Tick the box or do the job right?

Tick box or customer service…?

Often we have heard the phrase “tick the box” as a way of saying “well we have done enough to say we have done the task” – but have we really?

Many of us know that some jobs do only need a “tick in the box”, but sometimes we miss the point.

Last week while preparing for a business trip I was down my local high street (it’s just a few weeks to Christmas) and I noticed in our local shopping centre was a Santa’s grotto. Nothing unusual here except that, well I don’t know it just looked tatty. In previous years it has been a large and reasonably impressive looking grotto, more like a log cabin, not an open space with a Santa on a throne. In fact it was so bad I took a photo of it, intending to blog about this.

 

Then things changed.

This week I have been in Dubai, A Muslim region, not a Christian one.

On a trip I went into a small local mall – not one of the big tourist ones, but a shopping mall used by people living locally. Looking at the shoppers there is a good mix of Muslim, Christian and other faiths here… but the grotto!

Now this centre is a small one, almost the same size as my local shopping mall back home. But what a difference.

In comparison, the UK grotto is “ticking the box” – the one in Dubai is “meeting & exceeding” the needs and wants of shoppers.

Which of these two images inspires children – well I know which one does for me. This is the difference between delivering on our promise and ticking the box.

Which would you take a small child to?

Just how often do we tick the box rather than understanding that image means a lot?

Culture to Ride the Wave of Innovation #cipd10

Day 2 at #cipd10 – Riding the waves of innovation

Looking at culture, diversity and innovation was Fons Trompenaars. It would be easy to dismiss Trompenaars as being out dated and out of context, but from what I recall of seeing Trompenaars some 12+ years ago his message has changed and kept fresh.

Trompenaars started out by saying that the “essence of innovation is to combine existing stuff in exciting ways”. He told stories of when his consulting firm would be asked to go in and work with firms that had just “come out the other side” of a major project with one of the big consulting firms. He said that often the client would take them around the firm and show off the IT solutions they have as a result of the work, his stated reply was “… yes but people live here”.

Describing our world as one full of bi-polar attitudes and thoughts. He cited as an example MBTI. Saying that can we only be Thinking or Feeling? Why not both? This statement resonated with many in the room. His view was that in order to innovate it was not about Thinking or Feeling – but Thinking WITH Feeling, or Feeling with Thought.

Trompenaars has strong views on a number of issues for example:

• Research – is just academics quoting each other and going round in circles – what we need is “search” not “research”

Having “destroyed” MBTI (a familiar tool), he then went on to look at KAI – the Kirton innovation tool. Again criticised as being bipolar but more than that Trompenaars said that in his view Kirton has confused Invention for innovation. As a measure of inventiveness he agreed that the tool added value – but that innovation was more a function of invention AND Adaptiveness (another scale on the instrument). I found this particularly interesting, as I have thought this true since working with the Creatrix Innovation inventory. What Trompenaars described as innovation is clearly identified in the Creatrix the work of Byrd some 40+ years ago.

Individual or team?

The rest of the session was in essence looking at how we could help leaders to move from being bi-polar thinking – to duality – or “both and” approach. For example not the dilemma of individual creativity or team performance. He put the case that not only can we have both – but for future sustainability and growth we need both.

Overall some interesting ideas. How clearly his ideas are communicated in his book only time will tell.

My notes on this session were extensive and I will generate a bigger article in time.

Beyond Survival- delivering ambitious growth #cipd10

Beyond Survival – delivering growth through your people #cipd10

 This was the last session of day one at this years CIPD annual conference. It was led by Carl McPhail CEO of New Look the large UK retailer.

 After showing us a short (1min) promotional video showing the business time line from conception as a market stall to its current multi million operation. McPhail introduced the business as “always being about change” and that to be successful in a sustainable way “you need to engage with customers as well as employees”.

McPhail talked about the cycle of products, the number of times the average customer visited (on average twice a month) and the need to have new products on the shelf for every visit and a complete stock change every 8 weeks. He highlighted that just 5 partner suppliers provided 50% of all new products and that while many would consider this narrow supply chain as a risk, McPhail considers this to be a strength for both the supplier and themselves.

