I couldn’t be at SHRM National this year so I sent my roving reporter, HR Pro, and friend, Chris Bailey! BTW – He’s also the Director of PwC’s HR Practice in the Caribbean. Chris will be giving you daily updates from D.C. and filling you in on all things #SHRM16! (P.S. – We could name this series “Selfies of Chris Around D.C.!) 

Monday SHRM – 4 keys things a futurist wants you to do with your business that will make it ready for 2020…. Plus some other cool tidbits…

Ok, so Sunday finished off with rooftop drinks at the Washington Hotel see pic, which was epic and it’s why we come to conferences to check out the view! Seriously Washington is a cool city being a brit I’m used to small winding roads and living in the Cayman islands I get a few beaches etc… so to see a city function as well as it does and have buildings on a scale that makes my small island feel tiny is pretty cool. Anyways Tim wants me to write about conference type stuff rather than a Bailey travel blog which would probably be way more interesting but NSFW, so let’s just say rooftop drink watching the Cav’s take their first major titles in 50+ years resulted in a sore head this morning. BTW I’m a Heat fan but you gotta love the game!  

 So I typed the below on my iPhone whilst sat in another faceless ballroom a bit bored before this session kicks off – I’m trying a bit of an experiment this year – I’m going to pop in and out of a few sessions at a time to see what nuggets of information I can glean in 10 minutes of listening. However if the speaker is particularly engaging or telling me something mind blowing I may stick around… So first session 10:45am “t minus 90 days until the election” no idea what it’s about 😉 so 10 mins starts now…. Can Mike Aiken get us off to a good start….this day in 1975 jaws was released…interesting tit-bit…then speakers worst nightmare slides don’t work! Can Mike battle on without slides   Not really attention lost so moved on out! Only nugget gained was the jaws thing…. Went straight into Steve Gilliland enjoy the ride mega session (@stevegspeaks) now I have seen Steve talk before and he is funny and a pro but I was mainly interested in whether he had updated his material, actually yes, new jokes new stories and some key messages that apply to all not just our HR folk….

Laugh listen learn – if you’re laughing your listening so I can hopefully teach you something

A closed mouth gathers no feet – know when to shut up! Love this quote and have not heard it before and it’s so true. Practice this… Only say something that will result in something positive!

Don’t forget why you do what you do – we all get wrapped up in tech, strategy, diversity, that we forget why what we do matters take a step back.

Three really simple messages that we all already know but told with humor that had me laughing right till the end…oops only fleeted once good on you Steve!

So, post the lunch box delight that seems to send the SHRM masses into a frenzy I’m back in a different ballroom listening to some smooth 90’s hits while I wait for Scott Hamilton to rock my world teaching me how he is able to see into the future (see Tim’s blog on which speaker are you) this guy is most certainly a futurist and he has a room of easily 1000 people to preach to! Scott’s talk 2020 transformation – next practices in HR…

Hold tight….

OK, so Scott is impressive probably why they gave him a mega session, obviously knows his subject and started out by giving some interesting facts such as Mercedes-Benz now have over 65 models as they shoot for even more different clients and are actively targeting the over 65 market…. According to Scott, Kodak turned down entering the digital market way back when as they didn’t want to cannibalize their own business….and similarly blockbuster also said no to online streaming of films two years before Netflix entered the market… all decision were made because leadership was unable to change its mindset.  Enter Scots formula for helping an organization use these HR practices to be the competitive companies of 2020.

1.        Eliminate: Which Policies and practices can you eliminate that your industry has long competed on? –Cirque du Soleil eliminated Star performers, Animal shows, Aisle Concession sales and multiple show arena’s

2.        Raise: Which practices/policies/benefits should be raised well above the industry standard? Again in the case of Cirque – Unique venues (Vegas etc..)

3.        Reduce: Which practices/policies should be reduced well below industry standard? For Cirque this was – Family audience to target Adult entertainment, Fun, and Humour, Thrill and danger

4.        Create – Which policies and practices should be created that the industry never offered – a potentially disruptive approve – for Cirque this was, Theme, Refined environment, multiple productions, Artistic music and dance.

·        For Cirque Du Soleil this created a $2.4bn business!

I really liked these coupled with Dump your HR baggage! Generate Practices that challenge the status quo, Target your areas to start divergent and convergent thinking (there is a whole other blog on this one!).

So to finish, he had the audience shout out some cool games changers here are just a few that you might want to consider:

·        Remove Job titles

·        Create Awesome workspaces

·        Pay off student loans of employees who remain with you over time

·        Think Tanking

Now I really like the think tanking idea simply take your teams once a quarter for 20 mins and think new sh!t up but actually try and create project plans to deliver on the new stuff.

So I didn’t leave Scott’s session, he held my attention, some good takeaways which hopefully I have succinctly placed above. If you want to look him up he is the Chief Exec of NextWorks on twitter as @enpforums.