Insights

News, views and opinions on the latest HR technology, trends and topics.

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When Staff Shortages Force Executives to Work on the Front Lines

If you have traveled by air over the last few months, particularly if your trip was international in nature, you have likely experienced some challenges, delays, cancellations, and even some lost baggage. The myriad tales of airline and airport chaos have been all over the national and global media in recent days. While summer air...

Some U.S. Cities and Towns are Rewarding New Remote Workers

A growing number of small towns and cities across the United States are attempting to convince knowledge workers to relocate to their small towns, by rewarding them with cash, tax incentives, and assistance with buying or renting homes. In some cases, the total value of these incentives approaches $20,000, although the value of each incentive...

Innovative Recruiting Strategies Include Inviting Family Members to Interviews

With the ongoing difficulties that many organizations are facing in candidate attraction and hiring in the wake of the “Great Resignation”, some recruitment leaders are exploring some innovative recruiting methods and “out of the box” strategies to give them an edge in the competition for the best talent. One interesting, and I think unique, example...

New Data Shows a Shift in the Top Reason Workers are Quitting Their Jobs

For decades organizations have been concerned and focused on getting behind the primary reasons why workers voluntarily leave their jobs. And the impacts and effects of the Great Resignation, which has seen elevated levels of worker quits for over a year now, have made understanding quits data even more important. For years most of the...

Are Summer Fridays the Key to Employee Happiness?

Many organizations, including our own here at H3 HR, institute a “Summer Fridays” program in the summer months. The specifics of an individual organization’s approach to Summer Fridays can differ, but generally speaking the program involves working shorter weeks, Monday through Thursday during the summer months with Fridays as “off” days or, designating Fridays as...

After Two Lost Years, Workers are Eager to Get Back to Summer Vacations

During the first summer of the pandemic, in 2020, almost two thirds of US workers canceled or postponed their vacations. The next year, 2021, was not much better, with Americans averaging about one week’s worth of unclaimed PTO, according to the U.S. Travel Association. Now, American workers are feeling eager to resume or re-start their...

Bringing Employees Back to the Office? Make Sure There are Enough Desks

Not many days go by without news from electric vehicle maker Tesla making waves online. And since one of the most important current issues facing organizations and HR leaders is navigating the new ways of working – fully remote, hybrid, or in some cases, fully back to in-person work at company locations, it is not...

New Data Shows US Workers are Embracing Flexible Work Arrangements

New data released from the McKinsey American Opportunity Survey sheds light on how many workers are offered the option to work from home, who works in flexible arrangement, and how they feel about flexible work overall. McKinsey surveyed just over 25,000 Americans in spring 2022 to better understand the ongoing trends in flexible work arrangements,...

SAP SAPPHIRE IN ORLANDO – A conversation about event highlights and sustainability

At the recent SAP Sapphire Orlando event, Trish McFarlane, Enrique Rubio, Joey Price, and Jackie Cuevas sat down to discuss highlights of the event and consistent message of sustainability throughout. For more information about SAP Sapphire in Orlando and to view recorded sessions on-demand, click here

Executives Beg for Return to Offices, Revealing Just How Out of Touch Many of Them Remain

In the last few months several well-known and influential business leaders (Elon Musk, Jamie Dimon, Howard Schultz, etc.), have gone on record advocating, and in some cases requiring, remote and/or hybrid workers to return to their offices and workplaces after an extended period of pandemic-driven remote working. The specifics of what these and other business...

Mental Health Awareness Month: Resources from the HR Happy Hour Podcast Network

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a time to raise awareness of those living with mental or behavioral health issues and to help reduce the stigma so many experience. With Mental Health such an important issue for all of us, it has also emerged as one of the most critical challenges for HR and business...

On-Demand Webinar: Flexible Work and Busting HR Myths

Perhaps the most important and tricky set of challenges that HR and business leaders are navigating are the ones surrounding the design of work, workplaces, and managing ongoing remote and hybrid working arrangements. At the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, many organizations were forced to pivot rapidly to remote working, usually without a...

Companies are Taking Widely Different Approaches to the Return of In-person Work

Companies are beginning to see the initial effects of “return to work” policies implemented as the pandemic has waned and most pandemic-related restrictions have been lifted. Recently Apple enacted the first phase of their return-to-work program, requiring employees to be in their offices at least one day per week. The plan transitions to three...

Workplace Technology News: Oracle Announces the Oracle ME Employee Experience Platform

The importance of improving the Employee Experience, particularly through application of new HR and workplace technology was a primary concern for most organizations prior to the pandemic. And the events of the pandemic, and the associated disruptions and challenges to work, workplaces, and employees in all organizations, have elevated the emphasis for HR and business...

