Welcome

Welcome to the Oakwood Club and Alumni Network blog. We hope you find it enjoyable and stimulating, and that you come back and read it regularly.

So why are we writing a blog? Two reasons, mainly:

1. We want to give our current and past students a chance to informally consider and discuss the many HR topics that are interesting and important but that are not included or assessed in the CIPD Certificate curriculum. This is a bit like all the ‘side conversations’ that happen in the breaks during the modules (and sometimes happen during the working time between breaks too!).

2. We want to give future and potential students, and anybody else interested in HR, the CIPD and Oakwood International, a chance to get involved too. We want the blog to be an informal ‘shop window’, showing something of what we do and the way we do it.

But don’t get us wrong: this blog and its supporting Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook feeds are not intended to replace the Oakwood International website, Oakwood Online Services or the email correspondence we already have with our students. Please continue to use these to discuss your work, the modules and assignments etc., exactly as you have done up until now.

We also don’t intend it to replace www.cipd.co.uk or all those other invaluable sources of HR information online.

Over the next months you can expect to see short articles on a variety of HR topics: we’ll try and post something new at least once a week. We’ll start by working through a list of areas we want to talk about, but please expect also to see short articles prompted by current HR news and by your suggestions: the blog will allow you to post your own comments to articles, and we hope to use these to trigger more articles.

In Twitter we’re registered as OakwoodClub, on LinkedIn as Oakwood Club and on Facebook as Oakwood Club and Alumni Network, so please follow us, connect with us or be our friend. In LinkedIn we’ve also set up a group called Oakwood Club and Alumni Network, so please join us. Through all these channels we’ll post regular updates about the blog, so that you don’t forget us! And you’ll be able to post comments too, so that there can be ongoing discussions between Oakwood International and students, and between students too.

We will, of course, read and moderate all these discussions, routing to Oakwood Online Services any material that would be better discussed there. We may also, as a last resort, edit or delete any inappropriate comments, although we intend to contact people who post such comments privately, for ‘off-line’ discussions too.

So, we hope you stick around and read the blog, connect with us through social media websites, post comments and take part in an ongoing debate about the wider world of HR. Thank you for reading and we look forward to your involvement.