ILSHRM News

Today post is from  Cathy S. Plouzek, PHR ILSHRM Directors– Spring 2013

Hey ya’ll!  Happy Spring …

In my last update, I outlined the direction and vision for ILSHRM for the next couple of years.   Our theme is simple -- ILSHRM is HR people helping HR people.  During our Annual Leadership conference last January, we used this theme to help refine the ILSHRM Purpose, Mission, and Vision –

Purpose
We promote and support the interests, success and needs of our members and the Illinois HR community
Mission:
Lead and serve our members as well as the entire Illinois HR community by providing timely and relevant information, ongoing professional development opportunities, and intra-state communication on issues of interest in the field of human resources.
Vision:
Be the “HR HUB” and unifying voice in Illinois, supporting HR professionals, business leaders, legislators and our communities.

One of the many ways we promote and support the interests, success and needs of our members and the Illinois HR community is to offer and/or support five major conferences throughout the year:

ILSHRM Leadership Conference – January

ILSHRM and CIC-SHRM Legislative Conference – April

SHRM Annual Conference and Exposition – June 16-29, 2013

ILSHRM State Conference – August 18-20, 2013

SHRM Leadership Conference – November 21-23, 2013

The ILSHRM Leadership Conference is our annual conference targeted at the volunteer board members of our ILSHRM Chapters. The focus of this conference is to offer volunteer leaders a chance to network and learn best practices that will help them strengthen the work of their local SHRM Chapter. Each year this conference offers a deeper understanding of how SHRM, the Illinois State Council of SHRM and Chapters support the HR Professional.  

We had over 130 chapter leaders attend ILSHRMLead13 – our largest Leadership Conference to date!  Plans are underway for ILSHRMLead14 and I am very excited to announce that Pamela J. Green, MBA, SPHR – President and Founder at Power Project Institute LLC and Former Vice President/Chief Membership Officer at SHRM will be our keynote speaker.  Check out her promo video and stay tuned for more exciting details.

In the past several years, ILSHRM and CIC-SHRM has teamed up to host an Annual Legislative

Conference in Springfield.  Our focus at this conference is to introduce the importance of advocacy and to educate the attendees on the latest trends and changes in employment law.   As an advocate for the HR community, it is important that we keep our elected officials informed on how public policy issues can affect employees, employers, and the HR profession as a whole.  ILSHRM has a group of dedicated volunteers that work with paid lobbyists to stay abreast of the latest issues that affect HR.  This year about 20 HR Pros traveled to the Illinois State Capitol and dropped off ILSHRM fact sheets to our elected Representatives and their Staff.  

Illinois is excited to host the SHRM Annual Conference and Exposition, June 16-19, in Chicago.  This year’s conference will feature keynote presentations from Fareed Zakaria, Blake Mycoskie, Dan Pink, and Mark Kelly, plus over 200 concurrent sessions and the world's largest HR exposition.  A special thank you goes out to Chicago SHRM … All volunteer positions are filled!

The Illinois HR Conference & Exposition is the annual conference of ILSHRM. Each year the event attracts over 600 human resource professionals and vendors throughout the state of Illinois and across the nation. Programs presented at the conference cover all aspects of the SHRM Body of Knowledge. In addition to multiple educational opportunities, attendees will also be able to network with fellow human resource professionals, check out the latest and greatest services offered by the top human resource vendors and have some fun at our social events.   Check out this video and watch keynote speaker Jason Lauritsen leads us in our first ILSHRM Flashmob.  Join in on the fun – August 18-20, at Drury Lane Dinner Theatre in  Oakbrook Terrace.  Registration is now open. 

HR ROCKS! HR ROCKS! HR ROCKS!

The SHRM Leadership Conference is an event designed to give key SHRM volunteers the opportunity to gain information about their volunteer role, network with peers, share effective practices and challenges across regions, and engage with SHRM staff.  This conference also features Capitol Hill Visits where we have an opportunity to join fellow SHRM volunteer leaders and the SHRM Government Affairs staff for a trip to the US Capitol. 

I hope I’ve given you the information you need to consider joining us at any or all of these conferences.  If

not, please connect with me using the media listed below.  A conference is a great place to learn and meet people.  This is networking in its truest form!  You communicate with people daily on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.  Conferences are where you can actually meet people in real life, put a face to the name, and build your ILSHRM Network.  

Second Year ILSHRM Director’s Goals Update

The fact that my first year as director my "goals" blog post was published 1/7/11 and I am just sitting down to write my second year update on 1/26/12 (finalized on 1/31/12) should tell you something.  Either I am extremely disorganized or we have been very busy here at the Illinois State Council of SHRM (aka @ILSHRM).  Personally, I prefer the latter even though at times I do feel the first reason can and has been true at times.