Introducing The Workplace Minute Powered by H3 HR Advisors

Some news from the team at H3 HR Advisors to share – we have recently launched a new show for your Amazon Alexa-enabled devices! The show is titled “The Workplace Minute, Powered by H3 HR Advisors”, and is available as a free Skill for your Amazon Alexa device’s daily News Updates, (also referred to as...

Webinar: Up Your Diversity Recruiting Game in 2022

Join Trish McFarlane & Steve Boese on February 22, 2022 at 2:00pm ET for a topical webinar on diversity hiring! Register HERE today. 49% of recruiters report that job seekers are inquiring about diversity and inclusion more than they did last in 2021. It’s clear that a diverse workforce is important to employees. As the...

Trends in Job Growth and Wages in America’s Small Businesses

by Steve Boese I am an admitted Labor Market data geek. Probably my two favorite “work” days of the month are “Jobs” Friday, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the Employment Situation report, and the day of the monthly JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary) Report release. From the Jobs report we get...

Helping Organizations and Individuals Thrive in the New World of Work: A Conversation with SAP SuccessFactors Leaders

by Steve Boese How to thrive in the new world of work is top of mind for leaders today. If you were to think about some of the most important challenges facing organizations, and business and HR leaders in early 2022 what would immediately come to mind? Probably some (or all) of the following: supporting...

Event Report: SuccessConnect Fall 2021 – Elevating the Employee Experience

At the recent SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect virtual event SAP SuccessFactors executive leaders, customer representatives, and product developers and designers shared a consistent message – that in the new world of work winning organizations will be the ones that prioritize the employee experience at all points of the employee journey. That is a simple sounding, and...

Empowering Employees to Learn, Connect, and Perform- SuccessConnect

by Trish McFarlane I want you to think about something. What are the moments that matter to you at work? I’m certain a few came to mind immediately. If I asked your co-worker, I’m sure there may be some duplication, but there would also be variance. Why? Because we all have an individualized approach to...

Best of the HR Happy Hour Show in 2021

While 2021, also known as Pandemic Year 2, was another challenging and at times trying year, on a number of levels, one of the things that helped us at H3 HR, (and hopefully some of you as well), stay relatively sane, informed and “normal” was keeping up regular recordings of our HR Happy Hour Show/Podcast,...

Workplace Technology News: Oracle Continues to Enhance Enterprise Cloud Applications and Analytics Capabilities

by Steve Boese At a recent Oracle Live “Future of Business” presentation on November 2, 2021, Steve Miranda, Oracle’s EVP for Applications Product Development shared some important updates to the Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications suite, as well as announcing new analytics capabilities for Supply Chain Management. In Steve’s opening remarks, he reiterated two of the...

Building the “X” in HXM

* This post is sponsored by SAP SuccessFactors. For more information on putting employees at the heart of everything you do, visit them here. HR Happy Hour Episode 499 – Building the “X” in HXM – Live with SAP from the HR Technology Conference Hosts: Trish McFarlane, George LaRocque Guests: Meg Bear, Chief Product Officer and Amy Wilson,...

Celebrating the 500th Episode of the HR Happy Hour Show!

Recently, at the HR Technology Conference, we recorded and celebrated the 500th Episode of the HR Happy Hour Show! You can listen to the show here, (I will also embed the show player below), or on your favorite podcast app. To make it this long, (500 episodes across over 12 years), is quite remarkable I...

Paycom’s Beti Is the Next Evolution in Self-Service Tech for Employees

One of the important developments in HR technology over the past 10 years or so has been the continuing development of employee-centric software that has put more and more information and control over so many aspects of HR into the hands of individual employees. From the beginning, employee self-service helped employees better understand, maintain and validate important data like...

Celebrating 4 years of the Workplace Movie Hall of Fame Series

“Movies touch our hearts and awaken our vision, and change the way we see things. They take us to other places, they open doors and minds.” – Martin Scorsese What started out as a fun idea back in July 2017 is still going strong. The HR Happy Hour Show debuted the first Workplace Movie Hall...

Mental Health Awareness Month 2021

In recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, we would like to offer some insights and share some resources on how to help support mental health in the workplace. Now more than ever, investing in your employee’s mental health is imperative, as it affects job performance, productivity, employee retention and more. Employee Mental Health –...

Resources for the Wellbeing Journey

*This post is sponsored by Oracle HCM. For more information, visit them at www.oracle.com/human-capital-management Wellbeing and self-care are more important than ever before. Working from home or other non-traditional places is now a way of life for many employees. Add to that the stressors from the pandemic, having children schooling at home, caring for elderly...

