Many are calling this moment a reinvention — or even a reckoning — for HR. Renowned business scholar and HR thought leader Dave Ulrich calls it something more precise: an inflection point.
Artificial intelligence is reshaping work faster than organizations can adapt, employees are burned out, leaders are under pressure, and boards are asking harder questions about value, performance, and accountability. In this environment, HR faces a defining challenge: to lead with evidence and impact — or risk becoming irrelevant.
In this live conversation, Ulrich joins SHRM President and Chief Executive Officer Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP, for a candid discussion about what must change now for HR to remain a strategic force across the organization. Together, they’ll move beyond slogans and surface-level transformation to examine the hard truths facing the profession.
This webinar will explore:
- Why this moment represents a true reckoning for HR.
- How HR creates stakeholder value, not just strong employee experiences.
- What “integrated human capability” looks like in practice and why talent alone isn’t enough.
- Where HR is falling short on analytics and AI, as well as how to close the gap between hype and impact.
- What boards and CEOs increasingly expect from HR leaders.
Join us for an unfiltered, evidence-based conversation that challenges conventional thinking and offers a clearer path forward for HR leaders who want to shape strategy, not manage decline.
Meet the Presenters
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Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP, is President and Chief Executive Officer of SHRM. With nearly 340,000 members in 180 countries, SHRM impacts the lives of more than 362 million workers and their families globally.
As a global leader on the future of employment, culture, and leadership, Mr. Taylor is a sought-after voice on all matters affecting work, workers, and the workplace. Recognized as one of the “300 Most Influential Executives in Corporate America” for 2024 by Savoy Magazine, on the “Virginia 500: Power List” by Virginia Business, and as one of the “Most Influential People Shaping Public Policy” in our nation’s capital by Washingtonian Magazine, Mr. Taylor is frequently asked to testify before Congress on critical workforce issues and authors the weekly USA Today column, "Ask HR."
Mr. Taylor's career spans more than 20 years as a lawyer, human resources executive, and CEO in both the not-for-profit and for-profit spaces. He has held senior and chief executive roles at IAC/InteractiveCorp, Viacom's Paramount Pictures, Blockbuster Entertainment Group, the McGuireWoods law firm, and Compass Group USA. Most recently, Mr. Taylor was President and Chief Executive Officer of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.
He is the author of the national bestseller, RESET: A Leader’s Guide to Work in an Age of Upheaval, which immediately upon its release in September 2021, was in the top three of The Wall Street Journal’s list of best-selling hardcover business books.
Mr. Taylor is a member of the United Way Worldwide Board of Trustees and serves on the corporate boards of XPO Logistics (NYSE: XPO), Flores HR, and Guild Education. He previously served on the White House American Workforce Policy Advisory Board and as chairman of the President's Advisory Board on Historically Black Colleges and Universities during the Trump Administration.
Women Business Collaborative (WBC) named Mr. Taylor as one of its 2023 Trailblazers in Gender Equity and Diversity for his work to achieve equal position, pay, and power for all women in business. In 2020, he received the Distinguished Executive of the Year Award from the Academy of Management, and he was named 2021 ALA Professional Society CEO of the Year by CEO Update.
He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources and is licensed to practice law in Florida, Illinois, and Washington, D.C.
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Dave Ulrich
Dave Ulrich is the Rensis Likert Professor Emeritus at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan and a partner at the RBL Group (http://www.rbl.net). He has published over 200 articles and book chapters and over 30 books. He edited Human Resource Management for ten years, served on editorial board of four other journals and on the Board of Directors for Herman Miller (16 years), has spoken to large audiences in 90 countries; performed workshops for over half of the Fortune 200; coached successful business leaders, and is a Distinguished Fellow in the National Academy of Human Resources. He posts weekly and comments daily on LinkedIn (over 380,000 followers and 3,300,000 page views in 2024) and has a free weekly newsletter with over 230,000 subscribers (https://lnkd.in/gbRqJHkW). His work creates ideas with impact about how to deliver stakeholder value through human capability (talent + organization + leadership + HR).
Organization. With co-authors, he has influenced thinking about modern organizations (Reinventing the Organization) by empirically showing how organization delivers four times business results over talent (Victory Through Organization), defined organizations as bundles of capabilities (Organization Capability) and worked to delineate capabilities of talent management (Why of Work; Talent Accelerator), culture change (GE Workout), learning (Learning Organization Capability), and collaboration (Boundaryless Organization).
Leadership. With colleagues, he has also articulated the basics of effective leadership (Leadership Code and Results Based Leadership), connected leadership with customers (Leadership Brand), shown how leadership delivers market value (Why the Bottom Line Isn’t), shapes investor expectations with an ability to measure leadership (Leadership Capital Index), and synthesized ways to ensure that leadership aspirations turn into actions (Leadership Sustainability).
Human Resources. He and his colleagues have shaped the HR profession and he has been called the “father of modern HR” and “HR thought leader of the decade” by focusing on HR outcomes, governance, competencies, and practices (HR Champions; HR Value Added; HR Transformation; HR Competencies; HR Outside In). He spearheaded a “gift” book on the future of HR (The Rise of HR) distributed to over 1,500,000 HR professionals), in which 70 thought leaders freely shared their insights.
SHRM certification has approved this webinar for 1 PDC toward SHRM-CP or SHRM-SCP recertification. A program code will be provided at the end of the webinar.