Normally, New Balance’s factories are humming along, making running shoes and other athletic wear. But they ground to a halt, along with nearly everything else deemed nonessential, when the dangers of COVID-19 became clear.

A changing workforce requires a new approach to employee retention if organizations want to keep their top talent in a business climate facing new uncertainties.

More than half of employees leave a job because of a manager. How can your organization avoid that trap?

Adrienne Bennett has been in the plumbing industry for more than 40 years. In 1976, a man who was recruiting for a plumbing apprenticeship walked up to her "and said I looked like a woman who could get something done," she said.

Building Cooperatively is a co-op in Detroit that focuses on historic restoration and investing in the community.

"I'm an artist and a musician, naturally," she said. "I've always thought of painting as an art. And it is an art — you create your own style of brushing and the way that you move. And I just like making things look better."

Deana Neely is CEO of Detroit Voltage. Her path to becoming an electrical contractor began when she was 18 and working for the Detroit Buildings, Safety Engineering and Environmental Department.

Tanya Saldivar-Ali first got into the construction industry 16 years ago, when she and her husband, Luis Ali, an electrician, decided to try real estate investments.

Since 2014, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department has shut off the water to 141,000 households whose bills were past due. Last year, more than 23,000 households reportedly had their water shut off.

The term “environmental justice” still may be unfamiliar to some people, but you don’t have to be familiar with it to understand what it means when you see it. With the Flint water crisis and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the people who were hit hardest were poor and black.

Abir Ali describes herself as a city builder. Her career has included architecture, philanthropy, design and real estate—with specialized positions across disciplines.

Talk of how automation and artificial intelligence would change the workforce once conjured images of robots taking our jobs. But so far, the robots have not replaced humans on the factory floor — or the cubicle row.

Automation and AI will change the nature of work, said Automation Alley CEO and Executive Director Tom Kelly. "You may not have a person in every truck driving on the highway, but you're still going to need all kinds of people in logistics," he said.

What does sustainability look like in Detroit, a city that is going through changes that some consider a renaissance? The Erb Institute talked with five people who are working to make Detroit more sustainable—in wildly divergent ways, from bees, to dirt, to real estate development, to stormwater.

Conference expos are major revenue generators, but the standard booth-maze model is past its prime. Today, both exhibitors and attendees expect associations to offer something better.

Detroit Dirt makes waste into a commodity. It takes food waste, green waste, spent grains and herbivore manure and uses an aerobic process to make it into high-quality compost.

An association management company allows an association to be agile and flexible—and makes its path toward a brighter future easier to navigate.

Fast data may be the next big thing, but what exactly is it, and how can it help your association?

What your staff should know about fast data—and how to train them