Thinking outside the inbox at HR Florida

I'm at the HR Florida Conference today down in Orlando, (to all the people who warned me that it is too hot to come to Florida in August, you are pretty much right).

I will be presenting along with my HR Happy Hour co-host Trish McFarlane a modified and updated version of the wildly, (at least in my view), popular session titled 'Thinking Outside the Inbox: What These Big Trends Mean for HR and Recruiting.'

You can check out the slides that Trish and I will be talking from below, (email and RSS subscribers will need to click through), and they can also be viewed and downloaded from Slideshare.

Although the details and data points on things like mobile technology trends, workforce demographics, ubiquitous and wearable technologies are continuously changing, the larger point remains - all our organizations operate in a fast-moving, dynamic, and fascinating world, and making a conscious decision to be better informed about that world will make you a stronger HR and Talent pro.

Trish and I only hit three of the 'big trends' in our talk today - there are probably dozens more we could have chosen from, but hopefully the larger point is the one that will stick.

Thanks to the folks at HR Florida for having us at the event this year and if you were at the session - please drop us a note to tell us what you thought of the talk.

More evidence that texting is the best way to connect with talent

A few months ago I had a piece on the blog titled 'The most engaging method of communication you're not using' about the increased growth and the massive engagement levels driven with text communications.

I used the below chart from Business Insider to back up much of my take on how if you really want to engage with people - employees, candidates, prospects - whomever - that getting permission to communicate via text was the way to go.

 

A practically equal number of texts sent and received across all age cohorts indicate incredible engagement and interaction in the medium. When people receive a text, they generally reply. And the sheer volumes of messages being sent by members of the 18-34 year old age range both indicate that more and more texting (or similar short, disposable communications tools), will need to become a tool in your toolbox if you want and need to effectively connect with people.

Want a more practical and real-world, (ok a sports world) example of how this change in communication methods is playing out with top talent?

Last week American soccer star Clint Dempsey transferred from Tottenham, the English Premiere League club he had been playing for, to the Seattle Sounders of the US-based Major League Soccer. This was pretty big news for US soccer fans, as well as relatively important news for world soccer in general.

Dempsey is not only a club-level star, he is probably the US National Team's best all-around player, had seen success in a top-flight European league, and is still relatively close to his prime playing years. And with the World Cup only one year away, for a player of Dempsey's ability and national team importance to move to Major League Soccer and away from the English Premier League was a big story.

But back to the point of this post and how texting plays into this.

Check two excerpts from a recent SI.com interview with Dempsey, as he describes the process of changing clubs, his role on the US National team, and some of the communications that took place between him and club and country leaders over that time.

SI.com: Did you have a heart-to-heart at one point with Tottenham manager André Villas-Boas?

Dempsey: I didn't. I really just had a heart-to-heart with my family, talked to my wife, to my mom and dad, to my brothers and my sister. And had a few sleepless nights just going over that decision and wanting to make sure I was making it for the right reasons, and that I felt good about it. You have to get that gut feeling that you're doing the right thing. It was good for me to be back with Tottenham in preseason and be around it to make that decision instead of being removed from it on vacation in the summer. I was able to be there, be in training and really think about it.

After I left, [Villas-Boas] sent me a really good text. He was happy with what I was doing and I was going to be part of his plans. He wished me the best. I'm grateful for him. He gave me an opportunity to see what it was like to play at a big club. So I'll always be grateful for that, just to get that experience.

Later in the interview, Dempsey discusses some upcoming US Men's National Team games and his conversations with coach Juergen Klinsmann.

SI.com: Have you had a chance to talk to Klinsmann since you made the decision to go to Seattle?

Dempsey: Just text. He said he wasn't going to bring me in for this game, but he was looking forward to making history in Costa Rica [in the World Cup qualifier on Sept. 6. The U.S. has never won in Costa Rica in nine tries] and making sure we book our tickets to Brazil [for the World Cup]. I'm excited about getting my 100th cap, and hopefully we do make history in Costa Rica.

Did you catch that?

Dempsey leaves one high-profile English Premiere League team Tottenham - and only communicates with Villas-Boas, his former manager there via text.Text me, bro.

Then as the move to Seattle impacts his fitness and availability for some upcoming National Team games and again he only communicates with US manager Klinsmann via text.

A top talent like Dempsey makes a major career move and the two most important executives involved in the process only interact with him via text message.

And no one, not Dempsey, not Dempsey's family, not the author of the SI piece, raises any objections or questions about the choice of text messaging as the communication method. No one asks, 'He only sent you a text? He didn't call? He didn't have a meeting with you?'

Look at Dempsey's quote again "After I left, [Villas-Boas] sent me a really good text."

He sent me a really good text.

And it seems like for Dempsey, 30-year old soccer star, that is just fine.

PODCAST - #HRHappyHour 169 - The Crowdsourced Performance Review

HR Happy Hour 169 - 'The Crowdsourced Performance Review'

This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, hosts Steve Boese and Trish McFarlane welcomed Eric Mosley, who co­founded Globoforce in 1999 with the goal of reinventing the employee recognition industry for the global, multicultural, multigenerational organizations of the 21st century.

As CEO he has led Globoforce to its place as a leading provider of social recognition solutions, redefining how companies understand, manage, and motivate employees. 

