SHRM 2018: People and policies for the 21st century workforce

There’s a lot of ground to cover for the 20,000 HR professionals attending this year’s Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Conference, which officially kicked off Sunday afternoon in Chicago. Following a musical performance by America’s Got Talent sensation Kechi Okwuchi (singing, aptly, Taylor Swift’s Fight Song), introductions of the SHRM family of organizations and several Father’s Day references, newly appointed SHRM president and CEO Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., took the stage to set the tone for the conference and a vision that would extend far beyond.

“You can’t find a CEO who is not talking about HR and people,” he said. “They finally get it: people matter. There’s something different right now: they really believe it, they understand that this is critical.”

How critical/? The world is on the verge of a workplace revolution which will see a merger of human and machine intelligence; current unemployment is at a 45-year low; U.S. birth rates continue to fall, creating an ever-tighter supply of labor; and a wealth of political turmoil coupled with social movements are further disrupting the human resources landscape.

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“Who is going to provide the skills our nation needs now and in the future?” Taylor asked. “We’re going to have to elevate this profession, innovate, achieve expectations that no one has placed on us yet. Our profession is hungry for transformational ideas and leadership and it is up to us to compose a vision of the future.”

To accomplish this, Taylor laid out three goals, emphasizing the need for HR professionals to deliver to prove their irreplaceable role in the workplace landscape: 1. “Dream about building inclusive workplace cultures,” Taylor told the crowd, noting not only people from different cultural backgrounds but veterans, people with disabilities, former criminals and older adults. 2. Lead workforce readiness. “Focus on people who don’t have the skills we need right yet but can,” Taylor said. “We will not leave to chance the readiness of our nation’s workforces.” 3. Elevate this profession. “We must care deeply about how we present ourselves and our work,” Taylor said. ”We must believe in ourselves.

“We must be the examples we want to see in our workplaces,” Taylor concluded before turning the floor over to former Florida governor Jeb Bush.

Former governor Bush spoke first on his own experiences in human resource and talent management before delving into current policy reforms needed to improve the workforce.

To address the growing income equality, skills gap and technological disruption, Bush pointed to three areas greatly in need of reform: Immigration, education and criminal justice.

The fact is, Bush said, there will be 8 million fewer workers in 20 years due to families forming later in life and having fewer children, coupled with an aging workforce. “Immigrants, on the other hand, are significantly younger,” he said, extolling also their work ethic and societal impact. Bush did not endorse carte blanche immigration policies, noting the need for some level of control through border protection and visa programs but emphasized, “Immigration can be a catalyst for sustained econ growth and should be depoliticized and stop being used as a wedge between people on both sides.”

As for education, Bush sees our current systems as a major cause of not only the country’s lack of skilled workers but the growing income equality. “We should have a preK-3 strategy so that children who finish third grade are prepared to learn in fourth grade,” he said, noting that a poor individual who fails to learn to read by fourth grade will likely never improve their status.

He stressed building career-readiness into the k-12 system, as well as partnerships with the private sector to make higher education more affordable, citing Starbucks’ collaboration with Arizona State University, among others. “We cannot just expect the tradition system of learning to work,” Bush said. “We have to find new ways to partner with it.”

Finally, the criminal justice system needs reform. “The simple fact is that we know than nearly 1/3 of adult working age population has a criminal record,” he said. “We don’t have the luxury of having people cast away in a world as competitive as it is today.” While Ban the Box laws in many states are creating more opportunities for many ex-offenders, Bush’s priorities would cut down on the number of ex-offenders to begin with through focus on reducing and finding sentencing alternatives for non-violent crimes; developing communities and social supports for criminals to reintegrate; immunize employers from being sued for negligence; and –this one in particular was met with a cheer from the crowd — states should recognize that alcohol and drug abuse is an illness.