If nothing else, you have to give new SHRM president Laurence “Lon” O’ Neill credit for this: His inaugural SHRM conference and exhibition this June in New Orleans is already shaping up to be a little different from those of the recent past.

Not only has the musical entertainment gone from the predictable oldies vibe of the past few years to someone a little more current (Sheryl Crow) but now SHRM has a first-day keynote speaker for the 61st annual conference who actually can speak in a relevant, contemporary way to the challenges facing human resource professionals today. Believe it or not, SHRM has landed former General Electric CEO Jack Welch.

Welch, who has been touted as the “greatest manager of the 20th century,” is pinch-hitting for former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, who has been “assigned by NBC to produce a special report from Afghanistan in late June,” according to a e-mail from O’Neill and SHRM. As much as I believe that Brokaw would have had some interesting things to say, his keynote would probably have followed the pattern of those given over the past few years by Queen Noor, Bill Cosby, Lance Armstrong, Colin Powell and Sidney Poitier: interesting in the broad sense, but completely and totally divorced from anything specific that HR faces.

Now, I have heard Welch speak somewhat recently and my hope is that he doesn’t just given his standard lecture-circuit speech. Although that would still be more specific to HR than 99 percent of what other SHRM keynote speakers have said, Welch can go a lot further and really focus in on the critical value of HR to a business organization during these very troubled economic times.

I wrote this back in 2005, but I think it is as true today about Jack Welch as it was back then: “In Jack Welch’s world, HR is not only a key part of the business, but HR people in the organization need to have special qualities to help the managers throughout the organization build leaders and careers.”

Some might disagree with this assessment, because Welch also is known for creating the infamous 20-70-10 employee assessment plan (known by its critics as “rank and yank”), where the top 20 percent of GE’s workforce each year got a big raise, while the bottom 10 percent was shown the door. In fact, Welch was frequently critical of HR, as former GE human resources vice president Bill Conaty points out. But Conaty also details how the former GE chief exec was intimately involved in all manner of HR issues.

SHRM can’t be getting Welch cheap—my estimate is that his appearance will cost SHRM a minimum of $50,000, if not more. But as steep as that sounds, I’d rather see SHRM spending my dues on a Jack Welch speech than the silly big-bucks SHRM ad campaign that was tied into last year’s presidential debates.

No matter how much Welch’s appearance is costing, or what he actually says, I think it is money well spent. And if SHRM is really on the ball, they’ll make sure they tout his HR insight and credentials. In fact, it might actually be something to get people to come out and attend the SHRM conference in New Orleans and perhaps slow the downward slide in attendance.

I could be wrong about this, of course. It’s entirely possible that no single speaker or performer—not Jack Welch, Sheryl Crow or even President Barack Obama—could get people to change their minds about attending SHRM in New Orleans, given the realities of the current economy. What do you think about this? I’d like to know if you are going to attend SHRM in June, or perhaps are now considering doing so, and why. Just post a comment at the end of this blog or e-mail me directly at jhollon@workforce.com. I’ll share any thoughts I get in a future blog post.

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