It brings up more questions than answers in my mind.

Depending on your company culture, HR may still be seen as the workplace equivalent of going to the principal's office. So then it's up to us as HR professionals to promote all of our strategic efforts, to get out in front of the office and be seen as a positive contributor to our organization's success. Right?!

Sure ,we do this with our HR Management and/or VP's, but do your worker bees really get it?
I'm sure the ones who know they'd like to work in HR one day - maybe they're getting advanced degrees or certificates in HR - they know what we're capable of, what our days look like etc. The rest of them still have no idea.

How then do you build up the internal respect, and more importantly succession planning within your company? How do you brand ( or re-brand in some cases) your HR department as a vaulable business partner and potential career path?

Cyber Sleuth Shally Steckerl recently posted a pretty damn good blog about it over on my fave, ere.net (http://www.ere.net/tb/E51AE2A4343648C49D696D87115F4FE1/3230133D53 ) But it got me thinking more about promoting internally and building an internal pipeline vs. external promotion.

So far what I've come up with is this:
-HR needs to be visible, part of which is being approachable and seen as useful in the eyes of the employee
-HR needs to self promote the hell out of their accomplishments
-Recruiting teams can spend more face time with hiring managers, and "on the floor" with the "worker bees"
-Communication will be key in achieving any sort of spur in recognition (goes along with self promotion)

I'm sure more will come to me, but I needed to get this out, and hopefully will get some feedback from the community about how you approach this.

In short, as HR pros, we need to get out there, we need to become the "go to" people and be shameless about what we're doing, and why we're doing it. We're charged with maintaining order, contributing positively to company culture, recruiting and retaining the best and the brightest, let's tell everyone that!