HR people are good communicators! - Rebecca Clake

I've arrived this afternoon in Manchester and it's been great to see the conference underway and feel the buzz in the exhibition. I arrived to witness speed networking in full flow in the ACE interactive area - proof that HR people value communication! I also saw my colleague Vanessa delivering a packed session on CIPD's HR profession map to visitors; complete with Madonna-style microphone. There were a lot of questions from people keen to find out more about how they could use our new MyHR map tool to help their personal development and some good discussion about how different behaviours from the map would be more relevant at certain times in your job - be that in terms of your own career progression or depending on where you found yourself in the business cycle. Look at the Exhibition guide to find out when more of these sessions on CIPD's HR profession map will be running.

A smaller group joined me for the 'meet the blogger' session - who were particularly interested in the findings from CIPD's new HR outlook survey results. We spent some time talking about the survey and findings relating to HR seniors' perspective on the function's role in the organisation. Interestingly they are more likely to agree that HR is given the internal prioirity it should be and also have higher levels of job satisfaction (and satisfaction with their immediate boss) than their more junior counterparts. Research team colleagues will be in the 'meet the blogger' sessions, so if you want to find out more about CIPD research and the personal interests of the advisers - do come along...

Drinks with our press team and journalists this evening - a great chance to catch up and network. And then tomorrow we have the People Management Awards dinner which, as a big fan of Hugh Dennis and Outnumbered in particular - I'm really looking forward to.