SHRM Counter Programming - Women's Pool

Every year during the Super Bowl I take a quick look at the counter-programming that ESPN decides to run to 'compete' with the big game (which is typically on ABC or Fox). ESPN knows that pretty much every typical ESPN viewer is watching the Super Bowl, so they don't 'waste' any potentially interesting or popular shows in that time slot.

They typically run something from the potpourri of Lumberjack contests, cheerleading competitions, or my favorite women's pool.  So while the big SHRM shindig is going on, any HR-related blogger not in attendance and providing daily updates of the goings on is likely to find it hard to get noticed this week,

So in the spirit of ESPN's programming strategy, while SHRM is in full swing, I offer this gem: Women's Pool.  The video is actually pretty funny, check out the 'interesting' telestrator image about 30 seconds in, followed shortly after by what sounds like a huge fart and the commentator denying responsibility for said fart.

Pretty funny, no?

Anyway, later in the week I will resume my normally excellent HR Technology programming, and don't forget on Friday, July 3rd at 6 PM EDT the next Episode of HR Happy Hour, where Shauna and I will get the 'inside scoop' on SHRM from a panel of HR superstars.

HR Happy Hour - Episode 4 - SHRM Special Edition

Join the HR Minion, Shauna Moerke and I on Friday, July 3 at 6PM EDT for a special HR Happy Hour - SHRM '09 Edition. HR All-Stars Kris Dunn, Laurie Ruettimann, Lance Haun, Mark Stelzner (and maybe more) are our guests for a re-cap of SHRM 2009. We'll talk about the HR Blogger session, the conference in general, and who threw the best parties. It should be a great show.

You can listen live here, and we plan on taking a few calls during the show as well.

Thanks very, very much Shauna for coordinating the guests for this show and thanks in advance for the superstar panel for agreeing to come on.  Unlike SHRM, I do not have a 'no cursing' rule on the show!

HR and IT - Part 2: Does HR need IT?

Last week the Creative Chaos Consultant guest blogged on the importance of the relationship between HR and IT, arguing that an effective partnership between the two departments is critical for long-term success and effectiveness.  And traditionally HR Technology projects have relied on this inter-departmental collaboration for many, many initiatives.Flickr- Bigarnex

Historically, HR Technology implementations followed a fairly common or consistent process. The HR leadership identified a business process or function it wanted to automate or enhance, the IT department was engaged and consulted in the RFP and vendor evaluation process, and once software was selected the IT staff would be responsible for installing and maintaining the new software. This installed software would then become just another part of the corporate systems portfolio that IT was called upon to support and manage.

But today HR Technology solutions that support traditional 'Talent Management' processes are primarily deployed in the Software as a Service (SaaS) model, (Taleo, Halogen, SuccessFactors , etc.). And there is a seemingly endless supply of either free or relatively low cost solutions available for internal collaboration and communication, that organizations and HR departments are increasingly evaluating and implementing. These platforms ranging from internal micro-blogging (Yammer), to wikis (like PbWorks or Socialtext), and activity steams (Socialcast) and almost always deployed in the SaaS model.  And on the surface, software solutions deployed in this manner, do not require significant IT involvement.

For example, I wonder how many organizations that have experimented with Yammer, have actually involved the IT department at all?  Signing up for Yammer is free, no specific software is needed, the solution is hosted by the vendor, and no integration is necessarily needed between Yammer and any other legacy enterprise systems. Similar arguments could be made for numerous other collaboration platforms, as well as some of the Talent Management systems that support functions like Performance Management or Compensation Planning.

Many organizations like to test these solutions in a 'pilot' manner, with a small group or department as kind of a proof-of-concept focus group.  Testing with pilot groups normally avoids internal IT involvement. User accounts, log in information, and 'core' HR data can often be manually created (or re-created) in the new solution, as the number of pilot users is typically kept to a manageable level. The lack of technical requirements for integrating or interfacing data to these new solutions can lead to IT being left out of at least the initial planning and testing of the new software.

So with the increasing ease and ability of HR departments to select, test, and deploy important new functionalities without significant involvement of corporate IT, does this mean that HR does not truly 'need' IT as much as in the past? 

Certainly in larger organizations, even solutions offered via SaaS and hosted by the vendor typically need some integration with enterprise directories for user authentication and possibly with the core HRMS system to pass important information like the organizational and supervisory hierarchy. These efforts by definition are the domain of IT.  HR departments certainly will continue to rely on them for these important activities.

