Every year I look forward to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) conference to learn what the experts, the consultants and most importantly everyday HR professionals share in sessions and hallways. This year was no exception. The conference keeps getting bigger and bigger. With over 20,000 people buzzing around the place with over 100 booths just on health and wellness alone, there was no shortage of ideas and solutions.

The many discussions focused on the role of HR, engagement of employees and building the culture of an organization, the impact of the #MeToo Movement, the challenges of compliance and hiring, and recruiting people. In the wellness area organizations are moving from wellness to holistic wellbeing, to continue building on wellness initiatives and bring something new to their employees.

Speaking at a session on Monday afternoon with Matt Harmon - VP of AutoZone about "Looking under the hood: What's driving AutoZone's culture of Health and Wellness?" we both were pleasantly surprised that not only we had a large room assigned to us, but we had hundreds of people in the room and it was filled with people standing to hear how this new approach to driving cultural change was being successful.

While we delivered our session on key influencers for building a culture of health and wellbeing, I cannot thank SHRM enough on reinforcing the relevancy of our topic. We are moving in the right direction for improving the health of millions and saving billions in healthcare costs. This is a long journey and we are on the right path.

Key strategists understood that an organizational culture change along with a renewed personality, is the need of the hour for HR personnel. To get the most from their investment in the many benefits an organization provides, it is important to make it easy to get information and access to all their benefits. Using all available communication channels to engage with employees is necessary to share corporate values and build their new caring workplace. Health and wellness goals set in tandem with the cultural vision must be communicated clearly to improve visibility in every nook and corner of the organization.

SHRM had some valuable sessions on HR strategizing as a valuable business partner. Successful HR personnel will be going beyond looking at employee data, presenting reports and delivering performance matrix., They must bring business acumen to be invited at the CEO table to contribute to profitability through productivity gains and impact at every level.

In the grand scheme of all things HR, we realized that a platform like ours has an opportunity to make it easy for HR personnel by giving them the best technology to communicate their benefits, they can now amplify their message about benefits, services, health, and wellness, and other offerings quickly and make a meaningful paradigm shift in their organizations.

Think of our platform like a swiss army knife for your HR team - you can meet many of your short and long-term objectives using this advanced platform and play your part in driving that profitability.

Drop me an email dinesh.sheth@greencirclehealth.com if you'd like to hear more from us.