For the first time, there are six generations in the workforce.

And each of those generations has different wants and needs regarding total rewards. When one-third of employees would prefer more benefits over more compensation, according to a Marsh McLennan Agency report published earlier this year, employers can help employees by allowing them to personalize their benefits, Todd Katz, EVP of group benefits at MetLife, told HR Brew.

“The most progressive employers recognize the diverse needs of their workforce, and they’ve gone out of their way to offer a broad set of benefit offerings that allow individual employees to curate benefit plans,” Katz said.

HR Brew spoke with people leaders and workplace experts about how HR can cater their total rewards packages to the multigenerational workforce.

Keep reading here.—MC

Matt Newman, SVP of employee experience at telecommunications software company Genesys, may have a slightly misleading job title.

While he does oversee employee experience at the company, he also oversees several other teams at Genesys, including real estate and facilities. He also serves as an HR business partner for nearly half of the company, including product, finance, legal, IT, strategy and business transformation, and…HR.

Serving as “HR for HR” can be, as he puts it, “it’s awkward and it’s not.” While Genesys’s chief people officer, Eva Majercsik, is his manager, he also has to have conversations with her about HR-related matters, like data on attrition within his own team, just as he would with other function leaders.

It can be tough to manage that balance, but Newman says he relies on a team of more seasoned HR pros, who see personal information about their peers but know not to share it. Moreover, he says, the approach has helped make him more mindful of actually following through on the policies and practices that he recommends for the HR team.

Keep reading here.—PM

Those AI copilots that tech companies have dispatched to join the office are getting a promotion.

Agents—autonomous systems that can perform tasks beyond the scope of a chatbot—are fast replacing copilots as the buzzword du jour in the race to outfit generative AI for the workplace.

Salesforce has retooled its Einstein Copilot into a new product called Agentforce, which became generally available earlier this month. Microsoft Copilot isn’t going anywhere, but the tech giant recently added a studio to create agents, as well as a cast of 10 pre-built agents. Plenty of others, from Palantir to Asana, have thronged to the build-your-own-agent space as well.

A new role: Agents essentially aim to shift the AI from the copilot’s chair to the driver’s seat. Rather than just answering questions or spitting out bits of copy at a human’s behest, they can perform multi-step tasks on their own.

Keep reading on Tech Brew.—PK