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Reflections on Year 1: Human Rights in the Workplace blog

Published on August 25, 2008 by Donna Seale

One year ago, today, August 25, I launched this blog — Human Rights in the Workplace.  I started the blog primarily because I thought I had something to contribute "out there".  While there are many employment lawyers in the blogosphere who touch upon human rights issues, there wasn't a blog that I could find in the Canadian blogosphere that dealt exclusively with the topic.  Beyond that, because of my background as a lawyer for and manager of a human rights commission in Canada, I felt that I had a different perspective to bring to the table; one specifically informed by my work at the Commission.     

Over this past year my readership has grown over 2000%.  So, reflecting on this past year from a purely statistical perspective, my initial thoughts on there being a need for what I have to say to be said seem to have been accurate (phew!).  Moving beyond numbers, though, I've also received a lot of feedback from you, my readers, that has lead me to believe that I'm on the right track.  You've shown me that there is a tremendous desire to learn about and understand how human rights law plays out in the workplace.  You've also shown me that there is still a great deal of confusion about and misunderstanding of what the law requires of employers, employees and unions in order for each of these workplace players to meet their human rights obligations.  All of your comments and questions have lead to never-ending ideas on my end about the direction I'd like this blog and my business to go in the next year and beyond.  

While I'm still working through my ideas, here are some of the things I'm looking to do in Year 2 of Human Rights in the Workplace:

• more frequent posting.  I initially tried to post more than once per week, moved to once per week (my ideal) and in the last few months have posted less than that.  While I'm happy to say I was so busy that I simply could not keep up with my once-per-week posting goal, I know that many of you were wondering if something happened to me.  And so, I'm really going to work on maintaining that weekly frequency this year;
• more posting on new cases.  There's a clear appetite for this so it's a definite goal.  My intention is to do more short posts on cases of interest to get the information out quickly;
• implement post themes.  One idea is to implement a once-a-month theme (or a few different themes on a rotating basis) where I discuss workplace human rights subjects more in-depth.  Another idea is to create an "ask the human rights lawyer" type of column where readers can submit general questions and I will do my best to answer them (this won't be legal advice, of course, since I can't provide that in this type of forum, it will just be general information in response to a general question);  
• revise and update the whole look and feel of my weblog.   For those of you who get my posts via e-mail you won't see my blog's home page often, if at all, but it needs work.  This is my big project for the upcoming year;
• publish a white paper on a topic of interest which you can subscribe to, download and keep at your desk for a handy reference;
• create a special subscriber's section where value-added content can be obtained.

So, these are my musings when I think upon my past (and first!) year of blogging.  I would love to hear from you in response to my thoughts on the future direction for this blog.  Remember that, ultimately, I want to create content that is useful to you so if you have ideas of what you'd like to see, please pass them along. 

For now, I want to express a very sincere thank you to all of you who have subscribed to my blog in the past year.  I hope that you will continue reading what I have to write.    

Related posts:

1. Launch of New Blog – Human Rights in the Workplace
2. Human Rights in the Workplace blog aiming for web accessibility – what about you?
3. Holiday wishes and thank you's for 2008 and human rights hopes for 2009

Categories: Items of interest

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