See you at the HRevolution

Today I, along with about 50 smart, talented, and fantastic HR folks will descend on Louisville, KY for the first ever HRevolution.

The HRevolution is the original and only 'Unconference' for HR professionals focused on blogging, social media, technology, and a little topic called 'The Future of HR'.

The event is a classic and wonderful example of a community coming together to share, learn, and try and make ourselves and the HR profession better.

But communities have to have something to rally around, and they often need leaders that can motivate and inspire people.

And in the case of HRevolution those leaders are Trish McFarlane and Ben Eubanks. Trish and Ben have created a concept and an incredible community has rallied around their idea. They, along with Crystal Peterson whose tireless efforts in organizing the logistics of the event, have engineered what has really become a kind of phenomenon.

Creating an event, working it into what is already a crowded fall conference and event schedule, and having it connect and resonate with so many people is really a testament to the community, and to the Trish, Ben, and Crystal's efforts.  I have been honored to be a (small) part of the planning for this event.

For folks who can't make it down to the HRevolution, there will be a lively Twitter stream under the #HRevolution tag and special Episode of the HR Happy Hour Show, 'Live from the HRevolution' on Saturday, November 7 at Noon EST.

Special thanks also to HRevolution sponsors:

Sanera

Nobscot Corporation

Xceptional HR (Blogging4Jobs)

Fustion Frames & Award Frames

Monster.com

The Human Race Horses

They have been generous with not only financial support, but advice and ideas to help make the event really meaningful and special.

I can't wait to get to Louisville (even if it means a ridiculous 5:00 am drive to the airport).

Personalizing the Enterprise System

In the last couple of weeks I have written about the how the lines between traditional enterprise software and external consumer social networking sites are blurring, and theorized that companies and systems that embrace this new reality would be in the best position for future success.

Not everyone agreed with me of course.

Yesterday I caught a news release from enterprise software company Sage Software, announcing a strategic partnership between Sage, primarily an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution provider for mid-market organizations, and Netvibes, a classic Web 2.0 provider of consumer focused tools for creating personal information dashboards.

From the text of the release

Joint development has already begun on new personal workspace dashboard technologies that will bridge the gap between professional enterprise tools and personal Web 2.0 applications and content, enabling the workforce to seamlessly manage both on a personal, individual level from any web capable device.

This functionality is expected to be released in the first quarter of 2010, included in Sage's ERP X3 solution. While the press release does not specifically mention it, it does seem likely that these new Netvibes powered personal dashboard capabilities would extend to the Sage Abra HRMS solution, very popular with medium size organizations.

Why would an established vendor of ERP and other solutions strike such a partnership with a pure Web 2.0 consumer oriented service?

Probably some or all of the following reasons:

1. Traditional enterprise software is not easy to actually use

2. In mid-size and large companies, enterprise systems are necessarily complex to adequately support dozens, if not hundreds of business processes, but in reality most users only interact with a tiny portion of the system's capabilities.

3. While some elements of role-based, or individual personalization to enterprise software are possible, most users find it too complex to enable themselves, and many abandon the effort.

4. Customers of ERP and other enterprise solutions are demanding support for increased integration with external content from traditional consumer oriented services.

5. Since big, enterprise tools are almost always designed and built around processes, popular Web 2.0 consumer applications are built around people, and the best ones quickly adapt to how users want to interact with the technology. Merging the two types of systems and approaches, while not easy, could result in a compelling combination in the marketplace.

Whatever the specific reason Sage had in mind, it is a clear signal that usability, a personalized experience, and more integration and connection with disparate (even external) data sources will become much more common in enterprise systems.

People simply enjoy using services like Netvibes.

When was the last time you said that about your HRIS or ERP system?

Failure and Fun

Tomorrow night, Wednesday November 4th, I will be attending the Fail Spectacularly event at Joe's Bar in Chicago, Illinois.

The 'Fail' event is hosted by Jason Seiden of Seiden Leadership and Laurie Ruettimann of PunkRock HR and is meant to give folks impacted by the crappy economy a chance to get up on stage, in front of over 200 assorted strangers and friends, and share their stories.

And if hosting a rocking, free party for the good people of Chicago is not enough, Jason has offered to give away boxes of his fantastic first book, 'How to Self-Destruct: Making the Least of What's Left of Your Career.'  For details on this great and generous offer, see Jason's blog.

