Have you thought much about retirement? Personally, I have not given it much thought, at least not yet. Retirement is still pretty far in the future for me. But I’ve seen other people retire, and watching them occasionally makes me wonder what “retirement” will be for me when the time comes. As attractive as the idea of retirement sometimes seems, like most CEOs I am so used to the 24/7 work- and lifestyle that it is hard for me to imagine ever having no work to do. Lucky...

When my daughter brought in the mail and announced, “Mom, you aren’t going to like this” I realized it wasn’t going to be good news. Sure enough, I had received another jury summons. I should have been used to it; after all, I seem to get called every year. I’ve always thought it’s had something to do with my speeding tickets—I tend to drive with a lead foot—but I hadn’t gotten one of those in at least two years. Regardless, there it...

Did you have the opportunity to watch any of Mary Barra’s testimony in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s oversight panel? I only saw snippets of it, but from what I saw I would not like to have been in her seat. As I listened to the panel grill her, and heard her responses and saw her steady composure, I had to wonder what I would have done in that situation. But whether she was composed or—on the flip side—not emotional enough was not so important to...

If you know me, you know I am a big baseball fan. All winter long I live for spring training and opening day. My summer vacations include going to other cities’ ballparks to watch games. I have Tiger season tickets and go to about 40 games a year.  I also pay attention to off-season  moves that my favorite teams make. That is why this off-season has been so interesting for me. I have never met Dave Dombrowski, the President/CEO/GM  of the Tigers, but as I read about his...

I have been thinking a lot lately about the debates in Washington and Lansing about raising the minimum wage and redefining “exempt” and “non-exempt” work statuses. Personally, I think business people should be more concerned about the latter issue than the former one. I believe that the expansion of the non-exempt category is a ticking time bomb ready to hit employers.  Not only will the “minimum wage” be raised for most if not all exempt workers,...

I would like to issue a challenge: Let’s junk the image of the glass ceiling as the metaphor for the barriers women face in today’s workplace. Don’t get me wrong—I get it that with all the women in today’s workplace and all the young women now graduating from college, it seems obvious that there should be more women in corner offices in large companies than there are. Of course there are barriers out there. It’s just that I think the image of the glass...

Recently I was attending a meeting with a group of about 15 people who know me but not particularly well. The facilitator asked each member of the group to say something about herself or himself that the other members of the group might not know. She picked me to go first, so I quickly stated what comes to me first when I think about my personality: “I am an introvert who plays an extrovert for my job.” This caused several in the group to protest, “Mary, you are far from an...

I was remiss in letting January go by without marking the 100th anniversary of Henry Ford’s famous $5/day pay plan for his workers in the Highland Park Model T plant. The reason is that ASE, or the Employers Association of Detroit (EAD) as it was known at the time, played an important role in the administration of that program. It’s a good story; let me give you a compressed version of it: The EAD had been formed in 1902 by a group of Detroit industrialists that included...

I’ve never met Mary Barra personally. But probably like you, I feel like I’ve gotten to know her well just from reading my share of all the coverage she’s getting in the local press. I’m fooling myself, of course, because all the press is really doing is giving her your basic star treatment, not capturing the whole person. She surely has her own set of professional and personal flaws, just like the rest of us. And if you don’t know a person’s flaws, you...

Allow me to introduce myself. I am Mary Corrado, and for the last 12 years I have been president and CEO of the American Society of Employers or ASE. ASE is a membership organization with 850+ member firms (nearly all of them in Michigan, despite our name). We directly service Human Resource departments, but the ultimate focus of our work is people, or “talent” to use today’s term of choice. But not just the people who work in those HR departments; we are really about the...

Thomas Perez was nominated Monday to be part of President Obama’s second term team, as Secretary of the Department of Labor. He would replace Hilda Solis, who resigned from the post in January. Perez’s recent resume suggests he will likely be a real challenge to employers. Perez, 51, formerly worked as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). As a federal prosecutor for the Civil Rights Division, Perez personally...