HR Space Official Blog

"HR-Only", employees and naughty suppliers in HR Space

Rob Moss — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 07:19:00 GMT

A few light ales were enjoyed by myself and colleagues at the end of last week to celebrate the successful launch of HR Space.

We're really pleased with the progress so far so thanks particularly to our early-bird members for your continued participation. We're already attracting more than one new member every hour and we've barely started promoting the site.

A quick update on the trio of groups in the title of this blog post...

"HR-Only"

The "HR-Only" forums will be opened up next week, once we've reached a critical mass of interest. We've had lots of requests to enter already but we're keen to make the new area busy enough so that your queries get answered.

If you haven't requested access yet please email hrspace@rbi.co.uk with your full job and contact details. Once we've verified that you are an HR practitioner we will allow you access to the HR-Only forums, forums that you will otherwise be oblivious to you because they only appear in HR Space if your sign-in details allow you access.

Note, we can only give you access to the HR-Only forums if you're already an HR Space member so join before you email us.

Employees

Anyone using our old networking forum will know that it was often frequented by employees with HR-related queries: is it legal for my employer to....? how much OML do I get if...? and so on.

We conducted research earlier this year that found that some HR people like it and some don't. So, we've decided to give employees an area specifically for these types of queries. Anyone can access it. Some HR practitioners enjoy offering some advice, others prefer not to - the choice is yours.

Naughty suppliers

Suppliers to the HR industry are some of the most knowledgeable people in their chosen field, and we value their input to the forum. However on Monday I had to give the first "formal warning" in HR Space to one supplier who chose to use HR Space to simply advertise his product and nothing else. His post was deleted and if he does it again he risks being banned from the site.

If you're a supplier please use the forum considerately. HR professionals come here to network, to seek advice and to discuss issues, and not to be sold to. Please consult the Rules of HR Space if you are unsure.

That's all for now, back later.

Rob.

Community spirit live and well in HR Space

Rob Moss — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 08:42:00 GMT

Well folks, this is it, the big day. Today, HR Space officially launches. We are no longer in "beta"and I know longer have to get my head around exactly what that means.

Some of you may of noticed my column on the Editors' blog yesterday (also the leader in today's issue of the magazine). If you didn't, have a look at Community Spirit is live and well in HR Space.

So what does today's launch entail? Today we will turn on the system that allows reader of our latest HR news to comment on articles using HR Space.We will turn off the code in HR Space that stops Google having a good look. And we'll start link to HR Space much more from the main PersonnelToday.com website.

So far we have 142 users who have contributed to 268 threads and 317 posts, not to mention hundreds of people simply having a look round.

Thanks to all those who have helped test HR Space over the past month and for the valuable feedback we've received.

all the best

Rob

Calling all bloggers!

Rob Moss — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 08:10:00 GMT

As well as its increasingly busy forums, HR Space gives all its members the opportunity to try their hand at blogging.

As soon as you join you can start blogging. One of early members, Mags (who hasn't been around for a while, presumably enjoying the sunshine abroad or a keen Olympics fan) did just that although, as you'll see she's less than sure that she wants a blog!

What's more if you have a blog already, HR Space can "mirror" your blog! To do this simply join HR Space and contact me with the URL of the blog you want to mirror. Only the first 200 characters will appear on HR Space so you can be sure that it's only going to add to your traffic, not take away.

On another note I can advise you that HR Space will be down for 2-3 minutes on Tuesday 26 August. I will update when I know exactly when!

Enjoy the bank holiday....

One small step closer to the launch of HR Space...

Rob Moss — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:17:00 GMT

If you're reading this then you'll forgive me for suggesting that we haven't launched yet, but we haven't, we're "in beta".

While it's here, it's working and there are real discussions taking place, we haven't told the wider HR world world where to find it yet. You, along with a few others, will have recently received an email inviting you along to a sneak preview of HR Space.

So what's left to do. Well, at the moment, Google and the other search engines can't 'see' HR Space, and we haven't quite completed the integration with the main Personnel Today website. Once complete, discussion of articles on PersonnelToday.com will automatically take place in HR Space.

So what's happening to the old networking forum? Well we're leaving that where it is. It's a pretty useful resource to find answers to old questions, but eventually we're going to make it read-only. If you try to post there you'll be redirected to HR Space.

It's early days, so please be patient. Let me know of any annoying things we've done in the design and we'll try our best to find the best solution.

Feel free to email me at rob.moss@rbi.co.uk

Opening Ceremony passes without incident

Rob Moss — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 13:29:00 GMT

Billions of people around the world watched in awe...

Okay, it wasn't quite on an Olympic scale but then we've been preparing for this for some time now so it was pretty satisfying that our mini-launch yesterday passed without any hiccup.

HR Space began about a month ago with a handful of members hand-selected from the HR community.

We've been ironing out a few bugs since then until yesterday when we sent out our first email invite en masse.

Again it was still a fairly a small group of people who had kindly agreed to help us out during this "beta" phase as we call it.

Early next week another email goes out, this time to about a thousand, so I envisage things getting a little busier next week.

So far we have 71 members, 149 threads and 181 posts.

Let the games begin...