Featuring scholarly and practitioner insights from HR and people leaders, industry experts, and researchers.

In this HCI Webinar, I talk with Guillermo Corea about building psychological capital. Guillermo Corea is a seasoned business leader with over 25 years of experience in digital media, business development, venture capital, and strategic management. Currently serving as the chief business innovation and growth officer at APA, he holds the distinction of being the first person appointed to this pivotal role. In this capacity, Corea is responsible for spearheading the development and implementation of innovative revenue generation strategies for both the association and its affiliate, APA Services, Inc. Corea brings a wealth of expertise to this role, underscored by his successful track record in launching new operations, expanding revenue streams, and fostering impactful partnerships.

Abstract: Contract, temporary, and freelance workers are no longer a stopgap at the edge of the organization. A Harris Poll survey of 1,006 U.S. hiring decision-makers released in November 2026 found that 71% of companies now build contract workers into their staffing strategies and that contract workers complete an estimated 11% of the work at U.S. companies. This article examines what that shift means for leaders. It defines the main forms of nonstandard work, reviews evidence on prevalence and drivers, and synthesizes research showing that blended workforces can strain standard employees' loyalty, expose temporary workers to higher injury risk, and create legal exposure around misclassification and joint employment. It then sets out five evidence-based responses: deliberate workforce architecture, floor standards across the extended workforce, integration at the team interface, shared safety duties, and classification governance. Organizational examples from technology, logistics, healthcare, automotive manufacturing, consumer goods, aerospace, and education technology illustrate each response. The article closes with three long-term capabilities for leading the whole workforce, not only the payroll.

This research examines employee recognition as a powerful yet frequently mishandled management tool that significantly influences performance, retention, and workplace wellbeing. Research shows that while frequent, specific, and fair appreciation powerfully drives engagement and reduces turnover, the majority of workers still feel their efforts go unnoticed or receive only generic praise. Furthermore, the research highlights the risks of poorly designed award systems and the growing challenge of artificial intelligence, which threatens to make gratitude feel hollow if fully automated. Organizations are encouraged to democratize appreciation across peers, learn systematically from workplace excellence, and maintain a human-centered approach to ensure recognition genuinely honors real contributions.

This research examines employee recognition as a powerful yet frequently mishandled management tool that significantly influences performance, retention, and workplace wellbeing. Research shows that while frequent, specific, and fair appreciation powerfully drives engagement and reduces turnover, the majority of workers still feel their efforts go unnoticed or receive only generic praise. Furthermore, the research highlights the risks of poorly designed award systems and the growing challenge of artificial intelligence, which threatens to make gratitude feel hollow if fully automated. Organizations are encouraged to democratize appreciation across peers, learn systematically from workplace excellence, and maintain a human-centered approach to ensure recognition genuinely honors real contributions.

This research examines employee recognition as a powerful yet frequently mishandled management tool that significantly influences performance, retention, and workplace wellbeing. Research shows that while frequent, specific, and fair appreciation powerfully drives engagement and reduces turnover, the majority of workers still feel their efforts go unnoticed or receive only generic praise. Furthermore, the research highlights the risks of poorly designed award systems and the growing challenge of artificial intelligence, which threatens to make gratitude feel hollow if fully automated. Organizations are encouraged to democratize appreciation across peers, learn systematically from workplace excellence, and maintain a human-centered approach to ensure recognition genuinely honors real contributions.

This research examines employee recognition as a powerful yet frequently mishandled management tool that significantly influences performance, retention, and workplace wellbeing. Research shows that while frequent, specific, and fair appreciation powerfully drives engagement and reduces turnover, the majority of workers still feel their efforts go unnoticed or receive only generic praise. Furthermore, the research highlights the risks of poorly designed award systems and the growing challenge of artificial intelligence, which threatens to make gratitude feel hollow if fully automated. Organizations are encouraged to democratize appreciation across peers, learn systematically from workplace excellence, and maintain a human-centered approach to ensure recognition genuinely honors real contributions.

In HCI Webinar, I talk with Dan Cosgrove about closing the gap on healthcare, cost, and coverage for working Americans. Spent over a decade at Procter and gamble, Berkshire Hathaway and Nike before he broke away to focus on his passion of healthcare. The first healthcare company he started broke $4M in under 3 years. Now his non profit Better Benefits USA was just recognized by by Procter and gamble as one of the top ten companies run by P&G alumni thanks to their work in disrupting America’s broken healthcare system.

Abstract: Recognition is among the least expensive levers available to leaders, yet most organizations still deliver it rarely, unevenly, and generically. Recent survey and message-level data from 2026 indicate that more than half of employees had not been formally recognized in the previous three months, that two in five individual contributors believe their good work goes unseen, and that workers increasingly discount appreciation they suspect was written by artificial intelligence. This article synthesizes longitudinal survey research, field experiments on symbolic awards, meta-analytic evidence, and healthcare quality-improvement studies to explain when recognition improves performance, retention, and wellbeing, and when poorly designed awards backfire. It distinguishes recognition from reward, defines strategic recognition, and reviews evidence on frequency, specificity, peer participation, award design, and fairness. Five evidence-based organizational responses are presented with documented organizational examples across technology, financial services, aviation, hospitality, healthcare, manufacturing, and public health, alongside three long-term capabilities for embedding recognition into how work is led and how talent decisions are made.