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Walk into any grocery store to stock up for Halloween and you will discover that, for chocolate treats, you have two basic choices: Will it be Mars or Hershey? I often buy both, but that is beside the point. The point is that the two giants compete for market share, but both enjoy robust sales. In other words, a relatively stable duopoly defines the U.S. chocolate candy market. But it wasnt always like this. Before the 1960s, the Hershey Chocolate Corp. reigned supreme as the undisputed chocolate king. It was in that decade that Mars went for Hersheys jugular. Hershey Chocolates response brought lasting change to its candy business, the local community, and Hershey Park, its chocolate-themed amusement park. As a professor of American studies at Penn State Harrisburg who has recently published a book on Hershey Park, I am astounded by how these changes continue to reverberate today. Milton Hersheys paternalistic capitalism Before the 1960s, change was not a word one associated with either the town of Hershey, Pennsylvania, or its famous chocolate company. Better words would be stability and productivityand this was by the founders design. Milton Hershey founded Hershey Chocolate and built up the town of Hershey, Pennsylvania, for his employees. [Photo: Bettman/Bettman Collection/Getty Images] When Milton Hershey entered the confection industry in the 1880s, violent clashes between corporations and labor roiled American society. Hershey imagined a better way: paternalistic capitalism. In the early 1900s, he built a chocolate factory and planned community out in the farms and pastures of central Pennsylvania. Instead of offering men and women wage-earning jobs and nothing else, he took care of his workers. They owned nice homes and benefited from a generous array of free or subsidized services and amenities: snow removal, garbage collection, trolley lines, good schools, a junior college, zoo, museum, sports arena, library, community center, and theater. They even had their own amusement park. But this was a reciprocal relationship. In return, employees were expected to work hard, exhibit loyalty, practice clean living, and refrain from labor agitation. With the exception of a strike during the Great Depression, the company and town lived in harmony. Milton Hershey called the place an industrial utopia, and residents largely agreed. Moving to Hershey, one recalled, was like moving to paradise. Harmony also defined Hersheys relations with Mars. At the time, Hershey produced only solid chocolatethink of Hershey bars and Kisses. In contrast, Frank Marss company specialized in chocolate-covered snacks, such as Snickers or Milky Way, in which milk chocolate is poured over nuts, caramel, or nougat. Where did that chocolate coating come from? Hershey, of course. In those days, Mars was a client, not a rival. Without competition, Hershey enjoyed the luxury of not having to worry about market share. Amazingly, the company did not advertise under Milton Hershey and continued this policy after his death in 1945. The production line at the Hershey chocolate factory in 1969 [Photo: Peter Simins/Pix/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images] Hershey in crisis Everything changed in 1964. The catalyst for change was Forrest Mars, the founders hard-charging son, who was a true disrupter. After seizing control of his fathers company, Forrest Mars set his sights on dethroning Hershey. As reporter and author Joël Glenn Brenner explains, the younger Mars boldly terminated the partnership with Hershey while ordering his engineers to learn how to make Hershey-caliber chocolate in six months. He also modernized the factory and ordered a surge in advertising, all to wrestle market share away from Hershey, the sleeping giant. The strategy worked. By the decades end, Mars had caught Hershey in terms of market share and pushed the chocolate colossus into crisis. The good news for Hershey was that it had at the helm two forward-looking leaders, Harold Mohler and Bill Dearden. Though standard practice had always been to hire locally and from within, Mohler and Dearden recruited outsiders with MBAs from Harvard and Wharton to initiate sweeping reforms aimed at modernizing its archaic business practices. The company oened a public relations office, conducted market research, installed IBM mainframe computers to crunch numbers, retrained its sales force, and created a marketing department. Many employees, a new executive joked, were so behind the times that they had thought marketing was what their wives did . . . with a shopping cart. This effort culminated with the release of the companys first TV commercials starting in 1969. The sleeping giant had awoken. The companys next move altered the town forever. As a cost-cutting measure, it terminated the free services and amenities at the core of Milton Hersheys vision. The era of paternalism was over. As the company liquidated assets, residents howled in protest. It was a very traumatic time for the community, one executive recalled. For residents, the only consolation was that at least the amusement park would stay the same. Or would it? By the late 1960s, Hershey Park had degenerated into what one executive called an iron park with a bunch of clanging rides. Leadership faced a pivotal decision: renovate the park or close it forever. The park had such a rich heritage, one executive recalled, that to shutter it would put a stamp of negative feeling within the community. The company elected to renovate. The original Hershey Co. chocolate manufacturing plant and Hershey Park Entertainment facility, foreground, in Hershey, Pennsylvania, circa 