Reading another LA Times article about the racism in tech experienced by Black and brown workers, was frustrating. Although initiatives like PledgeLA have shown modest success, there is still a long way to go to eliminate the racism that many workers complain about in the tech sector. The experience of a Black woman founder who was mistaken for a server at a recent venture capital pitch event in Milwaukee reminds us that even owning the tech company does not make you immune from racism and the bias of others. Both stories brought a personal incident rushing back to my mind.  I was involve ..read more

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little” ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt So conversations about race are now on the agenda in American companies. This is new. So new in fact that the Spring 2020 issue of HR Magazine offered advice on how HR should handle contentious political talk in the workplace. The advice? “Consider keeping political programs off the televisions in the office, including those in the break room.” Well, with these conversations, we are now way beyond what’s on televisi ..read more

“Change is inevitable, but it is in us to control it’s content and directions” – Indira Gandhi There are urgent conversations right now about whether the Coronavirus pandemic has accelerated or slowed down the drive for workplace automation. The answer is easy. The drive towards more workplace automation has not slowed down. To the contrary, McKinsey reports that “we have vaulted five years forward in consumer and business digital adoption in a matter of around eight weeks.”  The Coronavirus pandemic has caused significant technology disruption at every level across organizations. Conside ..read more

Over the last several weeks, organizations that flooded our in-boxes and timelines with their approach to managing the Coronavirus, have shifted to distributing notices sharing their reactions to systemic racism, GeorgeFloyd’s death and the public outcries for changes to policing.   Of the messages received so far, my favorite is from Calm, the personal wellness app. I loved their very simple, yet powerful email message: We are heartbroken.  We are weary.  We want change.  We stand with the Black community.  #BLACKLIVESMATTER Along with the message, Calm shared li ..read more

Far be it from me to speak for all of colleagues in the Human Resources profession, but I think this is a good time to share a few observations that should reassure all of us that - Yes - HR is ready to take on what I think will be the Raging 2020s. As the future of work unfolds, our organizations and by extension our HR profession is going to experience what Erik Brynjolfsson calls "the growing pains of a radically reorganized economy." Hopefully our collective memories of the transactional personnel office we talked about in business school will fade, and be replaced by people systems design ..read more

Far be it from me to speak for all my colleagues in the Human Resources profession, but I think this is a good time to lay out a few observations that should reassure all of us that - Yes - HR is ready to take on what I think will be the Raging 2020s. As the future of work and organizations unfold, our organizations and by extension our profession is going to experience with Erik Brynjolfsson calls "the growing pains of a radically reorganized economy." Hopefully our collective memories of the transactional personnel office we talked about in business school will fade and be replaced by people ..read more

Allied Market Research (AMR) has recently released a report suggesting that “global automation as a service industry” topped out at almost $2.1 billion in 2018 and will approach close to $12.5 billion by 2026.  Moreover, the CGAR (compound annual growth rate) is set to grow 25 percent between 2019 and 2026.  Automation as a “service industry” sounds a bit like robots zipping around a restaurant serving you food, but realistically, it’s more subtle than that. It means that functions like software installation, maintenance, and support for business technologies  can be more efficiently carried o ..read more

Although China is on a path to have its AI industry valued at over $10 billion by 2020, several experts have identified that the country may still struggle with actually implementing this new AI. How could this be though?  China collects data from over 840 million Chinese internet users making them the biggest online population on the planet. Yet, the data is of questionable quality, because there are not enough people tag, label, or “clean” it. China’s apparent lack of technology talent is actually making it harder to use and implement the massive amount of data at their disposal.  These conc ..read more

Women continue to enroll and graduate from college in higher numbers than men. In 2015, 73% of women who had recently graduated high school were enrolled in a two or four-year college program versus 66% of men. Analysis of data from the US Department of Labor shows that in Q1 of 2019, there were 29.5 million women who had earned bachelor degrees in the workforce. This was slightly ahead of 29.3 million men who had earned bachelor degrees. Women therefore, enter the workforce with higher rates of college education than men and are now at least equal to the number of men in the workforce with ba ..read more

Automation is expected to radically change the workplace. A new report from McKinsey cites the potential impact of changes on working women with an opening salvo that warns: "Concerted and creative new solutions are needed to enable women to seize new opportunities in the automation age. Without them, women may fall further behind in the world of work." One recommendation was that organizations create career paths for women increasing opportunities for advancement into roles not projected for elimination through automation. As a woman who has experienced job role redesign due to technology ..read more