Value of LinkedIn Groups – Why do some professionals use them? #hrblog

Many of us are on LinkedIn. many of us use the groups on LinkedIn. But what is the value of LinkedIn groups and what do people use them for?

Value of LinkedIn Groups #hrblog

Earlier in the month I ran a survey with my group members. the group has just over 40,000 members. Most of the members are in the HR profession. The group is a reasonably active group. I would love to be able to tell you how active, but LinkedIn has removed the group statistics!

Why do people use LinkedIn groups?

As a regular user of LinkedIn groups, I know why I use it. I have looked on the internet for other pieces of research, and found very little. In fact if you search for the term “why do people use LinkedIn groups” you get zero results. Well now I guess this article will appear!

LinkedIn themselves have a blog “Top Five Reasons to Use LinkedIn Groups“, but even this is five years old. In it they highlight the following reasons:

1. Learn from your network
2. Discover your passion
3. Engage with your community
4. Develop a focused audience
5. Deliver high quality, curated content

But to me few of these really hit the nail on the head. This focus or “reasons to use LinkedIn groups” is more push. What about true community. Put out to get back. Give for the sake of giving. be there to learn what you do not know. one and three are important. but the others? Sounds like a spamifesto to me.

I digress.

Value of LinkedIn groups the results

When I ran the survey I asked members of the group what value they get from the group. the results are interesting to say the least.

methodology, survey respondents were asked to answer the question:

I Like the group on LinkedIn because…

and they could respond with a short answer only.

Summary of the Value of LinkedIn groups and why people use them

Interestingly, I suspect that LinkedIn and others would not have guessed this order. Recruitment at number 5 is finding people, not jobs. That comes much lower down.

Learning and sharing is high.  But notice what is low.  News, current issues. i.e. pulse/ blog style content is low on their needs. advice, discussion and debate is what features as more valued.

Of course this is just a snap shot of a few hundred people. no demographics, other than over 505 have been in the profession for more than 11 years. So a more mature group of users. Curiously I ran this last years, and this time we has less new people to the profession respond. maybe the youngsters are finding LI of limited value!

It is clear this is a collaborative group, and they value a supportive culture in the group. Whilst this is not true of all groups, it does give a valuable insight into what “ordinary” users of LinkedIn value in groups.

The full list of responses, which makes fascinating insight into group users were:

