Who's on first?

'Who's on first?', is a classic comedy routine by the legendary American comics Abbott & Costello. Aside - even 1940s comedians are on the net check out A&C's website here. The routine is essentially a play on a failure to communicate, Costello wants to know the name of a certain baseball player, and Abbott can't seem to get across clearly that the player's name is 'Who', thus the recurring theme of the bit, Costello keeps asking 'Who's on first?' and Abbott keeps saying 'Yes'.

Video of the classic bit can be found here.

The idea of Who's on first? makes me think about who (customers, employees, shareholders) is 'first' in most organizations today. Many organizations will have well-defined, budgeted campaigns and programs specifically centered on the customer, how to find them, how to keep them, how to get them happier, spend more, tell all their friends, and otherwise 'delight' them.

But very few put similar emphasis and focus on programs aimed at their employees, getting to understand them better, keep them motivated, discover their hidden talents and aspirations.  Systems and processes are usually not centered around employees leading to the often noticed phenomenon in many organizations - 'LinkedIn knows more about your employees than you do'. Think about it, are your employees current skills and profiles easily accessible in your HR systems? Are they up to date? Are you saving 20 year old resumes in a file somewhere?

The astronomical growth and popularity of Social networking sites reveals that people want to share experience, knowledge, and learn from each other.  Why not shift some of your 'customer' focus to an 'employee' focus? 

Find out where and how your employees are congregating, self-organizing, and otherwise connecting with each other, as well as your industry, customers and the marketplace.

Does it make sense for your organization to develop your own 'place' or network for your employees?  

Check out what Best Buy is doing with Blue Shirt Nation, or from a vendor perspective check out SelectMinds.

Should we focus more on our employees?

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Walls

I know of an organization that does not want their IT folks who support the enterprise HR and Payroll systems to have IM clients installed on their desktops. The reason for attempting to place a wall between them and the people they support? 

photo credit - FlickR -Joriel "Joz" JimenezThe IT development manager is afraid that the HR and Payroll end users (who are all IM users), will directly contact the IT staff with questions, issues, problems, rather than following the established protocols of sending all issues and requests to the IT manager first, who then by some shadowy process assigns out tasks one at a time to the development staff.

Prohibiting IM use by the IT staff doesn’t make any sense, and anyway with services like Meebo, Twitter and Yammer, as well as web versions of the other major IM environments, isn’t even practical or enforceable anyway. But putting that aside for a minute, let’s consider some reasons why organizations would choose to operate this way.

1. A need to ‘control’ workers rather than ‘manage’ an organization – in today’s world this is really not sustainable for too much longer. Staff will tire of this arrangement, turnover will increase, and positions will go unfilled as the ‘buzz’ on the environment starts to spread.
2. A general lack of a collaborative spirit or said differently, an environment where problems are either ‘your problems’ or ‘my problems’ never ‘our problems’. It seems like too many IT departments want to spend quite a bit of time making sure that IT isn’t ever blamed for things going wrong or things not getting done.
3. Lack of the correct tools and technologies to enable better collaboration between the ‘real’ users and the IT staffs meant to serve them. This is the area that is most interesting to me, and an area that I try to focus on in my HR Technology class. Wikis, Zoho applications, internal social networks, Ning, heck even Facebook can all be utilized in one way or another to better foster and enable collaboration across the organizations.

The truth is that the walls and barriers will come down anyway. Banning IM use is folly, would an organization also remove telephones, e-mail or talking?

Smart organizations should be making efforts to increase openness and collaboration, not the other way around.

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Your HR Director should blog

Either I don't know the right Google search terms, or almost no HR Directors or VPs of HR are publicly blogging.

This seems odd to me, for in these times of forecasted talent shortages, fierce competition for skilled workers, and difficulty in keeping your best assets, the VP of HR really should assume the role of 'Head Talent Marketer'.

So many of the largest consumer brands have invested significant time, resources, and funds in corporate marketing-type blogs aimed at sharing and conversing with customers, prospects, and media.  Some well-known examples:

General Motors - GM Fast Lane

Kodak - 1000 Words Blog

Delta Airlines - Under the Wing

All of these blogs do a great job of shaping a message, helping to define a brand, and connect with their various audiences.

Why wouldn't this work for a VP of HR?  A blog led by the Head Talent Marketer and supplemented by other thought leaders of the organization I think would be an important addition to your recruitment efforts. The leader in the Recruitment efforts can and should be the biggest cheerleader for the organization. 

Why is this a great place to work?  Here are some incredible things that are going on here. Look at some of the superstars you'll get a chance to work with if you come on board. Those are just a few topics that the Head Talent Marketer can address.

I can't be the only one who thinks this is a decent idea, so my question is - where are the VP of HR blogs?

If you know of one - send me the link or leave a comment.

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Where is my choir?

Since I have been researching and teaching my HR Technology class I have tested a really large number of web services, software programs and concepts in my preparation for class. 

Certainly many are the most obvious types of products that would have direct application to the study of HR Technology, vendors  like SuccessFactors, Halogen, Taleo, and SpectrumHR come to mind. 

But I found that as the class content started to evolve and mature I introduced Twitter, Second Life, Socialtext, PbWiki and SelectMinds.

And I have even spent time on the 'utility' type Web 2.0 services, while not really designed for HR applications, could certainly support many HR initiatives.  Some of my favorites are Zoho, Box, Meebo, FlickR,and Slideshare.

And like any good worker, I have tried to educate our internal HR folks and other colleagues on some of these tools and services.  And while I fully understand that we are knee-deep in the muck of a train wreck of an Oracle R12 upgrade (a whole other story for a different post), I have been really disappointed in the general lack of interest in exploring quite frankly any of these tools in our own organization.

The couple of folks I could convince to get on Twitter are sure it is a goof.  Two different attempts at kick-starting some internal wiki development are stalled (I still post to it, I am stubborn), and you would have thought I committed a crime when I told an internal training class that the presentation was on SlideShare and I would gladly give them the link.

(Here they are by the way - I know they are ugly have not had time to make them over)

Irc Training Slides

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: irecruitment recruitment)

I know, people are busy, don't bother them with superfluous garbage like Twitter and Yammer.  Leave Facebook for the Admissions department.  I wonder if this organization will ever be ready to embrace the new Web 2.0 world.

And I also wonder how long it makes sense to keep preaching, when there seems to be no choir?

A 1997 Ford Taurus

Ah 1997, Elton John's Candle in the Wind was on the charts, PDiddy was still Puff Daddy, 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 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 maybe even three significant upgrades, each one getting progressively more complex, costly, and lengthy.  But underneath it all, the chances are the 'core' of the system is still largely the same as the 1997 model.

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 in 1997? 

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

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

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