Trapped in a Box

The company organization chart.

Every company has one. There is an entire class of software applications to help companies generate them, (my favorite is OrgPublisher from Aquire), and maintaining them and making sure all the correct names are in the correct boxes and the lines are all connected properly can be a full-time job in larger organizations.

In some organizations the chart is sort of a sacred document, informing managers and employees of crucial information like who is in charge of what, how many folks do job 'XYZ', and who might be the likely successors for a given person if they were to move to a different position, or leave the organization.

But organization charts, can be limiting, and can effectively 'trap' individuals and teams by defining them in too Flickr - Stefannarrowly drawn roles. If the culture of the organization is not inherently 'open' or 'collaborative', then the chart is a tool that can also serve to maintain separation in the organization. If your position on the organization chart is Web Designer reporting to the Marketing team, then you do web design work for marketing, and may not typically get much exposure to the web designers that work on the company's internal sites or intranet, as the responsibility for those functions falls elsewhere in the organization.

With the growing popularity and increase in the easy availability of tools and technologies to facilitate collaboration and communication, it seems very likely that many medium to large organizations have multiple, and isolated activities underway to explore and deploy these kinds of tools.

A mid-sized organization that I am familiar with has at least four different wiki platforms deployed in various parts of the organization. These are all set up, maintained and administered locally, and some are successful and some are not. But even the successful ones do not really have much of a chance to impact or influence the broader organization, chiefly because of the culture and the strict adherence to the organization chart. The company does not have the ability to 'break free' from the constraints of the chart, and individual local administrators of these wikis are not allowed or encouraged to work with other parts of the organization to share information and potentially work towards developing a solution that may benefit the organization as a whole.

It is actually very ironic that the recent availability and relative ease of adoption of tools to promote collaboration are bringing to light the lack of collaboration across this organization.

The number of tools for collaboration and communication are growing everyday, but if the organization still clings to the org chart, like construction crews cling to blueprints when erecting a building, then in many cases the full potential of these tools will never be realized.

Employee Transfers in 1920 - Look familiar?

Chicago, Milwaukee etc. RR employee form
Originally uploaded by mod as hell

Back in the day, forms like these were the 'technology' and mechanism behind a standard Human Resources process of effecting an employee transfer.

Or as this form indicates, an 'employe' transfer. Thanks to my friend Nicole from RemoteRevolution for finding out that the 'old' spelling variant was largely out of favor by the mid-1920s.

The form, which was from the Chicago & Milwaukee Railroad, provides a nice glimpse back into the old days in HR, when simple employee transactions like transfers were processed on paper forms, and required several individuals to handle and sign the forms.

Wow, hard to remember a time when simple transactions had to be done manually, on paper, over and over again. Easy to mess those up, and HR staffs now have more time for 'strategic' activities.

What's that?

Your organization hasn't automated and streamlined these processes yet? You are still processing employee transfers just like the railroad did in the 1920s?

I hope at least you have updated the spelling on the form to 'employee'.

Kindergarten Information Systems

information systems
Originally uploaded by striatic

I came across this awesome photo of a classic Kindergarten bulletin board on Flickr the other day and I had to write about it.

This type of board, which exists in thousands of elementary school classrooms all over the world, really is a great example of an information portal. Key information that is relevant and important to the 'users' is readily available, easily understood, is presented in a very visually appealing manner, and is very accessible.

Frankly, it jumps right out at you as soon as you walk in the door.

Schedules, news, events, important facts, and some required learning objects all right there. And there is usually an element if 'user creation' in this content, as kids often update the board with things like the day's weather conditions or perhaps adding vocabulary words to the 'letter or the day'. They may even put their names up to volunteer for activities and events.

So let's get this straight - updated, meaningful content, presented in an attractive, user-friendly manner, with elements of user-created content?

Sounds like most kindergarten classes have a better information portal than many corporate organizations.

I guess the old line about 'All I needed to know I learned in Kindergarten' may have some truth to it after all.

ERP and the Ford Taurus

Ah, 1997.

