Kathryn Larkin got her start in the world of total rewards as a lawyer, advising clients of companies like Deloitte on how to design benefits.

This involved a fair amount of problem-solving, Larkin told HR Brew. After a while, she said, “you wish that you could set things up so maybe you wouldn’t need to solve the problems,” she said. To design benefits with a solutions-oriented approach, she needed to be part of HR.

This desire for a seat at HR’s table led Larkin to take on a position as director of global benefits for Air Products, an industrial gas company, where she also served as their in-house employee benefits and executive compensation counsel.

After nearly 14 years with Air Products, the investment management company Vanguard tapped Larkin to be its head of global benefits in 2024. In this role, Larkin works with her team to educate workers so they get as much as they possibly can out of the benefits Vanguard offers.

For more on how Larkin is helping employees maximize their benefits, keep reading here.—CV

Exile on Main Street isn’t just a Stones record: It’s how a lot of small business employees are probably feeling right about now.

Thanks to the government shutdown, everyone’s looking at a wider batch of jobs data than usual to get a pulse check on the state of US hiring. Enter: ADP’s National Employment Report, released at the start of October, which looks at “anonymized weekly payroll data of more than 26 million private-sector employees in the United States.”

For Main Street, the report looked bleak. Small businesses, defined by ADP as companies with 49 employees or fewer, shed approximately 40,000 jobs in September, while large businesses, with over 500 employees, gained 33,000.

Rather than a blip, the findings from ADP’s latest report are a telling dispatch about the labor challenges facing small businesses right now, experts say.

For more on the hiring headache facing small businesses right now, keep reading on CFO Brew.—NP

Japan’s immigrant population hit a record high of 3.95 million this year, yet as its native-born population continues to fall, some Japanese aren’t ready for the country to diversify.

Japan has one of the oldest populations in the world (ranking at number four for people 65+ years of age), and as more people leave the workforce, the country has increasingly welcomed foreign workers to help fill the gaps. There are currently 2.3 million foreign-born workers in Japan, accounting for roughly 3.7% of the workforce, but some reports indicate that more workers are needed.

A recent survey from Japan’s Nikkei stock market index found that 98% of CEOs in the country want to hire more foreigners, and 99% plan to “actively” hire workers from overseas.

However, the country’s new far-right party, Sanseito, has encouraged a growing movement promoting the notion that immigration is detrimental to Japan’s culture, Bloomberg reported. The party and its supporters, which have expanded quickly since 2020, are driven in part by the rising cost of living and stagnant wages. Employers are in a difficult position.

For more on how employers in Japan are coping, keep reading here.—KP