• A professional community ready to support and share
• All the above
• ALLOWS ME TO BE UP TO DATE WITH CHANGES IN THE HR ENVIRONMENT, HELP DEVELOP SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE AND NETWORKING
• Always interesting
• Always useful info
• As a stand-alone HR Manager its useful to hear from other practitioners
• Breadth of experience and perspective
• Brings like minds together
• Broadens networking
• Can talk to like minded people
• CIPD members only
• Collegiate
• COMMON ISSUES SHARED
• Comparators
• Connection with past
• Dialogue without judgement
• Different viewpoints
• Discusses in vogue topics
• Easy place to catch up
• Easy to access knowledge/experience from other members
• Easy to access, relevant content, like-minded
• Easy to read
• Everyone is open and friendly
• Foment dialogue
• Food for thought
• Friendly, helpful
• Full of great experience and a willingness to share
• Full of like-minded people who have a passion for HR
• Genuine open discussion and alternative perspectives
• Gives the ability to brain storm issues
• Gives voice to the wider community
• Great discussions
• Hearing others points of view and guidance
• Helpful
• Helpful, informative, open
• Helps me gain insight and access to HR professional’s thoughts, opinions and work approaches
• High standard of contributions and interesting discussions
• Honest
• HR Professional knowledge
• I always get a reply!
• I belong
• I can help to inform in the HR arena
• I can keep in touch with the ideas and challenges of colleagues
• I can see others opinions
• I can share the balance of concern & excitement
• I can take it or leave it
• I don’t use it, sorry! Just doing the survey
• I feel connected
• I get ideas from it
• I get to meet, hear from and learn from people I will never see in person
• I learn
• I learn so much about what’s happening in the HR world
• I learn so much from it.
• I learn things I didn’t know about
• I learn what is going on in other areas of hr
• I see I am not alone with my challenges
• I see we are all struggling with the same questions
• I trust it
• Ideas
• Inclusion
• Increases my own competitive advantage
• Informal
• Informal way of acquiring differing perspectives
• Informational
• Informative & interesting to read others experiences & views
• Informative and supportive
• Informative and thought provoking
• Informative, Sharing of ideas/best practice, Innovation
• Informative, useful, supportive
• Informed relevant updates
• Informed, pertinent and thoughtful
• Informative and great peer discussion
• Interest
• Interesting and Informative
• Interesting debates from a wide variety of different perspectives
• Interesting discussions and opinions
• Interesting questions; Feeling of being helpful; Window over HR trends
• Introduces me to people, new ideas, and how other HR apply policies in their industries
• Is an added resource
• It allows me to be part of a professional online community
• It allows me to keep in touch with what is happening within the HR arena
• It always provides food for thought
• It appropriate for my professional needs
• It brings people together
• It brings together like minded people who want to share, grow and contribute.
• It can be informative
• It challenges me
• It connects me with other HR professionals and enables me to share and learn.
• It connects me with other professionals in an easy way
• It contains diverse experiences & expertise
• It enables me to connect with peers and to contribute to a profession
• It enables me to link in with like minded individuals
• It gives a broad-based picture of what members are thinking (albeit not always a comfortable one!).
• It gives an insight into the different opinions of experienced, respected HR professionals
• It gives information which I can form new opinions, and raise questions
• It gives insights into other HR professionals’ issues and ideas
• It gives me an insight into what fellow professionals are thinking
• It gives me an insight into what other HR professionals are dealing with or working on.
• It gives me an opportunity to benchmark
• It gives me confidence
• It gives me food for thought I can apply in my job
• It gives me good input for my studies
• It gives me great insights and information.  I have no back up in house and it is a great sounding board for me.
• It gives us a chance to ask questions, share answers and join in each others success
• It has interesting discussions with a variety of view points.  It’s also a source of support and advice.
• It has vast amount of members with a wide range of experience and skills. Great way of sharing knowledge, advise and experience.
• It helps keep me grounded
• It helps me professionally
• It helps me see how others reason
• It helps me with my day to day work and keeps me in touch with like-minded people.
• It helps to keep me grounded and informed
• It helps to speak to others with the same challenges
• It involves like minded people
• It is a community of experts
• It is a community of like minded professionals
• It is a good format for communication and support.
• It is a good way to share ideas, practices and information
• It is a group i aim to develop within
• It is a quick way to stay in touch with people facing the same issues we do…
• It is a snapshot of the struggle in a Politically Correct world!
• It is an easy method for connecting with colleagues
• It is energetic and vibrant
• It is good to hear others’ perspectives on common issues.
• It is helpful
• It is helpful, advice is brilliant
• It is inclusive
• It is informative
• It is informative and helpful and a good reference guide when you hit a challenge
• It is interesting and informative
• It is lively and up to date.
• It is open and attracts informed discussion
• It is pragmatic and engenders diverse views
• It is properly run
• It is relevant to my work
• It is useful to read the advice and support provided by members to queries.
• It is useful to see what others are involved with in other industries
• It keeps me close to current HR trends and solutions to similar issues
• It keeps me connected and I can see what’s currently relevant in the profession.
• IT KEEPS ME CONNECTED TO LIKE MINDED PEOPLE
• It keeps me connected to what’s going on elsewhere
• It keeps me in touch when I am busy
• It keeps me in touch with my local profession
• It keeps me informed about trends
• It keeps me up to date with best practise
• It keeps me up to date with others’ work and thinking
• It keeps me updated
