SHRM, you make me laugh. I see emails coming in from you on a weekly basis with offers for discounts, free totes, and more. The value of membership? It’s there. Let’s focus on that.

See, I’ve been a Society for Human Resources Management member since August 2010. Why did I join? Well, it wasn’t for a reason most people end up joining SHRM. I didn’t sign up for the white papers, the templates, the webcasts, or even the discounts on attending their events.

I signed up to volunteer.

Chuck Salvetti, the manager of the student and YP programs at SHRM, reached out to me last summer to see if I would be interested in being the chairman of the SHRM Young Professional Advisory Council. I leaped at the chance, but the caveat was that I had to be a member in order to volunteer on the committee. So, grudgingly, I signed up.

I’m so glad I did.

Since then, I’ve been more than confident that it was the right decision for me. Not only have I had the opportunity to participate in some great discussions that will shape the focus of the SHRM YP program, but I’ve also started using the tools that the organization provides. Last November, just a few short months after becoming a member, I took on a new HR role in a startup company. Suddenly I needed those webcasts, white papers, and templates to do my job on a daily basis.

I still tell people to join local SHRM chapters for the community/connections and the national SHRM for the content. However, after seeing the work they are doing with SHRM Connect, I could be recommending national membership for building connections if they can get the tool cleaned up and re-released.

Bottom line: SHRM is doing some great things in both traditional HR spaces and in social media. If you are not a member, I highly encourage you to give it a hard look. If you are where I was a year ago and membership doesn’t make sense for you, then pay your local dues and help them rock their chapter. There’s a role out there for everyone. It’s up to you to find yours and fill it.

Thank you to SHRM for sponsoring HRevolution!

Recently I had the opportunity to visit Washington D.C. to work with the Society for Human Resources Management and a great team of individual contributors on SHRM’s social media tool, SHRM Connect. While some of us have criticized SHRM for moving slowly at times, it looks like they are making great strides on this project.

Check out the video below for more information.

In November I released the free Rock Your Chapter guide to the public. The intent was to create something to help local chapters and state councils to attract, retain, and engage their members. Since then, the guide has been downloaded over 200 times! I just want to thank everyone for their support and ask that you continue to share this tool. Many chapters have a change in leadership with the new calendar year, and this would be a great way to get a jump start on new ideas for 2011.

Rave reviews

I’ve also had a lot of great reviews/testimonials from the volunteer leader community. It’s amazing to get the support from everyone that I have received. A quick sample:

Ben hits the nail on the head. “Rock Your Chapter” rocks!!
Posted by Lori Goldsmith, SPHR, GPHR

Thanks for putting your ideas on paper and working to make us all better.
(Cincinnati HR) Posted by Julie Johnson

This is great stuff! I will share with the Guam and Saipan chapters and let you know the results. Thank you for taking the time to put this together.
Posted by Katherine Gillespie Dote

Nicely done. Finally had a chance to download and read. Will happily pass along to others as well!
Posted by Bradley Galin, SPHR

Great book Ben. I printed it, read it and have sent links to my Chapter Board Members. I also posted a link on both the Georgia SHRM State Council LinkedIn Group and the Georgia SHRMState Council Membership LinkedIn Group!
Posted by Kevin Smith, SPHR

Can you help?

I love giving these things away for free. The best part for me is knowing that it’s helping a person somewhere that I don’t even know, simply because someone like you shared it with them. Here are a few ways you can help me (and other chapters in your area):

• Send an email to your local and/or state board with the link to this page
• Share the link on twitter
• Post it on your local chapter or state council Facebook page or LinkedIn group
• Tell other volunteers you know about how much you enjoyed it (assuming you did!)
• Tell me about how it helped you so I can make the next one better

Thanks for the support, everyone! Click here if you want to download the guide or see the reviews.