But the changing nature of software licensing and delivery itself is naturally changing the ways that the internal dynamic between HR and IT will function. I expect that IT will be confronted with more and more instances of HR (and certainly other business groups) experimenting and deploying software solutions without IT's knowledge. The key question for HR will be just how early and to what extent to involve IT in these activities. 

I agreee with the Creative Chaos Consultant in that HR and IT need an effective partnership, but the changing nature of software deployment and the sheer speed that most organizations need to see positive results from new projects are forever changing the dynamic between the two groups.

Guest Post - Leveraging the Age Difference in HR

NOTE - This Guest Post is authored by Ben Eubanks, from the Upstart HR blog.  Ben is a young HR professional with lots of great ideas and boundless energy.  Have at it Ben!

"I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience." –Ronald Reagan—

I hate to be forced into speaking for new HR people here, but I don’t see many others stepping up to take on the issues facing us today. HR is a tough career nut to crack. Getting in requires experience, and the experience only comes after getting in. It boggles the mind. Want to hear something interesting? I think that HR needs to open its doors to younger candidates. We have some valuable gifts to offer that are not normally seen in an HR department.

We are good with tech, but we don’t know the operations side of the business nearly as well as the veterans do. The veterans may know enough about technology to do their jobs, but the younger folks could probably teach them a trick or two. Both sides of the workforce have a specialty, and they also have an obligation to each other.

The seasoned professionals must teach the business and be open to change.

The newbies must be open to learning the business and propose change.

We’re young, (partially) reckless, and willing to try anything. The employees at Google get 20% of their time to chase innovative ideas. Some of their best products and applications have come from that block of time provided by the company. Sure, giving people the freedom to work one day of every week on their personal projects seems like a risk, but with great risk comes the opportunity for great reward.

We get the reputation of thinking we know everything. I don’t know who’s spreading that idea around, but it’s not true for most of us. Sure, we are great at lots of things, but if we’re going to go through the trouble to get into the HR field, we want someone to teach us how the business works from top to bottom. In recent weeks, I’ve had more than a handful of HR veterans tell me that one of the keys to being successful in HR is to get out of it. By that they mean that a truly successful HR professional will need to broaden his/her focus to see the company as a whole and adapt a human resources strategy to fit business needs.

Young people, are you with me? Stand up and tell it to the veterans in your organization. And to you senior HR professionals out there, I have four words for you straight from my generation. Teach us. We’re waiting.

Worlds are colliding, Jerry!

Last week I posted a question called 'Ask the Tweeps', essentially wondering where folks are turning when in need of information and expertise. As you would expect, the answers were pretty mixed, people rely on internal co-workers in many situations, and turn to their external networks for 'new' or 'different' questions that may not have in-house sources of expertise, or if they are interested in more diverse or alternate perspectives.

This is altogether natural and expected, and I think understanding the 'mix' of expertise and information requests in an organization could certainly become an important part of a company's talent management efforts. 

Just how often are our employees reaching outside the organization for information and advice?

What kinds of things are they asking?

Do we really have that knowledge in-house already, and our employees just don't know how to find the right person or resource?

And finally, how might the organization capture and leverage employee's external connections for longer-term organizational benefit?

Should they even try?

Lately a number of collaboration and information platforms that are designed to better enable employee communication and knowledge sharing have started offer at least some insight to these questions by  incorporating 'external' sources of content like Twitter updates, Delicious bookmarks, and FlickR images.  Solutions like Socialcast, Obayoo, and to some extent Socialtext all offer the organization the ability to combine or mash-up classic 'internal' content and communication with heretofore 'external' data that has been traditionally viewed as private or personal in nature.

Conceptually, this makes sense.  If knowledge workers find a great website that helps solve a problem, it should be bookmarked for others in the company to potentially leverage.  If an image on FlickR helps to explain a concept, then it would be great for the rest of the team to know that it is available.

But while the 'blending' of internal content (discussions, status updates, documents) with external content (Twitter feeds, RSS feeds from blogs, Delicious, YouTube. etc ) can make sound business sense, I wonder if many employees are prepared and comfortable to open up in this way.

These new collaborative tools try to help organizations exploit what everyone knows is going on: employees rely on external sources to accomplish their tasks. But will employees be willing to more fully open up their private and personal worlds to others in the organization.  Will they need to create dual accounts on these external sources, so that their 'company' Twitter feed can be shared with the organization and their personal Twitter feed can be kept private?

Worlds are colliding more and more each day.  It may not be as easy as it seems for organizations to take advantage, just ask George Costanza.