SMPHR Weekly Brew — Monday, August 3

Happy Monday, SMPHR fam. Grab your coffee — here's what moved in HR and leadership this week, a few fresh finds from the Learning Lab, and what's coming up on the SMPHR calendar.

Let's get into it.

This Week in HR

• Pulling back from DEI increases legal risk — and costs organizations qualified women (HR Dive) — Ghosting your DEI program doesn't make the legal exposure disappear; it just means you find out about it in a deposition instead of a policy review.
• This week in 5 numbers: Why some workers aren't AI upskilling (HR Dive) — Only 3% of C-suite leaders feel ready for AI adoption, and a quarter of workers are side-eyeing it over accuracy and privacy — turns out "just roll it out" was never a training plan.
• How to make sure front-line managers are heard (HR Dive) — Companies say front-line managers are mission-critical, then implement barely half their ideas — a great way to turn your most important layer of leadership into a suggestion box nobody checks.
• Leadership readiness lags behind AI adoption rate (HR Dive) — Everyone's buying the AI tools; almost nobody's teaching leaders how to actually run a team through the change — that gap is where transformation projects go to die.

New in the Learning Lab

• The 7 HR Trends That Will Impact Businesses in 2026 — and Beyond (Video, SHRM Tomorrowist)
• The Most Important Career Advice You'll Ever Hear With Harvard Business School's #1 Professor (Video, Harvard Business Review)
• From copilots to superagents: HR's 2026 shift (Article, HR Executive)
• Why we choose to use 'equity & inclusion' over 'DEI' (Article, Culture Amp)
• 2026 FLSA Update: Key Takeaways from Opinion Letters (Article, SHRM)

Coming Up

• Hot Topic Power Hour: Real Talk. Real People. — Wed, Aug 26, 12:00–1:00 PM. Register here.
• SMPHR Employment Law Legal Update — October (date TBD), 9:00–10:30 AM. See the full calendar.

That's the brew — see you at the next one. 🌿