Breaking Us in Two

Always liked Joe Jackson (the singer, not the baseball player, although I am pretty convinced the baseball player got a bad rap, but I digress). 

Joe the singer had a really cool song back in the day, 'Breaking Us in Two'.  I heard it the other day and Flickr - I'm Heavy Dutycoincidentally I have been thinking about a breakup of sorts, that is a breakup of my HR Technology class into two separate classes.

Currently, the class covers a wide range of topics and technologies, starting with the basics of HR Technology - 'Define ERP', progressing through the various components of Talent Management and their associated technologies, and eventually covering new trends and directions in HR Tech.  Things like the growing impact of social media in recruiting, discussions on the use of external social networking by employees, the concept of the corporate social network, and demonstration and testing of some of the technologies in that space.

Each time I give the course, the latter section about new technology and trends seems to get bigger, and since it is much more current and interesting, some of the 'older' material and concepts are starting to get squeezed out, and that really is a shame.  This quarter, I spent really not enough time on ERP and the issues and challenges inherent with ERP, did not talk about workforce scheduling and management technologies at all, and gave not nearly enough attention to Learning and Development technologies.

Even my sections on 'new tech' felt somewhat rushed, as we were fortunate to have the use of great Talent Management software from Halogen, that we spent quite a bit of class time using. Now I am at the end of class, wishing I had about three more weeks to really cover collaboration and internal social networking properly, with real software to use like Mentor Scout or SocialCast.

The remedy might be to split the current class and curriculum into two separate courses, an HR Tech Part I and Part II.  Part I would start with the basics, definitions, ERP, etc. and continue though the various components of Talent Management (recruiting, onboarding, performance, succession and comp).  Part II would then pickup with the impact of Web 2.0 on all these technologies, modern approaches to recruiting with social media, the use of external and internal social networking.  We could find a internal community platform vendor like SelectMinds to partner with the class to let the students roll out a full deployment of a mock internal social network for our class company. We'd spend time on internal use of blogs, microblogging and other new methods for company communication.

Does it make sense?  Is there really enough content and technologies to split one HR Tech Class into two?  Is this all just a shameless ploy to double my (meager) salary as an instructor?

What do you think?  Is HR Tech so big now, that 'Breaking Us in Two' makes sense?

I'm not in today, but my Twitter followers can help you

As the popularity of Twitter grows by leaps and bounds, and as folks increasingly turn to their Twitter networks for information, perspective, advice, and great ideas, I wonder if there will come a time when the standard 'Out of the Office' message - 'Hi, I'm not in, leave a message and I'll get back to you on Thursday', will be replaced by 'I'm not in today, but my Twitter followers can help you, just send me a Tweet with your question'.

Think about it, many folks who have spent the time networking and connecting on Twitter have developed robust, rich networks of hundreds if not thousands of 'followers', many of whom are more than willing to offer assistance, resources, and expert information on almost any question you are likely to throw at them.

A few nights ago I was preparing material for my HR Tech class on the use of Web 2.0 and related technologies in recruiting, and I tweeted a question to my network about what technologies aside from LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter were important to mention. Within five minutes I received a wide range of responses from five or six professional, successful recruiters.  The responses were insightful, helpful, innovative, and I incorporated some of the suggestions in class the next night.  My 'work product' was directly influenced and improved by the use of my network.

So, what's the big deal you ask? Hasn't leveraging your professional network always been a hallmark of successful employees?  In the past the most valuable employees often boasted the largest rolodex.Flickr - rutibegga

All true, but today's social sites like Twitter and Facebook enable more 'super-charged' networking, that is more accessible to every employee.  But unlike the old-timer's rolodexes, these networks are sometimes viewed as 'time-wasters', 'distractions', and even banned or blocked by some short-sighted organizations.

Would any organization force a new employee to erase all the numbers in their contact list? Then why would they try and block Twitter?

Follow me on Twitter - I promise I won't block you!

Wiki Lessons

The third session of my HR Technology course is winding down, and the final class 'Wiki as intranet'project is coming together really well.  The students have really embraced the technology and have created some really outstanding content, and have extended the 'core' functionality by embedding video, chat rooms, polls, and presentations.

In my experience using wikis as a class tool as well as deploying wikis in the organization for faculty use there are a few key considerations and lessons learned that are important to understand if you plan on introducing wikis to your class or organization.

1. If Wikis are new to your program or organization, chances are 90% of the students and staff will have never 'used' a Wiki, beyond reading entries on Wikipedia.

2. Even though Wikis are touted as simple, no-training-required tools, doing more than adding simple text will initially require demonstration and review for most non-technical users.

3. Wikis that make as simple as possible the steps for embedding video, slide shows, Flickr images, chat, and polls (love Zoho Polls for this), will be most effective in the classroom

4. For the best chances of adoption of the Wiki as the primary class or organization communication platform, put everything on the Wiki. for your class this means Syllabus, course overview, assignments, presentations, and any 'sign-ups' should all be Wiki pages. Encourage the class to post questions and comments everywhere. For an organization wiki, meeting agendas, minutes, project plans, status reports and announcements should all be placed on the wiki.

5. For a class, old habits are still hard to break, you may need to 'cross-post' for a time in both the Wiki and the old course management system. Certain items like the gradebook still have to reside in the CMS. Try not to make the students have to bounce back and forth between the two platforms too often. In your organization, you may still need to resort to e-mail blasts to be sure important announcements are getting seen, while you are building wiki awareness and use.  If you do resort to e-mail, be sure to 'cross-post' to the wiki and provide a link the the associated wiki page in the e-mail message.