And to add to the fun, and give the crowd a chance to see more failure in real-time, Shauna Moerke, the HR Minion, and I will broadcast a special episode of the HR Happy Hour show, live from Joe's Bar.

This remote show was made possible through the generous support of HR Happy Hour show sponsor Aquire Software. Aquire makes the leading solutions for corporate organizational charting and planning, and has some of the coolest, nicest people in the HR Technology industry.

The show, like the event, will start at 8PM EST, 7PM CST and we will stay on the air for the entire Fail party.

There is still time for you to get to the Fail event, and to participate in the fun, just go to the Fail registration site and let Jason and Laurie know you are coming.

See you in Chicago!

BYOT - Bring Your own Technology

Spent some time Sunday morning (the extra hour of 'sleep' we got in the US), reading some excerpts from a book titled 'The Tower and the Cloud',  Chapter One : 'The Gathering Cloud: Is this the End of the Middle' by Richard Katz.

The book is an examination of the technological changes and forces at work that will dramatically impact and inevitably alter the structure and delivery of higher education in the US and worldwide. One of the Flickr - prestamost interesting observations from the first chapter concerns the how the academic institution will be effected by the increasingly technical acumen demonstrated by its incoming students:

As the explosion of content continues along with the increasing maturity and availability of web-based academic services and applications, tomorrow’s students will arrive on campus with their own IT architectures and service arrangements. These students—and tomorrow’s faculty—will have little use for or patience with college or university offerings that under perform or force them to lose precious connections to people and processes that they have accumulated since childhood.

This idea has certainly been discussed and observed in the workplace or professional context as well. How does the organization react when new employees (typically Millennial or Gen Y age) enter the workforce carrying with them (and expecting to leverage) different, and many times superior technical capabilities than the organization has deployed?

Whether it is Gmail with its huge storage capacity, external social networks for connection and information sharing with their personal communities, cloud based file storage and collaboration services, or free web-conferencing and conference calling on demand, or event the latest in slick technology the new (and existing) employee has the ability, and perhaps the expectation that they can and should be able to leverage these capabilities in the workplace.

In 'The Tower and the Cloud', Katz suggest these factors (and several others) will force a fundamental shift in the traditional role of the university as the 'center' of learning, research, and access to technology. Since information access, computing power, and ability for experts to connect directly with students (and potential students) without the need for the physical university as a kind of broker the university will be forced to adapt to this reality, and evolve in order to survive.

In the corporate world, while it does seem that such dramatic changes are less likely (at least not as quickly), there are certainly some implications.  In an environment where employees (especially younger ones) move much more frequently from one firm to another, does it still make sense to spend the first 'X' days/weeks/months teaching these employees all about your unique and in many cases proprietary systems? Or would that time and effort be better spent building bridges from these internal systems to the ones that employees are already familiar with and have already adopted?

Technical capability, access to information, employees understanding and leveraging of networks, cloud capability and new and better solutions for collaboration all are advancing faster than most organizations ability to keep up.  Finding the correct balance between forcing employees back inside the corporate 'technology box' and leveraging the tools and capabilities they bring with them is one of the most important challenges for organizations today.

The ones that strike the correct mix will be in far stronger position than the ones that don't.

Can Compliance be Strategic?

Last night on the HR Happy Hour Show I tossed out the idea that perhaps to further the HR organization's ability to pursue more strategic objectives and more value-added activities, that the traditional 'compliance' related functions be spun-off to another part of the organization, (perhaps finance and accounting).

My (shallow) reasoning was simple: if HR departments are truly getting bogged down in compliance and and administrivia, why not spin off those functions to another department (or outsource them)?

Shedding those non-strategic processes, I proposed, would really empower the HR organization  to focus on strategic planning, aligning the workforce and their skills and capabilities with the organizational objectives, and equipping line managers with the tools and abilities they need to succeed.

A win-win right?

Well, some of the guests on the show, China Gorman, Mike VanDervort, and others did not like the idea. They essentially said that giving up the control of these processes to accounting (or someone else) would not be a mistake and that HR has to own those processes.

So here is my question:

If HR needs to get more 'strategic' and compliance and regulatory issues are in the way, can you just outsource, spin-off, or otherwise de-couple them from the real value that HR can deliver to the organization?

Can compliance really be strategic?

You can listent to the entire conversation, and the rest of the HR Happy Hour 'Is HR Dead' Episode here: