An opportunity for HR in 2009

Ok, you are probably sick of reading blogs, analyst opinions, and watching Webinars that all keep saying the same thing: in 2009 there are opportunities for HR Technologists to make substantial impact deploying systems or platforms to improve collaboration, networking, and information sharing. 

Take a look at this quote from the Collaborative Thinking blog by Mike Gotta:

An opportunity for HR in 2009

Generational shifts: GenY and aging workforce trends create opportunities for HR groups to take on a much more strategic role. Employee, retiree and alumni social networks for instance have the potential to help organizations become more resilient and agile by allowing it to capitalize on its internal and extended relationships - often in ways not constrained by formal institutional structures

 How about this one from the Aberdeen Group's Kevin Martin:

While HR and IT can often butt heads regarding HR systems implementations, Aberdeen's research has uncovered that HR should collaborate with IT to advance Web 2.0 initiatives and achieve the above-referenced common organizational objective: organizational knowledge capture and transfer.

And if you come to the realization and conclusion that social networking and collaboration technologies are the right tools for your organization and want to champion their adoption and deployment but are faced with skeptical or less-informed management? How do you convince the 'old-guard' managers and influencers that social technologies are a valuable, soon to be essential tool, and not just a distraction from 'real work'? How about this answer from Knowledge Infusion:

 Don't try. Start at grassroots level with a ripe and receptive department or business unit. Once there is success and viral effect, the old school executives will take notice and support an enterprise approach.

You know, deep down you know, that jumping in to the Web 2.0 world is the right thing to do in 2009.  The start-up investment is extremely low, the learning curves are short, and there are loads of articles, blogs, case studies describing how numerous organizations have approached and have had success with these tools.

Don't wait for the jokers in IT to do this and grab all the glory a year from now!

HR Tech in 2009

Wow, what a crazy year.  Banking industry collapse, stock market plummets, US auto industry teeteringFlickr - ViaMoi on the brink, every day another round of corporate layoffs.  Lots of great people out on the job market, or soon to be, as I have not seen any prediction that 2009 will be any better than 2008. What does it all me for the world of HR and HR Technology specifically?

Since in the 'Big Book of Internet' I read that every blog must post an obligatory 'predictions' post for the New Year, I will go ahead and take a shot at some predictions in the HR Tech space for the coming year:

1. Large organizations will drastically reduce, or postpone major initiatives (massive ERP upgrades, major deployments of new global systems to support talent management).  I think that the projects that will continue will be smaller in scope and application.  Perhaps individual country or division pilot projects, ones that try to limit initial investment and overall risk.

2. Small and medium sized businesses that are healthy (there must be some right?), will be under pressure to improves their e-recruiting and applicant tracking systems.  When the large organizations are letting droves of workers go, the small and medium size businesses are going to be swamped with not only an increased volume of applications, but a real increase in talented, qualified applicants.  It may be that in 2009, selecting the right talent from a large talent pool will be one of the most important challenges facing the SMB segment.

3. More organizations will look to experiment with Web 2.0 technologies for internal collaboration, networking, and knowledge management. Many organizations have already stepped into this market, notable examples include Best Buy, Deloitte, and Pfizer, and many who have not will wade in in 2009.  Why now?  These technologies are typically easy to deploy (many pilot deployments will not either involve or require internal IT resources), cost significantly less than 'traditional' enterprise systems, and present a low-risk, high-reward potential for the HR leader.  Deployment of a company-wide platform for networking and collaboration could be one of the most impactful positive contributions and HR department can champion in 2009.

4. Not really an original thought, but iin 2009 I would expect more vendor consolidation.  Some vendors in the Talent and collaboration space will not survive, and the vetting process that HR must undertake before launching any new initiatives is of the utmost importance. The HR pro may also need to re-evaluate some of their current tech vendors just to be prepared for any suddent and potentially harmful disruptions in service.

5. I don't really have a number 5, but I will close with this: employees may be uneasy, concerned, and fearful about your company's and their own future.  Do whatever you can to be open, honest, and timely with your communication.  Technology can help in these endeavors, but it will never be the solution to the most basic rule, 'Do the right thing by your employees'.

