SHRM 2023 Conference Takeaways

August 07, 2023

Last month’s SHRM Annual Conference & Expo (SHRM23) took place in Las Vegas, Nevada, with more than 20,000 HR professionals, executives and students participating. With hundreds of speakers touching on the latest trends in HR, including keynotes from President Bill Clinton and famous author, journalist and philanthropist Mitch Album, the theme of SHRM23 was Drive Change — a call for HR to move the needle and exact meaningful change within their respective organizations.

As with all initiatives built on the goal of driving positive organizational change, they require commitment from the highest levels of leadership and the ability to stay agile and adaptable to overcome today’s professional obstacles. As HR is uniquely positioned to influence and inform both the C-suite and the workforce at large, it can ignite change by aligning the organization's strategic goals with the diverse needs of its employee population.

With so many speakers in attendance, SHRM23 covered nearly every aspect of the HR profession. However, with eyes on the ground, Maria Trapenasso, national practice leader for NFP’s Human Capital Solutions, and Megan Nail, VP, Total Rewards, were uniquely positioned to identify some of the biggest challenges and concerns facing HR professionals today.

Assembling and Retaining a Diverse Talent Pool

Assembling and retaining a diverse talent pool remains essential to foster growth and drive change. With such a talent pool in place, organizations hold an advantage over their competitors by maximizing the utility of unique and differing perspectives to better inform decision-making and propel organizational success.

Although recruiting and hiring for diversity can be a challenging process, having a strategy in place that reflects an organization’s diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) culture and ambitions is essential. By eliminating bias and sameness in recruiting and actively pursuing a workforce of people from different backgrounds and experiences, organizations can create teams capable of solving novel problems with fresh perspectives. This helps mirror the customer base and market and also creates a working population that is more likely to innovate.

In tandem with a solid recruiting strategy, maintaining an inclusive workplace requires policies and practices that accommodate all people by providing them with a forum where needs can be addressed, opinions and points of view can be freely expressed, and people feel empowered to do their best work. It is a workspace that identifies that people have different ways of learning, interacting, and achieving, and where everyone is respected and empowered to contribute.

However, there is some evidence that investment in DEIB initiatives may be slowing down. With a few bad actors enacting surface policies to give the impression that they are inclusive, when faced with the choice of riding out the economic downturn or eliminating DEIB programs to cut costs, the latter is winning out for some organizations that were on the fence with DEIB to begin with. DEIB is not simply “checking a box” — it is a cultural initiative and shift that needs to permeate the organization at every level. Employers of choice realize the significance of being committed to a comprehensive DEIB program.

Optimizing and Communicating Total Rewards

With tighter budgets, it’s imperative that employers get an optimal return on investment from their total rewards packages and compensation. To do so, they need to continue to deliver the benefits and rewards that employees truly value, including those that prioritize their physical and mental well-being. At the same time, employers need to evaluate how they can better manage costs and mitigate risks.

By gaining insight into the experiences that workers have come to value, employers can then create a total rewards strategy that aligns with organizational budgets. Based on employee feedback, salary benchmarking and data analysis, savvy employers can identify trends within their unique employee population that can help them optimize their total rewards investment and remain attractive to employees and candidates alike.

Staying connected with employees and delivering targeted communications can help drive home the value of a total rewards package and aid in maintaining organizational culture. This is especially true for employees working in different locations. To remain fully engaged, employees need clear communication that helps them understand the goals of the organization and their own role within the company. But it’s also critical to solicit feedback from employees and encourage everyone within the organization to freely share their concerns in order to solve problems.

Personalizing Benefits

Workers want a personalized experience and benefits to match. They want employers to understand what they value, and they expect leadership to help them grow and strive along their career path. For employers, this means looking at the different generations and cultural orientations across their organization and crafting a benefit offering that meets their needs and overarching goals.

As needs differ for different people, gathering information from your employees is key to crafting a benefits package. This could be done in the form of formal surveys, conversations with team leads or Q&A forums with HR. Once you’ve identified what your employees want, you can map out an informed offering of traditional benefits like 401(k) match and health insurance, as well the more hyper-personalized offerings like pet insurance or financial wellness benefits.

Something else to think about when considering personalized benefits is leave management. Employers are starting to realize how much employees value things like caregiving support, dependent care resources and paid leave in general. Employers that acknowledge that employees are also caring for aging parents or young children in addition to their workplace responsibilities have an opportunity to better attract and retain these caregivers.

As President Clinton remarked during SHRM23, “It would help the economy to be pro-work and pro-family. We have got to have policies that are not either-or.”

Maria Trapenasso, SVP and national practice leader for Human Capital Solutions, and Megan Nail, VP of Total Rewards