Starting at the top with the frenetically busy yet always high spirited Chief Executive Beverley Main who had this to say:

“This year’s Big Day Out for HR Business Leaders has been very popular with all the places being filled within hours of the invitation going out. We’re not sure if it’s the beautiful venue (Roxy Theatre), the insight that Kim Rickard from Weta Digital will give us on working inside the film industry, or the promise of listening to Eastern Suburbs expert, Roger Tweedy, waxing lyrical on the drive-by back to the city about how Miramar has been transformed from a tired working class suburb into the place of stars, dreams and jobs. Or maybe it’s the promise of a yummy lunch, nice wines and great networking on a national level…”

Kelsi Doscher, our Membership Manager, has been working hard on our theme for the HRINZ expo stand – which is very Kiwiana – and it should grab the attention of delegates and day visitors alike whether from New Zealand or from far off distant lands. Kelsi has been working on the Professional Members and Mentors Dinner, an invitation only event to recognise the work and dedication of HRINZ Mentors and Professional Members which will be held on the first evening of Conference.

Helping Kelsi is Jo Brown the Membership Administrator who has been keeping track of all our new members and making sure they are aware of the upcoming conference and that our database is kept up to date and current

Sheridan Rose, the HRINZ Professional Development and Event Manager has been sorting out the terribly fashionable conference T-Shirts, making decisions concerning the little things like signage, name-tags, ticket design and the design of the conference satchels. When not spending time on the aesthetics she has also been taking care of arranging the President’s Dinner venue and making sure you all have costumes available for hire on the night of the Gala Dinner. Finally, and much to the consternation of the rest of us, Sheridan spent half a day tasting food to make sure it was up to par for the rest of us!

The Executive Assistant, Michelle Tattersall, has been in touch with our 10 generous donor organisations that have gifted 7 recipients from a range of sectors to attend the HRINZ conference. The list as follows is:

Fragomen- Darline Ewing-Jarvie, Presbyterian Support Central
Integrity Works & Buckett Law (joint gifted place) – Francois Schoeman, Iris Limited
Transpower – Katie O’Brien, Wellington Free Ambulance
Zuri Consulting – Richard Maxwell, Well Health Trust & Newtown Union Health
Gough and Associates, Catalyst Pacific Ltd, Carroll Consulting (joint gifted place) – Christine Hanks , Mary Potter Hospice
SPARC – Kelly Newbold, Sport Wellington
HRINZ – Joanne Ring, Wellington Zoo Trust

Thanks to all our donors!

Jen Bailey, the Office Administrator who we couldn’t do without, has been spending her time collating and organising the pre-conference survey and doing some preparation for our speakers. While doing this she has also been sending and receiving registrations and conference confirmations not to mention making sure everyone knows where and when the session will be and who’ll be speaking.

Finally there’s myself, Mike Metcalfe Communications Manager and Brenda Tweedy, Research and Education Manager. We, as the two newest members of the HRINZ team have slightly less responsibility at this stage but for my part I am making sure you all know what’s coming up and Brenda has been helping design the HRINZ Gala costumes and tells me “All HR team building exercises should include a little wine which stimulates the creative side of the brain in many ways and dulls the pain”.

And I nearly forgot George Matthews, the HRINZ Accountant. When I asked him what he did in preparation for conference he stared at me for a second and said, deadpan as they come, “accounts” before moving off to do what I assume was, well, more accounts.

Competition

In preparation for the conference the HRINZ team has been putting together our costumes. From the 2 photos below what is it you think we are coming as? What could these strange….’things’ possibly be?

The correct answer will receive a delicious bottle of wine and, if no one can guess correctly, the most creative answer wins as judged by the HRINZ National Office. Entries close Friday 5^th August.

TO ENTER: Send your answer to Michael.metcalfe@hrinz.org.nz. Winner announced Monday 8 August

Before I start giving you a taste of what HRINZ is lining up for 2011,  I would like to mention that at the end of last year, HRINZ launched a new branch in the Hawkes Bay area.

We now have 12 branches nationwide which includes our Academic Branch which is our first virtual branch.  This new branch in Hawkes Bay will allow all our members living in the area or surrounding area the opportunity to have their own local branch and eliminating the need for them to travel to their nearest HRINZ Branch which was based in Manawatu.  By creating this new branch this will encourage our members to attend more local Branch meetings and inspire each other in the local HR community.

So what do we have planned for 2011?
Well, here at HRINZ National Office we are raring to go with a whole host of exciting events, but I will only mention a few.  We have our new Webinars coming soon; our new Essential Employment Law course being run by Angela Atkins (who wrote Employment Bites –great book).  This one day course is a facilitated workshop with case studies, exercises and online assessments;  and then it’s on to organising our Nine to 9′ Auckland Conference and National Conference.

A big change on the horizon for HRINZ in 2011,  is that we will be having a new President. Our current HRINZ National President Kris Cooper, FHRINZ, two year term is coming to an end in February. So it will be exciting to see who be the next HRINZ President and be taking over from Kris.  I do have a hunch but my lips are sealed.

Personally, I think this year will still be about change for HR, as we will have to learn how to respond to the recovering economic climate which I am sure will bring old and new challenges.
I must confess I am still amazed at hearing about HR professionals who do not get out into the business and support their managers by listening to them and the challenges that they are facing but seem to be primarily focused on just the HR challenges.  HR will never get the tag of a business partner if we don’t start working together with the business units and supporting them.  These HR issues are also highlighted in some great articles listed by Fiona Powell which I recommend you check out.   I do believe  that 2011 will  bring some exciting times for HRINZ and the HR profession.

As this will be my final blog, I would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has been reading my blogs  over the last year.  I will be passing my blogging duties over to the capable of hands of Marie Sim, as I will be leaving HRINZ soon.

So over to you Marie……..

