From the HRINZ National President

The New Zealand Human Resources profession gathers once a year to celebrate excellence in HR and acknowledge the impact of that excellence in our workplaces.  The 2018 NZ HR Awards on 22 February was an evening when we did that in style at Sky City as we recognised so many excellent initiatives and inspiring people who have made a real impact on the organisations they work with and a meaningful difference to the lives of the people who work in them.  Why couldn't everyone attend I hear you say?  For the simple fact that tickets to the dinner were SOLD OUT.  2017 was a hard act to follow but the 2018 awards surpassed even last year's awards.  With just under 400 tickets sold for this night of nights, our events team reviewed the floor plan to see if they could squeeze in an extra chair or two but sadly we couldn't find room for everyone, hence the waitlist. I think the message here has to be book early for 2019!

While HRINZ was delighted and very proud to host such a prestigious evening, the real success came from the extremely high calibre of submissions the HR Awards judges had the pleasure of judging.  The 16 Awards that were presented on the evening were innovative, inspiring and in some cases, world class, so the judging process was made much more difficult given the quality of the initiatives and the strength of the submissions. While winning is a wonderful achievement our finalists can also be truly proud of being awarded this category.

You will see more detail about the Awards later in the issue but HRINZ would sincerely like to thank Human Synergistics as our principal sponsor of the evening as well as our other generous sponsors. We appreciate your support enormously.  We would also like to acknowledge the tireless contribution over many hours by our judging panel for these awards. Thank you so much to everyone who submitted an award, our finalists and of course our winners on the evening as well as everyone who attended the evening to share the excitement and the success. It really was a superb night and feedback we have received is that people left the evening feeling inspired and energised.

While the fanfare of the Awards reverberates across NZ workplaces after the Awards, it follows that it is critical for the future of the HR profession that the skillset required to be an outstanding HR professional is also recognised across NZ. The HRINZ Board have spent the last two years working on the concept of chartered membership for the HR profession in NZ, and as the Board sponsor for this project I would like to acknowledge the invaluable contribution of over 100 HIRNZ members across the country who have unstintingly and generously given their time, energy and brainpower to this project over six workstreams. This has been an enormous milestone project for the Institute and we are incredibly proud of what the team of HR professionals (at all of levels of experience) and senior academics have achieved along the way, all in a volunteer capacity. Thank you all, too numerous to mention here,  - we just could not have done this without your tremendous contribution.

We are launching continuing professional development (CPD) on 1 April and we are continuing to drive effort, resources and best of class thinking to develop an assessment process that allows easy application and adoption so that our members can be easily recognised for the level of professionalism they bring to their workplaces every day, supported by a level of professional development which leads the way for the future of the HR profession in NZ.  We have been delighted with the level of interest and enthusiasm shown by our members and confidently envision the time where chartered membership of HRINZ is a no brainer for our members and the organisations who employ them, realising the importance of life- long learning.

If you haven't explored Chartered membership yet, I encourage you to do so.  You may or may not be ready for it - but providing yourself with the direction, understanding and opportunity to thrive in tomorrow's future, here today, is critical for your career success.