• It keeps me updated on what is happening in the HR community and challenges facing different members
• It makes me feel part of a larger HR Community
• It makes me think
• It offers opportunity to share and learn
• It opens discussions on topics many are dealing.
• It provides a network of similarly minded individuals focused on the future.
• It provides a platform to share information
• It provides a visible forum for HR related Q&A
• It provides a window on others’ practices and ideas
• It provides food for thought and insight to different views
• It provides these three things!
• It provides up to date information & expert peer support
• It reassures me what a wide breadth of knowledge and experience exists between CIPD members
• It reflects the state of the profession
• It stimulates thought
• It supports knowledge and experience sharing
• It tries hard to push the boundaries
• It’s a professional and safe place to go
• It’s a chance to communicate with other professionals
• Its a forum for a useful debate and to share knowledge
• It’s a good sounding board and knowledge base
• It’s a great forum for discussion of HR principles and grey areas, I learn lots!
• It’s a special club to belong to!
• It’s a valuable community
• Its current and practical
• Its current, meaningful, interesting and always a topic of debate
• Its different to all the others – discussion is just that..
• It’s diverse
• It’s diverse and honest in discussion
• It’s down to earth and realistic
• Its dynamic, current and useful
• It’s enabled me to network and develop myself
• It’s free!
• It’s fun to laugh with our colleagues
• It’s good being a part of something.
• Its honest and practical
• Its inclusive
• It’s informal, wide-ranging discussion, great source of info
• It’s informative and a useful community
• It’s informative and entertaining
• Its informative and welcoming, gives us different perspectives and solutions, fair and open forum and great to network among peers.
• It’s interesting
• It’s lively and varied
• It’s more than a self-promotion vehicle
• It’s my ‘squad’
• Its open, topical, accessible
• It’s practical, open and honest and discusses issues that we all face.
• It’s real world exchange in an age of Trump
• Keeping open minded
• Keeps legislation up to date, good for getting advice
• Keeps me aware of “live” issues
• Keeps me connected to my fellow HR professionals
• Keeps me engaged and informed of what’s happening out there and what’s on everyone’s minds
• Keeps me grounded
• Keeps me in touch with external world
• Keeps me informed
• Keeps me informed and up to date
• Keeps me informed on current trends
• Keeps me thinking freshly!
• Knowledgeable and friendly
• Knowledge Wisdom Ideas
• Learning and development, keep up to date
• Learning, contact, challenge
• Like minded colleagues.
• Like minded people to run things past and bounce off of.
• Like minded professionals
• Like-minded professionals
• Lots of viewpoints from different people in different industries.
• Need to use
• Network and support
• Network and update
• NETWORKING
• Networking and finding out about latest trends in HR and business.
• Networking, sharing ideas and asking for second opinion or advice.
• New ideas
• New ideas
• Nice to know you’re not alone
• Not sure yet
• Of its breadth of contribution and debate
• Of questionnaire’s like this
• Of sharing, support and learning
• Of the chats and discussions
• Of the discussion and gaining knowledge from others.
• Of the interaction between members
• Of the sharing of ideas and support it provides
• One is not alone
• One of the few groups that’s truly informative, helpful and generally free of self-promotors
• Open and different debate, discussion
• Openness honesty and engagement
• Opportunity to share ideas peers
• Opportunity to test HR’s role in organisation context
• People contribute to the discussion
• People have shared focus and experiences
• People share their knowledge and support less experienced
• People tell it like it is
• Potentially helpful
• Practical views
• Professional interaction
• Professional members
• Professional to professional conversations
• Progressive
• Promotion is restricted
• Provides discussion
• Provides forum for new ideas and challenging accepted norms
• Provides more focused insight and discussion
• Quality of discussions
• Range of experience, freely shared
• Range of issues and differing views
• Realistic discussions live
• Reflection, sharing, surprise
• Regular updates
• Regular updates, relevant information
• Relaxed, helpful, open & honest
• Relevant and live
• Relevant discussion debate
• Same interests as me
• See the issues others are facing and know you are not alone
• See what others a doing
• Shared experience and knowledge
• Sharing experience
• Sharing information thought provoking
• Sharing of information & ideas
• Sharing of knowledge and ideas is essential
• Sharing, Community, Wisdom
• Shortcut to knowledge
• Similar backgrounds and challenges
• Some challenging points of view are expressed
• Some interesting materials
• Sometimes interesting
• Supportive
• Supportive without too much consultants selling their trade
• The chance to gain knowledge from experienced professionals
• The debates stimulate thoughts and actions
• The discussions are based on day-to-day pt
• The informative posts which offer practical advice and views
• The members are largely knowledgeable and willing to share their knowledge by providing advice to others
• The themes discussed are real-time
• The updates and situations other are also dealing with.
• There are some smart people around
• There is a mixture of people of all levels
• There is a vast amount of experience and knowledge available in a supportive medium
• There is a wealth of knowledge and support across a range of topics
• There is often interesting debate
• There’s a wealth of experience and ideas to dip into.
• They are helpful and you can always find the answer to a query.  It also means you’re not alone!!
• They are people like me doing different jobs happy to share insights that broaden my perspective
• They challenge me to think
• Topics discussed
• Topics of interest and can see differences between uk and Irish law
• Useful
• Useful discussions often ensue
• Useful forum for debate and getting views
• Useful information
• Variety of members and topics discussed
• We are all human!
• Well managed
• Whilst it is linked to CIPD it is not CIPD-led
• You can see a variety of views
• You can share best practice and new ideas
• You’re not alone!
• You’re really talking with other professionals