It has been an amazing year for the Institute as we have fully embraced the world of social media by setting up HRINZ Blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts.

All our social media sites have been very popular with our members, some more so than others, but  immediately, we recognised the value of using them.  Through using our HRINZ Facebook and Twitter sites, it has give us a real opportunity to be able to actively engage with our members regarding our events, competitions and hot topics in the world of HR.

By using our HRINZ LinkedIn page we have been able to consult our members and really find out their opinions on whether HRINZ should develop a Continuous Professional Development (CPD) model for our members to use in future.

This year has also been jammed packed with nationwide events and conferences such as: our Nineto9, HRINZ Research Forum and our HRINZ National Conference.

In amidst of all this activity we also found time to recruit and welcome some new members of staff who joined the HRINZ Team such as Gareth, Kesli and Sheridan.

It been a fabulous year for HRINZ and I must confess I have really enjoyed writing these blogs and receiving your fabulous feedback.

On that note I would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

See you in 2011 and watch out for our new webinars.

I love the holiday season but I know that this is not an easy season for employers, especially now with the introduction of social networking sites.

Long gone are the days where some ones indiscretion or rowdy behaviour at a Christmas bash was just talked about around the water cooler in whispered tones.  Now it can be public knowledge within minutes by being Tweeted or “Facebooked”.

No wonder, some employers are opting to host non-alcoholic parties or not bothering at all citing budgetary concerns.  This approach can limit some of the issues the employers may be faced with, but this still doesn’t solve the issue dealing with rowdy behaviour outside of work via social networking. 

Recently, a friend of mine who has been promoted to manager, was so worried about the Facebook implications that she felt she had to de-friend all her colleagues.  Her reason being that she didn’t want to be put in an awkward situation finding out that one of her staff members wasn’t turning up for work that day due to being hung over etc.  

Personally, I think that was a interesting approach but it does highlight how difficult or grey this area can be if you do not have a policy on this.  I do not think many employers have found a solution yet for this issue  and/or are afraid of becoming thought of as a “big brother” type.  However, as an employer if you don’t clearly define what you expect of your employees inside and outside office hours (including the use of social networking sites), then you could be landing yourself in hot water later. 

There is certainly lots of information on this subject now from the several leading law firms.   Michelle Banfield, Senior Associate at Belly Gully, recently put together a guide   for our members to use which highlighted the real implications these social networking websites now have on today’s workforce.  You can catch Michelle presenting on this topic in the new year via the HRINZ webinar session. 

Over  the coming weeks, along with the increased  opportunities of social networking due to the christmas period.  It tends to also be the time of year that Job Boards are well visited as  new year resolutions begin to form.  Over the last few weeks, there has been an increase in the number of HR vacancies appearing on various job boards.  Our free HRINZ Job Board in particular, has seen a definite increase in the number of HR vacancies being advertised to our 3800 members.  Honestly, I am not really sure why this is? 

Could it be that employers have been waiting to see how the year went before thinking about employing more staff? Or is it because more employees are now looking to move on, as the recessionary times are over?  

What are your thoughts on the increased number of vacancies over the last few weeks, is it normal, abnormal or a blip? Whose got the best Job Board to advertise on?  In your opinion what constitutes a good Job Board and why?  

I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions on these questions or this blog.

On that note, I would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
See you all in 2011!

We had a whopping 75 delegates ( 50 practitioners and 25 academics) clearly showing that there is a strong desire for interaction with one another  from both communities. There was such a great vibe around the Forum with delegates complimenting Professor Peter Boxall (FHRINZ)  and Beverley Main, CEO of HRINZ on hosting such a wonderful event and it was only lunchtime!

 The University of Auckland was a fabulous place to host the first HRINZ Research Forum as it’s such a beautiful building with state of the art equipment for the presenters to use.
The presentations were short and punchy at 30 minutes with questions at the end and covered a variety of interesting, informative and thought-provoking topics such as: personal grievances, diversity management, workplace bullying and stress and cultural support and employee outcomes in NZ organisations.   Most of the presentation topics all seemed to spark some lively debates and discussions. 

I was very lucky to be able to sit in eight presentations out of the thirteen papers presented and I do hope that you all enjoyed our live tweets from the Forum.

Personally, I had an amazing time listening to both Academic and Practitioners presentations, I am not going to tell you my favourite(s) as I don’t think I can actually pick one!
It was great for me to be able to meet various people (and put names to faces) that I have dealt with over the course of the year.   

I think this event was truly ground breaking for all concerned, as it clearly showed that HR practitioners are very receptive to HRM research and have a strong desire to use HRM research in their policies and practices. The Academics found out that HR practitioners do actually read the HRM research and use it to change their HRM policies and practices within their organisations.
This fact I think delighted Associate Professor Keith Macky (AFHRINZ) who conducted the Survey of HRINZ members asking what HR practitioner’s perceptions of the important HR problems or questions that need research attention were.
The results of this survey were truly interesting for example: 80% of them said they thought there was a real need for NZ based HR research and 44% of them said that they had used HR research to change their HR policies and practices in the last 3 years as a result of the research.  

I know that this event was a “Smash Hit” with everyone from the amount of positive feedback we have received on and after the Forum, from various people who attended and enjoyed the networking opportunities.

Therefore, the HRINZ Research Forum has achieved its main aim which was to start bridging the gap between the Academic and Practitioner communities which has now given HRINZ an excellent foundation to build upon for the future.

I won’t cover old ground by going into the reasons behind the concept of the Forum which are listed in my previous blog titled “A Research Forum For All” .  But personally I can’t wait to attend the HRINZ Research Forum, as it’s the first of its kind.

Not to blow HRINZ’s trumpet, but I am not aware of any other overseas HR Institute who has hosted a Research Forum solely designed to attract HRM Academics and HR Practitioners, so they can participate in discussions, debates and planning of future research.  Please let me know, if you know differently.

