For those of you that didn’t make it out to Orlando for the Annual SHRM Conference this year, fear not! I’ve sent my teammate Wendy Dayton on our team’s behalf and she has provided a recap of the happenings of this year’s conference, dubbed on Twitter as #SHRM14. (It was even trending! So for all of you hip, HR fans out there- check out what people are saying! Side note (aka shameless plug): while you’re on Twitter, give me a follow @HRTechKaiser!) Anyway, back to the important stuff.  From Wendy’s pen to your ears, here is the Day 1 recap of SHRM 2014:

Good morning from sunny Orlando where 13,000 of my closest friends and I are attending SHRM 2014.  It’s been a great conference so far…excellent speakers and a ton of good information being shared.

The theme of this year’s conference is Transform, so many of the speakers are talking about transformation in the world around us and within our jobs as HR people.  Yesterday the first speaker, Bette Francis, the SHRM chair, challenged the attendees to increase HR influence by building relationships.  She said 41% of our time is spent influencing people.  Then the keynote speaker and NY Times columnist, Tom Friedman, discussed how technology has changed the business and employee outlook.  It was very fascinating.  He said the biggest domestic and foreign policy question is “How’s my kid going to get a job?”  He tied the growth of technology to how we need to prepare for the future.

The biggest thing to happen in the early 21^st century is the merging of business globalization and technology—going from interconnected to interdependent and from connected to hyper-connected on a Gutenberg scale (Gutenberg created the printing press, which Tom said made monks around the world cheer).  There have been four huge technology shifts driving the growth:

–  Invention of the PC – allowing individuals to create their own content in digital form

– Emergence of the internet – allowing individuals to share their content

– Emergence of workflow software – allowing individuals to develop processes and push their content out to more people

– Emergence of search capabilities – allows collaboration

The result has been that information moves faster and there is more information than ever before; Tom used the words Connect – Complete – Collaborate to sum the transformation.  The technology mediums—Facebook, the Cloud, Linked In, 4G, Big Data, Skype—have all happened in the last 7 years, and technology continues to grow exponentially.  It has shifted the consideration of businesses to not place as much emphasis on what people know, as what they can do with what they know.  Young people won’t necessarily have to graduate from college with advanced degrees as much as they will have to demonstrate that they can strategically think and apply knowledge to grow business.

It’s going to be great to be a consumer in the hyper-connected world that is emerging.  For example, a person who wants to become an innovator and entrepreneur could be global from day one and charge startup costs to credit more easily gained through multiple resources.  However, it’s going to be a terrible world to be the leader in anything.  All leaders are used to being in a one-way conversation with the audience (i.e., I can tell you what I’m thinking and you can only respond in a narrow, time-delayed manner), but the two-way conversation is the new way of the world.   Recipients of messages can immediately comment on leadership—changes are being made by popular democracy vs. representative democracy (i.e., everyone has input, not just those that may be able to see the bigger picture and long-term impact).  Tom said being a leader “is not fun anymore.”

In this hyper-connected world, it’s going to be difficult to be a worker─ ’average is over’.  Every boss has cheaper, easier access to above-average everything (labor, genius).  Workers can no longer just “show up”.  Years ago, a worker in Bethlehem Steel could drop out of high school, get an average-paying job, have an average house, have an average family, take average vacations, and have an average funeral.  Now, a worker can’t get a good job unless they are ready to be creative.  It’s not enough to say, “I’m non-routine”, the worker has to show that they are innovative.

People in older generations got to find jobs; kids today have to create their jobs.  The high-wage, middle-skill job is gone (e.g., union jobs), and people have to get ready for high-wage, high-skill jobs.  Education must focus on bringing low-wage job skills to at least average-wage job skills, and people must graduate from high school innovation–ready.  Self-motivation is so much more important.  The world has changed from a pension world (defined benefits) to a 401-K world (defined contribution).

Another session I attended was on moving employees globally.  I was hoping to hear more about global benefits leave administration, but the focus was more on the legal side and how to avoid issues with ex-pats.  One point I found interesting was the concept of a GEC, which is a company that an employer can create to manage expats.  The GEC allows companies to hire and terminate people between their international companies and more centrally manage them while eliminating the duplicative costs inherent with moving people around. The GEC has to have a base employee group such as IT, HR, etc., and has to observe corporate formalities like any other company. Benefits can be managed through the GEC and can be different among the different countries in which there are expats.

I also attended a session on telling stories to present information.  The person that spoke was very energetic and engaging.  We did an exercise where we picked a partner and told them about a vacation we had without using the word ‘um’—the purpose was to be aware of our ‘comfort’ words.  It was definitely a challenge and eye-opening!

(Maybe as a coach…not ON. I don’t think HR would approve of being on a coach.)

Stay tuned, as today I’m going to be continuing to search for global leave administration information and find out more about the SPHR certifications.

If there is anything in particular you want Wendy to search out, please let us know by commenting below or tweeting at us (@HRTechKaiser)!