So far, 2014 has been an interesting year in the world of HR, as we turn our attention to expected technology and leadership changes and challenges in the latter stages of the year and into 2015, here’s Sprigg’s latest who’s who of HR’s most influential.

Based on factors such as social influence, PR, speaking engagements and latest posts, here’s our take on the biggest movers shakers and high profile disruptors within HR.

Think we missed someone? Contact us with your suggestions and we could feature them in an upcoming edition of the Sprigg newsletter.

Meghan Biro: CEO of TalentCulture, and a prolific contributor to everything that’s HR, talent management, social media, and workplace-related. Follow her at talentculture.com, @TalentCulture, and @MeghanMBiro.
Adam Chandler: Publishing Editor at HRreview magazine, Adam has been lauded for the fresh branding and entertaining HR content produced by the magazine since he joined the team last year. Get the scoop @hrreview
Cat Carlos: Cat’s the Director of HR Consulting at People Clues, an HR tech advocate, professional, and social media strategist. She’s also a wealth of HR news at @GetHiredbyCat.
Jeff Waldman: Producer of the SocialHRCamp unconference series, Owner of Stratify and well-known HR and social media journalist. Jeff’s star continues to rise in the world of HR and technology. Follow @JeffWaldman
Jilaine Parkes: Sprigg’s very own Jilaine Parkes has a well known voice in performance management and team chartering for over two decades. Jilaine has recently been leading the launch of the latest version of the Sprigg performance management software, speaking at events such as HRPA and offering helpful advise in such titles as Women of HR, HRPA, HRreview, HRM Guide and The HR Director. Follow @JilaineParkes.
Lisa Horn: Lisa’s SHRM’s Director of Congressional Affairs and their Co-Director of Workplace Flexibility. She’s also a wealth of HR knowledge at @SHRMLobbystLisa.
Nicole Bendaly: Author, Consultant, Speaker and leadership and team development guru Nicole is a well known name in Canadian and International HR. Follow @NicoleBendaly
Charlie Judy: Charlie’s “utterly convinced we’re over-engineering the business of HR.” Dust off your slide rule and join the debate at @HRFishbowl.
Sharlyn Lauby: HR professional and consultant, started the friendly “HR Bartender” network. See if she shakes or stirs her martini at @sharlyn_lauby.
Ian Welsh: Possibly the nicest man on Twitter! Ian has a long and rich career in HR and communications. He’s now a freelance HR and employee engagement pro, and writer. We’ve found that @ianclive will always reply with a thanks for retweeting or getting in contact.
Irene Becker: Founder of JustCoachit, architect of the 3Q model, social media celebrity, well known speaker and avid writer, Irene is a respected and well connected figure within leaership, business development and performance management. Follow @JustCoachIt
Mike Prokopeak: As the editorial director for Chief Learning Officer, Diversity Executive, Talent Management, and Workforce magazines, Mike’s got a lot of great HR and internal communications stories to tell. Read along at @MikeProkopeak.
Nisha Raghavan: Nisha is founder of India HR Live, a Drive Thru HR cohost, and she’s an employee engagement expert. Everything’s bigger in Texas—especially great HR ideas. Saddle up at @TheHRbuddy.
Donna Rogers: Donna’s a HR educator, consultant, trainer, and SHRM leader. She also digs Dilbert, so definitely worth the follow at @HRWarrior.
Rachelle Falls: Thought leader, speaker, HR and social media guru, radio talk show host and all round cool HR pro, Rachelle is at the centre of HR conversations. @HRGirl
William Tincup: HR consulting, speaking, software tester, radio host of Drive Thru HR and huge personality on social media, William is at the core of HR conversations in 2014. Check out @williamtincup and @drivethruhr.
Bryan Wempen: Bryan’s the President of ceVoke (a boutique speaker agency specializing in HR), founder of Drive Thru HR, keynote speaker, and a vegan. He’s also a HR leader, follow him at @bryanwempen.
Josh Bersin: HR, Corporate Talent, and Learning Analyst. Founder of Bersin by Deloitte, a leading research and advisory services firm focused on corporate talent management. You can find Josh at bersin.com, and follow Josh at @Josh_Bersin and @Bersin.

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Here’s a handy list of some of our favorite HR resources to help Human Resource professionals and business leaders.

SmartBrief

SmartBrief publishes various B2B newsletters for business owners in specific sectors. Subscriptions are free and they allow you access to a wide variety of content in an easily accessible format. What’s more, you can get lots of help info about partnerships and memberships with NFIB, NAWBO and not-for-profit organisations.

The Department of Labor

Easy to use website covering lots of common questions employers ask. Great resource in understanding roles and responsibilities and keep processes such as employee wages requirements.

