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.

Last week we held the HRINZ National Conference, themed ‘Workplace Culture in a Tiny Country’ and I’m not sure if it was the theme, the great speakers or the wonderful people at HRINZ, but I loved every minute of it from start to finish. When I put the concept together back in February, selected the speakers in March and started working on the logistics and all the side events with the team, I was pleasantly surprised to realise I was actually having fun. The staff at HRINZ who did the bulk of the logistics hadn’t worked together on our national conference before (we’ve had a lot of new staff this year), but we were very fortunate to have our Lysa manage the Expo from Christchurch with her usual eye for detail, professionalism and incredibly high standards so that freed the rest of us up to concentrate on the conference, with regular phone calls and visits from Lysa to ensure the two events dove-tailed into the slickest three days of HR information ever.

Looking back, it was a pretty ambitious undertaking really, given the circumstances. It was scheduled three weeks earlier than usual thanks to the 2012 Rugby World Cup that New Zealand is hosting, and on different days of the week than usual; we had a new conference team at HRINZ (I was the only one in the conference team who had worked on our previous national conferences); a new PCO (professional conference organiser), Amy (who had arrived from Scotland just a few weeks before we started our prep), and a new PCO company, Conferences and Events; a new MC, Ginette McDonald; a new National President at HRINZ, Catherine Taylor; and a new Platinum Sponsor, Mt Eliza Executive Education.

When we saw the branding Amanda (our external designer) had created for the conference everything seemed to instantly fall into place. Kelsi was quick to pick up on the ‘kiwiana’ flavour for our HRINZ expo stand and in the design of our ‘pohutukawa’ costumes, and had us all happily working away on regular ‘craft’ sessions when we weren’t foraging amongst our family and friends for props for our stand.

By the time we got to the actual conference we were very relaxed. The registration numbers were the best they’d been for years, some side-events had been fully subscribed within days of being offered (for example the Big Day Out, held at the Roxy Cinema where we learned a lot about Weta Digital was snapped up in record time, though that was hardly surprising), the expo stands had sold out months earlier, the conference and expo sponsors had all embraced the theme and worked really hard to support us, and even the weather Gods smiled down on us for the duration of the three days.

Only two things remained unknown – the sessions and the audience – though we’d done a lot of research on both but the chemistry between the two is always a variable ingredient and can go either way. If we’d had any doubts, within minutes of the conference opening they were allayed. The combination of excellent presentation skills and a depth of knowledge, intellect, wisdom and expertise were immediately apparent with our opening keynote speaker, Professor Ian Williamson, and continued with every subsequent keynote speaker throughout the three days (I didn’t have time to attend the concurrent workshop sessions unfortunately but I understand these were pretty well received too).

The audience was the best I’ve ever had the privilege of being part of. From the very beginning they embraced the humour, the kiwi ‘culture cringe’ we’d identified as unique, special and wonderful, and the diversity, tolerance and support we’ve come to accept as the norm in most of our workplaces. But best of all was the audience’s ability to shun the overdose of political correctness that so often gets in the way of us being honest, open and forthright. I think the grown-up ‘Lynne of Tawa’ set the expectation from the beginning which was followed at every opportunity by the very quick quips expertly delivered by our very polished MC, who relished being in her natural, down to earth state.

When you have your opening keynote speaker being described by the delegates as “hot” and “O for awesome” with his own instant fan club apparent from the moment he started talking; when you can have a tongue-in-cheek debate about a pretty serious topic where the winners should have been the losers (yes the ‘L’ word was used without repercussions or recriminations) and the debate moderator makes the rules without the usual constraints of consultation and the need to keep everyone happy; when the questions from the audience are authentic and well thought through rather than the ego-centric statements that have become the norm at many other conferences; when the audience is genuinely interested in engaging with the sponsors; and when complex concepts are broken down into bites that everyone can relate to and understand and discuss at every opportunity, you know you’ve made it.

Visitors to the expo who brushed shoulders with the delegates remarked about the atmosphere that was almost physical. The buzz was extraordinary – the laughter, the sharing and the overall mood for the three days was just amazing. Adding in all the social functions and networking opportunities that HRINZ conferences are famous for meant that this conference and expo was our best ever, but I think if there had been no social activities offered the atmosphere would have still been as good – the delegates were high on being part of something so much bigger than they’d ever been before at a HRINZ conference. I’ve never known such a participatory audience who thrived on contributing to the overall success in such a generous manner.

