There is more HR focus today on the bottom line and critical business issues. We play less of a role of policy police and we are outsourcing routine administrative duties. This allows us to work across functional lines more with key contributors linking HR strategy to critical issues. Another trend I see is that we are doing more to measure HR practices. We want to determine if what we are doing is adding value and if it isn't, find another strategy or move on to something else.
Some measures are internal and some are benchmarking with external best practices.
That I am surrounded by very competent people involved in decisions that help link our people resources with a challenging strategic plan. We are not afraid to work our culture to meet rapidly changing business conditions. We have a lot of talent here, some that we have developed and some that we have brought in from other organizations. The decisions we have made working together have led to eight consecutive years of record earnings.