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A Note From Membership

Looking in the rearview mirror, 2020 has been one of the toughest years for so many of us. As we cautiously tiptoe into the new year with optimism, we can’t help but notice how important the people are that are around us and, in our lives, every day.

While we faced a lot of challenges in the previous year, it has brought a significant amount of opportunity. We quickly realized the power of connecting, no matter how we connect is an important part of SHRM of Greater St. Louis.

Whether it’s finding the next career opportunity, getting more involved in your community or simply meeting other like-minded professionals to relate and share ideas.

Looking Back Over 2020

Last year the Membership Committee worked on a vision to help take networking and community to a brand-new level. We searched for ways to expand our personal brand as a chapter to make our members feel important and valued. As a committee, we shared a common goal to came out on the other end of these unique and challenging times stronger and better as we were catapulted into our now virtual world.

Here are a few things, among many, to highlight from the Membership Committee’s work over the past 12 months.

• We closed out the year with our first ever virtual holiday extravaganza, which turned out to be a complete success!! We’re thankful for our business partners that stepped forward to provide surprise gifts, raffle items and SHRM of Greater St. Louis for donating a free annual membership.
• We incorporated a 60-day extension period to our expiring members so that they could still access critical information in a timely manner realizing that their companies may have experienced financial hardships.
• We took a personal approach with our retention efforts making phone calls and sent handwritten cards of appreciation to lapsed and expired members to reduce amount of increased digital automation that was hijacking their inboxes.

 
While the Membership Committee is also one of the largest volunteering committees in our chapter, the amount or work and thought that went into planning throughout the year was never too much and there was always room for new ideas.

Looking Ahead to 2021

As we cruise into the new year with much excitement and passion, it’s apparent our most trying times have made us stronger. We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to collaborate with other committees in order efforts around a few ideas as we trend in 2021.

• Increased Member Engagement – Realizing our biggest asset as a chapter being our members and its impact in our community, we’ve partnered with the Business Partner and Programming Committee to launch several virtual networking events throughout the year. Please check out the upcoming events page on our website and future announcements for more information.
• Recruitment of New Ideas & Peers – Similar to your organization, we’re focused on diversifying our experiences and our members to cross pollinate new ideas, connections and possible career opportunities.
• Strong Retention Efforts, “NORM!” – Playing off the famously shouted name from the TV series Cheers, even though we are a growing chapter, we still want you to experience familiar faces when joining meetings or events.
• On-Boarding with Intent – We’re fine tuning a consistent process to show new members early-on the value of our chapter, impact of volunteering and making early connections to feel connected sooner.

 
On behalf of the Membership committee, we’re thankful to have the support of our members so that we can continue in our mission as a chapter and as a resource. Thank you for sticking with us through tough times, we value and appreciate you all. If you’re interested in taking your membership to a higher lever and would like to volunteer, please reach out or visit the volunteer section of our website. Our best version of SHRM STL is yet to come!

Mel Jones
VP of Membership
[email protected]