It was at this point that it really dawned on me – here is a CEO at a HR conference talking business not HR. the language he was using was more about profit, than retention or other HR measures. This was refreshing. It was not that he was ignoring HR – he wasn’t, what he was doing was truly integrating HR & the business.

McPhail went on to talk about the strategy to achieve their aggressive growth ambitions. It included the following:

• Being the #1 in the retail market space
• Aggressive targets
• Sales & profits
• Cash & returns
• UK space
• Product
• Multi-channel
• International
• World class benchmarking
• Obsessive customer focus
• Best people

McPhail highlighted the last three:

Benchmarking, this is not within the sector to other retail providers – but best in class – logistics, finance etc

Customer focus, in that they have created social media channels, Facebook, “MyLook” – they own network, so that they can take temperature checks on a daily basis so that they can react to what the customer experience is

Best People – McPhail himself says that he has his strengths and weaknesses, and that he knows his weaknesses and engages with the best people he can find (in and outside the business) to address this. The examples he gave was the introduction of online shopping and social media, as it was his team that recommended the change of channel.

On the people agenda – all leaders (himself included) have been assessed and personal development plans put in place. He said that he relied on his HRD to provide honest information on the people in the business and to act as a trusted adviser. The HR leadership approach aspires to provide:

• Advice
• Support
• Trust
• Integrity
• Fun
• Honesty

Overall this was a refreshingly honest and business led session (rather than many fad based sessions), good to hear the value a CEO puts on HR, when HR works with the leadership to deliver a successful business.

CIPD Annual Conference #cipd10

CIPD Annual Conference 2010 – #cipd10

This year as last the annual shin-dig of the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development CIPD (the UK’s professional body for HR, HRD & OD professionals) is taking place at Manchester.

Some interesting sessions attended so far.

The introduction by Jackie Orme – the CIPD’s CEO set the scene for the event. Pointing out that for an organisation to be a success required a unique blend of both financial health of the business with an appropriate level of social responsibility.

The CIPD being both politically and sectorally independent puts the CIPD in a unique position. Orme highlighted the importance of putting the people agenda back at the centre of HR work, meeting both the business needs and the needs of the people to deliver the business.

Orme announces a package of changes to the CIPD member offer to further develop the support to members and their growth throughout their career, recognising that cost of CIPD services may have been a barrier in the past. New services and price revisions are taking place to address this.

Orme suggested that HR needed to be more insight led rather than policy led for the future success of both our profession and our organisations.

Keynote

Ram Charan

A charismatic professional that started out by asking how many people used powerpoint for such presentations.. then proceeded to spend the entire session “out in the participants” – not using any visual aids and engaging with people eye-to-eye. I suspect that some of the audience may have felt a little intimidated by this.

He had some great messages.

His first was that to be a good athlete they need to train – not just with complex kit, but doing the basics like press-ups. Now the athletes don’t like this but they do it as practice and practicing the basics is fundamental to success. Using the analogy we were challenged as to what are the boring basics we need to practice in HR/ HRD? He suggested that relationships, influencing are amongst those things – and do we practice them often enough?

The future of HR is as the trustee of the people – much like the CFO is the trustee of finance. This means we need to understand the talent we have, where each person adds value and where they do not, and to make sure that key decision makers are aware of the latent talent so that it can be retained, grown and deployed.

The key role HR has were stated as:

1)      to be the trustee of people

2)      recognise the potential in every leader in clear and specific ways (actions not competence)

3)      to find people and find a fit for them and to develop them (note the order – not what is traditional, putting people into roles!

For Hr to do this properly we must not rely on 360 and other measurements – the human brain is better at this, we need to see them in action – in the “day job”. We need to be able to spot leaders with “bandwidth” capacity.

As HR professionals, one thing that we can add strategically to the business is to be able to spot “social trends” occurring both inside and outside our organisations and look for the organisational relevance and inform business leaders. HR is better connected than many other functions to do this.

He stated the obvious and yet it seemed in context – WTHOUT PEOPLE YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS.

This session covered a lot – too much to put here – when I have digested this maybe there will be a longer piece!

