Introducing Allan Hoving, HRiQ Online Community Director

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Allan Hoving
Allan Hoving
06/24/2010

Human Resources IQ welcomes Allan Hoving as Online Community Director. Allan will be spearheading the Human Resources content and offerings that we share with our HR professionals on a day-to-day basis. Katherine Mehr will be focusing on training initiatives for our HR professionals so that we can bring you many options to continue your knowledge sharing along your career path. A transcript of a recent podcast follows.

Welcome, Allan. Can you please share with our members a little about yourself, and where you see your experiences helping to develop and grow Human Resources IQ?


Thank you Katherine. I’m thrilled to be working with you and IQPC, which has been doing great work at HumanResourcesIQ.com; you obviously understand the importance of new media. Congratulations on having the number one top-rated HR podcast, HR Today.

My own background is in business-to-business content and services – both print and online – for over a decade. I served as Online Community Leader for ExecuNet.com and helped launch its Executive Suite LinkedIn group, which is one of the largest groups on LinkedIn. Prior to that, I was the Managing Editor of HR Outsourcing Today magazine, so I know the HR space well. Lately, I’ve been moving into social media, webinars – and even podcasting, though this is the first time I’m on the guest side rather than the host.

How do you envision Human Resources IQ transforming over the next few months to a year?

As someone who’s been working online for a while, I’m very interested in the interactive side of interactive media – in community comments, feedback and user-generated content. I want to continue to develop those features that you have established here at Human Resources IQ. Each member of our community has a unique perspective and something to contribute to the discussion, and I’d like to encourage our members to get involved. You are at the front lines of the profession, you know what the new and emerging issues are. And I would love to hear from you.

Beyond that, of course, we have the mission of bringing new and deeper content to the site and across all the different platforms we use. And for me, it’s very exciting to see the Human Resources IQ content and community extending from the main website into multimedia, and to our social media extensions on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and beyond. We’ll continue to serve and grow as an environment where HR professionals can learn and exchange ideas.

What can HR professionals expect from Human Resources IQ during this expansion?

The goal is to make Human Resources IQ a more engaging experience for members. We’ll make it easy for readers of our twice-weekly enewsletter to click over to the site and find what they are looking for: content that’s relevant to how they are doing their jobs.

Let’s switch gears. In your opinion, what HR topics do you find are the most pressing in today’s marketplace?

With the economy seemingly on the rebound, we’ll be looking at issues like talent acquisition, onboarding and retention. Other topics we’ll cover include training and learning, virtual teams and, of course, the ways in which leaders are being called upon to be innovative in their organizations, to be flexible, agile and to embrace new technologies to engage and empower their employees.

Those are some examples, but again I’d like to hear from the audience about what topics are of interest to you. I welcome your suggestions, as well as your contributions of articles. Maybe you’d like to be a guest on the HR Today podcast. Please feel free to get in touch with me at allan.hoving@iqpc.com.

We’ve seen HR actually shift over the years from very transactional to now more "people-oriented," really focusing on Human Capital Management. What steps do you predict HR to be going in?

The buzzword everywhere today is engagement. In the HR space, engagement means presenting an organization’s identity, brand and reputation -- being as open and transparent as possible with the outside world – so that your employees and future employees are able to interact with you, learn about your culture. The challenge is to really reach out, start the recruiting, education and training process much earlier. So you can bring people into the organization, keep them engaged, motivate them, develop them as valued contributors and empower them to serve your customers and your market.

Any final thoughts you’d like to add?

I just want to thank you personally, Katherine, for being so gracious, for introducing me and making me feel welcome here at Human Resources IQ. I really appreciate it. I’m looking forward to working with you to serve our community on HumanResourcesIQ.com.


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