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- EX Insights: The Truth About ATS + Weight-Loss Meds at Work
EX Insights: The Truth About ATS + Weight-Loss Meds at Work
The real hiring bottleneck + a brewing benefits equity crisis you need to see coming
Inside This Issue:
Happy Tuesday.
If you've been watching your LinkedIn feed lately, you've probably seen the hot takes piling up about ATS systems destroying qualified candidates and the breathless coverage of weight-loss medications entering the benefits conversation.
Well, this week we're cutting through the noise with actual data on both fronts—and the reality is more nuanced (and more actionable) than the viral narratives suggest. Turns out your ATS isn't the villain in your hiring process, but your recruiters are drowning. And while GLP-1s might seem like an innovative perk, UK employees are sounding alarm bells about fairness before programs even launch.
We've also got sobering updates on remote ergonomics failures and a genuinely depressing stat about workplace hope that deserves your attention.
Let's dig in.
Featured Insights:
Stop blaming the robots.
New research from Enhancv involving 25 US recruiters has decisively debunked the viral myth that ATS platforms auto-reject most resumes. The reality? Ninety-two percent of recruiters report their systems don't auto-reject based on content or formatting at all—instead, they're facing an impossible math problem.
Entry-level roles attract 400-600 applicants; customer service and tech positions pull 1,000-2,000 applications in days. Recruiters review in order or batches, and once they hit their screening threshold, they pause—leaving late submissions unreviewed entirely. The bottleneck isn't your tech stack; it's human capacity and sheer volume.
Before you add Ozempic to your benefits menu, read this.
New research from Lifesum shows 74 percent of UK employees believe workplace provision of GLP-1 weight-loss medications will widen existing health inequalities, not close them. Only 21 percent think it could level the playing field.
Even more telling: while 27 percent would feel grateful if offered, 39 percent would feel either concerned or pressured. Employees strongly favor conditional access tied to medical need (49 percent) over universal availability (27 percent), and half believe lifestyle factors like nutrition and exercise are the real drivers of health outcomes anyway.
If you're exploring this benefit, equity and communication strategy need to come first.
Fresh off the Press
Stay current with key headlines and announcements from across the industry.
From Our Vault
Every generation gets blamed for workplace disconnection, but the real issue isn't age—it's personality mismatch and lack of self-awareness. This piece argues for ditching demographic assumptions and using psychological insights to understand what actually drives each person. Worth revisiting if you're still designing engagement strategies around generational stereotypes instead of individual motivators.
The Extra Point
Here's an uncomfortable truth: your engagement scores might be high while your best people are quietly burning out.
Engagement surveys tell you how employees feel about work, but they don't tell you whether employees have what they actually need to do their jobs well.
The gap between "I'm committed to this company" and "I have the tools, clarity, and support to succeed" is where talent walks out the door. If you're only tracking sentiment without measuring enablement, clear goals, manager support, resource access, decision-making authority, you're optimizing for the wrong metric.
Try this: audit your last three exits and ask whether those people lacked engagement or lacked the ability to execute effectively. The answer will tell you what you should really be fixing.
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