It has been an awesome year and I am so humbled by the wealth of talent on our board of directors as well as the enthusiasm and hard work they have put forth to make tremendous headway towards our goals.  And by golly they even met and exceeded some of them.  The following is a copy of the 1/7/11 goals list with noted updates (in bold) as well as additions for 2012 which take me through the end of my tenure as Director turning over the reins to Cathy Plouzek, PHR for 2013 & 2014. 

…
 I’d like to share a few goals that I would like our state council to achieve during my two year tenure as Director. I have to admit these goals are prior to my looking at the SHAPE plan (again this years since it just came out). So I am sure it will grow…Our board did meet earlier this month and I am still in the process of meeting with all of our core board so like this list last year, it may change as the year goes on:

1.       WORKFORCE READINESS (SHRM CLA) 100% Chapters signing the ESGR Statement of Support (http://www.esgr.org/); COMPLETED NOVEMBER 2011!  Thanks to MaryJo Martyn and all 20 chapters!  Joe Smedinghoff plans to continue her work by first polling the chapters to see what initiatives are already in place and then building a plan for the entire state.

2.       Membership (SHRM CLA) Build SHRM Affiliate Chapters in the Southern part of the state (working on 3 already); we now have 4 in the works.  Research was completed in 2011 and letters to SHRM members in East Metro, Carbondale, and Mt. Vernon have gone out this week to see if anyone has interest in developing a chapter in those areas.  An additional chapter interest meeting is planned for early February in Matteson, IL.

3.       Government Affairs (SHRM CLA) Increase awareness of ISC-SHRM & SHRM resources among all state legislators (with SHRMs help as one of the 10 states they worked with last year); this is truly more like a five year goal.  We did have at least three chapters invite SHRM to do the Advocacy Program and we are nearing 300 advocates statewide.  We still need a state Advocacy Captain.  I’d also like to see 100% of chapters invite David Lust to their chapter to present the program.  We had our first statehouse visit last April and plan our second March 27^th.  We added a state legislative affairs director to the board on a temporary basis to develop our outreach process and to work directly with the lobbyist firm we hired to watch for HR related bills that we can reach out to legislators about to increase awareness about SHRM members and their needs.  So far this month they found four bills (two of which were shell bills) that had an impact on the HR profession.  Reach 100 attendees at our Annual IL State HR Legislative Conference & Advocacy Day; we did not achieve this goal in 2011 but it is still a goal for 2012.  Watch for registration soon!  I hope to increase the state house attendance by at least 5% over last year’s first every advocacy portion of our legislative event.

4.       Reach 1000 attendees at our annual conference (in Aug at Drury Lane in Oakbrook); this goal was a bit out there since we really don’t have a chance at that number until 2014 (after SHRM national is in Chicago in 2013).  The reason is our current venue can only hold 972 in the auditorium where all the keynotes present.  In 2011 we had 923 totals in the building (which included attendees, speakers, exhibitors, and media).  This year we do plan to sell out early because John Jorgenson is a bang up conference director!  So plan to get your tickets in advance.

5.       100% Chapter participation in the annual Chapter Basket Raffle Fundraiser at State Conference; we were close in 2011 so this is still a goal for 2012.  We did increase our council giving by matching what was raised at this event and plan to continue. 

6.       Develop a formal Succession Plan with the assistance of a Nomination Committee to be appointed; the nomination committee was appointed so the real work will be done in 2012.

7.       Finalize and implement a formal strategic plan started at last year’s Leadership Core Planning meeting; still in process.

8.       Finalize and implement an updated Website; completed in March 2011 – additional improvements are planned for 2012;

9.       Analyze our financial situation and develop a backup plan to sustain our council and support our mission for a year or two in case our income is impacted (primarily our attendance at annual conference).  We did appoint a financial committee and added same as an official standing committee per our bylaws draft yet to be approved by the board.  Both committees will complete goals started in 2011 this year. and

10.   We are still looking at additional ways to improve the overall operations of the council as we have grown significantly in a short time frame.  Council management professionals are being sought to help improve the overall operations of the entire. 

Finally, again this year, I just want to say thank you to all those I have met and worked with along the way and to those I will continue to work with on the board and in the chapters. I am humbled to serve you the rest of this year and want you to know that my virtual door is always open. Call or text me at 217-414-1297, email me at donna@rogershr.com, DM me on twitter @DonnaRogersHR or Skype me at DonnaRogersSPHR.

Last but not least I want to shout out to the world famous Dave Ryan for putting up with me, posting this post so late, and for writing most but posting all 87 blog posts last year.  Wow!!!

- Donna Rogers State Director ISC SHRM