Workspan Daily News Bytes for June 12, 2026

Employers Providing Meals to Lure Workers Into the Office

According to new research by food technology platform ezCater, employers are looking at workplace food access as a means to enable return-to-office (RTO) strategies.

The survey of more than 2,300 U.S. employers and workers found:

• Companies are increasingly investing in meal programs. Daily or weekly meal programs have risen 26% year-over-year. Employers frequently cover the cost of such programs, with 81% of meals free to employees. Ninety-one percent of workplaces plan to spend the same or more on food in 2026, up from 82% in 2024. In fact, 20% plan to increase their spending by more than 25% this year.
• Employee meal programs are a strong response to rising in-office expectations. Seventy-nine percent of hybrid employees said employer-provided food would make them more likely to stay with a company with an on-site work mandate.

“Food has evolved from a perk to a strategic lever for workplace productivity and culture,” said ezCater chief growth officer Cindy Klein Roche. “Employee meal programs are now core to organizations’ strategy to bring employees together.”

U.S. Job Cuts Increased for Third Consecutive Month

U.S. employers cut 97,006 jobs in May, up 16% from the 83,387 job cuts recorded in April, and up 3% from the 93,816 announced for May 2025, according to a report released Thursday, June 4, by Challenger, Gray & Christmas. 

The May 2026 total is the highest for the month since 2020, when 397,016 job cuts were recorded at the height of the pandemic. It also marks the third straight month cuts have risen. So far this year, employers have announced 397,755 cuts, down 43% from the 696,309 announced for the first five months of 2025, when federal workforce reductions drove totals to historic highs.

“We’re seeing a sharp rise in cuts tied to acquisitions and mergers and a jump in bankruptcy-related losses, which tells me companies are restructuring aggressively as they reposition for an AI-driven economy,” said Andy Challenger, the outplacement and executive coaching firm’s labor and workplace expert and chief revenue officer. 

See the table below for the top 10 industries for job cuts last month.

Ebola Is in the News. What Should You Do to Mitigate Risks?

Consulting firm Mercer on May 28 published an advisement article to help employers in the U.S. and around the world understand the current Ebola virus outbreak in parts of African and take steps to mitigate possible risks.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a public health emergency of international concern on May 17 after Ebola cases increased in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is monitoring the situation and has stated that the risk to Americans currently is low. Nevertheless, the Mercer article recommended that employers:

• Maintain general awareness;
• Understand the potential for business disruption (e.g., supply chain and ancillary operations);
• Consider employees who may travel (for business or personal reasons) to impacted geographic areas;
• Anticipate further announcements from government and health authorities regarding travel precautions should the outbreak spread.

Mercer also recommended that employers:

• Reactivate or create a pandemic / health security committee. Include, for example, representatives from HR, legal, risk, security and medical/occupational health.
• Immediately engage their travel risk management partner. The article stated, “Medical evacuation is a real and time-sensitive operational matter, not a theoretical contingency.”
• Rigorously comply with government travel advisories for traveling employees and organizational visitors (e.g., vendors, partnering organizations).
• Establish a 21-day return protocol, as advised by the CDC, for any employee returning from an affected geographic area.
• Brief HR and managers on symptom recognition and escalation pathways.
• Review/revise business continuity plans for operations in affected areas.

OSHA Updates and Extends Workplace Heat Program

In April, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) updated its National Emphasis Program that protects workers from outdoor and indoor heat-related hazards.

According to the announcement, the revised National Emphasis Program – Outdoor and Indoor Heat-Related Hazards (originally issued April 2022) uses OSHA and the Bureau of Labor Statistics data from calendar years 2022-2025 to direct inspection priorities to 55 high-risk industries in indoor and outdoor work settings.

While 33 of these industries were part of the previous emphasis program, OSHA added 22 new industries to its list. New targeted industries include, but are not limited to:

• Plastic product manufacturing;
• Metalworking machinery manufacturing;
• Department stores;
• General freight trucking;
• Animal slaughtering/processing; and,
• Electric power generation/transmission/distribution.

The revised emphasis program removes outdated background information, updates links, eliminates the former numerical inspection goal and introduces two reorganized appendices (one for evaluating heat programs and another for citation guidance). The update also includes clearer guidance to improve tracking and more effectively implement the program’s enforcement and outreach efforts.

The updates are effective immediately and will be in place for five years through 2031.

Meta Pulls Back on Employee Tracking/AI Tool

As reported by Reuters, tech giant Meta recently announced it was scaling back on an initiative that was going to track its employees’ computer activity. In April, the company received criticism from its own staff after it announced a new tool would log their keystrokes and mouse clicks to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models. Now, new controls will allow employees to pause the data collection for “up to 30 minutes at a time” as well as request exemptions from the initiative altogether.

Called the Model Capability Initiative, Meta said its goal was to help people complete everyday tasks by training AI models with real examples of how people actually use computers. The company added that the data was “not used for any other purpose” and the tool had “safeguards in place to protect sensitive content.”

“While we remain confident in the privacy protections we put in place at launch, which went through several layers of risk review, we have heard your concerns about personal data on work devices, battery life and wanting more control over when capturing happens,” according to an internal memo written by Stephane Kasriel, a vice president in Meta’s Superintelligence Labs.

Figures and Facts of the Week

• 17 billion: The estimated U.S. dollar amount global employers are expected to lose in productivity due to the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament, including $11.7 billion in the U.S. alone, according to research by UKG, a global workforce management platform.
• 84: The percentage of global organizations that identify managers being ready to explain pay as their top transparency risk, according to a 2026 Pay Transparency Pulse Survey by professional services firm Aon.
• 62: The percentage of HR professionals in the United Kingdom who have considered stepping away from their current role within the last 12 months, according to new research by IRIS Software Group. The most cited reasons for leaving included high workloads, the emotional demands of HR work and compensation.
• 48: The percentage of U.S. job seekers who admitted they applied to jobs without reading the full job description, according to a report by employment website Monster.
• 43.5: The percentage of American workers who had a positive business outlook for the six months ahead, down from 44.2% who said the same in April, according to the latest data in May from the Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index.
• 39: The percentage of U.S. companies who have reduced headcount in the past year due to AI, according to a new report by HR software company BambooHR.

Editor’s Note: Additional Content

For more information and resources related to this article, see the pages below, which offer quick access to all WorldatWork content on these topics:

• Employee Benefits
• Employee Experience
• Well-Being