Canadian Management Centre

Canadian Management Centre offers a wealth of free online professional development resources, tools and insights to help users grow personal and business strategies. Resources include articles, webcasts, whitepapers, podcasts, templates and self-assessment quizzes. Topics covered include Management, Leadership, Communications, Project Management and HR & Training.

G.Neil

A great HR supply shop for small business and medium businesses. G-Neil are well-known for their 5-in-1 labour law posters as well as a service that will notify you when updates are issued.

Human Resources & Career Information | Entrepreneur.com

A premier business magazine for entrepreneurship since the 1970s, Entrepreneur is a first rate source of analysis and opinion for business leaders and HR. Unique content includes premium and free forms and templates, job descriptions and other human resource management forms.

BenefitsLink.com

BenefitsLink provides employee benefits professionals with latest developments and analysis in plan compliance, administration, policy and design. The website includes active message boards, industry news and an extensive calendar of conferences and webcasts.

Employment Law Information Network

ELIN is a no charge legal resource web site designed for employment lawyers, in-house employment counsel and human resource professionals.A helpful online source of information to allow you to keep pace with the changing landscape of workplace law.

Ask a Manager

This is a superb human resources blogs that offers no-nonsense help and tips. Written by practicing HR pros to help educate and network.

Outsourcing

The Outsourcing magazine is published by Wordlabs Global once in every two months for the niche needs of decision makers in the global services industry. It focuses on bringing quality content to its audience through a global network of highly experienced writers. The magazine reaches out to its audience of over 200,000 globally through comprehensive circulation of hard copies, e-magazine and subsequent digital channels.

Monster.com

Monster.com is considered one of the top job boards out there. Besides being able to post jobs on Monster, companies can save job searches and constantly monitor the site for talent.

This can be very valuable if you have positions you hire for regularly or a job that’s difficult to fill.

Specialized community forums in Sales, Health Care, Marketing, Administrative services will help you can stay on top of industry trends and commentary.

Expatriate Foundation

Established in 2008, the Expatriate Foundation is the first of its kind to reach out to expatriates, scholar practitioners, human resource professionals and internationally minded organizations who share a common bond; one in which education, learning, and the desire for success meet equally for the betterment of all.

Society for Human Resource Management

SHRM is perhaps the most well know professional association for HR in North America. Loads of content – much of it totally free and super helpful.If you don’t mind paying a small fee you can also get articles, white papers, templates, employment legislation, tools and event info.

Your Local Chamber of Commerce

This can be a powerful resource to find meetings and workshops focused on employment challenges and goals.

Contact us to learn more about excellent ways to gain new insights and grow productivity.

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The latest quarterly report from the EY ITEM Club forecasts that unemployment will drop below 7 per cent in the first half of 2014, however, labour market growth is unlikely to alleviate demand for skilled people.

“Despite the labour market increasing by nearly one million people over the last two years, the demand for highly experienced, skilled talent has never been fiercer, particular within construction, high tech, professional and scientific industries which are growing rapidly,” said Stuart Steele, EY’s human capital partner.

He said that in an increasingly global economy, employers are forced to compete for talent with both their domestic and overseas counterparts. The labour market is far more mobile than it was 10 years ago, with employees more willing to change careers and location, putting employers at a disadvantage.

Outlining the challenges for HR professionals, Steele said: “We are seeing some companies building talent strategies that factor in high levels of staff tenure, with the expectation that employees may only stay for three to five years. The challenge for the HR director is to ensure that the organisation gets the best out of their people within their relatively short tenure. In these cases, the quality of the development experiences on offer can become more important, or at least as equally important as the remuneration packages on offer.

“At the other end of the spectrum, we are also seeing some leading organisations establishing partnerships with universities or other learning institutions to secure a pipeline of work ready candidates, with skills that are specific to their industry or even their company. There is a greater level of targeted investment.”

The report also highlights that the labour market is going through a period of major change. With older workers delaying retirement, increases in immigration and cuts to the government’s workforce, EY forecast that the supply of available workers will swell by further million in the next two years.

Steele said: “It’s clear that the labor market is rapidly changing. Policy makers and employers, across all sectors, will need to adapt and evolve their HR policies to keep pace, or risk losing out in the war for talent.”

Read more at: http://www.cipd.co.uk/pm/peoplemanagement/b/weblog/archive/2014/01/21/competition-for-best-talent-remains-fierce-despite-jobs-growth.aspx

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Many, when hearing “talent management,” may think of human resources or HR. Talent management is far more than HR and probably contributes more to the bottom line than any other trend, including technology.

Years ago, a mentor of mine shared a story. He was speaking with a CEO of a mid-size firm who was complaining about all the “nincompoop” employees. My mentor asked this question (knowing full well the answer): “Who hired those nincompoops?”