2009 [Photo: Bradley C. Bower/Bloomberg/Getty Images] Hersheyparks transformation But how to renovate was another matter. In the 1960s and 1970s, owners of traditional amusement parks had to think twice before investing in their properties. That was because Disneyland, the nations first theme park, had caused a sensation when it debuted in 1955. Its incredible popularity, and the opening of the more spectacular Disney World in 1971, placed pressure on old-fashioned amusement parks everywhere. After commissioning a feasibility study, Hershey officials decided to gamble: Instead of fixing up the old amusement park, they would convert it into a Disney-style theme park. To pay for the massive overhaul, they redirected capital earned from the dismantling of Milton Hersheys paternalism. Reborn as Hersheypark in 1973, the ever-growing complex has become a mecca for chocolate lovers and thrill-ride seekers from across the Northeast. Every year, Halloween reminds me of this remarkable transformation. The stores become stocked with Hershey brands, and the theme park comes alive with its spooky Dark Nights entertainment. In the past, workers at the Hershey plant would joke that they had chocolate syrup in their veins. These days, they clearly have innovation, too, and that creative spirit is largely due to Forrest Mars. By giving Hershey the jolt it needed, he shook up the status quo and changed the chocolate company, town, and park forever. Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. John Haddad is a professor of American studies at Penn State. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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A year ago, direct air capturetechnology that pulls CO2 from the airseemed ready to quickly scale in the U.S. Project Cypress, a massive undertaking in Louisiana designed to capture more than a million tons of CO2 each year, won $50 million in funding from the Department of Energy in early 2024. In Texas, another major direct air capture hub also won funding. Together, the projects were eligible for as much as $1.1 billion from the DOE, part of $3.5 billion Congress set aside for DAC hubs in the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Climeworks, a pioneer in the industry and one of the partners on the Louisiana project, was hiring a U.S. team, scaling up a new plant in Iceland, and signing large deals to sell carbon removal to companies like British Airways and Morgan Stanley. Heirloom, another tech company working on the Louisiana hub, closed a $150 million Series B round of funding. CarbonCapture, another startup in the space, raised $80 million. Multiple other DAC projects also won DOE grants. The situation is different now. In one round of cuts, according to a leaked list, the DOE might revoke around $50 million in grants to 10 different direct air capture projects. (The cuts are part of more than $7.5 billion in cancellations for what the administration calls Green New Scam” funding.) A second leaked spreadsheet suggests that the flagship hubs in Louisiana and Texas might also be at risk. Earlier this year, Heirloom laid off some workers and reportedly canceled a planned project. Climeworks also had a round of layoffs. At the same time, a few projects are moving forward, and one key tax credit is still in place. Government support isn’t the only thing keeping the industry afloat. But the technology is still in the so-called valley of deaththe stage when it still hasn’t reached large-scale commercial deploymentand funding cuts would be a major blow. Even as other countries offer incentives, it could slow down the industry globally. “I think it could slow down substantially,” says Eric O’Rear, associate director at the economic and policy research firm the Rhodium Group. “If you look at it from a policy perspective, the U.S. was really dominating this space.” From boom to uncertainty As an industry, direct air capture is still in its infancy. The technology was proven in a lab 26 years ago, but the first commercial plant, run by Climeworks in Iceland, didnt open until 2021. It was a milestone, but tiny compared to what’s needed: It captures 4,000 tons of CO2 a year, or roughly as much as driving 930 gas cars over the same period. To deal with climate change, the world may need to capture 10 billion tons of CO2 a year by the middle of the century, according to one National Academy of Sciences estimate. (Thats on top of radically cutting emissions, not as a replacement.) Critics have argued that the technology is too expensive to be a realistic solution. But the companies developing it say that scaling up will bring costs down, both because of economies of scale and because engineers can learn by doing, improving materials and processes as they go. Climeworks Mammoth plant in Iceland, 2024 [Photo: John Moore/Getty Images] Our approach, deployment-led innovation, involves running DAC plants in the field for rapid, real-world learning, Climeworks CEO Christoph Gebald told Fast Company in 2024. Now the company says that one key component of its tech, the sorbent, lasts 10 times longer than before, and its working on cutting its energy use in half, which would also cut costs in half. The company aims for a cost of $250 to $350 per ton captured by 2030. Ultimately, the industry aims to achieve $100 per tona tipping point that would make it affordable enough to be deployed at a very large scale. The first corporate buyers are early-stage adopters willing to pay much higher prices to help the technology grow. The two large planned DAC plants in Louisiana and Texas could help accelerate that process. But the future of those projects is still not clear. In