The HRINZ Research Forum is being held at the University of Auckland Business School.  Thirteen papers are being presented in plenary and concurrent sessions covering topics such as: counteracting bullying and stress in the workplace, organisational responses to abusive supervision and personal grievance processes: a study of how the parties make decisions before, during and after mediation.

One of Research Forums key goals is to strengthen the engagement between HR academics and HR practitioners, in order to advance relevant HRM research, on the one hand, and evidence-based HRM practice and policy advice, on the other.  So in other words, we are looking to bridge the gap between these two communities and give everyone an opportunity to participate in discussions which can improve HRM practice and help shape a relevant HRM research agenda for the future. 

For years, HR Practitioners  have been asking for the opportunity to interact more closely with the HRM Academic community, so here it is folks!  An opportunity to  have your say on what type of research you would like to see which could help you and your organisations.

The Research Forum will run  from 9 am to 5pm,  finishing with a cocktail hour for everyone to socialise and mingle with some of NZ  leading HRM academics like Professor Peter Boxall, FHRINZ and Associate Professor Keith Macky, AFHRINZ and many more. 

If you haven’t registered yet, but would like to attend our Inaugural Research Forum, please visit www.researchforum.hrinz.org.nz

See you all there!

In this blog I would like to update you on  HRINZ’s plan to  move towards a Continuous Professional Development (CPD) model for our members.

One of HRINZ’s goals is to improve the standard of HR in New Zealand.  HRINZ has identified a need to formalise the recording and monitoring of professional development as part of a requirement to maintain Professional Accreditation.  As a professional Institute if we can demonstrate real tangible ongoing development of our members, then this leads to employers, general management, and our communities having greater trust and confidence in the skills and value that we, as HR professionals, can bring to our respective organisations.

For this reason, HRINZ is looking to implement a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) framework.  The CPD definition HRINZ is looking to adopt  is: “the systematic maintenance, improvement and broadening of knowledge and skills, and the development of personal qualities necessary for the execution of professional and technical duties throughout the individual’s working life.”  

Currently, we are consulting with our members for their views on how CPD for the Institute should operate?  If you would like to check out our full CPD consultation document which provides more details behind our thinking on how we think CPD should be set up for the Institute, click here.   Or you can check out our LinkedIn discussions.

 I would love to hear what your thoughts and views are on CPD and whether you think CPD is the next step for HR professionals to increase their credibility within the business world?

Gareth has been with HRINZ for just one month and previously he was farming and travelling.

Getting to know Gareth:

The achievement in my life I’m most proud of:

Climbing Thorong La Pass

The quote I live by is:

Love the open road and all that it suggests

One thing the rest of the team don’t know about me is:

I was in a Bollywood movie in Mumbai

The last book I read was:

Ken Follett – World without end

The one thing I miss about being a kid is:

Body to chair size ratio

Personally, I don’t think it is all doom and gloom out there.
Spring has arrived and so has some budding signs that employers are becoming more confident about recruitment. This is evident from our HRINZ HR Job Board which is starting to consistently display more HR Jobs over the last few months indicating that the HR Job Market is starting to bubble.

 Let’s be realistic, I am not saying we are out of the woods yet, as there are a lot of people unemployed.  However, there are positive signs that the recruitment freezes are being lifted which is good for people looking for work.

You could also say this is a positive time for employers, who can now afford to be choosy about who they want to employ, due to the number of candidates looking for work.
I have heard that there has been a lot of senior level HR people applying for lower positions just to gain employment in the current market. This has meant that some employers have been rubbing their hands in glee, as they realise that they can advertise for an intermediate level employee but in reality get a senior instead.  Don’t scoff, I have heard this from several different sources.

Whilst this may be great for the employee and employer now, it does make me wonder how is this is going to affect the business down the track when the job market becomes more buoyant? Will these seniors stay in these positions or go elsewhere?

Personally, I think that the seniors in these positions will be out of the door as soon as they can, unless you can promote or pay them the salary they know they can earn.
Is this a False Economy? Or clever use of talent? It is an interesting one. You decide.

So on this note, I will finish my blog and ask everyone out there, what are your thoughts on the job market?

PS:  If you would like to advertise your HR and/or HR related roles on the HRINZ  free HR Job Board, click here or contact HRINZ National Office.
(Please no adverts for truck drivers etc -Trust me we have had these in the past).

Our thoughts and prayers are with all our colleagues, friends and fellow New Zealanders that have been affected by the earthquake in Christchurch.

This has event has really made everyone realise that we cannot be complacent about possible disasters and businesses need to have a policies and practices in place.

This blog is a short one, as I would like to draw people’s attention to the information which the Department of Labour has released today on how to deal with employment and health and safety issues that are being faced in the wake of the Christchurch earthquake.  The information has been designed to help businesses and their employees make good, safe, sensible and practical decisions in this difficult time and covers: 

• Managing Health and Safety in the workplace
• Payment of wages
• Leave for employees
• Flexible working arrangements and terminating employment
• Problem Solving Support

 Click here to visit the Department of Labour webpage

If you have any further questions or queries on this issue,  please contact me at National Office, or on our HRINZ Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn pages.

