Welcome to 2020 and the start of a new decade. I am honored to serve as your ASHHRA President as we kick off the new decade and look forward to a banner year. As always, we face challenges as the new year/decade rolls in. As health care HR professionals, we need to prepare for, and creatively deal with, those challenges.

A 2019 zenefits.com article presented a laundry list of some the most important items we as health care HR professionals face. At the top of the list was talent shortages, followed by wage competition, turnover/retention and burnout. A separate article by Softwareadvice.com proposed Bold Predictions for HR in the new decade. The ones that caught my eye included strategic thinking becoming part of in-house HR departments’ new core competence, HR increasingly utilizing analytics and big data to augment its value to the organization, managing a remote workforce becoming the new norm, and HR needing to become more like marketing to be competitive in attracting qualified employees. Most, if not all, of these important issues and predictions have been topics in our ASHHRA webinars and conference education sessions so I feel as if I am ahead of the curve on many of these items.

How can we as health care HR professionals prepare our organizations for these challenges and changes in the profession? Many experts say the same thing: Keep learning. While budget cuts have shaved or eliminated educational dollars for many professionals, your ASHHRA membership is a cost effective way to help you stay ahead of the curve and deal with some of the challenges and changes that keep you up at night. You can utilize the plethora of tools on the recently revamped ASHHRA.org website, where you can log in to get low-cost (or better yet, free) on-demand education. You can also sign up for informative webinars or search for educational sessions at ASHHRA affiliated state or local chapters. The ASHHRA website is solid gold, so please mine it in 2020!

I am confident that 2020 is going to be a great year for ASHHRA and its members. Let’s get it started strong and have a great yeartogether.

 

Warm regards,

Willis E. Tisdale, CHHR, PHR, SHRM-CP
ASHHRA President, 2020