The Turn: All or Nothing at SHRM
Enjoy the humidity, crowds, and the mega-sessions
Every time I think about Orlando, I think about the band O-Town and their 2001 hit All or Nothing. They were formed on the TV show Making the Band, created by the same guy who formed the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC.
(This was the pre-Diddy version of Making the Band, btw. I’m not looking to get cancelled.)
It’s not good music but when you are 19 and all the girls you liked watched it and sang along to it, well, now I know it for probably the rest of my life.
The earworm of that overproduced single came back to me as I saw folks online descending into Orlando for SHRM’s annual conference.
The first annual conference I attended was in New Orleans in 2009. It was tiny by SHRM standards but still pretty damn big. Something along the lines of 7,000 or so attendees. I met so many people. And as a credit to them, I talked on a panel on about using social media as an HR professional. They even paid for travel. Shortly thereafter, I lost my HR job for good and made the pivot into whatever this is.
I also have so many good stories about that trip that I won’t publish because walking to my hotel barefoot came after some memories that are now seared into my eyeballs.
I’ve been writing about SHRM for two decades now, though. I started my blog, Your HR Guy, in May 2006 and wrote about missing the annual conference then. My last post about SHRM was three days before Christmas. In between has been a rollercoaster of (a few) ups and (more) downs.
I get annoyed at the world’s largest HR association for a lot of (I think) valid reasons. They have lobbied on the profession’s behalf to make the laws that protect people in the workplace less effective. They sometimes act as if Toby’s flaw in the sitcom The Office was that he didn’t side with management more.
It also seems like not a great place to work. In addition to the two lawsuits I wrote about late last year, the whole “come to the office or we’ll send your job overseas” thing wasn’t great. As “The Voice of All Things Work,” they should at least be specific about what kind of workplace they want to represent.
As I’ve spent the last two decades picking at SHRM, they have only become bigger and more influential. There will likely be something on the order of 25,000 people at the show this week. Their membership has grown. The CEO has a bigger microphone than ever.
And personally, friends and colleagues are more intertwined with the organization too. They make hay at the conference. They publish books with them. They speak there. They write for them. They advise for them.
I get it. Some of them are fans and others are making the tradeoffs you have to make to pay the mortgage. Yet, I still can’t get behind SHRM. All or nothing, I guess. And maybe I’m worse off for it.
The great thing is that there are so many more communities for folks who want an alternative. And honestly, I’m a little jealous because my former HR career had very few other options. But I might not have started writing which means I wouldn’t be here writing to you.
So it worked out, and I am mostly at peace with the all or nothing part. I can only wish the SHRM attendees in my life the best time as you can have in Orlando. Good luck out there, learn something, make some connections or money, and come back refreshed.
And a quick Orlando airport tip: If you can’t get access to a lounge for some peace from all of the loud kids, the smoking lounge is quiet and probably only knocks a few days off your life. They would’ve sucked anyway.
What else is going on this week
80% Cut Jobs for AI but Got No ROI: Gartner Study. Gartner surveyed 350 executives at billion-dollar companies and found that cutting headcount to fund AI didn’t move the returns needle. The companies that saw gains used AI to amplify people, not replace them.
The AI Outcomes Gap Is A Waiting Problem. Business leaders have decided the technology will get better and solve the outcomes problem on its own, so they’re waiting instead of changing culture, upskilling people, or measuring anything, argues Gabby Burlacu. That bet is not going well.
The AI Layoff Wave Is Becoming a Powder Keg. AI insiders are minting generational wealth in the same quarter tens of thousands of workers are hitting the door, and Connie Loizos notes the historical precedent for what happens when that gap gets wide enough.
What It Felt Like to Be an Applicant. Nearly two decades helping build the HR tech industry, then Shannon Pritchett entered the job market and found the whole thing remarkably broken even with her level of access and relationships.
More Than Half of Young US Hospitality Workers Would Give Up 5% Pay Raise to Feel More Confident. New research from Attensi finds younger hospitality workers would trade a raise for training that actually builds confidence. Two-thirds said current training delivers information instead of practice, which is a polite way of saying it doesn’t work.
Tech Layoffs 2026 Hit 149,935: Uber Cuts HR Days After AI Drained Its Coding Budget. Uber burned through its entire 2026 AI coding budget in four months, with nearly 70% of committed code now AI-generated, then cut 23% of its HR division. The company insists the two facts are unrelated.
Amazon Warehouse Workers Allegedly Asked for a Raise and Were Given a Bounce House Instead. Amazon upgraded the pizza party to a bounce house when workers asked for higher wages. Thanks?
Tollbooth. Indeed made sponsored listings the default and buried free postings. Brian Fink has the apt metaphor: a road everyone assumed was public just got fenced.
Very Dry but Necessary. AI governance is prospective where financial governance is retrospective, and the people good at defining constraints are almost never the people doing the discovering, writes John Sumser.
Ask the Analyst: What Are Best-Performing Organizations Doing to Move Beyond Traditional Best Practices? The best organizations ask what problem they’re solving before they ask what everyone else is doing, according to Nicole Roberts, Nehal Nangia, and David Perring. Turns out copying what worked somewhere else at a different growth stage is mostly how you get trapped.
Sorry, Your Job Is Awesome! Laurie Ruettimann is launching a limited-run podcast for people who actually like their jobs and want to get better at them, and this is a great idea. There’s no shortage of content about broken workplaces.
Your AI Content Problem Is Actually a Data Problem. The blandification problem isn’t a writing problem, it’s a missing inputs problem, argues Steve Smith. The shortest stave in the barrel is almost always real customer voice, and no amount of prompting fixes that.
It’s Not an AI Problem. It’s a Bad Idea Problem. My post isn’t so sure this is an AI problem or a bad idea problem. A lot of brand writing was already bad before the models showed up.
The House Always Trades Up. McDonald’s premiumization, Vegas losing its middle-class customer, employers hollowing out the dependable middle of the workforce: Mike Wood connects all three. The person being priced out of the drive-thru and the person being automated out of the job are the same person.
25 Days Off Wasn’t Enough to Recover From Burnout. Surgery, burnout, a lifetime of working since 16, and the finding that time off alone doesn’t fix it: Kat Kibben writes about all of it honestly.
The Titanic in Plain Sight. AI deployment decisions and their workforce consequences are being governed by different people on different timelines with no one accountable for the gap, opens Jess Von Bank in a seven-part series. Subscribe if you aren’t already so you can read the whole thing.
Making Sense of the Labor Numbers. The labor headlines and what’s actually behind them, from Mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri in a new Your Work Friends episode.
Introducing The Humanity in AI Awards. Sounds like an oxymoron, but Beth White is working to make sure the people on the other side of tokenmaxxing are recognized too.
Human Capital Insider: June 2026. Kyle Forrest gives his monthly rundown of Gartner research and what’s moving in human capital strategy.
Advocates Release New Report Urging Congress to Restore Federal Contractor Employees’ Rights After Trump’s Rescission of E.O. 11246. The right message aimed at the wrong audience, given the current composition of Congress.
Oracle Wins $396M Federal HR Systems Overhaul Contract. OPM picked Oracle to consolidate more than 100 HR systems covering two million federal employees on a 10-year contract. Set your alarms for a decade from now.
A Farewell to the Pay Transparency Newsletter. After three years, Anita Lettink is wrapping up her Equal Pay newsletter and moving to her Pay Time! newsletter. Subscribe there and follow her work.
John Wilson Steps Down After 20 Years Leading Wilson HCM. Happy trails to John Wilson, one of the good ones. The kind of exit that generates comments like this doesn’t happen by accident.
Have a great rest of your week!