• People go to sleep after lunch is served on daytime flights?  It’s 3pm and everyone around me are snoring their heads off.  Most of them can’t have been awake for more than nine hours.  I wonder if they nod off at their desks after lunch on a typical work day.
• Fellow passengers (usually male) wait until they get on the plane to strip off most of their clothes, empty their pockets or search through their carry-on bag for something they probably packed in their checked luggage.
• These passengers invariably sit near the front of the plane so they manage to hold everyone up as they block the aisles looking for stuff that they should have.
• The person sitting in the window seat next to you is usually one of the last to board and almost always has a weak bladder.
• The passenger who waits until the boarding queue is really long, manages to push their way in near the front and for some reason always has a problem with their boarding pass or passport which holds everyone else up.
• When you go to put your bag in the overhead locker the one allocated for your seat is full with other people’s excessive hand luggage.
• The rules about hand luggage size and number only apply to you and not to your fellow passengers.
• People wait until they’re the next to be screened by security before they empty their pockets (all fifteen of them), remember to remove their laptop from the case and still manage to set off the alert warnings when they eventually walk through.  Again it’s usually a male thing – sorry guys.
• I always get in the slowest immigration queue with the largest number of illegal aliens/asylum seekers or just people with lots of problems.  It doesn’t matter which queue I choose it always happens to me.
• Just as I’m about to be sent to the next available counter someone with special needs appears out of nowhere and gets priority over me.
• My suitcase is the one that falls off the baggage truck and either gets driven over or left on the tarmac for hours, is on top of the pile when it rains during unloading, or manages to mysteriously get dents in every corner between destinations.
• They run out of my food preference just as the trolley reaches me.
• They stop serving food just as they reach me due to turbulence.
• The people who seem to be queuing for the toilets are actually just having a wee leg stretch and chat to their fellow passengers in front of the toilets and by the time I figure they’re not actually queuing the seat-belt sign comes on and we have to return to our seats because of turbulence or in preparation for landing.

Am I alone in these experiences?  Do you have any other pet peeves to add?

This year HRINZ National President, Catherine Taylor, attended too – it’s important that the HRINZ President gets to attend at least one CIPD conference, and preferably at the beginning of their term as it can take a while to build all those relationships that are vital to an organisation as distant from the rest of the world as ours is.

Manchester in November can be pretty bleak but this year we arrived to a late heat wave with temperatures hitting 16 degrees for a few minutes some days and some watery sunshine – on one day we even had a day of clear blue skies with not a cloud in sight.  Now you’re probably wondering how we managed to see the sky given that we were there to work, but we planned our trip to arrive on the weekend to recover from the inevitable jetlag that comes with 26 hours of flying and 10 hours of killing time in transit lounges at various airports.

On Monday evening things got underway with a welcome reception for international delegates followed by a dinner for those from HR membership associations from around the world so that we could compare notes and talk in-depth about HR issues affecting each of our respective countries’ workplaces and memberships.  The conference started on Tuesday morning and ran for three days.

Catherine will cover HR highlights from the sessions we attended in her blog post and magazine article but I thought, as the CEO of HRINZ, I’d talk in my blog post about the operational differences I picked up between a large UK HR conference and exhibition and a small NZ conference and expo.  While it’s not about HR per se, there are some interesting ‘people’ observations to share.

Names and numbers

Both countries call it a conference, unlike the US (congress) and Australia (convention) however it’s an exhibition in the UK but an expo at home.  They look pretty similar though, once you allow for the sheer scale of these things.  This year’s conference was smaller than usual with around 1300 delegates – Britain is still in the grips of workplace uncertainty and the effects of the recession and the Euro crisis are being widely felt – though past conferences have seen numbers hover around 3,000.

The US Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) conferences attract around 13,000 delegates, so with about 300 attending the average HRINZ conference scale does play a pretty big part in creating a different experience.  Their expos are much larger too and they promote quite different products and services to the HRINZ HR Expo but more about that later.

Registration

Registration on the day is managed using electronic kiosks – delegates print their own name tags and collect a conference bag off a stand – and help is available for those that need it if you don’t mind queuing.  Every time a delegate enters the expo hall or moves into the conference sessions’ areas the bar codes on their name tags are swiped with an electronic reader.

As delegates enter sessions they’re handed an A4 booklet which contains the speakers’ slides, some pages for note taking and an evaluation form.  Slides are not provided post-conference and the evaluation forms are completely manual, which must take forever to be entered into a spreadsheet before being analysed and reported on.

I’m told that this system is going to change as it’s fraught with difficulties, especially when speakers don’t supply slides or decide to change them on the day.  Not to mention the whole sustainability issue for the environment (and the cost of producing them).

Audience behaviour

Cell phone etiquette is the same in both countries and ignored equally, though with larger audiences the incidence occurs more of course.  The same can be said about delegates arriving late and leaving early.  When there is time for questions the number of statements made by some delegates still tends to outweigh the number of actual questions asked, and are nearly always prefaced with “Thanks for a really interesting session which I found incredibly valuable…” and then they go into a long convoluted story about an issue or experience that they’d like to share, but with no question in sight, or perhaps a patsy question.  When there is only limited time for questions this can be really annoying for the rest of the audience and you can almost hear mutterings of “Do it in your own time!”.

I think our audiences are far more direct in their questions.

Pitch

Pitch seems to be a perennial problem the world over – it’s almost impossible to please everyone in the audience as they all come from such different backgrounds and stages in their careers and some need transactional / operational information (usually in very specific detail with lots of graphs and charts) while others like me want to hear about the big picture stuff that is preferably fresh / new, or at least approached from a different angle.  And whatever is presented must be robust and credible and presented well, preferably with a bit of humour or quirkiness.

Top Speakers

Fortunately I always manage to attend a few sessions where the speaker is brilliant (usually in the concurrent sessions) and after the session while the speaker is packing up their notes I rush to the front of the room waving my business card and asking if they’d like to speak at the best little HR conference in the world.

I’m rarely turned down as almost everyone wants to come to New Zealand (I never mention how long it will take to get there or to recover from the jetlag at both ends as I don’t want to burst their bubbles), though it doesn’t always work out, usually because of their existing work commitments or unrealistic fee expectation.  Once they’ve been to New Zealand they tend to stay friends of HRINZ for life, or at least exchange the odd email for a few years.