6. Keep the wiki alive even after the class or project ends. There's lots of good information there. Figure out a way to keep it accessible for students in the future. In an organization this is less of an issue, but be mindful of 'stagnation', many wikis start out with a flurry of activity, then sort of slowly die out as the novelty wears off.

I am absolutely convinced that Wikis are an incredibly effective tool for almost all class activities, with the added bonus of giving the students exposure and experience to a technology they will see in the workplace. In fact, a current student has already implemented her own company-wide wiki for here small business, largely based on the experience and lessons learned from using the class wiki.

These tips and observations are really vendor neutral, I have implemented wikis from Socialtext, Confluence, and PbWiki, and while they all have their individual strengths and weaknesses, they all support the essentials for class or organizational use.

What are your best tips, tricks and observations from using wiki?

No soup for you in 2009

'Do you have budgeted funds available to attend HR conferences in 2009?'

Last week Jason Averbook of Knowledge Infusion took an informal survey of HR professionals on Twitter asking that simple question.

The results were astoundingly one-sided, 18 respondents said 'No', 2 said 'Depends', and only 1 said 'Yes'. Looks like there could be many conference meeting rooms going empty this year.

Last month the Gartner Group announced the cancellation of several IT conferences, including its 'flagship' event, the Spring Symposium/IT Expo in Las Vegas.

Many confererences will still go on of course, but with greatly reduced attendance, and more vendors and consultants chasing fewer and fewer potential customers. 

What if anything should replace these opportunities for HR professionals, and the vendors or consultants that attempt to leverage the events to generate leads and close deals? One option for the HR pro and student are the numerous webcasts offered by HR.com, the Human Capital Institute, and maFlickr - Jim Frazierny of the vendors and consultancies as well.  These webcasts are usually free, they cover a wide range of HR-related topics, and run so frequently, that pretty much every day of the business week you can find one to attend. 

In fact, I will be presenting two webcast in the next few months, one on February 25 with HR.com titled 'Understand your workforce today, so you can plan for tomorrow' - details here; and one on May 14 with HCI titled, 'Tell the Hiring Story with Technology' - information here.

But webcasts are not the same as conferences, the ability to connect and network is missing, the ability to get immersed for a few days with like-minded folks, and easy access to experts and leaders in the field can't easily be replicated over the web.

I think there is some opportunity to develop a more informal, grass-roots style alternative to traditional conferences which no one can afford to attend, and webcasts that are really one dimensional and have limited utility.  I have been kicking around some ideas with some Twitter friends on this, and hope to try some of these ideas very soon.

What ideas do you suggest to replace the gap created by the lack of conference attendance in 2009?

But we don't want to be the Milwaukee Brewers

Editors' Note - This post originally ran back in July 2008, an update to the story is below

Here is Reason 31 of Steve's reasons why the ERP vendors will eventually crumble. My shop is now about 9 months in to another 'major' upgrade of the ERP system. Before it is all over, we are looking at a full year of essentially no progress on any meaningful, strategic, or high employee or candidate satisfaction project.

No online total comp statements, no automated competency management, performance reviews, or succession planning. No new processes rolled out to employee or manager self-service. No, pretty much a full year of test upgrades, patches, bugs, regression testing, more bugs, five day outage to production, more bugs, support, did I already say more bugs? And we went through pretty much the same scenario in 2003.

So 1 out of every 5 years, all progress stops, the organization retrenches, and all important and interesting work is 'frozen'. In theory we get lots from these upgrades, compliance fixes, latest in technology, new features, etc. And most of that, I admit, is true. But at what cost? One out of every five years essentially wasted.

What does this have to do with the Milwaukee Brewers? Well, for a team like the Brewers, showing slow and steady progress for four years, maybe even making a playoff appearance is a notable achievement. In year 5, if they have to regroup, trade off a few players they can't afford, and load back  up on young prospects, that is really ok with them, and most likely their fans (customers/employees). After year 5, the team (hopefully) starts the slow climb backup to contender status. Maybe they make another run at the top, before the cycle inevitably repeats.

But what about that plan for the Yankees or lately, the Red Sox? They would not be content or satisfied with an every fifth year halt to progress, or worse a regression back to square one. The fans get restless, the media relentless, and team ownership would not stand for it. Managers, executives, or players responsible for the problems would be sacked or traded. Those teams simply will not accept a 'cycle' like lesser teams like the Brewers would.

How does your organization see itself? Do you really want to be the Milwaukee Brewers? Or do you want to be the Yankees? Can you afford to take every fifth year as a 'no-progress, just keep running the Payroll' year? Will your staff accept that? How about your owners, executives and customers?

Is it time to get off the ERP upgrade treadmill?

Update - Feb. 2009 - A full 16 months since the major upgrade started, and my organization is still not fully recovered.  We are still logging new bugs every week, sometimes several a week.  Basic functionality that worked fine for years on the prior release, still fails to work consistently or reliably.  No significant new development or introduction of new features or functions have occurred, save only for those that 'Had' to be done, as the new release of the ERP system changed quite a few processes that frankly, did not need changing. So sure, my organization is positioned for the next several years, but was the cost of a year and a half of time, money and lost opportunities worth it? 

Think about this before you jump in the pool with ERP, I urge you.