Summary of World of Learning (WOLCE) 2010 Day 1

The Dangers of Social Networking in 2010

Dangers of Social Networking & Technology

As technology pervades closer and closer into every task we do we are increasingly connected in a disconnected way to the people around us. Today I received this interesting little list and thought it good enough to share:

You know you are living in 2010 when…

1. Realising you accidentally enter your PIN/ password on the microwave

2. Artificial - You haven’t played solitaire with real cards in years

3. Phone numbers - You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3

4. Instant Messaging –  You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you

5. Detached - Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don’t have e-mail addresses

6. Busy - You pull up at home after shopping and use your mobile to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries

7. Information – Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen

8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn’t have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it

10. You get up in the morning and go on line before getting your coffee

11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile : )

12. You’re reading this and nodding and laughing

13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message

14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list

15. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn’t a #9 on this list

16. You took the time to tell people about this post by twitter

17. …. then Facebook

18. and finally plan to email this to work colleagues when you go back to the office on Monday

AND NOW U R LAUGHING AT YOURSELF

Go on, forward this to your friends. You know you want to….

£Millions of training resources being thrown away

Social Irresponsibility: Essential Resources Being Disposed Of

Total madness and irresponsibility by our local and national public sector managers. In the UK and many other countries, as each week passes we hear of organisations being closed down. These are organisations that have been set up and run with public money – our taxes. Now for those employed in those roles its not a good situation to be in – job insecurity at a time when employment is difficult to find, tough economic times. For those individuals we empathise. Unfortunately like many other countries we have been living beyond our means.

As national budgets get cut so many organisations and departments are being “removed” altogether – and importantly these organisations have resources which are being disposed of rather than being re-invested back into our society. Don’t get me wrong this happens in the private sector too.

A couple of years ago when working for a multi-national organisation I was told to go and “clear a room, and see if there was anything of value”. That room was the library of a former training school close 2 years before). There were 100s of videos, 1000′s of books, dozens of commercial training activities etc – and that was just the easily tangible materials. I would estimate at least £50,000 (very conservative) worth of product/ resources was bound for the skip! And this from just one company.

When a whole organisation is closed/ downsized, re-located etc, often it will have many of the following:

• Books
• Training resources
• Knowledge in the form of intranet data
• e-learning licenses

What happens with this? Is it just thrown in the skip? Why? laziness?

In this difficult time of austerity, we need to ensure that we recycle all resources that MIGHT be of value and did cost the organisation (us the tax payer) to buy in the first place.

A few weeks ago I was leading a workshop in the training centre of a local public sector organisation, they were closing due to spending cuts. A shame as they actually made an operating profit – work that one out! Talking to the centre manager I discovered that:

1. They would be paying over £500 a month just to mothball the furniture – and they had no plans what to do with it
2. They were to pay someone to come in and chain saw up several NEW leather sofas, as they did not want the future liability if something went wrong in the hands of the new owner
3.  Would be throwing in a skip 20+ PC’s that were less than 3 yrs old… I’ll stop there its all too sad!

This function was cut to save costs… but it was actually returning a profit to the organisation. Bringing in income. The senior manager did not seem to be looking at this – just the out going costs”. This is one of the worst cases of management miss judgments in the public sector I have heard of recently. Now this is a total waste of public funds. the resources could have been given to a local charity, or other not for profit. Lets encourage everyone, managers, HR, learning professionals etc, to recognise the value of what is there, and rather than go into individuals attics and cellars (or skips), it be donated to appropriate organisations that can use the material.

As for intranet data, policies, and e-learning materials – lets make them available nationally where we can to help those that need to develop their skills for a changing work environment.

In the “information age” we need to start recognising the value of data – not just personal data but “knowledge” and find a way of warehousing this for other to use beyond the initiating organisation. For example some years ago the Business Link organisation (the gov backed consulting supplier for SMEs) built a “university” and commissioned a lot of training and online resources. When that function closed that data was lost. We are now in an age when data online can last for a long time providing people have access – is it time for a national archive of this public sector generated/ funded knowledge?