International Delegates

One thing I love about the CIPD Conference, but which we could never do, is the fact that there are so many international delegates from all over the world.  CIPD creates an international lounge for us within the exhibition hall and it’s great for networking, using for meetings or just chilling in during some of the breaks.  They need to work on the quality of the coffee though…

Catering

Speaking of catering, there’s another huge difference between our events when it comes to lunches.  Delegates are provided with a hot lunch each day, which is set up rather like a large workplace canteen.  You line up with your plate and are given two options – with meat or without meat.  Their idea of ‘dietary requirements’ is addressed very simply – you’re either a carnivore or a vegetarian.  They don’t serve fish or chicken for those who like to eat white meat instead of red, and the meat is invariably mince.

We had cottage (shepherds) pie and carrots on day one, chilli con carne on rice on day two, and lasagne and salad on day three.  Vegetarians were offered the same meals but with vegetables replacing the mince.  The food was wholesome and tasty, portion sizes were predetermined by the serving staff, and energy levels kept high.  There were no desserts for those with a sweet tooth, but free lollies and chocolate abounded on the exhibitors stands for those needing a ‘white death’ fix.

As someone who gets involved with special dietary requirements when we hold HRINZ conferences, and knowing how much time and effort meeting everyone’s ‘special dietary needs’ can take, I was intrigued at how CIPD handled this.  So much so that on day two I asked one of the catering staff how they managed to cater for people with food allergies, intolerances and preferences.

There didn’t seem to be any special bay with trays of personalised meals hovering and no-one seemed to be asking for anything special.  The chap I asked looked at me blankly, paused for a moment and then said “There’s a vegetarian option”.  I persisted and said “but what about people who can’t eat dairy / gluten / nuts / eggs etc?” to which he replied, “There’s a vegetarian option”.  I gave up at that point.

I wonder how they manage the complaints.  At our conferences as we spend almost as much time on sorting out dietary requests as we do putting the programme together.  Well a slight exaggeration but sometimes it feels like it, and it’s really soul destroying when those specially crafted meals aren’t even collected by the individuals who have requested them.

The exhibition

Because the exhibition hall in Manchester is huge (it’s held in the former railway station which has been beautifully restored) there is room to have stands from quite different suppliers to the ones we have room for in New Zealand.

There’s the usual EAP and counselling offerings, software providers and a range of tools and solutions on offer.  There are education providers (though I noticed less this time) and of course remuneration and recruitment organisations.

But the thing that really stood out for me this year was the sheer number of exhibitors offering incentives and rewards.  Child care facilities or programmes were a close second.  Alcoholics Anonymous had a stand too – that was a first for me, though there have been similar support agencies exhibiting in previous years.  The US SHRM expo I visited in 2006 was over represented with weight loss programmes (Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers mainly) probably to counter the Dunkin Donuts which were supplied at coffee breaks!

Dotted around the expo hall were spaces for cafes, face to face networking areas as well as social media networking, and even several seminar areas which exhibitors presented mini seminars at – all possible because of the sheer vastness of the venue.

Other ideas

I picked up a few pearls which include little things like providing a phone battery charging service and a proper coat check service to avoid coats being mixed up and taken by the wrong people.

And the CIPD use a neat little mini programme with sessions on one side and a map of the venue on the other – we’ll be adopting this to get around having to print conference handbooks which probably no-one reads anyway.

Overall I enjoyed the conference on several levels – it’s always good to feed your brain, to take a break and do something different for a few days, and to observe how others do things.  The networking is always good at these events, but the best thing is reminding people that New Zealand, despite its tiny population size and remoteness from the rest of the world, can hold its own in the area of doing pretty good HR and delivering small, but perfectly formed, conferences to a world standard.

In doing this we thought it would be really good to collect up people’s memories of what the Institute was like in years gone by.

If you have been a member of HRINZ for more than 20 years we’d love to hear from you. Please consider contributing to this blog. You could talk about what you remember from the old days, the biggest changes you’ve noticed, what you’ve gained from being a member – anything of relevance that you’d like to share would be great to receive. It will help us to preserve the history of our association for members in the future.
Please help us with this!

Unfortunately, and not unexpectedly, entries from the Canterbury region were non-existent this year however we’re really looking forward to seeing all the amazing initiatives and personal growth and development that has been undertaken in the region and entered in the 2012 Awards – the stories will be breath taking we’re sure.  There is always a silver lining to every cloud and we know that Christchurch will rise like the phoenix from the ashes, given time.

Plans are well underway for the black-tie National Awards Presentation Dinner which this year will be hosted by Attorney General, the Honourable Christopher Finlayson, at the Banquet Hall of the Beehive in Parliament Buildings in Wellington on 24 November.  Sheridan’s got everything in hand and we’re all looking forward to a wonderful evening – rumour has it that some organisations are making the most of the opportunity to use it as a Christmas function for their key clients and valued staff members.

There seems to be a lot of workplace Awards happening at the moment and quite a few are being celebrated around the same time as ours will be in November, so you’ll be spoiled for choice if you’re looking for a good night out during the ‘silly season’.  Which brings me to the point of this blog – what’s the real value of this sort of recognition?

Recently I attended a really good HRINZ Wellington Branch Special Interest Group session titled The Money or the Bag: The link between Remuneration and the Organisation’s Strategy, presented by Crispin Garden-Webster and Geoff Summers and attended by a strong audience of senior level HR practitioners.  During the session we broke into groups to discuss the topic in more detail and each group found themselves coming to the same conclusion – that recognition, appreciation and acknowledgement were all very high in the reward stakes for most (if not all) employees, yet usually cost employers very little to provide.  While money (salary and benefits) is important, purpose, autonomy and mastery played a bigger part in attracting and keeping good staff engaged.

