Inside SHRM 2021: A newbie dives into the HR deep end

I always thought Human Resources departments were little more than duplicitous tools of shadowy C-suite executives. HR worked to drive revenue upward while ignoring my emails (or responding testily), and never really had my best interests in mind. I realize that might sound like an affront to everything you hold dear, but I’m a reporter, and I’m paid to be skeptical. Weathering several different layoffs handed down by seemingly indifferent HR departments has definitely made me cynical.

But then I got a job covering the Human Resources industry—it made sense, given years of covering workplace issues as a freelancer—and I was almost immediately dispatched to SHRM 2021, which is basically the equivalent of Burning Man (minus the gleeful consumption of drugs and steampunk vibe) for HR professionals. The convention took place during a pandemic (yep, that’s still a thing), and drew thousands of responsibly masked HR aficionados to a city that laughs in the face of corporate etiquette and cordialities—Las Vegas—for four days of education and elbow bumping at a convention center about the size of the Death Star. I was there, and I lived to tell the tale.

As a 32-year-old man who sweats more than most in regular hot weather, the punishing Vegas heat made my armpits slicker than a waterslide at the MGM Grand. However, I quickly learned that my pits would not be the story. Rather, it’s about an industry grappling with a 2020-induced paradigm shift that’s thrown conventional ideas about work into a blender, mixed them with a pandemic, a summer of racial reckoning, shuttered offices, a bajillion Zoom calls and a workforce fed up with the “always on” deluge of remote work. My assignment was to drink this thick SHRMoothie up, and learn about a field that most workers (including myself) haven’t given much consideration to throughout their careers.

The conference’s slogan this year was “Now more than ever, our workforce needs us.” And after spending three days immersing myself in all things SHRM, I couldn’t agree more.

The annual showcase certainly absorbed some of Vegas’s circus energy. Corporate carnival barkers ran rampant, hawking their wares, which included myriad versions of HRMS and HRIS, mental health platforms, payroll management platforms, wellness platforms, recruitment and retention platforms, and many other platforms that I won’t mention for the sake of my word count. The concept of AI was discussed ad nauseum; as I said, HR tech is a huge deal. I was struck by the abundance of tech-savvy operators, who are all striving to make deeper connections with HR departments across the globe and help people, everywhere, work better. And make money.

The expo floor was big enough for a handful of 757s, per my reckoning, which means more than 500 exhibitors fit comfortably under the towering lights. Vendors did their best to stick out. One vendor paraded out a spinning wheel (à la Wheel of Fortune) to raffle prizes. The spinning provided a consistent earworm, the clicks reverberating like a Pavlovian signal to turn around whenever I got close enough. Another vendor came toting an upright bass and banjo, for seemingly no apparent reason (they were peddling a book on career success). There was a woman clad head-to-toe in the most obnoxious American flag pattern I’ve ever seen—a clear overture to the most patriotic people professionals.

Again, I was taken aback by how competitive the marketplace was, and how many companies are trying to make an impact, regardless of their tactics. As an HR neophyte, I’ve been gobsmacked to learn that the total HR industry market value was $17.56 billion in 2020, per industry research from Grandview Research, which projects a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.2% from 2021 to 2028.

This potential for profit was certainly reflected by the event’s size: There were 11,000 attendees, between in person and virtual, but this was a pandemic year. For comparison, 2019’s expo saw 18,000 attendees gather at the convention center. Even in an off year, however, the opening general session on Thursday gave the impression of an evangelical church that swallowed a rock opera. There was a full-on musical opening with a duet performance of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” A man rapped. He rapped about HR. Dancers wearing costumes of different vocations—think a construction worker, a doctor, etc.—danced under a figurative Human Resources rainbow. It was a lot to take in, but that’s my job.

I did learn many valuable things while roaming the expo floor. Chief among them: HR professionals are a tribe, bound by a common language. At pretty much every talk I attended, there were inside jokes—common gripes routinely discussed and used as sources of levity. Were they all making fun of me, the outsider, in their secret language? Probably.

Dawn Kelley, a Human Resources manager for the city of Modesto, California, noted just how often HR people screw up, telling a chuckling crowd that they’ll probably get an employee’s pronouns wrong. She offered the insight that any missteps can be overridden by the understanding that a “sense of belonging happens because you make it happen.”

It was clear to me, as I attended lectures on DEI, evolving gender norms, and hiring the formerly incarcerated, that this profession does strive to put the worker first—at least in a procedural capacity.

Practitioners showed up in droves to learn how to navigate some of the rockiest terrain the workplace has ever seen. You are acclimating to the changing social tide at base camp, learning how to create equity for nonbinary employees, hire people with criminal convictions, implement real diversity in the corporate world beyond performative efforts, all while walking a tense tightrope between the demands of the C-suite (profit!) and the workers (greater flexibility! Mental health resources! Gender pay equity!).

Lessons were distilled with unflinching honesty. In a talk on DEI, Dethra Giles, founder of the executive coaching consultancy ExecuPrep, told a crowd that saying, “I don’t see color,” is to say, “I don’t see your experience.”

One of the biggest themes of the weekend was empathy. HR people are widely instructed to be masters of the empathetic arts, wielders of the expert listener’s toolkit. You’re instructed to encourage employees to show up to work as their complete self. You aren’t resisting the seismic global shakeup that’s bled into the workplace, but rather, you’re acclimating to it, which I find totally admirable.

SHRM was certainly a crash course in the previously unknown world of Human Resources, and I left the conference a little less mystified by the industry. As we get HR Brew up and running, I look forward to leveraging the kind of knowledge and expertise I encountered from speakers at SHRM, and using it to help you all make the best decisions possible through my reporting.

In the meantime, I’d advise telling whoever handles the catering at the Las Vegas Convention Center that charging $14 for a heat-lamp fried chicken sandwich has got to be an OSHA violation.—SB

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Contact Sam Blum via the encrypted messaging apps Signal and Telegram (@SamBlum_Brew) or simply email [email protected].