We need to do a number of things:

1. Train managers making these decisions in commercial skills
2. Educate people to recycle resources FIRST
3. Get out of the “they will sue us” mentality the public sector seems to have on disposal of assets
4. Learn how to distribute electronic knowledge so we do not lose it
5. Set up a central, national archive for data – in fact we have it – its called the British Library!
6. Bring in commercial managers from the private sector to start making informed decisions on how public funds can be spent effectively for the future of our pensions and our children!

Thinking of using PayPal for online payments?

Do I need a PayPal account? Can I pay with my credit card instead?

Are you a small business and want to take payments for small products online? Well so were we and we went for PayPal as while it is not the cheapest option, it is easy to integrate and people trust it.

We have been using PP for some time and have not had any problems, however in the last couple of months we have seen a reduction in sales. Then in the space of 2 weeks we have had several phone calls from potential customers saying that their card had been rejected and was there anything wrong with our site?

Then after some research and several hours on the phone to PayPal we have identified the problem. Paying by PayPal with a debit or credit card can only be done a number of times before PayPal requires the purchaser to have a PayPal account. Now this is a problem if your purchaser has no intention of having a PayPal account.

There are other reasons why PayPal my refuse a credit card – if you have a card which is registered but expired and you have not “told them” of this, if you email address is black listed.. there are many reasons.

So here is what the PayPal site wont tell you (but it is hidden) – accepting payments via PayPal for all real purposes, requires your purchaser to have a PayPal account. Using a credit card on its own is of limited use (value and frequency). 

On the PayPal site it does say:

Do I need a PayPal account to pay for an eBay item?

Answer :

No. You can use a credit card to pay for things on eBay if you don’t have a PayPal account. As a PayPal guest you can use your credit card, with guest checkout, up to 15 times to pay for things on eBay.
By signing up for a PayPal account, though, you have more options when you pay. You’ll be able to pay with your PayPal balance or — if that isn’t enough to cover a payment — you can pay directly from your bank account or use your debit or credit card.
Whatever payment method you choose, your financial information is secure. Merchants get paid but never see your bank account details or debit/credit card numbers.

On many sites (including our own) you will find the statement – “Do I need a PayPal account to pay for the product? A. No. PayPal will process Credit or Debit cards at no charge to you!” – however the “rules” appeared to have changed and now certain types of cards seem to have limited use in association with paying for products and services through the PayPal system. This seems to impact cards used by businesses and those used with PayPal previously. This is disappointing for many of us.

The Final Word

So if you want a “secure” and easy to use purchasing system and are happy that most of your customers have PayPal accounts – PayPal is a good solution.

If you believe that many of your potential customers will not have a PayPal account and will want to pay with popular cards (credit & debit) - go another route

International Leadership & Management Workshops & Seminars – Dubai & Nigeria

Leadership & Management Workshops & Seminars

Following the success of our recent international workshops in leadership and change management, RapidBI are in the process of scheduling international seminars for senior managers and leaders as well as professional officers.

Over the past year, we have run a number of successful workshops for officers, senior managers and leaders from Nigeria, Italy, UK and India. Mostly from the worlds of finance, public sector and professional services.  This need has promoted us to join in a strategic alliance to be able to provide the following training workshops being run in Dubai:

• Leadership Workshop
• Leadership & Change Management Workshop
• Leading Strategic Change Workshop
• Strategy & Business Planning Workshop

These workshops are 5 days long and suitable for middle to senior managers, Heads of department etc.

Fees for these courses are just £4999 per person or £7450 for up to three participants and include:

• Comprehensive Course Manual & References (Colour)
• Handouts
• Breakfast, Lunch & Refreshments
• Complementary (Free) Laptop/ Netbook Computer
• Accomodation is provided at some venues – please ask when booking

Why price for 3 people?

We have learned over time that many public or open courses for leadership, change and management get canceled due to low numbers. This strategy we have found effective as it is cost effective for two people, but helps to ensure that we never cancel a course once scheduled.

Small Sizes

We believe in quality programmes so limit numbers on the program to 12 maximum. Unlike some providers that pack the room out, we use quality venues and ensure high levels of trainer/ participant/ learner interaction.

Our Course Schedule & Program

Our course schedule typically follows this programme:

• Day 1 – 1400-1700 arrival & registration, Intro to course & contents
• Day 2 – 0900-1400 course work + evening self study
• Day 3 – 0900-1400 course work
• Day 4 – 0900-1400 course work + evening assignment
• Day 5 – 0900-1400 Assignment presentation & presentation of certificates

Why Dubai?

