Why Community?

We need community, even if we compete. We need human connection.

Do we see each other as fellow members of a professional community? LinkedIn is a commercial tool and I have competitors active in LinkedIn, but I will give credit to LinkedIn for creating an amazing online community for professionals.

I devote at least 15-30 minutes a day on LinkedIn, both as a content creator and to learn and build my network. In a given week, I comment on others' posts a few times, hit 'like' a dozen times and have private message conversations with 5 to 10 people. Some have become business partners or clients, or associates. Many become friends though I have never met then face to face. I could name 10 people with whom I have become friends. If I ever meet them, I would gladly greet them with a hug, if appropriate.

But I'm an Introvert!

I teach about 200-400 people each year on total rewards topics. I love giving back to my profession, paying it forward and being a mentor or coach to someone who is doing the work I did 10 or 20 or 30 years ago. But at the end of the day, I am very happy to go home (or back to the hotel room) and just chill by myself. Even at home, I have my "man cave" where I may retreat before or after dinner.

Yet, despite being an introvert, I have learned the value of friends, or at least fellow rewards professionals with whom I can be real, be a listener and share some things from my life that relate to what they have shared. In doing so, I build good connections with others, even if they do not become BFFs. Within the total rewards community, I have managed to make a large number of friends, and I count this as being rich.

Friends versus Community

I am half-way through Peter Block's book Community, which he defines as the collective capacity of citizens to make a difference. He states that making the difference we seek to make requires a group of people to learn to trust each other and choose to cooperate for a larger purpose. Politics and policies tend to divide and isolate, and cannot do what must be done. He holds that community is an idea whose time has come. It's about creating belonging, accountability and ownership. It can result in true transformation and creation of an alternative future.

Total Rewards Community?

I have a large professional audience, but a small community. I have an audience of 5,000+ LinkedIn followers, 5,000 LinkedIn connections, 70,000 YouTube viewers, over 1,000 YouTube subscribers, and over 50,000 unique visitors to my two websites (freelancetotalrewards.com and my-atri.com.) I have taught 3,000 HR people and over 1,000 non-HR managers how to pay people, so as to attract and retain talent, and support motivation, using the total rewards approach.

But I am failing, as there are not enough others who see a need to give back, pay it forward and build the next generation of rewards practitioners who will be even more awesome than my generation.

I can name them, the list is so small: Fermin Diez - PhD, SPHR, GRP, IHRP-MP, FSID , WENDY LIM , Freddi Marquez , Lynette Ng , Nicasio “Nic” Lim, DPM and Dr. Mark Bussin . I have recently added Dr. Muhammad A. Laghari CCP GRP and Anik Brahmachari, SPHRi?, CTA-CPC, CTRP?, to this list. Ruth Lee, CTRF and Romizaidi Mohd Ali and Arcelyn Madamba, MIR, CHRP, CTRP and Devina Renata S. are stepping up to the challenge also. Sajjad Parmar is the most prolific new mentor in rewards and he belongs on this list. In fairness, everyone must pay the bills and focus on their jobs and entrepreneurial pursuits to provide for their families. I fault no one. I am only pointing out that there is a cause--building awesome total rewards practitioners for the future--that some of us are taking on as a personal cause, as part of earning an income.

There are others who are giving back but view me as a competitor, though we are on friendly terms. There are others who teach as a form of income, but have not seen the bigger purpose of building a new generation of great total rewards practitioners. There are others, upcoming rewards leaders who are may be so consumed by their jobs, they feel unable to devote time or energy to giving back or building the next generation. But I am confident that in time they will.

The ATRI Total Rewards Community

The QR code below will take you to a virtual community I am building, strictly for total rewards practitioners. Sorry, no vendors, consultants, service providers, headhunters or others with a commercial motive.. This is a freemium model, with a basic free "entry" like a carnival, but paid access to the TR Cafe, events calendar, posts and feeds, articles, polls, quizzes, job postings, online courses and much much more. Please join, but please contribute, and help us build something. The TR Community is built on the Mighty Networks platform.

Many join the free platform, with limited resources. The affordable paid plans are where you'll meet others committed to building a thriving total rewards community of awesome practitioners, looking to have their best year ever, this year and every year.