HRzone will be changing in 2015!

Who, why, when, how?

Here at HRzone we want to offer the best experience to our members, whether that’s through the editorial content we produce, the events we organise, or the community we create on site (that’s you guys!).

We’ve seen from your feedback in the recent questionnaire as well as our own website traffic stats that more and more people are visiting the site from mobile devices, smartphones and tablets. Although our site currently works on these devices, we think we can do better and provide a much better experience for both mobile devices and your trusty old laptop or desktop.

We also want to ensure that content is front and centre, whether that’s an interview that we’ve recently published, or a user blog that’s really captured the imagination of the community. That’s why we’re investing in updating the site.

As you may or may not know, HRZone is part of the Sift Group and we own a number of other websites focused on inspiring action in our communities and helping our members achieve a positive change. To help achieve that goal we need to equip both our members and our staff with an intuitive website that is easy to use and up to the latest standards of web design.

But it seems to work at the moment?…

At the moment each site has to be updated manually and every technical feature has to be developed independently for each website. It’s a time consuming process.

Managing and updating the HRzone website is a bit like a game of Jenga. You take away the old bits that no one uses from the bottom and you try and balance some new features on top without everything falling over! Our developers and designers are very good at this website Jenga, but they’d rather be playing something a little less time consuming when they could be developing new features for members to use.

Although each site will be developed using the same framework, the system can be personalised in a number of ways to reflect the needs of each community. When something needs updating, we can update it across all of the sites in one go. As well as this, if a particular feature is really taking off on one site, it can be adapted and moved across to HRzone easily.

At this point we’ve been working on all the background framework needed. We’ve built a crack team of web developers, designers and user-experience experts to make sure we create the best website we can. Of course, there is still a long way to go. We'll be listening to your feedback to make sure we are building something that has real value. We’ll be introducing a number of blog posts over the coming months explaining some of the changes and considerations, but if you have any questions please post them below and I’ll make sure you get an answer.

Also, we're looking for a number of users to get involved with helping us out at a bit of a deeper level with the new site. This would involve a couple of conversations about your thoughts on features and the new site (you may even get a sneak peek before everyone else!) If you'd like to get involved, please let us know!

You can also contact the team via email if preferred with any feedback or questions. Click here to send an email.