So this morning I got up bright and early (5 AM…that’s obscenely early for this sleep baby, let me tell you…) and drove to Brookfield for an HR seminar. This is the first of several seminars I’m scheduled to attend this year. The audience was composed of both men and women, which was a bit surprising to me because you really don’t come across men in HR that often. It’s known to be one of the “softer” and more “personable” departments, which is why everyone expects women to be the frontrunners.

Anyways, before I get on that tangent too far, I just wanted to note a couple of the takeaways from the session:

1. People don’t leave jobs, they leave managers. (Hmm, this sounds familiar. Almost identical wording from the book I mentioned a few posts back, First, Break All the Rules)

2. We talked ALOT about the ACA (Affordable Care Act) and how that’s impacting HR professionals and their employees. The seminar speaker emphasized how important it is to have a solid relationship with your insurance broker because 2014-2015 will be big years of change in the health care industry and your company needs a reliable and knowledgeable support system. I had to laugh and shake my head when she said that, because it’s a running joke in our department how crappy our broker is. When we had open enrollment in 2012 and 2013, it was a complete disaster. We ended up doing the majority of the work, when the broker is supposed to be the one doing it (that’s what we pay them for!). The only problem with our situation is that our broker has a personal relationship with the company CEO, so I don’t think we’ll be parting ways with them any time soon. Unfortunately.

There were many other great topics we went over throughout the session, much of what I already knew. But it was really beneficial to hear those things from an objective point of view because most of what I know in HR I’ve learned on the job, and with that comes the influence and expertise (or lack of) from the people I work with. I absolutely love my bosses, but sometimes it’s good to learn things and pick up those concepts from an outside source–it’s unbiased, and it also helps reaffirm what I was already learning and doing at my job.

All in all, it was a good day. I’m looking forward to more of these seminars. Not only does it help me invest in my own career and skill set, but hey–it gets me out of the office for awhile 🙂

Oh, and p.s. I’m almost done with the newsletter article, so I’ll be posting that soon. I’ve got some good material in it, so I’m pretty excited about that.