Earlier this week I was fortunate enough to attend the Senior HR Executive Conference organized by The Conference Board, (my summary of the first day of event is here).
While there were so many excellent presentations from the HR Executives on a wide range of topics, read this piece from HR Ringleader on the Unilever 'Agile Working' program for an example, I want to focus on what wasn't said at the event.
In a day and a half of presentations, casual conversations, lunches, and networking the subject of social networking use in HR and the leveraging of social media tools and technologies for HR, was largely absent from the discourse. In total, I think we (the bloggers that were invited to the event) only 
Flickr - JFChenierobserved two mentions of social networking; one a reference to sharing family recipes on Facebook, and two; a representative from PricewaterhouseCoopers talking about how PWC using social networking tools to connect with interns and intern candidates.
That was it.
No discussions on using new tools for workforce collaboration, for internal expertise location, to improving the 'connectedness' of their global organizations, and definitely no talk about implementing innovative strategies and approaches for using social networking to find, attract, retain, and engage top talent.
Last night on the HR Happy Hour show, a 2009: Year in Review, we spent a large portion of the time discussing social networking and social media as one of the most significant themes and trends for HR in 2009, (when we were not playing the Sad Trombone).
What gives? If social media and social networking for HR were really that significant in 2009, shouldn't there have been at least some talk about this development at the HR Executive Conference? Shouldn't have one Senior HR leader talked about how HR was able to exploit employee networks, new technologies, or public sites like Twitter or Facebook to drive some truly innovative solutions?
Why might there be a disconnect between those of us active in social networks and technologies for HR and what we heard (or more accurately did not hear) from the Senior HR Executives?
ROI- On the Happy Hour, Jessica Lee made an excellent point. She essentially said that HR Executives have not seen the real organizational ROI of social media and social networking for HR initiatives, and therefore do not yet consider it important and/or essential. I think Jessica is right on with this observation. These executives don't want to hear 'Look our company recruiting Facebook page is up to 823 fans!'. They want to know how these tools and strategies produce results, better hires, at lower cost, and improved results. That is it.
Echo Chamber - The HR folks involved in social media and active in social networking have formed a nice, tight cocoon around ourselves, and since we keep telling each other this 'stuff' is important, then darn it, it must be important. But we are not doing a good enough job in and out of our organizations reaching the broader HR community, and certainly not the highest levels of HR Executives. Until those of us that are proponents of these approaches start doing a better job on outreach, the executives will simply not even notice, let alone care.
It really isn't that important - So much of the conversation and presentations at the conference centered around implementing consistent performance evaluation processes, identifying and retaining high-potential employees, and managing the workforce through this recession. While at least in theory social technologies and strategies could assist organizations in these areas, it certainly is not necessarily obvious how. In these organizations more tested and traditional approaches seemed to be the preference, and based on the presentations, many companies claimed successful outcomes. Maybe it still is possible to solve important workforce and organizational crises without social networking.
It's still too new - It quite likely could be too early in the widespread understanding and adoption of social networking strategies in HR for them to have 'bubbled up' to get the attention of the average senior executive, or to have achieved the kind of success that an executive would want to actually talk about publicly. Maybe when I attend the 2010 Senior HR Executive Conference (please invite me back!), there will simply just be more to say on the topic. While 2009 was truly a year of dramatic growth in HR's use of social media and networks, it still really has a long, long way to go.
I have to say I was indeed a bit surprised how little attention these ideas received at the conference, but truly after reflected on them a bit, and from the comments and discussion on last night's HR Happy Hour, it does make sense somewhat.
For HR folks invovled in social media and social networking, what do you think needs to be done in 2010 to get these topics on the radar of the most senior leaders in the discipline?