Sponsors of this year’s annual CaribHRForum’s electronic survey expect to reach over 3000 Human Resource Professionals across the CARICOM region this year, easily becoming the most wide-spread effort to gather information from a single profession.
The 2008 survey which was released on Monday September 15th, 2008, focuses on the single topic of regional HR conferences and the role they play in bringing together HR professionals.
It is being conducted by a volunteer team at CaribHRForum, the online forum that was formed in 2003 by Francis Wade, a management consultant who recently moved home to the Caribbean.
According to Wade, “the survey has grown in leaps and bounds since it was inaugurated last year, and the team now comprises a Jamaican, a Trinidadian, a Kittician and a Bahamian who have only met in cyber-space. We got to know each other through CaribHRForum and have worked together for months to put this together, mostly using Facebook, an online social networking service.”
CaribHRForum, with over 200 members, is the largest professional networking group of its kind that is built on cyber-services such as a discussion list, a blog on CaribHRForum.com and a news ezine – CaribHRNews.
In fact, the idea of a large, all-encompassing regional conference was first discussed at length within CaribHRForum’s list, which sometimes sees up to 20 emails per day in a region-wide discussion.
“Sometimes the conversation gets heated, and there is a great deal of participation from many members who share their perspective, while learn from each other.” A recent group conversation on the industrial relations climate in the region is still generating some sparks after more than a week,” said Wade.
It was another hot conversation on CaribHRForum that provided the theme for this year’s survey. While Jamaica has the larget conference each year, with some 500 participants, there are other territories in the region that don’t even have an organization formed. Many are unaware that conferences and organizations like CaribHRForum exist and end up practicing in isolation from their colleagues.
“Hopefully,” Wade says “the results of the survey will do much to help us bring the professionals of the region together. We should learn a lot about what people are looking for in attending a conference, and help make our own conferences compelling.”