HRevolution: We are the Future of HR

Last weekend, I attended HRevolution with 49 of my closest virtual friends. This was a unconference and was unlike any that I have ever attended. I was more than little nervous when there was no agenda, timeline, or "official" communication about the conference, just an email about a tweet up at 7 pm on Friday and the conference from 8-5 on Saturday. It went against everything that I was taught in college and had done as a practitioner in my career.

I pretty quickly got past my controlling, scheduling, planning and borderline OCD personality quirks (can you say Happy Hour?) and was able to enjoy myself and meet my virtual friends. The conference sessions were great, actually seeing the online conversations about HR is not dead, The Future of HR and Transactional vs. Transformational HR come to life with passionate voices.

Like many others who attended, I left feeling like something was missing - action steps about what I was going to add, change or stop doing because of this event. I blamed this on my formal training background again, but was glad to see so many posts saying the same thing (here, here and here to share just a few).

After a 2 hour ride home with @PeninaSachs and a few days to ponder, I think that my biggest take away is that We are the future of HR.

• The HR that we are practicing is not dead - there will always be a need for people who transform organizations.
• The HR that we are practicing can be transactional and transformation because it is based upon business need. We realize that we must limit transactional duties so that we can work on transformational initiatives, but the basic HR functions need to be done right the first time in order to establish credibility with your stakeholders.
• The HR that we are practicing is evolving and includes social media and technology. Why? Because it connects people to people and we need to understand the tool before we can leverage it for our business.

I've tried to keep in close contact with people in HR (and recruiting) who are, like me, different than the HR stereotype because I haven't met very many of them. We share ideas, resources, struggles, successes and a much deserved drink every now and then. Thanks to HRevolution, I have doubled my network of forward-thinking, passionate HR professionals and look forward to the conversations that will continue to push our industry forward.