Hello from the Career Development Manager

Hi ya,  my name is Debbie Bridge and I work for HRINZ as the HR Careers & Education Manager.

I have been working for the Institute coming up to three years in July (wow)! Before that  I  worked in various HR Departments for private and public organisations in the UK and New Zealand which include:  Her Majesty’s Prison Service (HMPS), UPL, Alcatel Lucent and Department of Labour.  So, as you have guessed, I am not a born and bred kiwi but moved from Wales, the ‘land of song’ to New Zealand the ‘land of the long white cloud’. I love living and working here and the transition has been an easy one as you’re all mad rugby fans too!

 Like many HR professionals I moved  into HR from a business management background.

I believe having an HR and business background,  has helped me enormously with my role as I can easily understand and relate to our members issues, wants and needs as a HR professional. So I hear you say Careers & Education Manager that is a pretty fancy title, but what does it mean?

Well, to summarise I am the person you need to contact if you are interested in getting into HR  or need  some career or educational advice.

I can point you in the right direction concerning HR courses, career development programmes such as the Mentoring Programme, Career Log and our Professional Accreditation process. 

However, the responsibilities don’t just end there,  I also manage the HRINZ Knowledge Base, Mentoring Programme, Job Board, write our HR Best Practice Guides, manage three  of our sub committees, answer all manner of HR enquires for our members (due to my previous life as an HR Advisor) and in my spare time, for fun, write HRINZ political submissions (lol)! So,  it is a pretty varied and busy role.

 After experiencing a very snowy Christmas in Wales, I came back this year to hit the ground running, as I have been busy working on our new Academic Grading Panel  with the Academic Branch President, Peter Boxall.  We are very excited that HRINZ will shortly be able to accredit professional academic members.  See Professional Accreditation.  

I have also been working with our Editor of the New Zealand Journal of Human Resource Management (NZJHRM) to launch our first “General Human Resource Issue for 2010”  which covers HR  issues such as: Recruiting an aging workforce, Workplace Mobbing and Understanding HR policy and practice at a strategic level. This issue contains some fabulous information on a wide range of HR issues, so why not check them out by visiting our online journal at www.nzjhrm.co.nz .

Oops I almost forgot, over the last few weeks I have been learning how to blog for HRINZ which is all very exciting and new for me, so please be nice as this is my first attempt!

 If you have any questions or comments about our journal, academic branch or just HR related ones, I would love to hear from you.
Otherwise I look forward to blogging again soon!

Debbie