Ever called yourself an ally for an identity group?

Well, then, ask yourself: What have I done this week to show my allyship? If you haven’t done anything, you’re probably not an ally to that group, said Stephanie Chung, author of Ally Leadership: How to Lead People Who Are Not Like You.

HR Brew spoke with Chung about her book and how HR pros and managers can be allies to identity-based employee groups. She also discussed how leaders can navigate growing anti-DEI sentiments in the workplace.

What will HR pros learn from your book?

First of all, ALLY is an acronym, and so it stands for ask, listen, learn, you take action…From an HR perspective, at the end of the day, if leaders can just grab a hold of that one concept and use the word ALLY as an acronym that will help them go far.

We have six generations working, which is unheard of. We’ve never had that many generations working all at once in history, and so that can be a challenge, because leaders are managing people that have different expectations and different perspectives. So, a Boomer is going to think very differently than a Gen Z or a Zoomer and all the different generations in between.

For more on how leaders can be effective allies to employees from underrepresented groups, keep reading here.—MC

Working through a flood of applications with rising pressure to fill roles quickly with top talent, recruiters haven’t had an easy go lately. To help address key pain points, applicant tracking system and hiring platform Greenhouse announced a suite of new AI-driven features aimed at easing the burden on talent acquisition pros while hastening the hiring process.

Greenhouse is designing new tools to help recruiters make faster and better hiring decisions inside their existing workflows at a time when there are more and more applicants, but fewer and fewer recruiters to handle open requisitions. Unveiled at the UNLEASH Conference in Las Vegas last week, the new tools promise to automate labor-intensive tasks, from filtering resumes to drafting job descriptions.

“Application volume has doubled over the last two years,” Meredith Johnson, Greenhouse’s new chief product officer, said in Las Vegas. “That volume is clear. We’re seeing in our data three times the number of applicants per recruiter. So there’s a real challenge here that’s forming.”

Johnson pointed to a 134% spike in job applications since the release of ChatGPT, according to Greenhouse data.

For more on how these new AI tools can lead to better hiring decisions, keep reading here.—AD

Target is far from the only retailer to capitulate to the Trump administration and roll back its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, but it has suffered more backlash, foot-traffic declines, and reputational damage than others that did so.

One reason that consumers may seem inordinately disappointed with Target—and some are even boycotting the company—is that it trumpeted its commitment to DEI for decades before its retreat just five days after Trump’s inauguration—an inauguration, it turns out, to which Target contributed $1 million.

In 2009, for example, Target received a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) annual Corporate Equality Index, which rates companies on their inclusiveness for LGBTQ+ employees. It’s a milestone that Target still includes on its online company history timeline, but as part of its DEI rollback announcement, it pulled a 180, revealing it was “stopping all external diversity-focused surveys, including HRC’s Corporate Equality Index.”

For more on Target’s diversity initiative timeline, and the fallout from its DEI rollback, keep reading on Retail Brew.—AAN