Welcome to the CIPD online communities! There are two main boards, Learning and Development and HR Practice. These are then sub-divided into several categories to help organise discussions into a logical and accessible order. On the homepage you will also see the threads which have received the most recent replies. If you want to see all the discussions that have been started recently, you can click through to see a full list.

Please feel free to start new discussions or contribute to existing ones. You can also take part in our mini-poll - a quick vote on a contentious subject!

All feedback is welcome, about the boards in general and how you find the user experience. Email b.hawes@cipd.co.uk

Help

The purpose of this page is to give you basic instructions for using the CIPD Professional Community discussion areas. If you have a specific technical query or problem that is not answered below, please email us.

Before contributing to a discussion, please read our guidelines, they provide useful advice on the nature of the community and the style of discussion.

Creating a new discussion thread

This allows you to start a new topic. Go to the Community (HR Practice or Learning and Development) and then to the appropriate subject area (eg Reward, or General HR). Click on "Create a new Discussion Thread". Type your comment or question into the text field.

If you want to post a long piece, it's best to write it in Word first and copy it in.

If you want to add an attachment relevant to your comment, you can here. You can also choose to be alerted by email when anyone else posts a comment to the thread you have started. When you have finished writing your comment, click on Preview Comment. You can then see what your comment will look like. If you want to make further changes, click on "Re-Edit Comment". When you are happy with it, click on "Submit". Your comment will then appear.

As soon as your thread appears, other users will be able to add comments to it. If no comments are added within a month, the thread will be removed., though you are welcome to try starting a similar question again.

Adding a comment to a thread

Go to the text box at the end of the thread entitled "Enter your question or comment here". Follow the same procedure as above. Again, if you are writing a long posting, it is best to write this in Word first.

Finding a discussion

You can find a discussion on a particular theme either by looking at current discussions in a subject area, or by searching. To search, click on "Search Discussions". This will search both the current discussions and the archives of previous discussions in the community, for a particular word or phrase in the subject or body of postings. In the Advanced Search you can also search within specific dates.

Archives

Discussion areas can become very full, which makes them difficult to use. To solve this, old duscussion threads are regularly removed and put into an archive. This means that you won't see those discussions when you access the community areas directly, but you can still find material in the archives through the search function.