30. HR should expect predictable coverage dips around milestone birthdays generally, not just the big 3-0.

• 🇸🇪 Sweden runs the opposite pattern: workers there are 8 percentage points less likely to take their 30th off, only spiking at 40 (+20 points). Milestone-birthday planning should account for country-level differences rather than one global assumption.

• 🎉 Each country's single most popular summer vacation day sits right next to a public holiday, from Sweden's Nordic July shutdown (46%) to Italy's eve of Ferragosto (42%). Employees overwhelmingly extend existing holidays rather than pick random dates off.

• 🇮🇳 In India, 30% of summer vacation requests are booked within two days of the start date, the most last-minute of any country tracked. Standard PTO request lead times built for other regions may not fit every part of a global workforce.

Read more: Deel and a16z: Charts of the Summer

🤖 This hiring AI scans 900 million candidates. It also wrote its own bias report.

AI hiring vendors increasingly publish their own bias-mitigation documentation to reassure buyers before a contract gets signed.

Cadient's SmartSuite report is a useful example of what that self-assessment looks like in practice, and where its limits sit. For HR teams evaluating any AI hiring tool, the report is as instructive for what it does not claim as for what it does.

Reading the Fine Print on AI Bias Claims:

• 🧮 SmartScreen gives every candidate for the same role an identical, automated, criteria-based interview score. That standardization limits human inconsistency, but the report does not show whether the scoring criteria were tested for adverse impact.

• 📍 SmartTenure abstracts candidate location down to the state level and sorts education into just six tiers. The vendor frames this as bias prevention, though the same abstraction also makes the model harder for an outside party to audit.

• 📜 The report states plainly that it "does not serve as legal advice or a certification of compliance." That disclaimer sits in the same document that cites EEOC, OFCCP, and NIST frameworks, worth reading before treating any vendor claim as a compliance shield.

• ⚖️ Under the EEOC and OFCCP guidance the report itself references, legal responsibility for discriminatory hiring outcomes stays with the employer using the tool. No amount of vendor documentation transfers that risk away from HR.

Read more: Cadient SmartSuite

[Next Week] Solo HR, Real Impact: Building the HR Function from Scratch

In this session, panelists will break down what it takes to go from “just keeping things running” to building something" that works long term.

They will also discuss what to prioritize, what to ignore, and how to stop feeling like you’re constantly behind. If your HR strategy currently lives in your head (and your to-do list is winning), this will help you get a handle on it.

BONUS: Two lucky attendees will walk away with a $50 Spafinder gift card, because if anyone deserves a proper reset, it's the person running HR solo. Attend live for your chance to win.

🍽️ Sodexo's AI plans a season of menus in 1 day, down from 4 weeks.

Sodexo's chief tech, data, and digital officer Alice Guéhennec has spent her return to the company pushing AI adoption at scale across kitchens, facilities, and retail.

Rather than mandate a single top-down system, she built in room for employees to opt into the tools that help them most.

The result looks less like a mandate and more like an open invitation.

What HR Can Learn From Sodexo’s AI Strategy:

• 🙋 Any employee can request a license for tools like Microsoft Copilot or Google Gemini Enterprise if they believe it will boost their productivity. That bottom-up model is one HR can borrow instead of forcing a single AI rollout on every team.

• 🧪 Every major AI use case gets piloted at just 5 to 10 sites across a couple of Sodexo's 43 countries before wider rollout. Small-scale testing limits how far an AI misstep can spread before anyone notices.

• 💳 Cashier-free checkout technology lifted revenue by 56% at one pilot university and drove a 28% sales lift with an 11% bigger average check at another. Early wins like these build the internal case for scaling AI further.

• 🤖 Sodexo has deployed roughly 200 robots globally, split between 100 floor-cleaning units and 85 delivery robots, and is now exploring kitchen robots for the most repetitive and risky tasks. Expect safety-driven automation to keep expanding in frontline roles.

Read more: Fortune: How foodservice giant Sodexo is embracing AI and robotics

📈 One firm's training hours mapped to a jump to 91.4% succession.

L&D budgets are often the first line item questioned when spending tightens, in part because the payoff is hard to point to directly.

Gi Group's latest UK corporate social responsibility report lays out both sides of that equation in the same document. It offers a data point HR leaders can use when building the case for training spend internally.

4 Numbers Behind One Staffing Firm's Training Payoff:

• 🧠 The company logged 975 hours of EDI-focused training in 2025, covering inclusive recruitment and tackling microaggressions. DEI training gets tracked as its own measurable line rather than folded into general L&D hours.

• 🩺 76 employees were trained as Mental Health First Aiders, giving a 1-in-6 staff ratio against the MHFA England benchmark of 1-in-10. That ratio is a concrete number other HR teams can benchmark their own coverage against.

• 📣 Employee Net Promoter Score moved from -1 to +6 over the same year as the training push. The report does not prove the two are causally linked, but they moved in the same direction together.

• 🎓 10 permanent staff completed apprenticeships in 2025, pairing paid work experience with formal qualifications. Structured pathways into permanent roles were part of the same training investment, not a separate program.

Read more: Gi Group UK & Ireland Corporate Social Responsibility Report 2026