We also discussed the notion that not all employees wanted to be acknowledged in the same way.  Some like to be acknowledged amid the fanfare, glitter and with mirror balls, while others were happier with a phone call from a senior manager or CEO thanking them for doing a great job.  The common denominator is that everyone likes to be appreciated for doing a good job – however the delivery can vary wildly from one personality type to another.  One size most definitely does not fit all!

So how does that work for people and organisations who enter awards?  Do they want to be put on a pedestal, stroked and worshipped – is that why they entered in the first place?  Or do they simply want to share the things they’ve discovered through their efforts that might help their fellow beings in their working or personal lives?  I strongly suspect it’s the latter but in order to get that recognition to enable them to pass on their achievements they often have to take some formal action, such as entering awards, to allow it to happen.  Becoming winners at whatever level is probably the last thing many of them expect when they enter – they’re often happy just to be able to tell their story to a ready and willing audience.

I don’t think that the people who attend the National Presentation Dinner (and for that matter any regional event where Award entries are acknowledged) do so to be wowed by being the first to hear who has won a particular category, or to support just those they know who have entered, but they come because they want to be part of something much bigger and are there to celebrate the efforts of a whole profession, regardless of who ends up taking home the trophy.

To support my theory consider this analogy.  My husband, Evan, is a total rugby nut and one of the ‘original’ All Blacks supporters, just like a large proportion of Kiwi blokes of his age and background.  He has been lucky to attend a reasonable number of games during the 2011 Rugby World Cup, though they’re not all ‘All Blacks’ games.

He fessed up the other night that he actually enjoys the games where the All Blacks aren’t playing more than where they are because he’s freed up to appreciate the skills and strategy of all the players on both sides of the match rather than feeling loyalty to just one team.  He said best of all was the fact that it didn’t matter who won as, in most cases, he had no allegiance to either team, and at the end of the game the winning team was usually decided by how well they played the game, so he could just enjoy the actual rugby played, without any emotional strings attached.

Having said that, he still has opinions about the quality of refereeing, and like many kiwis he supports the All Blacks and any team playing against Australia, but his real passion is for the game – the plain old-fashioned good quality rugby.

Isn’t that the same for the good quality HR that is delivered throughout our country’s workplaces?  We want to celebrate the value of it all, because let’s face it HR has come a long way over the last few years for a lot of people and organisations.  Having said that, there will be no ‘participation’ prizes at our awards ceremony – the winners will most definitely have done something pretty special.  No-one wins by default at HRINZ!

So will you be there to wave the flag for the profession at the National Presentation Dinner?  I certainly hope so.  It will mean a lot to us all.

The theme, ‘HR to the Rescue’, was interesting in that when the programme was created back in December we’d chosen to focus on the recent demands placed on HR by several natural disasters that had struck New Zealand, but by the time we got to the conference in May we’d been beset by even more disasters, both here and in other parts of the Pacific Rim, with tragic consequences, so everything had changed quite dramatically.  It was still on the same theme but it just became much bigger.

Opening key note speaker, Hamish Wilson, did a great job of reminding the audience that for HR to achieve anything it had to be ready with systems and capabilities in place before called upon.  He took us through a large restructuring project he’d undertaken for Dutch Shell, and whilst the scale was completely mind boggling to our tiny work force, the point was made that the problems and issues are the same pretty much everywhere.

In scheduling the session order earlier in the year I had wondered if the audience would pick up on the link about identifying the need to be ready in order to help others – a bit like being told to put your own oxygen mask on first when going through the safety drill on a plane.  For those that might have missed it initially it certainly became apparent as the day wore on.

I attended a concurrent session at each opportunity – my only regret was that I couldn’t be in three places at once as the buzz around the venue during the breaks told me that things were going really well.  Later, the evaluations confirmed that every session was interesting, relevant and well received.  The content of some sessions had changed slightly between the programme going to print and the session being delivered and I’m guessing this was to accommodate the events that had occurred in the intervening period.

Derek Roger reminded us about the damage that rumination can do to our lives and while I’ve heard Derek speak several times before I could have listened to him for days – he has the most amazing ability to impart a really important message in a delightfully charming and amusing manner – I still have images in my mind of the startled cat cartoon he used to illustrate his point and it brings a smile to my lips whenever I think of it, as well as a reminder not to worry about things that might never happen.

Dave Wild followed Derek as closing key note speaker and I’m really glad that unconsciously I had got the order of sessions spot on.  Dave used a day to day example of how to extract innovation from potential disaster and come out on top.  I won’t go into what the example was but there could have been some very anxious moments had Derek not already pointed out how futile worrying would have been.  If I didn’t know better I could have assumed they’d colluded to prove a point.

As the day’s sessions of Nine to 9 was drawing to a close Vanessa Stoddart, GM HR at Air New Zealand was presented with the inaugural Honorary Fellowship of HRINZ – we couldn’t have ended the day’s proceedings on a more positive note.

Networking drinks were a welcome break from all the thinking and these were quickly followed by a relaxing and tasty dinner – made even more enjoyable by comedian Mark Wright entertaining us with his own style of humour, as well as a very insightful soliloquy of just what New Zealand and New Zealanders have achieved on the world stage.  It was very sobering in a funny sort of way.

The attendance numbers were a wee bit lower than we were expecting – we always want more people to benefit from the experience – but the quality of presentations and participation of those who did make the commitment to attend certainly made up for it.  Nine to 9 has positioned itself as a ‘boutique’ style event that shouldn’t be missed and especially caters for busy HR people.  Is there anyone working in HR who isn’t busy?

As you know we have quite a lot of new staff at HRINZ and they’re a great bunch – all very dedicated and excited to be getting on top of their new roles – but some of them are spending a huge amount of time phoning and emailing accounts departments of members’ organisations to get reference numbers for the payments we’re receiving because for some reason this vital information is being left off remittance advices.  With 4,000 members paying their annual fees along with a very large percentage of them also attending SIGs and other events on a regular basis, our accounts function is pretty big, especially at this time of the year.