a statement after a leaked spreadsheet listed the projects, the Department of Energy said that no additional projects have been terminated, and that the DOE continues to conduct an individualized and thorough review of financial awards made by the previous administration. Both projects have bipartisan support from state leaders, and when they were on a DOE “hit list” earlier in 2025, Republican leaders helped keep Project Cypress alive, at least temporarily. But it’s possible neither project will continue. CarbonCapture subsidiary True North Carbons Deep Sky installation under construction in Alberta, Canada, 2025 [Photo: CarbonCapture Inc.] Smaller direct air capture hubs that had planned on DOE funding may also struggle to continueor possibly move. CarbonCapture, a startup that planned to install its tech in Arizona this year, has already relocated that project to Canada, to a site called Deep Sky that’s designed to help multiple companies scale up their technology in one place. Deep Sky announced last week that it plans to build a second large facility in Canada. The Canadian government offers strong incentives for DAC companies to build new plants. Some other countries, from Denmark to Japan, also have incentives for DAC projects. “Globally, we are seeing carbon removal continuing to scale,” says Ben Rubin, executive director of the Carbon Business Council. “I think the big question is, who will be home to those economic benefits and who will be home to those jobs?” Project Cypress, for example, was expected to create 2,300 jobs and bring billions of dollars to Louisiana’s economy. For the climate, it doesn’t matter if direct air capture happens in the U.S. or Iceland or Kenya. But the U.S. government, under President Joe Biden, started to take a leadership role in helping the tech grow faster. The political changes could slow global progress. What’s moving forward Some DAC projects are still underway, with or without government support. In Texas, 1PointFive, a subsidiary of the oil giant Occidental, is building a sprawling facility that could capture up to 500,000 tons of CO2 a year. 1PointFive told Fast Company that the facility is on track to start running this yearat which point it will be the largest direct air capture operation in the world. Some of the captured CO2 could be injected underground to help get more oil out of old oil wells, a controversial move from a climate perspective. But some of it will also be permanently stored in deep rock formations or depleted oil or gas wells. Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency granted the company permits to inject millions of tons of CO2 in storage wells over the next 12 years. The captured CO2 could also be used to make everything from plastic to jet fuel. The Stratos facility under construction, 2025 [Photo: 1PointFive] The project, called Stratos, doesn’t have any DOE funding. Microsoft, one of the project’s customers, agreed in 2024 to buy 500,000 tons of CO2 removal over the next six years, with the caveat that the CO2 won’t be used in oil production. BlackRock invested $550 million; the total cost may be more than $1.3 billion. Others are moving forward with smaller pilots. Avnos, a California-based startup, is nearing completion on a pilot called Project Brighton that was funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, and plans to begin operation before the end of the year. The company has an unusual hybrid approach that could potentially reach low costs earlier than others like Climeworks. Along with capturing CO2, it also captures water. The tech’s design means that it can cut energy use in half or more, dramatically cutting the overall expense. (At its first large project, it expects to capture CO2 for less than $250 per ton; as it scales up, CEO Will Kain says, it has a “good line of sight” to $100 per ton.) Because the technology produces water from the air, it also has the opportunity to potentially be used at water-hungry data centers, or at facilities that want to use CO2 to make products like chemicals and need water for those processes as well. Avnos is involved in DAC hub projects with DOE funding, and hasn’t yet heard what the ultimate fate of those projects will be. But it also has deliberately looked for a variety of sources of funding for other projects. “We’re diversifying our sources of funding,” Kain says. How the industry could keep growing Kain is still optimistic about the industry. “The global momentum for carbon removal is very strong,” he says. Even in the U.S., when most of the clean energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act were axed by Congress this summer, a tax credit for direct air capture stayed in place and was actually expanded. (Now projects that use CO2 to make other products can get the same incentive as projects that permanently store CO2 underground.) If federal support for new projects wanes, as expected, “it certainly makes it harder for us to deploy first-of-a-kind pilots in the U.S.,” Kain says. “So companies like us have to get a little bit creative in how you fund.” Some companies are also working on new ways to lower the cost of direct air capture and work without government grants, including a Denver-based startup called Heimdal. The company has an unusual approach: Instead of using large fans to pull in air and extract CO2, it uses calcium oxide, a mineral that naturally reacts with the gas to capture it. “It’s very simple,” says Marcus Lima, cofounder and CEO. “Its literally just spraying rocks on the ground.” The rocks are later heated up in a kiln to release the CO2 for storage or use. The cost is already low, at around $200 per ton. The launch ceremony