As in international centre, Dubai is both accessible and welcoming to the international community. Obtaining visas is easier than many other locations. It is centrally located and it is easy to access from Europe, Africa and Asia. The training centre and facilities we use are just 15 minutes away from the internationally renowned shopping malls, with state of the art facilities and customer service.

For more information please contact us using the contact us page. We can also offer these workshops in-plant if required

#ConnectingHR – Networking, Beer and Red Knickers

Social Networking In the Real World

The morning after the night before…

Last night saw the second ever ConnectingHR “Tweetup” or networking event in Central London. The event was again organised by @joningham and @garelaos and like the first was a great success – both in terms of numbers and atmosphere. The event was sponsored by @courtenayhr

Over 80 people had registered for the event, and despite the searing London heat the majority were in attendance – and some that did not register!

The format of this was much like the first where most of the time it was free networking, with an informal “presentation” by our hosts (less than 5 mins) broke the pattern. This time the organisers did a couple of new things a tweet wall and they asked two of us to “lead” discussions:

• How to use Twitter for “virgins”
• How to get the most out of LinkedIn

I was invited to lead the session on Twitter and we had a small but vocal group of about 7 people. This was in a small way a leading to another event being planned… the Unconference in the autumn. This looks promising and I will look to both inform when it is happening and blog about it when it does.

TwitterWall

One new innovation at this event was the introduction of a “twitter stream” projected onto one of the walls in the room we were using. This was set to capture the #connectingHR tag. This had the impact of encouraging more people at this event to tweet ‘live’ than did at ConnectingHR#1. Was this a good thing or not? In many ways it was a distraction, however as the event is open to people not involved (yet) on Twitter it allowed them to see one aspect of the platform in use. The tweet wall certainly held attention at times and was itself the attention of focus on occasions (see http://bit.ly/connectHR2010

It all happened at a networking event

I found out about this on the twitter wall, and apparently (we were in a basement room of the pub near the toilets) and a woman walked into the room we were in (she had been drinking for some time) stood, wet the floor and walked out! I heard from another source that a pair of red knickers were seen in the ladies loos! so it all happens at a HR networking event! Needless to say most of the attendees of our event were better behaved!

Better Behaved – or were we?

One of the interesting things about twitter is the perceived anonymity and freedom it provides. last night I noticed on several occasions that some people had tweeted profanities and made (perhaps) inappropriate comments on to twitter using the hash-tag (#connectingHR). Twitter is an interesting environment, and personally I like to remember that whatever you put there is on the net for good. Any use of language etc will be there for people to see. If using twitter for business, what will potential customers thing of our “drunken” ramblings? or if an employer look at us as their next recruit…?

What makes this event special?

This networking event unlike many others has a great unique selling point – the majority of people that attend are “employees” – the number of “suppliers” is strictly limited. This means that it is a true social networking event, no sell, no pressure to sell. For those that are nervous or dislike “networking” (CIPD members look at this thread on networking for introverts http://bit.ly/as5Cqd) it is the ideal environment to become comfortable just talking to with people.

A big thank you

I spoke to sooooo many people – new and old contacts, if you are reading this you know who you are (too many to list here) great to catch up last night – until next time in the twitterverse or at another #connexctingHR event!

100 Thoughts on Business – banks using social media

Connecting with Business Leaders

In the last couple of days I have seen more and more about the #100thoughts events programme from the HSBC. On the event website they describe the events as:

“We are currently identifying 100 leading business thinkers in each of our regions across the UK. They will be invited to attend one of our sixteen planned national business events, where they will get the opportunity to network with like-minded businesses and gain insight into how others are meeting the challenges of today”

“We are inviting people from across the UK to join an online community of the freshest business thinkers on Twitter @100thoughts and to tweet their piece of business wisdom using #100thoughts. The most inspiring and unique ‘thoughts’ will be chosen as VIP attendees at the invite-only 100Thought regional events. These are being held around the country between May and July 2010 and the winners will get exclusive access to the expert panel at their chosen event.”

