On Thursday, December 1st, several hundred HR and Recruitment practitioners in Toronto got together at the uber cool Masonic Temple for DisruptHR Toronto 3.0. If you have not heard of DisruptHR you need to take 15 minutes out of your busy day and head over to www.disrupthr.co. Watch some of the speaker videos, read the blog and check out the many cities where DisruptHR is making its mark. To date DisruptHR has taken place in 11 Canadian cities with Toronto being the first.
The whole idea behind DisruptHR is to inspire, invoke ideas, enable conversation and networking, and build community. For me it’s also about pushing the HR profession forward. Even if the impact on the greater community is small, I’ll take it. At the end of the day the collective efforts of those that are trying to make an impact can be exponential. And I think we are starting to see this happen, particularly where I work and play, Toronto and Vancouver.
People often ask me what it means to make a difference in HR. Before I answer this question let me just say that there are many possible answers to this question, depending on who you ask. For me, making a difference and pushing the industry forward is about focusing on building the skills required of HR practitioners to support business and the workplace of tomorrow. More specifically, it’s about focusing on things like technology, branding, marketing, social selling and the holy grail, employee engagement. I note that answers can vary depending on who you ask because well… if, for example, you’re working for a massive organization, or closely affiliated to an HR regulatory association then your answers will be very different than those who work for rapidly growing SMB tech companies. There are several variations, but you get my point, hopefully.
So aside from the fact that DisruptHR 3.0 was a raving success (yes I’m biased but so far the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive) it also played a role in helping the profession move forward. Topics were focused on different ideas (disruptive you can say but you all know how I feel about buzzwords), speakers were engaging, the atmosphere encouraged conversation and networking, the sponsors connected with attendees on how they could potentially add value to their organizations, and the list goes on. At the end of the day, if each attendee took away one idea… just one, away from the event then the collective impact to push the industry forward was huge. That is my definition of making a difference.
I can’t tell you how happy it makes me feel when I see a full room of 250+ HR practitioners talking, sharing ideas and extending their knowledge to new and uncharted territory. This is the only way we can truly push a community forward and make a difference.
Excellent platform to share ideas for betterment of our profession. Thanks. Look forward to attend in future.