For the record, a quarterly pizza party is not considered a rewards and recognition program capable of identifying and developing your highest performers. Top talent does not always announce itself in performance reviews. It often shows up in smaller moments: the person who helps a new hire settle in, fixes a process that keeps slowing people down, or raises the quality of a project without being asked. A strong rewards and recognition program can make those moments visible.

Love them or hate them, Palantir's new Meritocracy Fellowship directly addresses what they perceive to be higher education's inability to train the future workforce. Once completing the five-week training course, Fellows join forward-deployed engineering or internal software teams. The American software company is marketing the program as not an internship, but a real opportunity that leads to a clearly defined career path within the organization. This concept is not new; in

Nobody likes Human Resources—let's just put that out in the open. We are the workplace equivalent of the principal's office. It's the place nobody wants to hear from or be sent to, because no one ever calls from HR with good news. HR often becomes the face of every hard workplace moment: rejected job applicants, denied raises, policy changes, performance issues, and layoffs. When employees see HR only during stressful events, it is easy for the department to earn a reputation