Follow Up–Practioner’s Criticism into SHRM’s Blog Squad
| By Jessica Miller-Merrell | HR
The SHRM 2010 annual conference is in the books. I think that by any measure it would be rated as highly successful. Prior to the conference I had a guest post, Practioner’s Criticism into SHRM’s Blog Squad. My thanks to Jessica for giving me the space to share my opinion; I was honored to do so. In the post, I questioned the wisdom of the make-up of the SHRM blog squad, chosen by the powers that be at SHRM. My comments centered around this, there were not enough Human Resource Generalist in the group. While I still think that is the case, I must commend the SHRM blog squad they did a GREAT JOB! All of the bloggers provided a real flavor of the event, pretty much in real-time. I haven’t read all of the posts yet but hope to do so.
Practioner’s Criticism into SHRM’s Blog Squad
In an attempt to support my position, I contacted SHRM to get some demographic data on the organization. It took several days for them to get back to me but now I finally have the information I needed to support my case. Direct from SHRM HQ, generalist make up a large majority of members at a whopping 52%.
After looking at this data, it would almost appear that they should have had more women blogging as well as women make up 77% of membership. Us HR pros have to hit our demographic numbers all the time, right? If so inclined I guess you could dissect this data in many different ways to get it to support many different arguments.
So one more time, a big thanks to the SHRM Blog Squad, and all of the conference bloggers for a job well done!
Guest blogger on Blogging4Jobs is Dave Ryan has been in HR since it was called Personnel. Dave is active with SHRM in many different aspects. Dave is also a certified U.S.A. Hockey Official and a frequent speaker at local colleges who speaks about H.R. topics and social media in the workplace. Dave enjoys reading blogs, staying current on H.R. topics, officiating ice hockey, golf, computers and all gadgets electronic. You can find Dave on LinkedInDavetheHRCzar. and on twitter, @davethehrczar.
I always find the SHRM membership demographics interesting so, as a note to Dave, I’m glad you followed-up and got the numbers.
I agree – the Blog Squad did a fantastic job and I was very pleased to see SHRM incorporating them into the conference.
Dave,
Thanks for the follow-up.
The issue becomes a matter of sample size….there were only 5 bloggers. How should the make-up of the blog squad been representative of the group? If we break it down based on the demographics, there should have been 2.5 generalists as bloggers (there was only 1). Would one or two more generalists have changed the tone or content of the blogging? Similarly, there should have been 3.85 women bloggers (there were 3). Would the addition of one additional female change the content and tone of the blogging?
Matt
Thanks for the comments, Robin & Matt. I wanted to share what I learned from SHRM. It was disappointing that it took a week to get that information.
I am working to get some bloggers at the ILSHRM Conference, I had better to my best to keep it as diverse as possible and reprentative of our state!
Hey Matt has it right. There was also over-representation of Twitterati on the Blog Squad. The Squad had 80% tweeters but only about 3% (350) of SHRM10 conference attendees went to the TweetUp! I demand an exact stratified sample of Squad members next time in Vegas, with just 0.15 of a member being a tweeter, to set these things straight….
Or we can all just relax….hmmm, tough choice.
David (joining Twitter for an occasional tweet after reading Jessica’s great book)