HR Community of Practice

Since 2009, the HR Community of Practice has been a place for human resources professionals across the university to collaborate, connect and learn.

Whether you are new to the university as an HR generalist or in a leadership position in your unit, the HR Community of Practice can help your professional development and enhance the quality of service you provide to your area.

Participating in the Community of Practice

There are more than 300 members in the HR Community of Practice representing all major areas of the university. Membership is open to all human resources professionals at U-M ranging from generalists to business partners to higher levels of HR leadership. Participation in the programs offered through the Community of Practice is free. 

The group meets regularly either virtually or in person at various locations across the Ann Arbor campus and Michigan Medicine. Members also communicate and share resources using their Slack channel in umichWORKS.

HR Community of Practice Strategic Plan 2023-2025, contact Darrell Washington with any questions.

If you are interested in participating in the community of practice, please submit a request.

Group members discussing at tables and listening to presenters at a Community of Practice meeting.

Community of Practice goals

The goals of the Community of Practice are to:

  • Connect people who might not otherwise have the opportunity to interact, either as frequently or at all.
  • Provide a shared context for people to communicate and share information, stories, and personal experiences in a way that builds understanding and insight.
  • Enable dialogue between people who come together to explore new possibilities, solve challenging problems, and create new, mutually beneficial opportunities.
  • Stimulate learning by serving as a vehicle for authentic communication, mentoring, coaching, and self-reflection to harness the collective intelligence of the HR community.
  • Capture and diffuse existing knowledge to help people improve their practice by providing a forum to identify solutions to common problems and a process to collect and evaluate best practices
  • Introduce collaborative processes to groups and organizations as well as between organizations to encourage the free flow of ideas and exchange of information.
  • Help people organize around purposeful actions that deliver tangible results.
  • Generate new knowledge to help people transform their practice to accommodate changes in needs and technologies.

Here are some of the HR Community of Practice strategic program offerings and resources. View a complete list of programs delivered since 2009.

Program Offerings

Resources

If you are interested in participating, please submit a request.

Join the HR Community of Practice Channel on Slack:

If you haven't already, please join us in the #hr-community-of-practice channel on Slack. umichWORKS Slack is a communication platform only open to U-M employees. If you are not on U-M Slack yet, use these instructions to join. Once you are on Slack, here's how you can join the #hr-community-of-practice channel:

  1. Open the umichWORKS Slack Workspace
  2. Select the + sign next to Channels
  3. Select browse channels
  4. Search for “hr community of practice”
  5. Select “Join”
  6. The channel will now show up in your list of channels

This is a space where we can have conversations. We can connect.