Emily Peirce

Throughout history, many transformative technologies have acquired a pattern of initial fear or opposition, followed by reluctant but gradual acceptance. The current wave of powerful generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools has met with similar concerns and in higher education (HE) there are concrete worries as boundaries between student-generated content and AI-generated material blur (Richardson and Clesham, 2021).

Look between “self-starter” and “excellent communication skills” on nearly any list of job requirements and you’ll find it: “attention to detail a must.”  Almost every job post across almost every industry lists some variation on being “detail oriented” as an important skill. And true perfectionists are in luck, because this seemingly perfunctory requirement is actually critical to success in a ton of positions.

Another SHRM conference has come and gone. With over a thousand exhibitors, hundreds of events, and keynote speakers ranging from Brené Brown to Martha Stewart, the SHRM conference can cause a bit of sensory overload, but we’ve distilled our experience at the conference down to a few core themes. Here are five of the biggest trends we saw at SHRM 2019: 1.