HRINZ Academic eList

June 2007 Edition

Welcome to our first newsletter for New Zealand’s tertiary educators of HR management and related topics!

What’s the newsletter about?

First up, I’d like to explain what the newsletter is about. It’s a quick update for you about what the Human Resources Institute of New Zealand (HRINZ) is doing that may be of interest to you, and provides an opportunity for you to respond with feedback to us. We intend sending a newsletter whenever we have ideas to share with you – perhaps three or four times a year.

You do not need to be a member of HRINZ to receive it. Please forward the newsletter to any colleagues who may be interested. (See below for how to join or remove yourself from the Academic eList.)

We want to help bridge perceived gaps…

For many years, there has been lament about the (perceived) gap, or even disconnect, between HR academics and practitioners. We are keen to do what we can to facilitate communication, and ensure practitioners have access to the latest thinking from our tertiary institutions.

As such we have several tools to help, including these three, which are specifically relevant for the tertiary sector:

1. Research and Publication Fund

This fund encourages, supports and provides actual financial assistance for research relevant to human resource management and development in New Zealand. There are not endless supplies of money, but we have had surprisingly few applications recently. We are thinking it is because not enough people know about it!

The Research and Publications Sub Committee of Board (R&P Sub Committee) reviews the applications and makes the funding decisions. Current members of the R&P Sub Committee can be found on the HRINZ website: http://www.hrinz.org.nz/Site/About/HRINZ_People/national_committees.aspx

There is no prescribed format for applications, although guidance on what HRINZ’s Research and Publication Sub Committee of Board is looking for can be found on our website: http://www.hrinz.org.nz/Site/HR_Info/research_and_publication.aspx

2. New Zealand Journal of Human Resource Management (NZJHRM)

Have you heard of this? No, we thought not! A survey earlier this year indicated that few members knew about our electronic Journal. We started to think that tertiary educators may not know about it either! We are working to rejuvenate information and knowledge about the Journal and have been making decisions to refresh our approach.

The Journal is a refereed electronic publication, which can be located under the “HR Info” tab on the HRINZ website: http://www.humanresources.co.nz Information about submitting articles is available on the site.

We have decided to have a special issue of the Journal this year, with the theme of Innovation@Work. This is the same topic as the national conference being held in September. Articles will be published shortly after the conference. Our aim is to build practitioner enthusiasm for the topic at the conference and follow this up with some meaty research-based work.

I encourage you to consider your current research projects in light of this theme. To submit an article, email your contribution to researcher@hrinz.org.nz.

Your Students - the Future HR Practitioners

We are well aware that you are training our future HR practitioners. We would welcome receiving information about the numbers of students you have in your HR courses and programmes. This will provide us with information on the size of the student market, how to best engage with them, and track how many stay within the HR professional after tertiary education. Project and funding decisions may be made based on these numbers. Please forward this information to Kelly.Shea@hrinz.org.nz .

Remember to let your students know about student membership of HRINZ. It’s great value at our current subscription rate of $64.69 (GST incl)!

Your Ideas Please

We would welcome hearing your ideas about what we can do to help our members with HR knowledge. Please email Kelly.Shea@hrinz.org.nz with your suggestions.

Future Issues

As well as discussing the ideas you send to us, in future issues we will be able to let you know about these developments at the Institute:

The new HR competencies – After comprehensive analysis, these NZ-based but internationally benchmarked competencies are due to be released later this year
The Student Ambassador programme
And more…

So watch this space!

Please do email your suggestions. We’re keen to hear from you.

Warm regards
Kris Cooper, AFHRINZ
Vice President
Chair, Research and Publications Sub Committee