HR(O Today) Transformation

Our CEO introduces some changes to the HRO Today Magazine Team—plus some exciting data and changes to come.
 
We are in an industry obsessed with transformation. Our magazine has long promoted the idea that to achieve best practices success operationally, whether in shared services models or outsourcing models, you first need to engage in proper transformation processes. Now it is time to eat our own dog food, and we think it may actually taste pretty good.
 
We have made some changes at HRO Today magazine. We have done this in response to what we believe are changes in the needs of the readers and new directions in the delivery of content. It was time for a fresh approach. We welcome a new Editorial Director, Dirk Olin, who brings a wealth of experience to this platform in the management of both print and online news, as well as feature content media. His prior experiences span highly respected journalistic news organizations as well as leading business to business trade publications including The Congressional Quarterly, The New Republic, St. Petersburg Times, The Daily Journal, Mother Jones, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and The American Lawyer. He also was a member of the team that launched Law.com and was a regular commentator for KQED-TV so he has experience with web and broadcast media. His vast and varied multi-media background will give HRO Today new approaches to how it delivers the information you need to manage your business. 
 
Much of what he will be implementing will be based on the feedback from our recently closed 2009 HRO Today Magazine Readers Survey. Our subscription base is approximately 30,000, and I want thank all of you for the overwhelming response and the astounding percentage of participation. We appreciate your level of engagement and the (occasionally very pointed) suggestions for improvement. We want HRO Today magazine to be the best magazine you read, and HROToday.com to be the best source for information on human resources.
 
Our magazine coverage will begin to broaden, and we will be gathering more expert contribution in addition to the great staff of contributing editors we currently have. We will look to our vast community of practitioners to help identify best-in-class cases. We will continue our successful Bakers Dozen Ranking program and expand into other areas of HR and technology. We will be providing more feature content on HR practices, and analytical and critical evalution of the market.
From our survey, we were gratified to learn that now over 70 percent of our practitioner readers are Director or above in the HR suite. This is up from about 61 percent a few years ago. (We will argue that reading HRO Today is the leading cause of rapid promotion, though the statisticians are quibbling over proving causality! Geeks!) What many of these executive level respondents have pointed to was the need for more immediate information.  
 
We will be undertaking a major overhaul of HROToday.com. By year end, it will feature blogs, op-eds (including contributed letters to the editor), pulse surveys, and daily updated news feeds on HR topics, leading HR providers, HR leaders in the news, and HR policy. We will also be improving our resource guide with expanding information on providers, including whitepapers and other materials for providers that wish to make these available to the community. We will be adding and aggregating the best information so that you can visit HROToday.com every day and get not only the electronic feature content from the magazine, but the latest news, opinion, and resources to perform and achieve. So, please join me in welcoming Dirk. We hope you look forward to the “Transformation,” and thanks again to all of you who took time to engage in our survey.