I’m not sure how many of you knew it, but I have the honor of serving as the chairman for the SHRM YP committee. Not sure what that is? Well, the video below will clue you in. I talk about some of the things the Society for Human Resource Management is doing to target young professionals and a few reasons why it’s a hot button issue for me.

This week is going to be a busy one for me, so I’m considering a full week of videos. I recorded a handful while I was out of town last week, and if I can pull them together, you can listen/watch instead of read this week. Enjoy!

Email subscribers need to click through to see the video below. Continue Reading »

There was a great panel this morning at the SHRM Leadership Conference about some of the “hot” HR issues, including Diversity and Inclusion, Workplace Flexibility, and Social Media. Check out the short video below where I talk about some of the interesting quotes I heard.

(When I tested the video, it played without the lag between the visual and the audio. But them someone told me it was showing weird for them. Sorry about that if it’s broken, but just listen. As always, it’s the content that counts!)

Video Notes:

• Eric Petersen-importance of separating the things  a 20 year old does and the things that make a generation different.
• Lisa Horn-workplace flexibility isn’t just for women. Yeah.
• Curtis Midkiff-Continuing the conversation after a conference is one of the best uses for social media.

Yeah, it’s not exactly what I came here for, but I thought they were interesting enough to share.

What do difficult people, SHRM’s value proposition (or lack thereof), guinea pigs, and enthusiasm have in common? They are all guest posts I’ve done in the past little while! Looks like I’m a little schizophrenic with the varying topics, but each post has its own merits.

I have several guest posts that went live (fairly recently) elsewhere that you may have missed. Some of them might be a bit different flavor than the usual upstartHR offerings, so be sure to check them out! If you’re interested in seeing some of my previous escapades, click here for the Guest Post Blitz archive.

My friend Charlie Judy at HR Fishbowl let me share my thoughts on working with difficult people in this short post: Who needs a class? Get rid of them!

John Jorgenson of the newly christened HR Tailgate blog opened up the discussion by letting me reply to his own SHRM-related post with an article of my own: SHRM, Value, and You

Jessica Miller Merrill at Blogging4Jobs opened up the stage and let me discuss science experiments, rodents, and an billion dollar corporation’s product strategies: Guinea Pigs and Google

Lance Haun over at Rehaul lets me talk about one of my favorite elements of a good candidate: enthusiasm-can it get you hired?

On the NASHRM chapter blog, RocketHR, I discussed good work etiquette and not making a bad impression: termination for bad manners? (don’t miss my funny SlideShare presentation at the bottom!)

And finally, Laurie Ruettimann told me to write something about SHRM and how they can stop doing things poorly, so of course I jumped at the chance: SHRM-3 recommendations from a new member.

Just a little bit of my brain floating around the interwebs these days. Anything in there interesting or enjoyable? What’s your favorite piece?

SHRM has some work to do to catch up on social media, and a while back they hired a guy named Curt Midkiff to make that happen. You may remember me writing about Curtis before (part one and part two). Well, it’s been six months since his first appearance here, and I thought it was time for us to give him a performance review.

What do you think went well this year? What did you accomplish?

When I came to SHRM in April, our team had several initial goals for the balance of the year which were:

1. Enhance our engagement with some of the key “HR voices” in social media.
2. Increase engagement in our Annual Conference via social media.
3. Create some initial beta platforms for engagement via social media.
4. Be a resource for other SHRM departments and leaders looking to engage external audiences via social media.
5. Get Ben Eubanks to become a SHRM member
6. Work with the collaborative social media team here at SHRM to develop a strategic approach to social media.

I think that we achieved some of those in these first six months but there is much more we want to next year!

2. Do you see any areas that need improvement?

Hmmm… Let’s see. Quicker blog posting from my SHRM10 blog squad (my fault guys, we will get all your work up next year in Vegas… ). And maybe we need to enhance our cloning software here at SHRM so I can be at six or seven places at once especially all the great social media conferences going on. But seriously, I think that next year offers a great opportunity for growth in the social media space here at SHRM. We have a number of people here at the headquarters that are integrating it into the work they are doing so collectively you can expect to see some cool things next year.

