Why SHRM President Johnny C. Taylor Jr. is looking outside DC to influence workplace policy

Happy Birthday, American Society for Personnel Administration (ASPA)! Oh, that’s awkward—you haven’t met?

Actually, you probably have. In 1989, the ASPA rebranded as the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), an organization most HR professionals know well. As it celebrates its 75th birthday, it counts over 300,000 people people across 165 countries as members.

SHRM’s president, Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., told us the organization started before HR was even regarded as a profession, much less the strategic change-making role it is today.

“It was administration. It was payroll. It was basic hiring and onboarding,” Taylor said of HR at the time of SHRM’s founding. Its early days, Taylor said, were concerned with developing standards for processing HR functions and complying with laws—its leaders didn’t create best practices or think to influence the development or direction of workplace law then.

As Taylor and his team reflect on SHRM’s 75-year evolution, we talked to him about how the organization gained influence in workplace law development and how he sees its strategy changing in the coming years.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell me about SHRM’s first years. What were the most pressing issues that HR professionals needed guidance on?

We existed to try to help our personnel administrators comply with the law. But it’s really important [to note]: At that time, SHRM [didn’t have] a role in helping make the law.

In 1984, we moved the company from Ohio to Alexandria, Virginia. It was a very intentional move by the organization to say, we are going to be an influencer of workplace policy, not just the people who administer it.

Then, once we got here…there was the name change in 1989 to SHRM. [The idea of] “human resource management” [was] the first bold step to say: This is a profession. MBA programs [were] growing at the time, everyone understood Peter Drucker’s work around management…[We said] we are managing the organization[’s] human resources, just as financial folks manage the financial resources. We are actually a business function.

SHRM’s slogan is “policy is not politics.” When was this adopted?

[In 2018] I was in the car, riding to the White House. I was being appointed to the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board by the Trump administration…I started getting calls from members saying, “Oh, my gosh, we can’t do this. You should not go to the White House because we don’t like this president.” I remember…I said to Emily Dickens, our chief of staff, “Listen, SHRM is about policy, not politics.”...If you only speak to people when you agree with them, then…you won’t be able to influence policy, national policy, global policy.

Some of the policies that SHRM has supported, like the Occupational Safety and Health Act in 1970, initially stalled because of politics. Is it too simple to say “policy, not politics” because of the inevitability of one influencing the other?

There’s no question that politics exist and will influence every decision—including most business decisions in this country. What we’re saying is SHRM’s positioning—if it’s Johnson as a Democrat, and Nixon as a Republican [advocating for the OSHA Act]: We don’t care. What we think matters is that we protect workers from known hazards in the workplace.

We’re going to advocate for good policy, irrespective of the politics of it…For example, we’re…right now pretty focused on…paid leave...If you are an hourly employee living check to check, having unpaid leave is tantamount to no leave, so we believe that is something we should do…Was this first proposed by a Democrat or a Republican? It matters not.

Looking ahead to the next 75 years, do you think that the country’s political climate will make it harder to advocate for workers?

I don’t think it could get harder. This country is as polarized and as fractured as you’ve ever seen.

Has SHRM considered advocating for specific state or local policies that might be easier to get through the door?

Yes. That’s exactly what we’re doing. What we found, oftentimes, is…legislation can’t move. Your goal is to make it American, full policy for the country. But you may choose to push it out of a state where you can find a more friendly environment. And then once…you can show that it’s working, you then take that and go back to the Feds.

I imagine it might be a headache for employers in the short term, because they have a patchwork of state laws, but it will help them in the long term when the federal law is created. Is that right?

That’s exactly the strategy. If it can’t move it in DC, then take it outside of DC, and then come back to DC [later]. It’s harder and harder—even in a highly polarized environment—when you come and say, “state X has been doing this for the last five years and here are the results” [for politicians to ignore].