If the right people are not placed in the right seats, using the right talents, to make the right decisions to ensure the right results in the right time frame and within the right environment, there could be a lot of “nincompoops” in your workplace.

“Forbes Magazine” recently published an article about how happy employees equal hefty profits. These two statistics jumped from the page:

• In 2013, the revenues for the 2014 Fortune 100 Best Companies to work for increased by 22.2 percent.

• US Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed these same companies added new employees at a rate five times higher than the national average.

This trend of talent management has arose because of many of the following factors:

• The Silver Tsunami (retirement of baby boomers)

• Loss of intellectual property and knowledge from the baby boomers

• Advent of multiple generations in the workplace

• Global competitive environment instead of just local or regional

• Shrinking labor force of qualified applicants

Possibly the one factor that is still not clearly articulated, is that people drive business results. Without people, business would come to a fast, grinding halt.

Logic suggests by focusing on people and how to manage their various talents, will propel those firms as noted previously by Forbes and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics ahead of their competitors.

Forward thinking leadership in big to small businesses recognize people are not a cost, but an asset to be developed. They understand the cost to hire a new employee is at minimum 2 to 3 times the cost to keep a productive employee. These firms no longer accept employee turnover as a cost (estimated at $300 billion in 2009) of doing business.

Imagine for a moment, what would happen to your small business of 20 employees if you walked in tomorrow and discovered 17 employees gone? Of the three remaining, only one is really happy and the other two would be open to leaving if the right offer came across the table. If talent management is not on your list of critical goals in 2014 based on this data alone, then it should be.

Talent management is a trend for many small businesses and an established best practice for those who wish to stay ahead of the flow, and maintain their competitive edge.
Read the full article at posttrib.suntimes.com

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The team at Sprigg will be working to facilitate and develop the reputation of HRreview and its award-winning HR content in North America.

In addition to a monthly newsletter to 150,000-200,000 HR and related professionals, there will be dedicated features, blog specials and whitepapers shared across email, social media and a plethora of editorial partner sites.

Sprigg will be working with editorial and corporate partners across Canada, UK and US to bring you lots of excellent, regular HR content including blogs, features, supplier news, interviews, elearning and HR technology specials.

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Jilaine will be offering regular thought leadership and analysis along with associates of the Sprigg Talent Management Systems.

View Jilaine’s bio on HRreview here.

Learn more about HRreview here.

HRreview LinkedIn

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Steve Mendelssohn and Bruce Croxon talk performance reviews.

Held at the Delta Meadowvale Conference Centre, just outside of Toronto Canada, and covered byBiZTV, the panel was comprised of Bruce Croxon, entrepreneur and CBC Dragons’ Den “dragon”; Steve Medelssohn, labour relations lawyer at Watershed LLP, with 20+ years experience; and Jilaine Parkes, founder and president of Sprigg Software. The breadth of experience among the panelists lead to a rich discussion, as smoothly moderated by Nicole Bendaly, president of Kinect.

With plenty of opportunity for audience Q&A, attendees found themselves immersed in some of the most pressing issues facing human resources departments, and organizations in general, in terms of performance management. Framing the discussion were opening remarks by Jan van der Hoop, founder ofHiringSmart, who outlined trends and perspective as a launching point for the discussion.

Topics covered by the panel included:

• Why people hate performance reviews
• What employees need to have in place to ensure the process is successful
• The drawbacks and upsides to online performance reviews
• Top legal questions related to performance reviews and how to address them
• Top criteria when evaluating an evaluation system
• Elimination of ratings – pros and cons

Jilaine Parkes, Nicole Bendaly and Jan van der Hoop.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the event. Feedback from the session, which ran from 9 am to noon, was exceptional and stressed the need to continue to provide similar forums for discussion, networking and development. Below is a sampling of comments that were received after the morning concluded:

I found the session extremely informative and practical. The down to earth, reality based, discussion moved my thinking and experience forward in regard to improving the Performance management process for our company.

– Ken D.

I thought the event was very good. I liked the idea of the moderator, as she was able to keep things moving without losing track of the time. I know our team thought it was very informative as well.

 – Kim M.

I found the session to be really thought provoking and interesting. I especially enjoyed the panel-style delivery – it provided for some really genuine conversation and discussion. I left the session with some valuable ideas to integrate into the new performance management training program for managers that I’m leading.

– Brittany M.

Stay tuned for our next performance review discussion coming up in May 2012!

—

As seen on: BizTV Canada

Overview of BizTV:

• BiZ TV Canada Inc. (BTVC) is a unique all internet business show.
• BiZ TV posts a different video on the home page each day and then archives these videos to be viewed anytime.
• BiZ TV records on location and at eMotion Studios and Pyman Media Group.
• BiZ TV is a federally incorporated company and was organized on April 21, 2011.
• BiZ TV maintains it’s offices in Burlington, Ontario.

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