The unemployment rate is low, so the need for outstanding HR leaders is high. Getting talent goes far beyond an attractive compensation package these days, whether it’s for seasoned executives or millennials. Talented workers want to feel certain that the organizations they join are the right fit.

HR leaders play a crucial role in helping set company culture, attracting talent, developing the workforce and ensuring employees have a long and productive tenure with their organizations.

At a time when executive misbehavior makes daily headlines, HR leaders are the spine of organizations in making sure inappropriate situations are addressed fairly and completely.

This is a far cry from the time when a company’s human resources department was not a center of power. It might have received some résumés and then forwarded them to hiring managers, or it simply provided information about the benefits the company offered. But these days, HR departments are front-and-center in importance, often gaining new names that help reflect their important and evolving roles.

Still, it really doesn’t matter whether the HR department is called people operations, talent resources, employee experience, human capital management, people and development, employee management care unit or team member services.

As Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, says, “Great vision without great people is irrelevant.”

HR professionals play key roles in turning vision into successful reality. No matter what their titles are and their departments are called, we are happy to honor an array of South Florida’s innovative leaders with our third HR Awards of Excellence.

None of this would be possible without sponsors, and I’d like to thank StevenDouglas chairman and CEO Steven Sadaka, president Matt Shore and vice president Alan Berger for helping conceptualize and support this awards program. StevenDouglas is a leading company when it comes to identifying and providing access to top-level talent for businesses in South Florida, and we are proud to be associated with them.

I’d also like to thank our gold sponsors—Sapoznik Insurance, MassMutual South Florida, MSC Cruises and Third Level—and our silver sponsor, Akerman.

Congratulations to all of our honorees.

Gary Press

Chairman and CEO

SFBW and Lifestyle Media Group