The tweet stream (#100thoughts) is full of short tips about running and improving a business, and although bordering on being overly commercial, the average person on twitter will see through this and discover the important elements that will help them personally.

This is interesting , as the whole event series seems to be based around a social media platform. Is this the first of its kind in the UK? Is this the way forward?

Read these initial 100Thoughts from great business leaders:

Thoughts 1-25

Thoughts 26-50

Thoughts 51-75

Thoughts 76-100

As well as providing information on these events, and how to follow the learning if you are not going there is a useful section providing business reports which is worth a look.

I am currently waiting for the details for the event in Birmingham, I will no-doubt tweet and blog from there. If you know any more about these events or want to share your learning please add them to the comments on the blog, with links to your own blogs etc.

Measuring Influence On Your Web Site

Measuring the Influence of Your Web Site

One of the advantages of having an on-line presence is the ability to measure data. Having been listed in a top 50 blog it got me thinking about exposure and what this means for marketing for smaller businesses.

Five years ago, we measured web influence by the number of sites linking in, now depending what site system you believe we have between 170 and 203 sites that link, and yet when you google a url on our site there are many more – so how is this calculate – and does it really matter?

Now your on-line marketing strategy will stand or fall based on how influential you are.

What is Influence?

Influence is often defined as

“implicit or explicit effect of one thing (or person) on another,” or…

“can someone’s words (and/or video) make you think or do something?”

Lets first look at some of the traditional (on site) measures:

There are sites which claim to measure visits etc, these include Alexa, Google and many others. But can you trust their data?

Lets have a look at RapidBI.com and compare:

Pages per visitor

Alexa -

Here we can see 1.6 pages per visitor, supposedly less than the previous month.

Google Analytics -

Where as here it is 2.01 pages per user (I can tell you this is an increase)

Bounce rate:

Now these results are closer – with Alexa saying 65% & Google saying 68%

Visitor stats from Google for the month 28 April-28 May 2010 (yes just ONE months worth of visitors….)

These stats ignore the people that have subscribed to our RSS feed and see the content not on our site!

Now this begs the question which is right? Well without giving away my real stats, all I can say is that neither are as accurate as they claim!

Data for a website is critical, as you can monitor what works and what does not, you can see what key words attract traffic, and most importantly of all which pages turn potential clients away!

What has this to do with influence?

For me one of the most important strategies when having a web presence is to build traffic, then work on creating conversions. Having traffic does not mean that you influence your readers, or potential readers. Influence comes from trust and belief that what you say has meaning to them in their situation. The more often you post on a blog, the quicker it is to be able to build trust, as with each piece comes an understanding of where you are.

But it is so much more than just your web site

Many of us now have a presence in many places, Twitter, LinkedIn, FaceBook etc and because of this our on-line ‘footprint’ is much more dispersed. Some approaches create the Social Index like this one from Sixty Second View:

They created the beta version of their “Social Media Index” or score for them. Here’s how they score it:

Each person has been given a score out of 10 based upon 6 criteria:

• Blog – analysed Google Rank, inbound links, subscribers, alexa rank, content focus, frequency of updates, number of comments
• Multi-format – analysed Facebook – number of friends
• Mini-updates – analysed Twitter – number of friends, followers and updates
• Business cards – analysed LinkedIn – number of contacts
• Visual – analysed Flickr – number of photos uploaded from the person/s or about the person/s
• Favorites – analysed Digg, del.icio.us

Now this is great, but it assumes that top influential people will use all platforms. For example RapidBI do not use Flicker or FaceBook for business, so we would lose out on that score alone, also Digg & del.icio.us are great for B-2-C topics, but low volume for B-2-B, so again this stacks the odds against business net-workers.

Other proposed approaches include:

Looking at the following components and putting a value on them.

Incoming Traffic – Page-views, Incoming traffic from search engines, rss subscribers

Incoming Links – Primarily manual links such as blogrolls, in-post deep links

Reader Engagement – Internal searches, time on site

Recommendations – Retweets, share stats

Connections – Number of mutual connections, number of mutual connections on multiple sites

Track Record – Age of domain, number of blog posts, length of engagement

Engagement – How often and long a person has engaged with a service on-line

This has been taken from http://mashable.com/2009/03/02/measuring-on-line-influence/

Whatever you do, as part of your online strategy, look out for these measures and consider them (and any new ones) when developing or adapting your strategy.

