Highlights of 2010
It has truly been my pleasure and a distinct honor to serve as your president for 2010. This year has been filled with accomplishments for your SHRM-Atlanta chapter. I’d like to take this opportunity to share just a few of the highlights with you.
Looking to our future, the SHRM-Atlanta Board of Directors and Executive Team engaged in a strategic planning process earlier this year. The outcome was a new, bold vision for the chapter: “SHRM-Atlanta – Working for a Better Atlanta.” To begin the implementation of activities around this vision, we launched our first, very successful, Signature Luncheon event at our Fall Conference. With support from our sponsors, we had excellent attendance of 115+ HR and business executives from the Atlanta community. I encourage you to watch the video of the panel discussion to hear various perspectives on Atlanta’s economic opportunities and challenges. The Board completed quite a bit of operational work as well, establishing many processes, policies and procedures for our chapter governance and operations. Now, each new leadership team has a strong foundation on which to build.
To continue growing our membership numbers, we undertook a new project to benchmark our membership numbers with comparable chapters and evaluate our strategies around membership growth. When the analysis has been completed, a final report with recommendations will be made to establish new membership targets, plans, and timelines. Concurrently this year, we strengthened the Ambassador program and conducted a Recruiter of the Year membership campaign which generated 25 new members. We are the official sponsor of the DeVry SHRM Student Chapter and we became the new official sponsor of the Georgia State SHRM Student Chapter.
SHRM-Atlanta served the community in many ways this year. We participated in a very successful Virtual Career Expo with 11 Alive WXIA TV station to provide job assistance to callers. Over 100 SHRM-Atlanta volunteers participated in this two-night event, as well as many staff from the Department of Labor. Together we helped 2,300+ job seekers who contacted us with questions. We strengthened our relationship with the Atlanta Business Chronicle through a number of activities. SHRM-Atlanta continues to be tapped to participate in articles, interviews and newsworthy activities by both ABC and AJC.
If you participated in our 20th Annual HR Conference, you saw that we partnered with Technology Association of Georgia (TAG). TAG sponsored a Technology Row in our showcase and offered a track of programming. Next year, this partnership will continue and TAG will provide content for a new HR and Technology Track in our conference. SHRM-Atlanta co-hosted the PADV event “When Violence Goes to Work”. And, we continue to support the Mayor’s Youth Program providing workforce readiness programs to City of Atlanta youth.
In 2010, we achieved the highest attendance ever for 20th Annual HR Conference. Outstanding programming, extensive marketing efforts and new social media efforts all contributed to attendance. We continue to evolve and improve the sponsorship offerings associated with the conference.
SHRM-Atlanta successfully launched the HR Leadership Academy in partnership with UGA Terry College of Business. 29 participants completed the program and received a UGA Advanced Certificate in Business Strategy, as well as a Certification from SHRM-Atlanta and 65 strategic CEU credits. The program received extremely high ratings and several of the graduates have advanced to senior HR leadership roles. To support our HR members in job transition, we conducted another HR Helping HR event which was very successful. And, we added a 6-month extension to the existing 6-month free job transition membership. We launched a new Perimeter GEM in 2010 with strong attendance and evaluations.
The SHRM-Atlanta chapter will be hosting SHRM’s 2012 Conference in Atlanta. Preparations are already underway to recruit and organize over 1,000 volunteers to serve on several different teams helping out at the SHRM annual conference. 18,000+ attendees are expected to attend that conference and we will be working hard to showcase our city and chapter. The opportunity to volunteer is now posted on the SHRM-Atlanta home page.
As I complete my year of service as your president, I want to take this opportunity once again to sincerely and wholeheartedly thank each and every one of you who contributed your time, energy, creativity and passion to SHRM-Atlanta this year. YOU are the reason we accomplished so much! Thank you for all you did to ensure the highest quality professional development and networking opportunities are right here in Atlanta.
Looking ahead to 2011, rest assured that there is a yet another great leadership team in place who will continue to take SHRM-Atlanta forward. I encourage you to get/stay involved, give back, participate and attend. It is tremendously rewarding and worthwhile.
Happy New Year to you and your families!
Elizabeth Wysong, SPHR
SHRM-Atlanta 2010 President