HRINZ has individual membership but often there are multiple members working in an organisation where the employer is paying for the members to belong and/or attend HRINZ events.  We frequently receive payments from these organisations which cover many invoices but unless we’re told what invoices they relate to it is almost impossible for us to accurately reconcile the payments against the correct member’s ledger.  This results in some members being chased for payments that they’ve authorised and thought were paid.  If we can’t receipt the payments against the correct invoices the money paid gets put into a holding or suspense account until we can track down what it’s for.

HRINZ staff phone or email the accounts departments when remittance advices are missing but it’s amazing how hard it is to get a response from some of these people – very few return calls or respond to emails and in many situations when we do get hold of them and explain what is going on the problem continues in subsequent months as if the conversation never happened.  This must be affecting the productivity of lots of organisations and wasting a lot of resources – it certainly has that affect on our tiny one.

We had a discussion about it in our team meeting this week and came to the conclusion that the problem probably sits with HR anyway (sorry guys) as clearly there is a training issue here.

Having been an accounts clerk in a much earlier life I know that it is possible to do it better than it’s currently being done by many, and if it is done properly life becomes a lot easier for both parties.  The thing that concerns me is that what we are experiencing is probably also being experienced by lots of other organisations – we’re just the tip of the iceberg – so how much time do accounts staff really spend doing such menial, unproductive and unnecessary work across the country?  Working on the old concept that prevention is better than cure, why isn’t this issue tackled at the other end when people are being trained into a new role?  It’s not rocket science or is it?  Have we created such complex and convoluted systems and processes that it’s just too hard to add a simple reference number to a payment remittance notice?  Has online banking become a monster or simply made us lazy?

I know the staff at HRINZ would much rather be doing work that adds value to membership, so if there’s anything you can do to help sort this problem out for us at your end we’d be very grateful.  Then we could all get on with the fun stuff.

On the first day I attended a Graduate Careers Expo at University of Waikato that HRINZ was exhibiting at.  I hadn’t planned to go to Hamilton but at short notice one of the National Office staff couldn’t make it so I went in their place and I spent the day with Kelsi, our membership manager, and Jayne, our Auckland Branch events co-ordinator.  The plan was for the three of us to talk to aspiring HR practitioners and give them info on what being in HR involved, as well as how HRINZ, as their membership association, could help them along the way.  It went really well and our time at the expo just flew by, though I found myself doing other business for HRINZ and missed some of the action (Jayne became guest judge of talent for an adjacent exhibitor and Kelsi found herself moonlighting on the IT stand – all part of the expo experience apparently!).  One thing that was apparent was that there are some great HR grads who are really keen to get into HR roles but who are finding it a bit tricky as there are few opportunities being offered at the moment.

The expo was held in the Academy of Performing Arts building and the environment is beautiful – it took some self control not to just sit beside the lake in the sun and snooze like a lizard, especially after having to get up at the crack of dawn to catch a ‘red-eye’ flight.

That evening our trio attended a HRINZ Waikato Branch new members event with the local committee which was kindly hosted at a local business, The Effect.  It was very enjoyable drinking fine wine in the garden while we learned more about Hamilton’s newest HRINZ members, and all in a beautiful ‘art deco’ setting on a lovely barmy Waikato evening.  Hmmmm, maybe it wasn’t ‘work’ as we know it…

On the following day Kelsi and I arrived at the Wintec (Waikato Institute of Technology) Business School where Kelsi gave a formal talk to Brent Wood’s business students on HRINZ and how we can help them with their careers and then Brent, Kelsi and I answered a few questions on HR.  I found it interesting that the questions being asked hadn’t changed much over the years – the concerns about how to get a foot in the door for that first HR role seems to be a perennial one, but perhaps a little more difficult in the current tight job market.

Our session with the students was followed by a tour of the Wintec campus – what an impressive place.  I had last been there in about 1999 when many prefabs dotted the horizon.  They’ve now been replaced with an eclectic mix of beautiful historic buildings and stunningly crisp and creative new ones, where height, light and accessibility abounds, punctuated with courtyards of trees, shrubs and lawns.  The pride in the campus was apparent – no litter, graffiti or attitudes to be seen – and its proximity to the CBD of Hamilton is perfect.

Morning tea and lunch gave us a chance to talk to the key people involved in the development of human resources at Wintec and their generous hospitality was very well received by us too.  It was great being able to have a range of conversations about the future of HR and the issues faced by our emerging (and current) work force from a different angle, and really reassuring to see the dedication and commitment from the people who influence our next generation of practitioners and business leaders.

On reflection, I realised that I don’t have enough of these conversations, probably because I always seem to be busy, but I certainly plan to schedule more now that things are humming along back in the office.

It’s great to enjoy work to the extent that it doesn’t feel like work, and even nicer being able to get out of the office and into another space for a couple of days.  Now where’s my next destination…?

The old website was huge and it contained over 6,000 documents with most of them needing tweaking or updating in some way – some minor, some major – and there are some that we’ve deleted altogether and quite a few that have been archived in case we need them in the future.

I’ve learned a few lessons in doing this project and they just might be useful to others

1.       Unlike true love, a good website doesn’t last forever.  Divorce it if necessary – don’t keep it past its ‘use by’ date if its not meeting your needs and don’t get emotionally attached to it or you’ll never be able to part with it.

2.       Don’t introduce visitors to your best friend (other sites) and expect them to stay loyal to you.  If visitors are led astray by links that take them away from your site and there’s no way of finding their way back home to yours, you’ll probably lose them forever.

3.       A website is a bit like a garden – left for too long without weeding and pruning it will become an impenetrable jungle which will need chainsaws and machetes to fix it (and it’s a great place for nasty creepy crawlies to hide in).

