IA is pleased to be hosting the Carnival of HR for August 2022. Yes, it’s the last day of August, but it still counts, so hush.

This month, we focused on the theme of Total Rewards. Organizations are starting to shift the way they think about retaining their employees, focusing less on medical and dental benefits and more on the overall person – including mental, financial and social wellbeing.

The beauty of the topic is that it highlights the role of HR in guiding leadership to make better decisions, so the call for submissions to the Carnival triggered different interpretations and perspectives – which we love!

Without further ado, here are the submissions – they are few, but mighty!:

Pay your people

The tight labor market the US is currently experiencing has prompted employers to budget big pay raises for 2023. While the average is projected to be about 4.1%, data shows that this would be the most significant pay increase in the past 15 years. So, what does this entail for small businesses?

Sommer Ketron and Joey Price from Jumpstart discuss why pay raise should be a part of your executive strategy for 2023, how to identify a fair pay raise, and best practices in communicating pay increases with your employees in their recent podcast episode. Take a listen!

Influence leadership

One of the more powerful actions HR can take right now is to help leadership make smart choices. Business leaders are experiencing significant pressure to cut costs while retaining customers, and sometimes employees are caught in the middle of this metaphorical rock and a hard place.

Anthony Paradiso, an expert in Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, & Belonging, shares some practical tips on how HR can use their influence with leadership to ensure HR is seen as more than just compliance.

Remote or hybrid – you still need to be connected

Finally, we go into the vault to resurface a past blog from IA’s own files. Yes, technically the Carnival highlights recent articles, but 1) the topic is still relevant today, and 2) our post, our rules.

Cast your thoughts back to the early days of the pandemic, when businesses who were able to do so closed their offices and had employees work from home. It was a big shift for several workers who had always worked face-to-face with their teams.

Because IA is fully remote, the team took some time to share their tips on how to stay connected in a virtual world. The post may be older, but the advice is still relevant – especially considering the importance of belonging in building connection with workers.