for Heimdals Bantam facility in Oklahoma, 2024. [Screenshot: Heimdal/CapturePoint] The startup opened a facility in Oklahoma in August 2024 that can capture up to 5,000 tons of CO2 per year. To help with costs, it makes some compromises that some competitors wouldn’tselling the CO2 for use in oil production, and using natural gas as an energy source. But Lima argues that those are stepping stones toward an ideal for future operation. He also believes that companies should focus on bringing costs down without relying on grants. “My view is, at least for capital projects, federal funding should serve as an accelerant, as an enabler,” he says. “What we’re seeing now with the chnge of administration and the general cooling in the climate-tech capital markets is kind of a return to earth. Reality now starts to matter a lot more, because you don’t have hundreds of millions of dollars in the venture markets that you can just have like that. Projects need to make money.” Even companies with lower costs may face more challenges in getting investment now. “With this pullback in federal support, there is going to be increased uncertainty as it relates to how healthy the environment is for investing in the U.S.,” says Rhodium Groups O’Rear. It still isn’t clear what will happen in the U.S. But more federal support would also help companies test a bigger variety of approaches to the technology. “We don’t know which of these technologies is going to be best at scalebest economic performance, best technical performance, the right kind of projects that communities want to host,” says Erin Burns, executive director of the carbon removal nonprofit Carbon180. As the world blows past 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, it makes sense to test as many solutions as possible. Without support, some nascent technologies may be lost completely.
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E-Commerce
Yes, it’s that time of year again, when most of the U.S. gains an extra hour of sleep as we “fall back” from daylight savings to shorter days, colder nights, and standard time. This Sunday, November 2, at 2 a.m local time, we will turn back our clocks to 1 a.mand that will last until March 8, 2026 (when we will once again usher in daylight saving time). Although getting an extra hour of sleep sounds like a win, heres what really happens to your health when the clocks change. Darker nights disrupt the body’s natural clock Darker evenings actually disrupt our bodys natural circadian rhythm, our mood, and our metabolism, according to Dr. Zaid Fadul, CEO of Bespoke Concierge MD. Light is your body’s main ‘time-giver’ that sets your internal clock,” said Fadul, whose practice specializes in integrative medicine with a focus on sleep. “When evenings get darker sooner, your brain releases melatonin earlier, shifting your sleep schedule and throwing off your rhythm.” He added, This disruption affects hormones like cortisol and insulin, lowering insulin sensitivity and increasing stress while also impacting serotonin and dopaminethe chemicals that control your mood and motivation. The one-hour clock change also creates “social jet lag,” disrupting your body’s schedule, especially if you’re naturally a night owl, Fadul explained, noting, “Your sleep quality tanksparticularly the deep REM sleep your brain needsleaving you foggy, tired, and less alert during the day. While getting extra sleep doesnt hurt, the issue is most prevalent in the spring, when people lose an hour of sleep. And that can have other impacts on health. How the time change impacts sleep and health Research shows a spike in heart attacks and cardiovascular issues after the switch to daylight saving time in the spring. Moving the clock forward or backward also alters the timing of when heart attacks occur in the week following these time changes, according to research presented at the American College of Cardiologys 2014 Annual Scientific Session. The time change also affects night-shift workers morewhich include a substantial number of the population, such as nurses, police, firefighters, and doctors. The best way to adjust your internal clock Here are Fadul’s recommendations for readjusting your internal clock after the time change. Morning light: Get outside for 10 to 20 minutes of natural sunlight within 30 to 60 minutes of waking up (no sunglasses, unless you really need them). Exposure to morning light is the fastest way to reset your clock. Evening light hygiene: Dim your lights two to three hours before bed and ditch the overhead lighting. Keep screens on warm mode with low brightnessor better yet, put them away. Consistent wake time: Wake up at the same time every day, even if you slept poorly. If you’re dragging, take a quick, 20- to 30-minute nap before 3 p.m. to recharge without messing up your nighttime sleep. Meal timing: Load up on calories and protein earlier in the day, and finish dinner at least three hours before bed. This supports your insulin rhythm and helps your body know when it’s time to wind down. Caffeine and alcohol: Cut off caffeine about eight hours before bedtime. Avoid alcohol during the adjustment windowit might help you feel drowsy, but it wrecks your sleep quality. Movement timing: Take morning or lunchtime walks to get natural light and movement together. Skip intense late-night workouts for the first two to three days after the time changes. Workouts might fire you up when you need to be winding down. Temperature cues: Keep your bedroom cool, around 64 to 66 degrees Fahrenheit (18 to 19 degrees Celsius). Take a warm shower one to two hours before bedthe cooling effect afterward signals your body that it’s time to sleep.