4.       Do your homework.  Find out what your stakeholders want/expect in a website and give it to them (we gathered up lots of comments and suggestions before we started and managed to accommodate nearly all of them).  Check out similar websites too, but don’t try to copy them – keep yours individual and edgy.

5.       Don’t embark on a rebuild until you have enough time to devote to it – it needs to be done ‘in the flow’ without lots of interruptions or delays otherwise you’ll get lost and it will take longer (this happened to me a bit on our journey but fortunately our website genies knew where things were at throughout the entire process and guided me back on track).

6.       We all know about the boiled frog syndrome – a dysfunctional website doesn’t happen overnight, it creeps up on you over quite a long period of time and you don’t usually see it happening.  If you start hearing grumbles or your traffic logs start slipping take a long hard look at your site, preferably without your rose tinted specs.  I was guilty of this too as the four years since we’d last touched it (and even then it was just a quickie facelift) had absolutely flown by.

7.       Make sure you have a really good policy for how it is updated and managed, with strict protocols (rules even) around file names, permissions, grammar, spelling and style etc, and schedule regular audits by an independent pair of eyes.

8.       It’s great to be able to manage your own content but best if just one very competent person is the ‘Guardian of the Site’ to ensure it doesn’t get messed up, or worse neglected.  Use an advisory group if necessary to ensure your site doesn’t become the local rubbish dump.

9.       Allocate enough dosh to create what you need.  Invariably website rebuilds go over budget as most of us can’t remember just how much info our websites contain (or don’t contain), and few of us properly scope the project in the first place.  If you’ve ever built a house, done renovations or gone on an overseas holiday you’ll know what I mean.

10.   Talk to the people who are responsible for supplying different parts of website content for your organisation and make sure you know what they need and give it to them, but without compromising the design, structure/architecture and navigation.  Don’t let the loudest voice call the shots either.

11.   Ask your website users what they think of the new site and if the majority of them have a problem then you’ll need to fix it.  But beware of knockers – you’ll never please everyone and it’s likely that your critics will have their own agenda anyway.

12.   Remember to promote your site widely, but get it going properly first – broken links and slow-to-load sites will do more harm than good.  A good website genie will give advice on the use of key words to use to maximise search engine optimisation – make sure you follow it.  “Welcome to our website…” won’t help your ranking in search engines either, even if you do want to welcome visitors to your place.

13.   Celebrate your success!  It’s a big job which brings immense satisfaction when it’s finished.  Remember to thank everyone who has played a part in rebuilding it and be proud of it.  Goodness knows it will be out of date soon enough, so enjoy it while you can.

14.   Schedule the next rebuild while you think of it – by the time it comes around you’ll be ready for it.

I’d like to acknowledge all the wonderful people who played a part in rebuilding our website – I won’t name you as you know who you are and I’d hate to leave anyone out, but from the bottom of my heart, a huge THANK YOU!!!

If you’d like to tell us what you think of our baby, please comment below.  We’d love to hear from you.  Honest.

For most people working in Human Resources in the Canterbury region, and for those whose organisations have branches or responsibilities for people in Canterbury, the work continues with very long days rebuilding infrastructure, shattered lives, and a desperate sense of trying to get back to some semblance of normal, or business as usual.

But for a large group of people with excellent HR expertise and years of experience, knowledge and wisdom that have been providing consultancy and contracting services to Canterbury based organisations, things are very different.  Many have suddenly found themselves with contracts cancelled or delayed indefinitely, without the work they thought they’d be doing and there’s little chance of the situation changing in a hurry as organisations switch from planned growth and development pre-earthquake, to mere survival since 22 February.

As I see it, the risk for the Canterbury region as it gets on with the job of rebuilding the city and the economic centre of the South Island, is that there is a very strong likelihood that when the time comes they’ll find themselves without the intellectual expertise of these consultants because  many will have all left the area to find work elsewhere.  And who can blame them.

In a perfect world (and we certainly know that there is no such thing anymore) the over worked, exhausted HR champions who are currently holding it all together could be supported by the newly under-employed consultants and contractors who would make life so much easier for everyone.  As these two groups of people most likely don’t know each other someone needs to step in and provide a facilitation service.  Ideally that someone should be HRINZ, but as I mentioned in my last blog, we’re really not in a position to do so at the moment.  As we’re an organisation of volunteers would any of you care to put your hand up to help with this?  HRINZ can provide the means to do so; you just need to provide the willingness to make it happen.

It could take the form of a web-based database that HRINZ can create and manage on our website with a volunteer facilitator creating a simple matching or introduction register by collecting the needs of individual organisations and tracking down the expertise to deliver to these needs.  What a great way to help!

After a period of minimal staff turnover for the last three or four years, five of my team of 12 have moved on (or are about to move on) to other things – namely overseas trips, new career challenges, a change of pace, and relocating to a new city.  With the HRINZ Board nearing the end of a two-year long governance review the timing of these changes at National Office couldn’t be better to enable the changes we need to make to go forward –  our needs will definitely be different under the new governance model  that has been mooted.

I’ve been working at HRINZ for more years than I care to admit to, though loving almost every minute of them; however my job changes when my boss changes – HRINZ elects a new National President every two years – and this keeps me fresh and stops me from becoming bored or stale.  Catherine Taylor, GM HR at Kiwi Bank, has just taken up the reins as National President and I’m really looking forward to working with Catherine to implement some of the big projects we’ve been working on (along with others on the HRINZ Board) over the last few years.  I’m not going to go into any detail now about what these projects might be – you’ll just have to ‘watch this space’ and read my future blogs, but I believe we’re about to enter a new phase as New Zealand emerges from a particularly tough two or three years of recession.  The recent tragic Christchurch earthquakes will undoubtedly affect the whole country, so it’s difficult to second guess how things will be in the future, but I’m trying to see a glass half full of hope and optimism, rather than one half empty with pain and suffering.