Another Day in the HR Field

The title of this blog post is dedicated to a new twitter user/Peep and #ILSHRM11 attendee that in my eyes posted the most enlightening and relevant conference ending tweet out there. Follow her @ChristieHR . Let me tell you why this particular tweet caught my eye! As we ended the conference it was raining and at one point I had to "borrow" the umbrella from our SHRM Foundation gift basket to get a computer out of my trunk for a speaker who did not bring one. Unfortunately, as a result of this wet excursion, the basket winner gained a "gently used" SHRM umbrella. The sky was truly sad as it was "crying rain" fairly heavily between mid to late morning just before the last session. The point is, the emotion, enthusiasm, and energy within the walls of the Drury Inn was so high that I truly think some were sad to see the two day event end. Although my feet were crying for a break! Attendees were getting so much knowledge from the fantastic line up of

It's late, I am still not done with my work responsibilities that must be done before I leave town for three days, and I am totally not even close to being packed. However, I could not resist a quick break to write a post about what I will be doing over the next few days! Within the next 10 hours I will be driving 55 North heading to the Drury Lane in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois to attend the best ever Illinois State Council (now branded as ILSHRM) conference & exposition. On the downside as I look toward tomorrow morning, I have a lot of stuff to transport so my car will be loaded down. The most exciting is three first ever very professional banners that show the state of IL and all 20 locations of our chapters. The second most impressive is a whole slew of items I have been collecting all year to put in the ILSHRM basket for the SHRM Foundation basket raffle fundraiser. I started this fundraiser three years ago and I must admit this is the most loaded basket we as a stat

Do You Focus on You're Rock Star Employees? We are heading into a time where " employee retention " is what is going to keep us up at night . A time when the economy bounces back, baby-boomers retire, the knowledge drain is a reality, and the only thing that's going to keep us going is hanging on to our Rock Star employees. A few months ago, I attended a leadership conference with an awesome keynote address by the name of Clint Swindall . The most powerful statistics he shared is that based on numerous surveys almost every organization has about 26 percent of it's employees who are the type of employee who always answers with "Oh Yeah!". You ask them to implement a new project, increase sales, motivate employees and they say "Oh-Yeah" without a bit of hesitation. This is what I call the Rock Star Employee! Another 55% of your employees are OK. They are there to collect a pay check, they don't like to cause problems, they are n