Top of mind...

Nick McKissack is Chief Executive of HRNZ. Nick is passionate about people development and sharing the success of members and organisations leading the HR profession in New Zealand.

For the first time in many years, HRNZ won’t hold an annual conference and expo in 2020. We’ve decided to focus our efforts instead on delivering to our members the choice of four one-day HR Summits. Each one will have a different theme and be held in a different location in New Zealand. We’ll also be keeping these one-day Summits affordable for our members and having an initial member-only registration period.

An important reason for moving to the one-day Summits is because we want to focus on having conversations with our members about the issues that are shaping the HR profession.

We’re limiting the number of registrations at each Summit to 70–80 people and have designed sessions to be highly interactive. We’re lucky to have Cheryl Tansey, our resident Agile expert, acting as MC for all four of the Summits this year. Cheryl is a particularly talented facilitator and will make sure we get the best value out of the day as an opportunity for learning and networking.

I’ve had the pleasure of seeking out new and interesting people to present their ideas to these events. It’s been fantastic to talk to so many people with great new thoughts and ideas and an absolute willingness to share them. We’re going to have an exciting mix of practical case studies, new left-field thinkers and a sprinkling of celebrities! We’ll also be hearing from some of our fabulous HR Awards finalists.

In the spirit of getting agile, we’ll be reserving part of the day to an unconference-like approach where participants get to set the agenda for where we take the conversations that our guest speakers have stimulated.

With our Summits, we want to take a slightly different angle on discussing familiar topics, as well as introducing new themes for HR professionals. We’re going to kick this off with the first Summit in Auckland in May, where we’ll be talking about sustainability and the role that HR professionals are playing in building sustainable organisations for New Zealand.

We’ll move to Taupo in June and discuss issues around diversity and inclusion – we’ll tackle some of the seemingly intractable problems that we need to confront to achieve truly inclusive workplaces.

In September, we are in Wellington talking about how we create and maintain positive cultures in an increasingly disrupted world. We’ll finish the year in Queenstown in October, where we’ll talk about becoming the digitally savvy HR professional that we all need to become.

Overall, it’s an exciting programme in which we’ll be working to share the ideas and conversations that come from each Summit as widely as possible across our growing membership. We recommend members register early for their choice of events.

The 2020 year feels like a good time to get serious about shaping the HR profession for an even more pivotal role in the future. We see our members as having a huge role in creating successful and sustainable workplaces throughout Aotearoa.

Nick McKissack, Chief Executive HRNZ, nick.mckissack@hrnz.org.nz