Eric is also the author of the recent book, The Crowdsourced Performance Review, a resource for HR and Business leaders that want to transform their traditional, annual, and ineffective performance management processes to a more enlightened, modern, social, and collaborative way of engaging the organization, and improving outcomes.

We talked with Eric about how the traditional process for performance management is outdated and almost universally hated, how modern technologies like social networking and mobile access are impacting modern employee needs and expectations, and how thinking about performance management as an ongoing, real-time, and in the moment process can help organizations make the leap from the 'old' way of managing performance to something much better.

We also (of course) reminded folks to make sure you make plans now to attend the upcoming HRevolution event taking place in Las Vegas on October 6, 2013, and the HR Technology Conference immediately after, on October 7-9, 2013.

You can listen to the show on the show page here, using the widget player below:

New Business Podcasts with Steve Boese and Trish McFarlane on BlogTalkRadio

Thanks to Eric for the time and the insight about performance management can and should change for the better - enabled by techology, and supported by the wisdom of peers, colleagues, and even customers and partners to create a better and more impactful process.

It was a really fun and interesting show and I hope you check it out.  

And, and you can register for HRevolution 2013 here: 

Time heals all wounds, just not fast enough if you've lost a job

I caught a really interesting piece in the Wall St. Journal online recently titled After Divorce or Job Loss Comes the Good Identity Crisis, a look at some interesting research that examined just how long it takes the average person to get past, get over, and move forward from a dramatic life event such as a divorce or a job loss.

We've all heard and perhaps even advised friends and colleagues that 'time heals all wounds', the key question for the wounded is often 'How much time?' John McLaughlin, Untitled, 1963

Turns out it may be as long as two years for folks to get it back to 'normal' following a major life change.

From the WSJ piece:

Whether you've lost a job or a girlfriend, it won't take long before someone tells you, Dust yourself off. Time heals all wounds. Yes, but how much time?

Experts say most people should give themselves a good two years to recover from an emotional trauma such as a breakup or the loss of a job. And if you were blindsided by the event—your spouse left abruptly, you were fired unexpectedly—it could take longer.

That is more time than most people expect, says Prudence Gourguechon, a psychiatrist in Chicago and former president of the American Psychoanalytic Association. It's important to know roughly how long the emotional disruption will last.

Once you get over the shock that it is going to be a long process, you can relax, Dr. Gourguechon says. "You don't have to feel pressure to be OK, because you're not OK."

Oh, so don't feel pressure to be OK because you're not OK. Thanks Doc - that helps bunches if the traumatic life change involves the ending of a romantic relationship, where no one is going to force you to jump back into the dating scene before you are good and ready. Heck, maybe you never get back in the game. Sure, that kind of stinks, but again there are worse things that can happen. Like...

Like having the traumatic event be the loss of a job, especially if it was a good job and if you didn't see the axe coming - whether it was a layoff or even a term for cause that you should have seen coming but were blind to what was about to happen.

If the WSJ piece is right, and getting over the loss of a job might take up to two years to bounce back from, then that might be one of the reasons for the increased difficulty that many out of work job seekers have experiences in getting back to work in the last few years.

In this recovery period after losing a job, people are likely to feel depressed, anxious, and distracted - just the kind of feelings and 'tells' that will pretty much destroy a job seeker in the interview process. No one wants to be the hiring manager that signs off on taking on board the guy who was an emotional wreck in the interview.

Two years to get over a big loss, including a job.

Important to try and remember when the guy across the interview table, who suddenly found himself on the job market unexpectedly, has only had two or three months to process everything that has been happening to him.

He's tense, he might be getting depressed, and the pressure that is mounting on him at home is only getting more intense by the day.

Hard to 'get over' the trauma of a job loss under any circumstances for sure. And probably almost impossible when with every day that passes without a new job that  the 'two year' time frame doesn't seem to get closer to ending, but rather just keeps moving into the distance.

VIDEO: Innovating loneliness

A couple of years back now the HR Happy Hour Show welcomed Sherry Turkle from MIT, and author of Alone Together: Why We eExpect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, an examination of how the rise of social networks, more powerful and connected personal technology, and how these advances are changing our real world interactions.

It was then and probably still is one of my Top 5 all time favorite conversations that we've ever done in 168 shows to date. If you are at all interested in the topics of social networking, the dangers of being always connected to our devices, and even, (one of my favorite topics) the continuing emergence of increasingly sophisticated artificial and robot technologies into everyday life, then I encourage you to check out the replay of the show here.

What made me think about that show was reading about and watching the video embedded below, (Email and RSS subscribers will have to click through), called The Innovation of Loneliness by Shimi Cohen.

In the video, Cohen hits on some familiar concepts - Dunbar's Number, the inability to truly be 'alone' in our always-connected world, the endless amount of personal branding and promotion going on, and the curious rise in the incidence of loneliness despite the technological advances that connect us.

Favorite line from the video - 'We're collecting friends like stamps'.

I don't have a bigger point or lesson to try to share here, except that even three years on from that old Happy Hour Show with Professor Turkle I am not sure all that much has changed - and if anything the issues raised in Alone Together have not gone away at all - and in fact have become even more prevalent.

The book, the podcast from 2011, even the short video by Cohen are all worth a re-visit I think, as well as another examination in how we relate to each other and the world around us when we are constantly connected, shaping a stylized image of ourselves, and parceling out time to actually talk to other human beings in tiny bits - afraid about what we might be missing elsewhere in the world if we have to focus our attention on just one other person.