Top 50 HR blogs in the world

RapidBI listed as one of the Top 50 HR blogs in the World

Today whilst traveling back home from running workshops across the UK all week I picked up on a twitter thread about top HR Blogs. With Jon Ingham congratulation several people for their blogs. Low an behold RapidBI was one of them!  Thank you Evan Carmichael!

So RapidBI is included in Evan Carmichael’s site (the Internet’s #1 resource for small business motivation and strategies) as a Top 50 Human Resources blog to watch (or read!) in 2010

It’s wonderful to be in such good company, and I’m excited to be part of an increasing UK contingent in this US/ International who’s who of HR blogs:

• Jon Ingham’s Strategic HCM
• XpertHR
• Personnel Today Editors’ Blog
• “Rick” ’s Flip Chart Fairy Tales
• Anna Farmery’s The Engaging Brand

Congratulations to everyone on the list.  To all my readers: these are great resources for you!

ASTD, SHRM and CIPD in Merger Talks – Shock news in the world of HR

 

Secret talks are taking place today in Virginia between the ASTD, SHRM and CIPD with regards to a future merger.

The team at RapidBI heard late last night that talks scheduled for later today are taking place hosted by SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) in Virginia, USA. If this happens, and the three organisations combine forces it will make the worlds largest professional body with in excess of  400, 000 members (after duplicate memberships are deducted).

Not new…
It is understood that talks have been on going since Jackie Orme took over as chief executive of the CIPD in April 2008. Regular travel between these two UK and US organisations have been taking place over the last two years with and agreement getting closer and closer. A Google of the term “ASTD CIPD SHRM merger” gives little away, but drop SHRM from the search and there are clues to this series of talks. It appears that this has been on the table for some time. It is not clear if the SHRM are included in the talks or if they are the mediator for the discussions.

Cheryl Myles CIPD Branch Development Manager said that the plans were originally to announce the merger at the ASTD International Conference and EXPO May 16 – 19, 2010 in Chicago, IL, however due to pressures within the executives within the SHRM (whose conference is due to take place on June 27 – 30, 2010, San Diego Convention Center, Calf) it was agreed that the CIPDs HRD Conference and Exhibition, 21-22 April 2010, Olympia London would be a better place to announce the new venture, and be the starting point for a road show at each of these events sharing the strategy prior to asking members to vote later in the year.

Johanna Ratcliff, Digital Communications Manager, who is responsible for all web and intranet structures in the CIPD said ” there are a lot of new developments which we have been working on for some time which will provide a 21st century service to an ever growing and distributed membership, I am very excited about a forthcoming announcement”. It has been known that Ratcliff has been working on an updated website platform with the ability for the CIPD to offer virtual branches for some time, enabling geographically dispersed members to attend groups together virtually using state of the art technology.

What this will mean for the profession is not clear. Certainly the three organisations have a wide and diverse membership across the globe and it does provide the opportunity for an international set of standard qualifications in HR, L&D and OD.

This does leave open what the organisation will be called, as there is little overlap in the organisations names, does this also mean the UK organisation will have to drop its valued charted status – or will the riggor of this be retained and offered world wide?

Time will tell how this news is taken. What are your thoughts – good or bad news for members of all organisations? Talk to colleagues and share your thoughts here or on the sites respective forums and community spaces (or their LinkedIn groups)

The SHRM

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is the world’s largest association devoted to human resource management. Representing more than 250,000 members in over 140 countries, the Society serves the needs of HR professionals and advances the interests of the HR profession. Founded in 1948, SHRM has more than 575 affiliated chapters within the United States and subsidiary offices in China and India.

The ASTD

The American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) is the world’s leading association of workplace learning and performance professionals. Founded in 1944 ASTD’s membership includes more than 70000 people, working in the field of workplace performance in 100 countries worldwide

The CIPD

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) is Europe’s largest HR development professional body. A globally recognised brand with over 135,000 members, who support and develop those responsible for the management and development of people within organisations.