Recently there’s been so much going on here on HRzone I felt it was time that in addition to the occasional Friday fun blog I should be doing a weekly round up of what’s been going on here in our community.

It’s been another bumper week on HRzone – as ever I’m overwhelmed by the amount of comments, discussions and especially blogs from all of you. We’ve had an influx of fabulous blogs recently and I hope this continues – if you want a dedicated audience and to get in the HRzone newsletter, all you need to do is start your own blog here – it’s free and hopefully you’ll get a lot out of it too! We will be featuring a ‘blog of the month’ too from May onwards – so if you want to be in the running, get blogging!

We are heading into May over this weekend (how 2010 is flying by). April was all about health and wellbeing at work – although of course we had room for lots of other subjects too, and will continue to talk about wellbeing and how it connects to engagement, the employer value proposition and reward: epecially over May when we are going to start concentrating on rewards and benefits. This article highlighted the latest wellness research from Gallup with lots of tips to acheive wellness and perform better at work. There’s alway the issue of sickness too: absenteeism is considered a prennial problem but how do you deal with presenteeism. If you missed it earlier this week, find out here.

April was busy for employment law, including the new Fit note (see this guide) and the volcanic eruptions grounding flights to and from the UK tested policies and flexible working to the extreme! Few businesses suvived unscathed: see our vox pops from CIPD’s HRD event to see how a selection of HR and L&D people were affected – and discover how they coped with it.

Looking forward to the week ahead, the General Election on Thursday 6 May may see us getting to grips with a change of government this time next week. Will it be a hung parliament, the first in decades? We’ve had experts looking at flexible working and unemployment policies: just a couple of the issues which you’ll need to consider before you make up your mind on Thursday. Regardless of who wins, there are big challenges ahead – as the CMI pointed out this week, despite all the talk of us emerging from recession, we are still feeling the pinch.

On a lighter note, how do you feel about banning email for a week? Would it spell disaster or be a welcome break? Because that’s exactly what SuccessFactors‘ founder and CEO, Lars Dalgaard, has done. Why? According to this article, Lars claims email discourages face to face contact, and increases avoidance of issues which really should be aired. The company has now survived without email for a week: I’ll be finding out how they’ve been getting on.

And finally…
It’s what you’ve all been waiting for: the Men of HR calendar has finally been released. No, I’m not joking, tru Events really have made a calendar for charity. The interational affair has been lovingly crafted and tastefully shot. Proceeds will go to Orchid Cancer research and the Haiti appeal. There’s only one way to find out who is on it and that’s to buy it.

Have a wonderful bank holiday weekend –

Charlie