Best of the HR Happy Hour Show in 2020

While 2020 was an absolutely insane year on any number of levels, one of the things that helped us at H3 HR, (and hopefully some of you as well), stay relatively sane and “normal” was keeping up regular recordings of our HR Happy Hour Show/Podcast, now in it’s 12th year of production. While we obviously...

A New Administration Means New Impacts on HR and the Workplace

Even though the transition in the USA from the outgoing administration to the new Biden-Harris administration is only a couple of days old as I write this, there are already several HR and workplace policies, appointments, and directives that are very likely to impact work, workplaces, and HR in the coming months and years. A...

Recognizing Innovation In HR Technology: Oracle HCM Cloud

Over the summer months we at H3 HR Advisors have spent many hours attending virtual HR and HCM events, having countless Zoom calls with HR technology solution providers and doing our best to keep on top of all the developments in HR tech – and trust me, despite the pandemic there has been a tremendous...

Celebrating an HR Happy Hour Show Milestone!

We are happy to share the news of a happy milestone for our HR Happy Hour Show/Podcast – we recently surpassed 2 million downloads for the show’s history! We are pretty excited and certainly proud of the achievement but we also wanted to take an opportunity to wish our heartfelt thanks to all of our...

Introducing the HR Happy Hour Work Break VLOG

This week Trish McFarlane and Steve Boese kicked off the latest evolution of the HR Happy Hour Show, a live streamed video conversation we are calling the “HR Happy Hour Work Break”. The “Work Breaks’ will be short conversations about work, the workplace, and HR technology designed to pop up on your timeline in the...

Connect with the Next Generation Workforce This Week on the HR Happy Hour Show on Alexa

If there is anything certain about the world of work these days, perhaps it’s that almost nothing is certain. These are definitely incredibly challenging times for everyone, as people everywhere have either been directly impacted by the Coronavirus pandemic, from either the actual virus itself, or from the economic fallout from the mitigation measures we’ve...

The Coronavirus Pandemic and the Rapid Shifts in Labor Market Demand

As the Coronavirus Pandemic continues seemingly unabated in countries all over the world, the impacts on the US economy and the negative repercussions of widespread business and organizational disruption are coming more into focus. Entire industries, and the leading companies in those industries, have announced or certainly will soon announce significant workforce reductions or employee...

Trusted Coronavirus Information and a HR Happy Hour Podcast Network Update

As I write this update on March 12, 2020 here in the USA we are in somewhere in the later part of the early stages of coming to grips with the impact that the global COVID-19/Coronavirus pandemic is having on work, workplaces, schools, businesses in general, travel, recreation, transportation, healthcare, economics – essentially every aspect...

Labor Market Update: Five Data Points All HR Leaders Should Know

by Steve Boese I’ve long been a self-described “labor market data geek.” I look forward to the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics data releases on jobs, labor turnover, labor participation rates and more. Hearing the latest labor market figures, looking at the trends, seeing how financial and political markets react to the latest data –...

Assessing the Effectiveness of Workplace Chatbot Technology

With the continued development and increased implementation of Artificial Intelligence tools in HR and workplace contexts, it will become more important to HR leaders and HR technologists to be able to assess the effectiveness of these technologies. One good example of this challenge is with AI-powered HR and workplace chatbot technology, one of the more...

The Shift in Investments in Employee Development and Reskilling

Many organizations in the US face a continuing challenge in finding workers with the skills they need, and of note is how corporate approaches to development and reskilling employees have shifted in the last few years. As the economic recovery following the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008, and the ensuing recession, continued into the...

Masterclass: Investing in the Organization – and Yourself

Towards the end of 2019 when the H3 HR Advisors team met to kind of wrap up the year and to talk about some of the projects, opportunities, and challenges awaiting us in 2020, we also talked about how we could get better, smarter, better able to take care of our clients and ourselves in...

Mental Health in the Workplace – An Important Topic for HR in 2020

Last year the organizers of the 2019 Health and Benefits Leadership Conference reached out to me to see if I would be interested in participating at the event to talk about the continuing emergence of AI technology in the HR and Benefits space. I think I surprised them when I said I would love to...

Year in Review: The Best of the HR Happy Hour Show in 2019

We had another fantastic year on the HR Happy Hour Show and Podcast marked by dozens of amazing shows. a slew of incredible guests and topics, and highlighted by the 10th anniversary of the show back in May. While new and original shows will be kicking off in early 2020, we wanted to take advantage...

Event Report: The Future of Reskilling – Content Mobile Talks, Barcelona, November 2019

One of the most important HR and talent issues facing leaders in business, HR, education, and governmental institutions across the globe is the issue of the ongoing and persistent “skills gap” – the challenge of current and prospective employees not possessing the updated skills needed and that organizations require today and moving forward. These skills...

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