Microsoft’s Xbox AI Restructuring Meets Its First Union Pushback  

Microsoft’s Xbox division is heading into a public standoff with its own workforce. On 15 July, members of Bethesda Game Studios’ union will march at four studio locations under the banner ‘Save Our Devs’, protesting the latest wave of job...

Your Employee Experience News Roundup: Job Hugging, Revolut’s Graduate Office Mandate and Microsoft Layoffs

In this week’s employee experience news roundup, retention looks healthy on paper, but look closer and the story gets messier. Gartner’s “job hugging” data suggests people are staying out of fear rather than commitment — many are turning down new...

The UK Employee Experience Awards 2026 Winners Revealed 

On 9 July, finalists gathered at Park Plaza Riverbank, London, for the UK Employee Experience Awards (UKEXA) 2026, the first time in over six years that the finals have taken place live and in person.  Nineteen organisations made the 2026 shortlist, presenting a...

Human and AI Workforce Management: Why Managing Hybrid Human and AI Teams Changes Everything

Like it or not, AI colleagues have officially become a real part of the workforce. We’re not just using AI tools any more; we’re delegating the same tasks to AI assistants that human beings have been tackling for years. Gartner thinks...

Revolut Scraps Remote-First Graduate Policy. Seven Experts Disagree on Whether That’s Good for Them

Revolut’s graduate return-to-office policy marks a clear reversal. From next year, graduate hires will need to be in the office at least three days a week, the company has confirmed, scrapping the ‘remote-first’ approach it once used to attract them. Graduates...

Job Hugging: Why Low Turnover May Be Hiding a Disengagement Problem  

Job hugging is leaving employees present but disengaged, and organisations that read this as healthy retention risk missing the cost to performance, culture and the customer experience. People are increasingly clinging to their jobs out of fear rather than choice in...

Employee Experience News: Cisco’s AI Layoffs, the Workday Discrimination Ruling, and Superdry’s Governance Failure

This week in employee experience news, accountability caught up with automation. A court refused to let an AI vendor hide behind ‘we just built the tool’, Cisco paired a personalised AI rollout with job cuts in the same window, and...

Building an Award-Winning Culture from Day One: Lessons From Jane Austin at Wave Utilities on EX Lore Podcast

For most HR and EX leaders, the question of what they’d do if given the chance to shape a culture from day one remains just that – a question. For Jane Austin at Wave Utilities, it was reality. When the UK...

Cisco’s AI Agent Rollout Lands the Same Month as Layoffs

Cisco is giving every one of its roughly 90,000 employees a personalised AI agent from the end of July 2026. In the same window, the company has said it will cut close to 4,000 jobs globally as part of an...

HR Thinks Employee Recognition Is Working. Employees Disagree by 22 Points  

Nearly four in five UK employees (78%) say they’re more motivated when recognition is combined with financial reward, according to new research from workplace platform Perkbox. The Science of Reward Report surveyed 4,000 UK employees and 1,000 UK HR leaders,...

What the Workday Ruling Means for AI Hiring Discrimination

A US court has refused to throw out landmark claims that Workday’s AI screening tools discriminate against job applicants. The questions it raises reach any organisation that lets software decide who gets seen in the hiring process. On 22 June, a...

Retail Retention Risk: Nearly Half of Frontline Employees Are Job Hunting While Planning to Stay

New research from employee experience platform Perceptyx points to a more complex retail employee retention risk than the familiar story of disengaged workers heading for the door. Drawing on a panel of 507 retail employees, most of them deskless, the data...