Top 10 from the SHRM Conference

Top 10 things I learned in San Diego

10 – “It’s not HR Strategy vs. Organizational Strategy.  It’s all People Strategy”

9 – Remember that your employees are concerned and confused about Heath Insurance Reform.  Communicate with them.

8 – “We Know Next” – the coming SHRM slogan and tag line.  Just letting you know it’s coming.

7 – Steve Forbes was a big hit with Boomers, a big bust with everyone younger.  He was like a boring professor to them.

6 – Have your president give the same business update speech that they give to the board to all of the employees.

5 – Non-monetary benefits are better at building engagement

4 – HR is the key to organizational sustainability, which is defined as not robbing the future to live now.

3 – The attempts to make the SHRM President and Chair of the board likeable were really lame,  The did some contrived dancing together on the stage that were, frankly, a little uncomfortable.  Teleprompter humor seldom works.

2 – a powerful statement from the VP of HR of Deutsche Bank – “If HR stays the same, we will be out of business in 5 years.”  It drew a collective gasp, then applause.

1 – The big news was Al Gore and the Wedding Ring – Everyone strained to see if he was wearing one.  He was.

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Another moment of patriotism

We’re here.  A favorite holiday for America.  This is the big one – and I love it.  This is the holiday that has always been with us as a country – Thanksgiving Day came much later, and most of the others have been created by marketing departments in the past.

Happy birthday, America!  Here are some photos I took to get you in the mood…

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3 minutes of my 15 minutes of fame are here

I was interviewed today for a web site on trends and future things.  The segment will be posted on www.clearingthepicture.com in a week or so…

It was kind of odd to try to focus on the interviewer and be concise while working in a literal glass fishbowl on the trade show floor.  Odd world we live in.

"Do you really think that CFOs are the issue?"

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Odd things on the Trade Show floor

How about a custom imprinted M&M’s?  Nice idea, but is it worth an entire double wide trade show booth?  I think not.  I asked if I could print anything on an M&M?  She said ANYthing.  Then she thought again and clarified that anything that might not be deemed obscene.  Ah.

Can I print anthing? And just in Green?

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Daybreak in San Diego

View from my hotel…another grey day in SoCal

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Indiana Institute of Technology is in the house…

The hoosiers in the loud yellow surf shirts are the winning team from the Indiana State SHRM games – setting a record with 3 consecutive national championships and 4 consecutive victories in the state games. 

Part of the winning team – l to r – Ashlie Sklenicka, Mark Brown, Jessica Rambo, Zach Rambo. They were led by Dr. Jeff Walls.

They were quite visible in the front row of their section at the opening keynote, and I was able to get a brief video of the group that you can view here.

 

Big props go out to Dr. Jeffrey Walls, Ed. D, SPHR, who is their leader.  More info on his site here.

  

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Review of the Conference Dailyfrom the first day

Just read the Daily – impressions so far?  Not much.

Nothing to talk about yet, so they’re just printing press releases about upcoming speakers and coming attractions.  Steve Forbes will talk about leadership.  No surprise.  Diversity requires leadership.  No argument there.  There will be two huge sessions on Health Insurance Reform.  Actually, now that I’m on the team at Gregory & Appel and working on benefits, I’m looking forward to those…

The good news is that the overall tone of the sessions appears to be “moving forward” instead of last year’s conference theme, which could have well been characterized as “freaking out”.  It is forward progress to realize that we are in the “new normal” and can plan for the next steps.

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Opening! We’re on!

The room is filling, the music is swelling.  They start with student dancers, joined by some of the staff from SHRM, pounding oput some rhythms on the stage.  The crowd is up and dancing and it is a HUGE crowd.  The volume is up from last year – Michelle in Programs said that they set the general session for 14,000.  Glad to see things are up and bigger.

It kicks in

The first presentation were a set of “youtube” type of videos shot by members coming from Shanghai, Dubai and somewhere in the states.  Big fun.  Then the normal administrative grind of having the President Lon O’Neill and Chair VanCleave come up, make some well-scripted self-depreciating jokes, then methodically thank everyone including a mother-in-law (not kidding).  You know it’s a fun party when they take time to thank the board of the HRCI, the MAC, and so on.

They then had everyone stand that had some form of certification.  It felt good to get some applause, but the guy standing next to me noted that most of the board did not appear to be certified, and that they should be…hmmm.

Everyone is waiting for the main event – Steve Forbes.

14,000 of your closest friends.

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News Flash – Health Insurance reform is starting to actually happen

It is easy to defeat legislation.  It is more difficult to pass it.  It is even more difficult to implement it.

Here we are at the start of June, and I have been a part of a lot of briefings and discussions on the “how to implement this mess” topic.  The overall theme appears to be “We have no idea…”

One of the big questions that my CFO friends brought up was the key issue of Stop Loss Insurance.  Stop Loss makes Self Insurance possible, and the concern is (was) that the mandate for no lifetime limits would push the insurance carriers to stop offering the coverage.  This would be a massively bad thing, as far as the CFOs were concerned.

Good news this week – the carriers are adjusting.  Click here to read an article with some detail from the National Underwriter.  The first tangible shift that I have seen in the insurance world happened.  The stop loss carriers are starting to announce that they will offer policies with no lifetime caps.  Whew.  Glad they are shifting.  The world is still waiting to see how the implementation of the exchanges will be done, but I wanted to share that the first changes are showing up.  Consider yourself alerted.

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CFOs and Health Insurance and mmmmmDonuts

I wish you could have been there.

The May meeting of the CFO Roundtable was on Health Insurance Reform, and it turned into a chat on how to really make significant changes in employee health behavior.  We had a panel with two excellent attorneys and the President of Anthem Blue Cross, and a room with about 30 CFOs.

CFOs and Attorneys on the topic of Health

 It was a solid conversation with good Q&A.  

Main points –

 The health insurance reform bill is not health care reform.  It is poorly written.  Most of the expert advisors out there do not want to get too far out in front, or they will end up doing a bunch of throwaway work. 

 On grandfathering your existing plan, there is a dilemma.  You can use it to get out of more things, but they have less value.  Upon inspection, it is not as big a deal as first thought.

 As currently written, for many smaller employers it will be cheaper to abandon health plans using the current numbers.  Two things to realize – first, the regulators will probably be raising the penalties for this approach.  Second, from a recruiting and retention point of view, not having benefits will harm your ability to find and retain a good workforce. 

 How to fix health care?  We must have payment reform, and get away from a transactional mentality.  One big impact could be in the practice of moving from the current method of charging fees for individual services to a “bundling” approach. 

 The seeds have been planted, but will take years.  We want to pay for value, pay for quality.  On the plus side, we have the Indiana Health Information Exchange, which could be helping us pay for value, pay for quality. 

 Now for the ironic part.  We were agreeing that good wellness plans had a positive impact, that employee behaviors were at the core of the issue, and that we all wanted employees that exercised more and ate a healthy diet.

What did the CFOs have for breakfast?

Mmmmmm. Donuts.

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