And personally I’ve never had so much fun on any project or enjoyed a HRINZ event so much – I was actually sad to see it end but the good news is that I believe we’ve come of age when it comes to accepting all that’s good about our workplace culture in a tiny country, not to mention what’s possible at a HRINZ National Conference! I’m already plotting and scheming how we can present an even better one next year.

Beverley Main – HRINZ CEO

Check out the photos on our Conference Website

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.

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.

Well this week his luck ran out over comments made to our Prime Minister about the type of Governor General we should be seeking when the current GG’s term ends, and a record number of complaints were received which culminated in his resignation while on two weeks suspension without pay.  The irony is that it was only a couple of weeks ago that Henry received the accolade of top presenter at the Qantas Television and Broadcasting Awards – he was everyone’s hero then.

Now while I’m not going to comment on what was actually said this whole issue deeply disturbs me but for an entirely different reason to the ones baying for Henry’s blood.

The main thrust of the argument about Henry’s comments related to him asking John Key if he intends to replace the Governor General with someone who looks and sounds like a New Zealander, referring to the fact that Sir Anand Satyanand is of Indian ethnicity, though born and raised in New Zealand.  In Henry’s initial defence a spokesperson from TVNZ said that Henry was only verbalising what many New Zealanders were thinking and this almost became a second issue in itself until it was dumbed down by TVNZ.

In my day job I come across a disappointing amount of examples of racial discrimination in the recruitment and selection of immigrants, particularly from the Indian, Asian and African continents.  If you look at the number of agencies that have been set up to assist immigrants to settle (and I’m not talking about low-skilled refuges with complex problems, but those with good tertiary education and vast international work experience) you’d be right in thinking that these people need help to find work and perhaps a place in New Zealand society.

The amount of research undertaken to try to understand why immigrants languish without permanent work for months, and sometimes years, after arriving here also spells out there is an issue that many immigrants face, especially those that don’t look and sound like your average Kiwi – some find it really hard to get an interview, far less a job offer.

It can’t be caused by their education (most of them are better educated than the average Kiwi) or their lack of experience (most of them have worked in a range of well-known global organisations and often in several countries), so what is it?  Is it that recruiters, HR and line managers are looking for an easy ‘fit’ where all their staff will look and sound like New Zealanders?  Or is this a gross generalisation?

What really annoys me about the Paul Henry debacle is that we’re quick to castigate someone who offends our sense of fairness or equality yet we condone the silent discrimination that many new New Zealanders face on a daily basis.  As a nation we need to get real and stop these double standard instead of sacrificing someone who is at least honest in his opinions, even the misguided or blatantly stupid ones.  At least he has the courage to say what’s on his mind.  As the old biblical saying goes – let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

I didn’t raise this to make you envious, honest, but to explain my absence from the ether, and to justify all the emails I won’t be responding to, the meetings I won’t be attending and the phone calls I won’t be returning. And that takes me onto the point of this blog.

When we go on holiday we usually spend months preparing and planning – itineraries, travel and accommodation arrangements, what to pack, what to do when we’re there, how much money we’ll need, travel insurance, shots if we’re going somewhere exotic or undeveloped – the list goes on and on and as we get closer to the day of departure we turn our minds to planning for our absence from our place of employment. Clearing all the work that’s been piling up on our desks, arranging for colleagues to cover for us, finishing tasks, putting what we can on hold and trying to second guess anything that might unexpectedly crop up while we’re gallivanting around the countryside or planet.

Research around the effects of taking holidays has been undertaken a lot over the years and the outcomes are always the same – take a break, get sick, come back feeling worse than when you went on leave as you now have resentment to deal with as well. The recommendation is that employees should take at least one two week holiday each year (rather than using their leave up in a day here and a day there), so that you get at least one week of pleasure out of the two weeks taken. Many organisations will close over the Christmas period which enforces this strategy, and as much as some employees might grumble about having to take leave when they don’t want to it usually results in a fresher workforce in the new year when they return.

If your job is already pretty demanding and full-on preparing for a holiday, especially for a reasonably long period of time, will certainly tax you and will add stress to your already super-busy life. The reason you’re going on holiday is most likely because you are tired, run-down and in need of a break, so all the work involved in actually getting away will be adding to an already hectic schedule. If you work for a small business it will be even worse as there will be less people available to cover for you and fewer resources to enlist while you’re away.