Thanks so much for reading and commenting on this blog in 2008. 

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When you rely on technology...

be sure the technology is reliable.

Backstory - our hosted, ERP-based e-recruiting front-end and applicant tracking system has been rejecting all candidate document uploads for about four days now.

That's right, no resumes, cover letters, recommendations, etc.  Worse still, the error message EVERY candidate sees is 'Your document could not be uploaded, it has a virus'. 

Just great.  Not only are we turning away and turning off scores of candidates (although in this economy they may come back anyway), we are scaring the crap out of them that their own systems may be infected.

When you rely so heavily on third-party, hosted or SaaS solutions, particularly for your public-facing applications, you better be confident in their reliability, the vendor or host's ability to respond quickly to a problem, and your own capability and actions plans to mitigate and deal with the fallout.

Hold your vendor's to their obligations for uptime and issue resolution. When they fail, make sure they prove to you how they will ensure it won't happen again. If they can't prove to you they won't continue to let you down, then take your business somewhere else.

How many good candidates are we losing right now?

The Sacred Cow and HR Technology

The single most influential book I read in college was from my Sociology 101 class.

The book was 'Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture' by Marvin Harris.

 

From the summary on Amazon:

This book challenges those who argue that we can change the world by changing the way people think. Harris shows that no matter how bizarre a people's behavior may seem, it always stems from concrete social and economic conditions.

The most memorable passage, I recall, was the observation that if a starving Hindu farmer relented, and slaughtered the family cow, that while he would temporarily improve his family's hunger and other conditions, he would almost be certainly sealing his doom, since the cow (when alive) provided so much more than a few cuts of beef (most importantly the potential to breed and produce another cow).

Over time, the sacred cow metaphor has come to stand for unquestioning adherence to an organization or ideology or process.  Something that is so entrenched in mindset, that it sort of perpetuates on and on, whether or not it still makes sense or adds value.

 How does the sacred cow analogy tie back to HR and in particular HR Technology? 

Well, do you post every one of your job ads in the exact same manner and on the exact same job sites?

Do you continue to have employees provide feedback and questions on HR programs to a single 'general' e-mail address, viewable by only internal HR staff?

When pursuing technology projects to increase automation and improve efficiency, are you really just taking a old, long paper form and 'webifying' it?

These are some of the most challenging economic times in memory, can you afford to cling to your own Sacred Cows, or do you need to think about and explore opportunities for improvement.

I am running an experiment right now, designed to help show how changing things up from the standard is a good and necessary idea - this is a link to one of our open engineering jobs, the job has been open for a while, and for whatever reason we can't get it filled.  Take a look, pass it along, lets see if 'advertising' the opening in non-traditional ways leads to a better result than the same old methods we have been using forever - Engineering Job.

The Net Generation in Class

Been spending some time this week reading the fantastic, 'grown up digitial' by Don Tapscott.

It really is a great book and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in understanding how Generation Y, or the Millennials, or the Net Generation, or whatever you would like to call the group born between 1979 and 1997 will forever change education delivery, workforce management, social networking, and collaboration.

To me the key points I have taken from the book center around the ways that Gen Y students generally prefer to be 'taught'.  The classic mode of delivery with the teacher in front of the class expounding his or her words of wisdom which the students dutifully transcribe and hopefully successfully regurgiate later on for the exam. This method is tired, old, and frankly boring for everyone.

Gen Y students want to to give their opinions, insights, and help to co-design the curriculum and content.  They are much more comfortable in a collaborative environment, and will gladly assist and help each other in their efforts.  They have the tools to explore and inject concepts and content from everywhere.

A key takeaway for me as the insructor is to stop talking so much, start listening and start asking more questions. 

In class I introduce a number of technologies like Performance Management, Succession Planning, wikis, blogs, and microblogs.  But rather on 'telling' the students what they are used for, perhaps I need to spend more time having the students tell me what these tools can be used for.

I think, then we will both learn more, and be better for the experience.

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