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The number and scope of women-owned businesses have risen at an unprecedented rate. In an era of new opportunities, this paper profiles eight courageous and resilient women who share their personal stories and the lessons they learned building successful businesses. One theme that emerged from these women’s stories was the critical role of mentorsh...

Workplace harassment costs employers millions of dollars every year through poor employee morale, higher absenteeism, reduced productivity and costly settlements and lawsuits. Employers need to create the right culture, supported by appropriate policies and training. With the recent stunning revelations from Hollywood, the Media and Washington have...

The Tax Reform Act contains sweeping changes and impacts all taxpayers, from individuals to businesses, and the rules for each category are different. Generally, the changes made for individual taxpayers, including the pass-through rules for business entities, are effective from January 1, 2018 to December 31, 2025. If no changes are made by Decemb...

Now that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is law, it is helpful to have a checklist for determining how tax reform changes your employee benefit programs and a chart outlining the key benefit plan limits for 2018. Also in this issue of HR Focus, we revisit what sexual harassment is and what employers should be doing to prevent it, address it and help prot...

At the heart of risk management is a gloomy truth: You can never achieve zero risk. In a world of limited resources there are always tradeoffs to be made: how much to invest here and how much there, how much risk to tolerate and how much to mitigate or insure against. To answer those questions, risk quantification is necessary—to estimate how...

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and the recent taxpayer victory in the U.S. Tax Court’s Lender Management, LLC decision have created important planning opportunities for closely held and family-controlled entities in 2018. In particular, with respect to: (1) navigating the elimination of the various deductions and the expansion of “bo...

The 13th edition of the World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report, undertaken with Marsh & McLennan Companies, examines the evolving macro-level risk landscape and highlights the systematic threats that may disrupt expectations. A more rigorous exploration of potential sources of value destruction, greater strategic agility to match a rapi...

Three major cyber events in 2017 set new precedents for the scope and impact of damage wrought by cyber-attack in terms of geographic and industry reach, operational disruption, and economic losses, as well as the destruction of market capital and reputation. While the concepts of cybersecurity may be foreign for many executives and board members, ...

The benefits of the U.S. 2017 tax reform act (the Act) should be broadly felt by Americans, and businesses large and small will see tax relief. The Act contains elements important for stronger economic growth—a competitive corporate tax rate and a move toward a territorial system of international taxation. At the same time, the House and Sena...

Industry 4.0—synonymous with smart technologies—is driving efficiencies and increasing productivity. Data, and the physical-digital integration of humans, processes, systems, and machines, are key components of this transformation. The global ramifications of Industry 4.0 are still under debate, but one thing is certain: Change is comin...

You’ve made the right moves in your operating business—you’ve developed and executed your IT plan and upgraded your ERP, EAM, and CRM systems to improve efficiencies and gain new insights. You're starting to see results, but these new systems are generating vast amounts of data you aren't always sure what to make of. To de...

A flexible operating model drives innovation and responsiveness to market changes. It nearly always reflects a fundamental shift in long-standing beliefs about how organizations make money, and it requires a shift to a highly adaptable configuration of capabilities that must align with strategy and occur throughout all levels of an organizatio...

Operational improvements are a key lever for achieving value creation after a deal closes. There are three critical ways private equity firms can both protect and grow value through operations. One way is to lead differently, beginning with recognizing that the due diligence process can cause employees to be apprehensive. When leaders understand an...

The future. It’s the topic on the mind of most business leaders—what’s going to happen in the future? And importantly, how do you ensure you’re prepared for it? Today, as technological advances impact the scale, scope, and utility of data and information, a new ecosystem of information and trust is taking shape around us. Bu...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is advancing quickly, and it’s impossible for anyone to give a precise vision of how the next ten—much less five—years will unfold. Our aim here is different: to make specific predictions about AI trends for the next 12 months and draw out key implications for business, government, and society as a who...