Author Archives: Larry Janis

Vice President/Partner Insurance Consulting

The Vice President/Partner Insurance Consulting (L&A Insurance), will be responsible for developing and executing strategies for existing client portfolios to ensure growth and profitability, effectively manage client relationships, facilitate delivery and drive client and employee satisfaction. The Vice President-Life Insurance will play the role as a subject matter expert across our life insurance business and work with the Executive Team on new service offerings, go-to-market strategies and the overall top-line revenue growth of the practice.

The VP Partner is responsible for managing existing and new client relationships and achieving the assigned annual revenue quota. This includes:

• Engagement leader on strategic accounts and builds the storyboard for client deliverables

• Orchestrate across solutions, operations and consulting

• Translate clients’ strategic requirements into enabled solutions. Work with others to achieve better results and forge close working relationships and alliances in order to get things done (for the client)

• Will be responsible for business revenue growth with existing clients based on discovery meeting with our existing clients

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The pandemic has derailed women’s careers and livelihoods. Is America giving up on them?

By Maria Aspan and Emma Hinchliffe

In early 2020, just before the first U.S. patient was diagnosed with COVID-19, women crossed a major employment milestone. The labor market was booming. Health care, education, and other service sectors largely staffed by female workers were racing to hire more people. And for a few shining months in early 2020, government data showed that women outnumbered men in the U.S. paid workforce.

Then “the whole house burned down,” says Michael Madowitz, a labor economist at the Center for American Progress.

It’s been almost a year since COVID-19 closed the schools and day cares working mothers rely on for childcare, and battered many of the service-oriented businesses with majority female workforces. And in that time, the pandemic has set working women back by more than three decades—to levels of labor force participation last seen in 1988. The resulting employment conflagration has spread across race, age, and industry, from low-paid essential workers to “knowledge” employees in remote-friendly corporate roles—although it has, predictably and awfully, done the most damage to the Black and Latina women who were already the most economically vulnerable.

“We’ve lost so much ground. It’s astronomical,” says C. Nicole Mason, president and CEO of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

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6 questions on the future of L&D with Microsoft’s learning leader

by Jennifer Colletta

Learning and development have become one of the cornerstones of many companies’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic, as organizations seek to arm their employees with the skills needed to navigate the frequent change and disruptions, while also preparing them for ongoing digital transformation. In order for such efforts to be sustainable, companies must have a true commitment to fostering a learning culture, says Joe Whittinghill, corporate vice president of talent, learning and insights at Microsoft.

Whittinghill has spent more than two decades with the tech giant, including the last five helming its learning initiatives. His work was influential in the development of the Microsoft Learning Center and the creation of Microsoft’s Leadership Principles—a driving force in the company’s cultural transformation. Whittinghill recently sat down with HRE to talk about the role of learning in culture, particularly at a time of rapid reinvention.

HRE: What were L&D leaders at Microsoft spending most of their energy on prior to the pandemic? And how did the pandemic shift those priorities?

Whittinghill: At Microsoft, we have long been focused on creating a culture of “learn-it-alls” by developing a personalized learning journey with cutting-edge learning and development, content, platforms and services. Our approach to learning has moved rapidly to be grounded in neuroscience, and more fully understanding how the brain functions, to truly enable our best work and best lives. While the pandemic hasn’t drastically changed our overall approach, it has certainly accelerated it. What has changed is the move to fully virtual, both real-time and asynchronous, and the development and optimization of these durable capabilities within our portfolio of available learning methods. Now more than ever, we’re looking at bringing new ways of learning to our employees and ensuring that we continue to prioritize a learning culture by offering time and space for learning.

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Two issues CIOs need to watch out for in 2021

by Bruno Aziza

January is a month CIOs often use to look back on the past year to build plans for the next. 2020 was a year like no other, and when Data Executives reflect on the “tech-celeration” their company experienced, they could find it challenging to prioritize opportunities for 2021 and beyond.

There is a lot to look forward to in 2021:

  • CIO budgets are expected to rise by at least 4% this year according to SiliconAngle and Enterprise Technology Research (ETR).
  • Almost 92% of companies report that the pace of investment in Data and AI will continue to accelerate, and
  • This year is the “no turning back year” for Chief Data Officer (CDOs): 65% of companies now have one, according to the latest Big Data and AI Executive Survey.

Still, a lot needs to be solved: over 3/4 of executives admit they have not succeeded in building a data-driven organization and while investment in Big Data and AI remains high for 99% of them, results continue to lag.

In this post, I examine two phenomena that could make or break the future of CIOs. One is a favorable one. The other, a distracting one. I’ve labelled them the “Organizational Shuffle” and “VendorSpeak”. Let’s dive in! (more…)

3 tips for managing long-term remote work in 2021

By: Jen Colletta

With more organizations making remote work permanent, here are a few things to keep in mind.

Remote work was one of the biggest HR stories of 2020—and it’s not looking like the headlines will be much different this year. As the pandemic rages on, many employers are keeping their workers at home for the time being, and potentially permanently, creating new priorities for HR leaders as we head into 2021.

When organizations had to quickly pivot to remote work early last year, HR leaders scrambled to ensure workers had the proper technology, revamp processes to support business operations and create new ways for employees to collaborate. Now, HR is tasked with making such strategies sustainable for the long term. As part of our look ahead to HR’s role in 2021, we recently spoke with several HR leaders about what the initial shift to remote work showed and how HR can take these lessons into this year. Here’s what they had to say:

Rely on your data. Organizations that were most successful in transitioning to remote work in 2020 were those that embarked on comprehensive data collection and analysis about their work forces, says George Penn, vice president, advisory in the Gartner HR practice. That approach enabled employers to “understand employee situations, preferences and engagement drivers to rapidly adapt their strategies in the areas of wellness, inclusion, performance and rewards.” Those organizations were then better prepared to enact “responsive and dynamic programs,” Penn says, a model that will prove vital in 2021. Read more here.

Invest in the tech to support remote processes. Modern Hire CEO Karin Borchert predicts that remote and hybrid work will likely “stick around long after the pandemic is over.” As such, now is the time, if employers haven’t, to ensure technologies are in place to support management, engagement and performance evaluation. Hiring should also be a particular focus for technology selection, she says. “Because of the success large enterprises saw with recruiting, hiring and on boarding new employees, they will likely keep their hiring processes 100% virtual post-pandemic, as technology allowed them to make smarter hiring decisions in a way that in-person interviews could not compete with.” Read more here.

Are you remote-first, or remote-friendly? Long-term remote work can only be successful if all employees are remote, as allowing some, but not all, employees to work from home could impact business efficiency, productivity and culture, says Job van der Voort, CEO and co-founder of HR tech provider Remote. So, employers need to approach 2021 with a remote-first mindset, focused on providing employees the tools, resources and support for successful remote work. Read more here.

Source: HRExecutive