Seth Harris Speaking Topics

• Big Data at Work: Keeping the People in People Analytics

  The growing use of big data and predictive analytics to help address human capital and other work-related issues brings great opportunities, but also meaningful risks. Big data can help employers recruit the best qualified job applicants, improve the match between jobs and prospective employees, and reform work processes and workplace rules to maximize productivity, customer satisfaction, and employee retention. Big data promises that employees’ workplaces will be governed by merit and driven by data, not supervisors’ biases and outmoded notions about which job qualifications matter most. However, big data and predictive analytics can also raise grave concerns about workplace privacy, exploitation of workers and legal liability. Based on decades of experience addressing labor and employment issues as a teacher, scholar, lawyer and policymaker at the highest levels of the U.S. government, Seth Harris surveys the new and growing practice of people analytics and proposes a simple principle for using big data in the workplace: employers must be values-driven as well as data-driven. Harris helps audiences to understand that keeping the people in people analytics is the surest path to success.

• The Performance Pyramid: Proven Methods for Creating a Culture of Excellence

  How does one turn a system mired in inefficiencies, inconsistencies and outright indifference into the top producing organization on which all others are judged? Just ask Seth Harris. When Seth joined the U.S. Department of Labor in 2009, he inherited a 17,000 person agency (and $85 Billion annual budget) that was mired in old, outdated processes, inadequate accountability practices and a workforce that was content to continue the same old cycle of overpayment and underperformance. When he left in 2014, the DOL was the star performer among Federal agencies, becoming the model all other Federal departments and large organizations should follow, and established a new organizational culture that emphasized performance above all else. In this informative speech, Harris teaches how to build a successful, performance-centric culture, and establish a viable performance-measurement system that encourages innovative thinking and the desire for excellence. By helping organizations create a strong strategic plan that’s directly allied with the institution’s mission and the needs of their clients and customers, Harris helps companies and other enterprises better establish themselves as true performance leaders that others will use as a benchmark.

America’s Economy: Present & Future

The American economy has slowly recovered from the shock of the Great Recession. But the economy is different today than it was 10 or 20 years ago. Growth has slowed. Globalization has accelerated. The mix of jobs and industries has changed. Energy sources and technological applications have proliferated. The skill sets needed to succeed in 21st Century jobs surprise employers and workers alike. Seth Harris, former Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor, member of President Obama's cabinet and Deputy U.S. Secretary of Labor offers an overview of the U.S. economy and assesses where it is heading. Harris is a prominent policy maker and nationally recognized scholar, commentator and advisor on economic issues affecting American businesses and families.

An Immigrant Nation Debates Its Failed Immigration Policies

With comprehensive immigration reform legislation blocked by partisan bickering in Congress, what is the future of America’s broken immigration system and the millions of people and businesses struggling with it? Refugee children are flooding to America’s southern border. Millions of undocumented people live in fear as hundreds of thousands are deported every year. The risk of exploitation is nearly constant. High-skilled workers and students trained by top colleges and universities lose opportunities to find jobs with U.S. businesses eager to hire them because of obsolete quotas and bureaucratic barriers. Entrepreneurs eager to invest in creating American jobs wait for visas that sometime do not arrive.

Former U.S. Acting Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Labor Seth Harris spent the first five years of the Obama Administration at the center of the debate over comprehensive immigration reform and led the U.S. Labor Department’s contributions to the immigration reform debate in the mid-1990s. Harris offers expert analysis of the state of immigration in this nation of immigrants that can only come from an insider and long-time participant in immigration policy-making. A nationally known scholar, teacher and commentator on the U.S. economy, Harris offers prescriptions for fixing our broken immigration system that honor our nation’s legacy as the land of opportunity and the refuge for oppressed and disadvantaged people from around the world.

The Surprising Truth About STEM Skills

The received wisdom among educators, employers, politicians and policymakers is that educating children and adults in science, technology, engineering and mathematics – the STEM fields – is the best path to assuring America's economic future. This wisdom relies, in part, on data from the federal government showing growth in information technology jobs and other computer-related occupations. But Seth Harris – the former Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor and Deputy U.S. Secretary of labor, and a nationally recognized expert in labor and employment policy and workforce development – explains that the story of America's economic future and the role of workers' skills in that future is much more complicated than the received wisdom suggests.

While technology advances and globalization have driven rising economic growth in most of the world, they have also conspired to eliminate millions of middle-skill jobs that supported America's middle class with more job destruction to come. The future depends upon workers preparing for jobs that won't be eliminated, and that means the right kinds of skills provided by the right kind of education and training. Not just any STEM skill will do. Former Secretary Harris helps you navigate the surprising truths about the future of our economy and the role of STEM skills in that future.

An Insider’s Perspective on Developments in Labor & Employment Law

Despite gridlock in Congress, the law governing workplaces and the relationships between employers and employees is changing rapidly. The federal agencies charged with administering dozens of labor and employment laws are re-writing and reinterpreting regulations, and significantly expanding and targeting enforcement efforts. A minimum wage increase. Revised overtime regulations. Health care reform. New regulations about union elections. New regulations about pay discrimination and discrimination against LGBT Americans. Reformed regulations about affirmative action for people with disabilities and veterans. Rules about who can advise about investing retirement savings. Rejuvenated law enforcement by OSHA, the Wage & Hour Division, OFCCP, the NLRB and the EEOC.

Human resources professionals, labor and employment lawyers, small business owners, worker advocates and other observers of workplace law need help keeping up with fast moving developments. Former U.S. Acting Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Labor, and nationally recognized labor and employment law scholar and teacher, Seth Harris is ready to help. Harris shaped many of the policies currently emerging from President Obama’s Department of Labor and drove change through an aggressive overhaul of the department’s performance and program evaluation systems. Harris understands and explains these changes in a way that only an insider and expert in the field can.