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E-Commerce
The consulting firm Accenture recently laid off 11,000 employees while expanding its efforts to train workers to use artificial intelligence. Its a sharp reminder that the same technology driving efficiency is also redefining what it takes to keep a job. And Accenture isnt alone. IBM has already replaced hundreds of roles with AI systems, while creating new jobs in sales and marketing. Amazon cut staff even as it expands teams that build and manage AI tools. Across industries, from banks to hospitals and creative companies, workers and managers alike are trying to understand which roles will disappear, which will evolve, and which new ones will emerge. I research and teach at Drexel Universitys LeBow College of Business, studying how technology changes work and decision-making. My students often ask how they can stay employable in the age of AI. Executives ask me how to build trust in technology that seems to move faster than people can adapt to it. In the end, both groups are really asking the same thing: Which skills matter most in an economy where machines can learn? To answer this, I analyzed data from two surveys my colleagues and I conducted over this summer. For the first, the Data Integrity & AI Readiness Survey, we asked 550 companies across the country how they use and invest in AI. For the second, the College Hiring Outlook Survey, we looked at how 470 employers viewed entry-level hiring, workforce development, and AI skills in candidates. These studies show both sides of the equation: those building AI and those learning to work with it. AI is everywhere, but are people ready? More than half of organizations told us that AI now drives daily decision-making, yet only 38% believe their employees are fully prepared to use it. This gap is reshaping todays job market. AI isnt just replacing workers; its revealing whos ready to work alongside it. Our data also shows a contradiction. While many companies now depend on AI internally, only 27% of recruiters say theyre comfortable with applicants using AI tools for tasks such as writing résumés or researching salary ranges. In other words, the same tools companies trust for business decisions still raise doubts when job seekers use them for career advancement. Until that view changes, even skilled workers will keep getting mixed messages about what responsible AI use really means. In the Data Integrity & AI Readiness Survey, this readiness gap showed up most clearly in customer-facing and operational jobs such as marketing and sales. These are the same areas where automation is advancing quickly, and layoffs tend to occur when technology evolves faster than people can adapt. At the same time, we found that many employers havent updated their degree or credential requirements. Theyre still hiring for yesterdays résumés while tomorrows work demands fluency in AI. The problem isnt that people are being replaced by AI; its that technology is evolving faster than most workers can adapt. Fluency and trust: The real foundations of adaptability Our research suggests that the skills most closely linked with adaptability share one theme, what I call human-AI fluency. This means being able to work with smart systems, question their results, and keep learning as things change. Across companies, the biggest challenges lie in expanding AI, ensuring compliance with ethical and regulatory standards, and connecting AI to real business goals. These hurdles arent about coding; theyre about good judgment. In my classes, I emphasize that the future will favor people who can turn machine output into useful human insight. I call this digital bilingualism: the ability to fluently navigate both human judgment and machine logic. What management experts call reskillingor learning new skills to adapt to a new role or major changes in an old oneworks best when people feel safe to learn. In our Data Integrity & AI Readiness Survey, organizations with strong governance and high trust were nearly twice as likely to report gains in performance and innovation. The data suggests that when people trust their leaders and systems, theyre more willing to experiment and learn from mistakes. In that way, trust turns technology from something to fear into something to learn from, giving employees the confidence to adapt. According to the College Hiring Outlook Survey, about 86% of employers now offer internal training or online boot camps, yet only 36% say AI-related skills are important for entry-level roles. Most training still focuses on traditional skills rather than those needed for emerging AI jobs. The most successful companies make learning part of the job itself. They build opportunities to learn into real projects and encourage employees to experiment. I often remind leaders that the goal isnt just to train people to use AI but to help them think alongside it. This is how trust becomes the foundation for growth, and how reskilling helps retain employees. The new rules of hiring In my view, the companies leading in AI arent just cutting jobs; theyre redefining them. To succeed, I believe companies will need to hire people who can connect technology with good judgment, question what AI produces, explain it clearly, and turn it into business value. In companies that are putting AI to work most effectively, hiring isnt just about resumes anymore. What matters is how people apply traits like curiosity and judgment to intelligent tools. I believe these trends are leading to new hybrid roles such as AI translators, who help decision-makers understand what AI insights mean and how to act on them, and digital coaches, who teach teams to work alongside intelligent systems. Each of these roles connects human jdgment with machine intelligence, showing how future jobs will blend technical skills with human insight. That blend of judgment and adaptability is the new competitive advantage. The future wont just reward the most technical workers, but those who can turn intelligencehuman or artificialinto real-world value. Murugan Anandarajan is a professor of decision sciences and management information systems at Drexel University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
