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What Happens in Vegas…
Thank
you to all our clients and friends who stopped by the Astron
Solutions booth during the SHRM 2007 Annual Conference and
Exhibition! It was great to make new friends and reconnect
with old friends. We’ll refrain from putting incriminating
photos on our website, for as the adage says, what happens
in Vegas stays in Vegas! We do want to share a few pictures
with you, though.
The Astron team gets
ready to work the booth. (L – R: John Sazaklis, Eric Katz,
Jennifer Loftus, Brendan Williams, and Mike Maciekowich)
No trip to Vegas would be complete without an
Elvis sighting!
2007
SHRM National Conference Highlights
Joining
over 18,000 attendees and exhibitors, Astron Solutions’
staff attended and exhibited at the 2007 SHRM National
Conference in Las Vegas. With temperatures hovering around
105 degrees each day, which is claimed to be a dry heat but
then so is fire, human resource professionals from around
the world met to listen to the latest ideas in managing
human resources. They also were able to wonder through an
exhibit hall filled with more than 2,000 exhibitors offering
services and products impacting all aspects of human
resources.
The
following is a summary of the key “official” highlights of
the 2007 SHRM National Conference provided by
SHRM:
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Cyclist Lance Armstrong recalls lying in his hospital
bed, tubes protruding from his bandaged body after
nearly seven hours of surgery to remove cancerous
lesions on his brain. “I really think that’s where the
comeback began,” Armstrong told attendees at SHRM’s
Annual Conference & Exposition in Las Vegas on June 24.
“When you’re there” at that kind of low point, he told
SHRM members, “just stop for a moment and cherish it
because it’s awfully good to come back.”
-
HR
professionals believe that a worker's relationship with
the boss is the most important component of job
satisfaction, but most employees just say, "show me the
money."
-
Refined electronic recruitment tools such as the
"dot-jobs" Internet domain are making recruitment more
efficient, a new SHRM survey shows.
-
Uncertain financial risk attributable to rising medical
costs for a generation with increasingly long lifespans
has resulted in companies rethinking their approach to
retiree health care, says Chris Matzke, senior vice
president of ICMA Retirement Corp., in a June 25 SHRM
Annual Conference session entitled
Health Care...The
Latest Threat to Your Retirement.
-
The
outcome of immigration reform legislation being
considered by Congress will not affect the Department of
Homeland Security’s (DHS) policy of increasing worksite
enforcement to crack down on companies that hire illegal
aliens, an immigration lawyer said at SHRM’s Annual
Conference and Exposition.
-
The
Family and Medical Leave Act is one of the most
difficult laws to implement. But HR professionals can
master it, Beverly Kish, SPHR, told a packed room
attending a session on implementing effective FMLA
management.
-
Pay
for performance as commonly practiced is broken, and HR
needs to take the lead in fixing it. That was the
message delivered by Jim Finkelstein, president and CEO
of consultancy FutureSense Inc., and Barry MacLean,
compensation solutions practice leader for Vurv
Technology, during their June 25 SHRM Annual Conference
session, "Pay for Performance: Idle Words of an Idea
Whose Time Has Come."
-
The
venerable SHRM logo, featuring a back-to-back H and R,
has been given a makeover as part of a branding campaign
announced during the Society's Annual Conference in Las
Vegas. It is now also acceptable to pronounce SHRM as
Sherm instead of the individual letters S-H-R-M.
That’s good news for the many of us who had been saying
it wrong all these years!
As
exhibitors at the conference Astron Solutions had an
opportunity to meet over 350 human resource professionals
who stopped by to review our services and products. This
provided us an opportunity to gauge the level of importance
of issues facing these individuals based on their questions
and interest. The following are the key topics:
-
Integrated Talent Management:
Many
human resource professionals discussed the need to better
integrate all aspects of managing their organizations talent
management including:
-
Applicant Tracking
-
Employee Surveys (First 90 Day; Periodic Opinion
Surveys; 360 Degree Surveys; Exit Surveys)
-
Job Description Development and Management
-
Competency and Performance Assessment
-
Succession Planning
-
Total
Rewards Management:
Like
their concerns with talent management, human resource
professionals expressed concern as to how more effectively
manage their total rewards systems including:
-
Compensation Strategy and Philosophy Development and
Confirmation
-
Market Strategy and Analysis
-
Employee Pay Strategies including pay for
competency/performance/contribution
-
Variable Compensation Strategies
-
Non-Cash recognition Strategies
-
Integration of Cash-Based Strategies with Benefits
and Pension Strategies
Human
resource professionals at this conference were very
concerned as to how the various individual systems they are
responsible for are to be integrated and administered to
ensure not only consistency in application but also an
impact on both their employees and the success of their
organization. This is a marked change from past conferences
where discussions were limited to specific aspects of these
strategies, rather than the strategy as a whole. Clearly
there was a welcomed maturing of the human resource audience
attending this year’s conference.
We’ll see
you next year, June 22nd – 25th, in
Chicago, IL!
Wonder what your fellow readers think about critical HR topics? Is your organization unique from or similar to others?
Click here to view the results of our past polls!
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Looking for a top-notch presenter for your human resource organization's meeting? Both Jennifer Loftus and Michael Maciekowich present highly-rated sessions on a variety of compensation and employee retention issues. For more information, send an e-mail to
info@astronsolutions.com.
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Copyright 2007, Astron Solutions, LLC
ISSN Number 1549-0467
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