Southwest Washington Shrm

Programs: Membership initiative our chapter committed to a member engagement and retention initiative to not only maintain our current members, but to also grow membership. By taking a strategic approach to retaining and growing our membership base through engagement and outreach events, we will maintain our position as the leading professional association for hr in our local community over the long term. As a member engagement and retention strategy, our chapter planned to attend the color run 5k walk/run event as a team. We thought this would be a fun opportunity for members to engage in networking, while strengthening their identity as a chapter "team" member. This event was also open to non-members, and we encouraged members to bring a friend as a fun way to introduce non-members to our chapter, and entice them to join. Additionally, we repackaged our monthly luncheon programs into "quarterly speaker series" around specific themes, as a new strategy to peek interest and entice people to attend three consecutive programs, providing multiple touch-points to engage potential members. The quarterly speaker series were highly successful. They attracted a new crowd to our luncheons. Many of the new faces attended all three programs in the series, allowing for opportunity for them to get familiar with our chapter, and several decided to designate our chapter as their primary chapter. Our members who regularly attend also provided positive feedback about the new format. Many said the new format felt more engaging. Unfortunately, the color run event was canceled by the promoter and was not rescheduled in our city. College relations initiative our chapter's college relations initiative was centered around increasing engagement between the wsu student chapter and our chapter. Building relationships with hr students today, paves a smooth pathway for them to continue to engage with our chapter after graduation as professional members, and widens our talent pool for potential chapter leaders in the future. We enlisted students to help run our registration desk at programs, provided complementary and/or reduced registration to our events, and connected students with employers seeking to fill internship opportunities. Our increased and targeted engagement with the student chapter has resulted in many new grads designating membership to our chapter. We also filled one of our key chapter leader roles for 2015 with a new grad from the student chapter. Diversity & inclusion our chapter's goal was to share best-in-class diversity and inclusion practices with members through continuing education opportunities. We also wanted to make an effort to outreach to a diverse pool of candidates for chapter leadership positions to ensure our board is seen as inclusive. We included two d&i tracks in the breakout sessions of our chapter's annual conference. We outreached to some of our minority members to gage interest in joining our board. One of the minority members we tapped for chapter leadership filled a board role.