Of course there is a positive side to this – you’ll find your productivity will lift (even if it’s temporary) and you’ll get rid of all those things you’ve been procrastinating about, so there’s always a silver lining.

Assuming you manage to survive on about half the sleep you normally get as you prepare for your holiday (which of course is never enough in the first place) and actually make it out of the office or wherever you earn your crust, there’s a really high chance that you’ll get sick as soon as you roll out your beach towel or step off the plane. The adrenalin you’ve been living on for months will recede as you slow down your frantic pace and your body will slip into its shut-down cycle in order for it to recharge its batteries and replenish your energy. You’ll likely spend the first week of your holiday with a dreadful cold, or some such other nasty, which will start to abate just as you board the plane or climb into your car for the journey home.

When you do get back to the workplace, unless you work on an assembly line or similar, chances are that there will be an even bigger pile of work and demands waiting for your attention than when you left.

One way to get around this is to take your Blackberry, iPhone or laptop on holiday and stay up-to-date by clearing emails and taking and returning calls throughout your break. Be warned though, the price of doing this can be very high – your holiday companion (partner, spouse, friend, family) will likely throw a wobbly, or worse, throw your phone or laptop into the nearest swimming pool, and of course you won’t have been able to have a break from whatever it was that was tiring you at work in the first place.

So there remains just one solution. Don’t have a holiday in the first place – it just isn’t worth it! Unless of course you can take an extended break and know you’re leaving your workplace commitments in good hands as I am. Thanks HRINZ National Office!

Earlier this year I succumbed to the pressure of adopting social media and social networking as an added strategy for HRINZ to reach its members and the HR community, and if you knew me you’d know I don’t do anything by halves, so as soon as the decision was made I embraced the whole blog, twitter, facebook scenario with a great passion – I’d been a member of Linkedin for years but that didn’t really count as something ‘out there’ as I could get my head around the concept so I didn’t think that was very tricky really. Being long-winded in my general communication style I quickly off-loaded tweeting on Twitter to my off-sider, Keri. I mean really, what can you say in 140 characters when you’re used to speaking in volumes? Facebook seemed to be more the domain of the young ones in our office (who did exciting stuff on the weekends and could actually still remember what they did by Monday morning), so that just left blogging.

I went to school to write stories, unlike some of my friends who went mainly just to eat their lunch or socialise with the cute boys on the top field. Writing stories at school was the thing I loved the most and I’d planned to make writing a career when I finished my studies but I never quite got there. I’ve written one book – well a training manual really which probably doesn’t count – and I’ve nearly finished my second epic – a business book that’s six chapters short of being ready for publishing (watch this space!) so when our social media strategy was being created I was happy to be tasked with writing a blog post every week, as it goes some way towards fulfilling my dream of writing for a living. I even get to come up with the topics that interest me – how cool is that?

So this is about my 16^th or 17^th blog post and I’m still enjoying being creative and most weeks I can find something that interests me enough to tap away on my lap top, often through into the middle of the night. But being the type of person that I am, I have a fear that I may be writing rubbish. My generation needs feedback too – I need to know that I’m not alone in my observations or opinions, and even better I’d love someone to challenge me on the stuff I write as I love a good scrap every so often. I know from the traffic logs that we keep that a few people do read my blog posts and occasionally one will be picked up in someone’s Tweet or on another blog or news site somewhere. This is really exciting for me as it reassures me that my HR blog posts are not just going into some big black hole somewhere, never to see the light of day. It also provides the proof I need that social media or social networking is actually a legitimate means of communication with a wider audience and is therefore worth investing in.

In early September HRINZ will be holding its annual conference (themed ‘Restoring the Trust’) and as part of our strategy to engage our membership we’re going to use various forms of this new media to reach them, and one of the ways we plan to do this is to add a new statement to our website each day starting with the words “Trust us…” and finishing with some words that might be true or might not be, a little like the Tui ‘yeah right’ billboards. We’ll be using a poll to see if our website visitors agree or disagree with our statement. Maybe then I’ll get the reassurance I seek that there is someone out there. Or not. And if the results show that no-one is interested in reading what I’ve got to say, far less responding to it, then I’ll know that blogging is not for me and I’ll quietly retreat to lick my wounds and find another outlet for my creative streak. Macramé maybe?

Am I alone in my deep seated fear that new technology uptake for those in my generation might have ended with fax machines and microwaves? Please tell me I’m wrong. Anyone?