Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP

Where attention goes, teams follow. Leadership focus often determines whether people see obstacles or opportunities.

Workplace toxicity isn't coming from where most leaders look. Not the boss, or the policy. It's the colleague two desks over. 212M acts of incivility daily. $2.3B gone every day. The fix isn't a new policy. It's the oldest rule we know: Treat people the way you want to be treated. #Civility #Leadership

The way we identify, promote, and develop talent? It's been disrupted. At #SHRMTalent26, my friend @Pulsipher_WGU made a point I want all leaders to hear: most schools build talent and hope employers want it. WGU flipped the model; they went to employers first. That's the foundation of our new @SHRM x #WGU Education-to-Employment partnership. A degree tells you someone completed a program, and skills validation tells you they're ready on day one. #SkillsBasedHiring

As a leader, accountability is the price of credibility. Pay it willingly.

At The AI+HI Project event a couple of weeks ago, every leader in the room had the same question: Who owns the AI transition? Honest answer: You do. AI won't take your job. Someone proficient in #AI will.

You don't build a global HR community with a strategy deck. You build it with people who show up because they believe in the work. This week is Volunteer Appreciation Week, and I wanted to take a moment to speak directly to the @SHRM Volunteer Leaders who keep our network moving forward. You organize the State Councils and Chapters, you mentor the next generation, and you carry our work into rooms and communities we couldn't reach without you. Who's a volunteer leader who made a difference for you? #SHRM #VolunteerAppreciationWeek #Leadership

You may not have a talent shortage. You may have a pipeline problem. Employers compete for the same shrinking pool of candidates. Unfilled roles. Pipelines running dry. Yet many people with criminal records remain largely untapped. Second-chance hires bring loyalty, commitment, and hunger. They show up in retention, productivity, and team stability. #SecondChanceHiringMonth

Grateful for time with the @LA_SHRM team and three leaders from the @USEEOC at yesterday's 2026 State Conference: Michael Kirkland, Rayford Irvin, and Jeremy Crosbie. This is what it looks like when HR shows up for HR. #LASHRM26 #SHRM #HR

Honored to sit down for a fireside chat at the 2026 @LA_SHRM State Conference this morning. 400 HR leaders. Real questions on AI, civility, and skills-based hiring. Thank you, Lafayette. #LASHRM26 #SHRM #HR

Watch the latest on The AI + HI Project by @shrm here: youtube.com/playlist?list=… Follow for more on leadership, hiring, and the future of work.

April 2023. ChatGPT had been out for a few months. I walked into a room full of academics, CEOs, and data scientists. The mood was fear. 🧵

Technology has always changed the nature of work. The leaders who handle it well focus on one thing: Making sure their people are equipped for what's next.

The mood in the room shifted. Most people had never been given a way to think about AI that didn't start with loss.

So I offered a different frame. AI + HI = ROI. Artificial Intelligence + Human Intelligence = Return on Investment.

Everyone was asking the same question: "What will AI take from us?" Nobody was asking the better one: "What can it make possible?"

The gap between how people are educated and what employers need is real. @SHRM and @wgu just took a concrete step toward closing it, a long-term Education-to-Employment partnership so #HR graduates enter the workforce with verified, employer-recognized skills, not just a piece of paper. Recruiting is fundamentally exclusionary. Skills-based hiring opens the aperture for talent we have been missing.

Every setback, every pivot, every hard season is shaping the leader you're becoming.

There are rooms you walk into as a speaker and leave as a student. Sacramento was one of those rooms. Last week, I spent the afternoon at the California Legislative and HR Leadership Summit with @TFournierSPHR in front of 250 HR professionals who showed up ready to engage the defining questions shaping work today. We talked about AI regulation and the reality that states are increasingly filling a void left by federal inaction. We talked about older workers, still the fastest-growing segment of the labor force, and still under-leveraged in most workforce strategies. We talked about apprenticeships, skills pathways, and what it takes to build real trust across six generations working together for the first time in history. A consistent theme emerged: HR is a strategic function shaping direction. Because workforce decisions are no longer downstream from business strategy, they are business strategy. Talent, skills, and leadership capability now determine productivity, resilience, and competitiveness in equal measure. The organizations paying attention to that reality will have a competitive advantage. The ones still treating HR as overhead will not. To Tara Fournier, thank you for the kind of moderation that makes real dialogue possible. To Andy Covell, thank you for the introduction. To @SHRMCalif , thank you for building a community across 16 chapters and 28,000 professionals who continue to elevate this work. And to leaders like Cherrity Ricks from @kerncountyshrm, and every #HR professional who stayed for every question, asked better ones of your own, and shared what you are navigating, thank you.

Some of the most productive conversations about the future of work happen between people who come at the same problem from different angles. I recently had one of those conversations with California State Senator @Lola_Smallwood, Chair of the Senate Labor, Public Employment and Retirement Committee. We focused on a challenge employers across every industry know well: too many young people are leaving school without a clear, practical path into the workforce. That's exactly what SB 845 is designed to address. The bill would expand career technical education and work-based learning opportunities for high school students in California. It cleared Senator Smallwood-Cuevas's committee last year and is now advancing through the California Assembly, progress worth noting. This legislation directly supports what @SHRM has been advocating through our Education-to-Employment Initiative. The pipeline from the classroom to the workplace is leaky, broken, and busted. Fixing it requires policymakers, employers, and educators working toward the same outcome, even when they're approaching it from different directions. During the SHRM California's Advocacy Day, our members were in Sacramento doing exactly that, sharing what employers are seeing on the ground and making the case for practical, employer-informed solutions. Common ground isn't always easy to find. But when it exists, it should be built on.