Elton John's Candle in the Wind was on the charts, you saw Titanic two or three times,  and one of America's top selling cars was the Ford Taurus.  Maybe you bought one, or more likely had one as a rental car. I swear I drove a Ford Taurus something like 72 weeks in a row when I was still in ERP consulting. 

 Stylin' in the Taurus

She's a beauty, no?

You know what else you might have purchased in 1997? 

Your ERP system. The same one that still runs your HR, Payroll, Accounting and Distribution processes.  In 1997, about $14B was spent by organizations on ERP.  By now you would have had to go through two or likely even three significant upgrades, each one getting progressively more complex, costly, and time consuming.  But underneath it all, the chances are the 'core' of the system is still largely the same as the 1997 model.  The data model you are using today, is probably largely unchanged from the original version of the system you implemented in 1997.

What about your business? How many things have changed since 1997?  Would you still make the same ERP purchase decision today that you did in 1997, when chances are you were in a panic over Y2K and you were pretty sure your Cobol mainframe system was going to spontaneously combust?

Is it really time for your organization to begin to let go of the loyalty to a system you bought over a decade ago? 

Many organizations still feel the need to only look to their ERP solution and try to add-on Talent Management functionality, or the ATS module rather than do a comprehensive assessment of the market, the business issues, and make an informed decision about the right technology solution for the business. 

You eventually sold (or junked) that '97 Taurus, didn't you?

NOTE : I ran this post, more or less on my old Wordpress blog, but after an interesting Twitter chat with Byron Abramowitz and Michael Krupa about ERP, upgrades, and creaky data models, I decided to run it today.  Also, it was WAY easier than writing a whole new post.

'Company Name Jobs' - Search!

You are in HR or a hiring manager for the XYZ Company. When was the last time you did a simple Google search for 'XYZ Jobs' or 'XYZ Careers'? Don't lie, I will bet you have not done a search like that for quite a while.  If you haven't for some time, go ahead right now and do the search, I'll wait here until you get back.

Okay, good.  What did you find?  Hopefully for you, your corporate jobs site came back at the top, or at least in the first two or three results on the first page. If your site is nowhere to be found, or is buried in the list and not easily recognizable as your jobs site, you have already, perhaps quite unwittingly put up the first hurdle for your applicants. 

Here is a simple example of two really large organizations, FedEx and UPS, and how they rank with 'Company Name Jobs' searches.

First, take a look at what you find when searching for 'FedEx Jobs'

The link most job seekers are after, is the fifth result down, does not have much descriptive information to clue in the job seeker that it indeed, is the main corporate jobs page. It also has a long and confusing URL that has FedEx's ATS vendor's name (HodesIQ) embedded in the string. Altogether not intuitive and not applicant friendly.

Compare that result to the same search for one of FedEx's main competitors for business and for talent, UPS:

The main corporate job site is the first result, a simple tag line that makes it totally clear what the applicant will find there, and there are sub-links to important parts of the site clearly laid out (Application Center, Job Search).  This is exactly the result you are looking for with a simple Google search on 'Company Jobs'.

The interesting thing is after you find the main careers site for both of these companies, they are really very similar.  They both have the expected employee video testimonials, sections with 'Life at' content, reasonably simple search and application procedures.

They are pretty decent, save for the fact that one of them, UPS, is much, much easier to find quickly in Google search, and the other FedEx is not easy to find at all.

 If you are like most, you spend quite a bit of time on your Corporate Jobs pages, making sure your instructions are clear, your links to benefits information and job listings are working, and maybe even making sure you have some nice employee testimonials and perhaps some cool video.  You may have even partnered with a slick new ATS vendor that has enabled 'social sharing' so visitors to your site can easily share a job listing with their Facebook friends, or LinkedIn contacts, or maybe even send a Tweet with the listing out to everyone's favorite social network, Twitter.

But before you do all that, take a quick look at the simple Google search I described above.  You may be spending time, effort, and budget on sites and systems that many job seekers will have trouble finding.

And if your results are more like FedEx and less like UPS, then do another Google search, for 'Search Engine Optimization', don't worry, you will get tons of hits on that - I promise.