Honey, you’ve got a big storm coming.
That isn’t just a line delivered in a recorded acting class that became a viral meme. It also was more or less the warning that SHRM’s president and CEO Johnny C. Taylor, Jr. delivered to HR pros at the organization’s annual conference last year. This year’s forecast is expected to be the same, he said at SHRM’s latest annual conference held in San Diego last week.
“It’s going to be another monster year,” he told the audience during his mainstage presentation on June 30, citing challenges including AI creating job displacement, rising layoffs, and DEI “becoming a four-letter word.”
Taylor outlined the three areas where HR pros can “rise literally above earthly expectations and really make a major difference in how people live, how they work, and how they thrive.”
Number one: Protecting “equal opportunity in a difficult climate.” Taylor stood by SHRM’s announcement in July 2024 that the organization would remove “equity” from its diversity initiative and instead call it “I&D,” a move that generated controversy among HR pros.
“My fellow HR colleagues, I’m not one that relishes in saying ‘I told you so,’ but we did,” Taylor said of SHRM dropping “equity” last year.
Taylor told the audience that US employment laws “focus on equality, not equity,” and that HR pros must know the difference between doing “what we want to do and what we are legally allowed.” He also said that SHRM will show how to execute on initiatives that are “legally compliant, workplace unifying, and business inclusive.”
When asked later by HR Brew how exactly employers can protect equal opportunity while publicly rolling back DEI programming, Taylor said HR pros must focus on those three factors—legally compliant, workplace unifying, and business inclusive—as guardrails for DEI initiatives.
He also noted there were “some instances” of employers not doing the work in a legally compliant manner, such as creating affinity groups that weren’t open to all employees. When asked how many HR or DEI practitioners were conducting noncompliant programs, Taylor said he didn’t know but pointed to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s threats to scrutinize DEI-related activities under Title VII.
When asked why SHRM is encouraging companies to shift their DEI programming when much of the law around DEI hasn’t changed, Taylor said it’s because it’s SHRM’s job as an HR organization. He cited the recent Supreme Court ruling in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services allowing a reverse discrimination lawsuit to proceed, and striking down a rule requiring someone from a majority group to meet a different burden of proof than those from minority groups as an example. (A veteran employment attorney previously told HR Brew that the ruling wouldn’t meaningfully change anything for HR leaders.)
“We saw this coming two years ago at least, and so it is our job to ensure that the HR member is, for lack of a better term, racing to where the puck is going, not waiting for it, because you lose the game at that point if you don’t see where it’s going,” he said.
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Johnny C. Taylor, Jr. said HR pros have a “monster year” ahead of them but can stay ahead by addressing the problems he identified.