Imagine starting a new job where your onboarding feels personalized just for you, with an AI assistant guiding you through training, introducing you to teammates, and checking in on how youre settling in. That level of personalization in the workplace isn’t just a concept for the future – its already here and happening more rapidly than many HR departments anticipate. AI is transforming HR in the workplace. In 2026, AI wont just take over repetitive tasks, but it will fundamentally change how companies hire, onboard, coach, and retain employees. The result is HR teams that are more strategic, data-driven, and more human than ever. After more than a decade working in HR tech for small businesses and startups, Ive seen that when AI is thoughtfully applied, it can enhance both efficiency and empathy. When used effectively, AI helps HR leaders focus less on paperwork and administrative tasks and more on the employees. AI is helping HR leaders drive meaningful change and streamline operations, all while preserving the human touch thats at the heart of great workplaces. Heres how I see AI reshaping HR in 2026 and the years to come: Streamlining Operations with AI AI is already automating many of HRs most time-consuming tasks, from managing benefits to answering employee questions. IBMs Ask HR platform, for example, is automating hundreds of roles previously devoted to automating answers to common inquiries. This kind of change allows HR professionals to redirect their time toward strategy, culture and engagement. AI is managing software and systems that previously couldn’t communicate. There are 5,700 pieces of payroll and HR software, most of which dont talk to each other and need someone to manage them. The task of managing this software is ideal for AI automation, especially workflows, onboarding/offboarding, compliance & audits, and high-priority HR employee requests. Its not always about efficiency. As automation advances, companies must ensure the human experience doesnt get lost. The next generation of HR tools will blend speed with compassion, using AI to make employee interactions smoother and more supportive. Personalized Onboarding Workflows The first 90 days are critical for the retention and productivity of new hires. AI-driven onboarding systems can now customize each step of the process, tailoring introductions, training plans, and check-ins based on each role, skills, and personality. Instead of one-size-fits-all onboarding, new hires receive an experience that feels relevant and personal from the first day on the job. That level of automation and personalization not only accelerates ramp-up time but also builds a stronger sense of belonging, individualizing the journey for every new team member. Digital Coaching and Real-Time Support Coaching used to be an extra perk reserved for executives. Now, AI-powered tools and confidential chatbots embedded in Slack or Teams are bringing that level of guidance to everyone. These integrated tools can offer personalized collaborative feedback, monitor engagement trends, and provide employees with a safe, always-on space for support and sharing. The result is an environment where learning and growth become endless and available to all. Doing More with Leaner Teams In the startup world, especially, founders are increasingly scaling HR functions before hiring senior HR leaders. With AI platforms now able to assist with recruiting, compliance, and employee engagement, small teams can manage complex workforce needs effectively. Some are spending way too much time in the weeds of HR, manually tracking state registrations, scrambling to handle onboarding paperwork and worrying about payroll accuracy and compliance. With AI-powered tools, companies can focus on scaling their business and let the software ensure that every detail is done right. This ultimately gives founders their time back and makes HR a solved problem. This newer and more lean HR model allows startups to focus on strategy and workplace growth rather than administrative tasks, demonstrating that technology and AI tools can democratize access to quality HR, rather than replace it. Keeping Humans in the Loop The best AI systems will never replace the responsiveness and creativity of HR professionals. Instead, theyll enhance and complement those skills. A human-in-the-loop approach ensures that technology supports human judgment, rather than replacing it. When humans and AI work together, HR teams can build workplaces that are not just efficient but also resilient and more connected. The future of HR isnt about replacing people with algorithms. Its about empowering people with better tools, platforms and resources. AI will take care of the repetitive so that humans can focus on trust, connection, and culture in the workplace. The true promise of AI in HR is not about losing humanity but enhancing it.
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E-Commerce
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