3. Goals for the Upcoming Year

1. To enhance our external social media platforms. I think we made a good start in these areas but in 2011 we can plan to do more. We will generate more content (videos, blogs, etc.) to give people a fuller picture of the work SHRM is doing as a global organization.
2. Annual Conference 2.0 — We are already working on some interesting things for 2011 to really increase engagement via social media. The feedback we received from the Social Media Lounge, The Blog Squad and TweetUp last year has now set the bar much higher and I think we are up to the challenge. At least from a social media perspective, we want to make sure what happens at Annual Conference in Vegas doesnt just stay in Vegas!
3. Equip our Leaders and Members with Social Media Tools — I think that we will be in a position next year to provide more tools for our Volunteer leaders and our Members which will enable to understand the power and potential of social media. As I mentioned before, we have a great cross-divisional initiative going on here at SHRM that is going to better equip our employees in the social media space which we can then pass along to our leaders and members.
4. Blogapalooza 2011 — We really want to get out there among the members to talk about social media and also listen to some of the best practices happening in the “field”. In my travels this year, I have met SHRM members like yourself (who by the way along with Victorio are doing some great work with #ProjectSocial) who are making some great strides in social media. We can assist as well as learn from these experiences as well. I am headed to Ohio in Dec and some of our other state conferences in 2011 so the tour bus is ready to roll.
5. SHRM11 — As I mentioned before we looked at Annual Conference 2010 as a launch pad for enhanced social media engagement. Since then, we have had a presence at our SHRM Thought Leaders Retreat, SHRM Strategy Conference and our Diversity and Inclusion Conference. You will be happy to know that Annual Conference 2011 will be the next step in that progression. As is everything at SHRM its a team effort, so we are working witn a number of departments here on a social media presence that will build upon last year’s “beta test”. Stay tuned.

Peer reviews (360 feedback)

In an effort to get a well-rounded review for Curtis, I asked a few people to tell me about their own perception of him and the work he’s done so far. I asked for honest feedback, and that’s what I got!

I have met with Curt several times (at SHRM conferences) and found him to be engaging and knowledgeable. The overall impression he gives regarding the possibility of national SHRM adopting social media and encouraging its use is commendable. I still see national SHRM conferences offering sessions that lean more toward the control of employee use of social media platforms, but I do not see this as something that Curt alone can impact.

I would like to see him continue to reach out to HR practitioners in the field who are using sites in their organizations successfully. By sharing those cases with SHRM leadership, he’ll continue to advance the positive image we need. I also recommend having Curt pull together a round table of these same professionals to talk with SHRM leadership about the benefits and how we’ve overcome the concerns of social media use. –Trish McFarlane

Curtis has done the best job he can in his short time with SHRM. He in essence has two bosses, the people at SHRM and the social media HR community. SHRM writes the checks. The challenge lies with SHRM itself and the red tape and seas that Curtis must navigate to help bridge the gap between SHRM and social media.

I would like to see Curtis spending more time engaging and leveraging the social media HR community while also learning more about what it’s like to be a HR practioner. I’d recommend that Curtis spend at minimum four weeks shadowing a typical member and learning about some of the obstacles and issues they face. This will increase his knowledge and credibility among the human resource members he serves. –Jessica Miller-Merrill

As a member and volunteer leader, I was super-pleased when SHRM named Curtis to his position (better late than never, hey SHRM?).  He’s had a lot to accomplish in a short time, but has gamely engaged with his audience of members; an audience which is often clueless, afraid and reluctant    I particularly enjoyed participating in the Curtis-led CLA Membership webinar – “Social Media for Chapters and State Councils.”  Well played Curtis – I hope you can keep it going! –Robin Schooling, SPHR

And that, my friends, is a review! Have any thoughts on the work Curtis is doing? Let’s hear ‘em!