Skip to main content

Lobby Day in Illinois Success

This is a post I started in April and just getting a chance to publish. My apologies for the delay. 

It's been a few years since Tami Ireland and I started the state legislative conference with then ILSHRM Director,
Carolyn Spherl.  With continued support we have had our ups and downs but yesterday put a smile on both of our faces for a couple reasons. Those reasons center around two things: 1) Growth & 2) Opportunity. 

Both of us have visited Capitol Hill in DC during the SHRM sponsored Lobby Day and have mirrored our approach as closely as possible. However, some years  have not even come close to this year especially as it relates to opportunity. 

If you compare the picture of our first year to this years, you can see the growth in number of participants. It's obvious to us that even though growth has been slow it is still growth. Can't wait to see what the 2015 ILSHRM / CICSHRM legislative event will bring next Spring. 

The opportunity I was referring to is seeing an HR related bill being discussed in detail on the Illinois House floor. In this case the Pregnancy discrimination bill introduced by representative Flowers (which has now been passed). In past years we visited the gallery but they have primarily been discussing issues not related to the workplace. 

So as I mentioned earlier both growth and opportunity has put a smile on our face and made us proud to have started this event on the first place. HR should be more involved in the goings on with thier state capitols much more than they are overall thought out the USA. Legislators have no idea how thier bills affect the workplace and employers in our state unless we tell them. Please visit your representives and senators! 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

55 Active Job Search Sites (Updated 7/19)

I had a company encouraging me to update this list over the last couple of months.  Since they focus on veteran hiring and I am a veteran supporting other veterans I am happy to add the following to this original posting from 2017. Silent Professionals is a free veteran recruitment service. Their differentiating factor is that they focus on a very specific subset of veteran employment which is the combat arms veteran. Their site is much more than just a job board because they actually provide a service behind it which is all free to the veteran. As combat veterans themselves, with a vast amount of experience in the private security sector, they are able to use that experience and influence within the industry to act as trusted advocates for the veteran candidate. They boast an incredible 84% job placement success rate for candidates that they recommend to employers. One of the reasons they're able to do that is because of their focus on jobs for combat veterans who are seek

Honest, Vulnerable, and Transparent Communications Can Be a Curse for Women

As we approach yet another end to Women’s History Month where organizations make a sincere concerted effort to raise awareness to the issues women face in the workplace with hope for continued change, I am skeptical. Not because I do not believe in the effort. Not because I have not heard story after story of women who have made history and are honored and respected highly for women’s suffrage progress they have made. Not because I do not believe in change. I do believe strongly in the effort that brings these stories to the public causing change. However, the reason I am skeptical is the same reason so many other women question the possibility of real change. Why, because we have been victims who feel defeated repeatedly and constantly reminded of the loss experienced. When you feel you have taken two steps forward and knocked five steps back every time that original wound opens and reminds us of the curse lived just because we are a woman. I had to be quiet about the real reason I

HR Assessment Risk Summary

In summarizing the potential for risk in the human resources and personnel practices of organizations visited over the past few years, the highest risk of audits, investigations, grievances and the resulting potential for penalties, fines and legal concerns come from six primary sources.   The main reason for concerns are because certain federal and state agencies are making it a priority to investigate: Misclassification of employees as exempt, Illinois led the nation in active investigations 3,635 involving 19,765 misclassifications, 245.6 million in unreported taxable wages, 5.1 million in unemployment tax unreported, 270,570 employees impacted. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently announced that 84,254 workplace discrimination charges were filed with the federal agency nationwide during fiscal year (FY) 2017, and secured $398 million for victims in the private sector and state and local government workplaces through voluntary resolutions and litiga