HRevolution Sponsor Spotlight - PeopleMatter

Note - The third HRevolution Event for Human Resources professionals will take place April 29, 30 in Atlanta, Georgia. This post continues a series where we recognize and thank the generous sponsors that make the HRevolution event possible.

PeopleMatter provides talent management software for the service industry. PeopleMatter's software tools help their customers in the service industries like hospitality, convenience stores, restaurants, and grocery stores to manage the processes for hiring, scheduling and engaging their talent - all from a single, integrated platform.

I first met Nate DaPore, CEO of PeopleMatter at the HR Technology Conference last fall.  Nate, along with his colleague Charles Wyke-Smith were kind enough to take some time to talk with me about PeopleMatter's Talent Management solutions, and to review some of their ideas and vision for the HR technology space, and more specifically, where they felt PeopleMatter could continue to innovate to deliver leading-edge talent management solutions for their customers.

PeopleMatter focuses squarely on developing solutions to meet the need of the service organizations; the type of customers that have significant talent management challenges. Traditionally high turnover, seasonal swings in talent and staffing requirements, the need to quickly and efficiently onboard high volumes of new staff, while simultaneously meeting myriad regulatory and legislative requirements for filing and reporting. Anyone that has tried to work in HR in these kinds of environments will attest to these conundrums.

Think about the importance of talent management to service providers like restaurants or hotels - their employees are face-to-face every single day interacting with customers, customers that often have lots of choices about where to spend their time and money. For service providers, having the 'right' employee, properly trained, and engaged enough to deliver superior customer service, can make or break the customer experience. And in the age of social media, we all know what one bad customer service experience can do to a brand. One tweet, one YouTube video, one ranty blog post and boom - years of hard work and accumulated capital and goodwill gone. PeopleMatter helps their customers better manage this challenge and uncertainty with their suite of integrated tools for hiring, onboarding, and engaging staff.

Nate DaPore, CEO of PeopleMatter will be attending and presenting at HRevolution next week, and if you are attending, be sure to connect with Nate. He is a super guy and has some great ideas about how to improve the talent management space that just might make that next trip to Starbucks or 7-Eleven a better one.

Thanks Nate, and to the team at PeopleMatter for your support of the HRevolution 2011!

Connect with PeopleMatter on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

Live from ERE Expo

Today and tomorrow, I will be at the ERE Expo in San Diego hosting what we're calling 'HR Happy Hour - Live from ERE Expo'.

I will be hosting the event's live web stream, doing some previews and summaries of the day's sessions and themes, and also having some 'web exclusive' conversations and interviews with some of the leaders from ERE, event speakers, attendees, and HR/Recruiting industry experts.

You can get all the details about the live web stream here - we will kick off each day's coverage at about 8:15 PDT, and will broadcast throughout the day, supplementing the live streamed sessions from the event.

Some of the folks you will see/hear as part of the Live HR Happy Hour programming:

Thursday, March 24

Alex Douzet - TheLadders

Laurie Ruettimann - The Cynical Girl

Gerry Crispin - CareerXroads

Bill Inman - Emergent

China Gorman - CG Group

Friday, March 25

Eric Winegardner - Monster.com

Matt Brown - Work4Labs

Amy Wilson - Wilson Insight

And more special live stream guests to be added in the next two days at the show as well. We plan on taking some questions from the web stream chat box, as well as questions that come in from Twitter on the hash tag #EREexpo.

If you weren't able to make it to San Diego for the ERE Expo, then the live stream is the next best thing. Several sessions will be streamed, including the keynote speeches, and in between, you can catch the HR Happy Hour Live programming as well.

Many thanks to David Manaster and the entire team at ERE for including the HR Happy Hour in the ERE Expo event.

Human Resource Executive Forum 2011

Today and tomorrow I'll be attending the Human Resource Executive Forum in New York City.  

Later this morning I have the great honor of participating in a panel discussion titled 'Leveraging New HR Technologies to Thrive in a New Reality', along with Josh Bersin, CEO of Bersin & Associates; Bettina Kelly, Senior VP at Chubb; Stephen Mirante, Senior VP at CBS Corp.; and moderated by Mercer's Patricia Milligan.

Clearly, the HR Technology landscape remains complex, fluid, and in many ways, in transition. From consolidation at the higher ends of the market, to the emergence of a slew of interesting and dynamic solutions at the edges of the market, and finally to the emerging importance and challenge presented by social and collaborative technologies; today's HR and organizational leaders are faced with both opportunity and decision points.

In organizations of all sizes, the need to understand workforce ability, alignment of capability to intended business strategy, assessment of current and future workforce needs, while simultaneously measuring, analyzing, and taking actions on data and information gleaned from these workforce technologies, combine to present the HR and HR technology professional with a diverse and complex set of requirements to address and technologies to evaluate and implement. 

And oh yeah, make sure these technologies are easy and engaging to use, can be deployed rapidly and on budget, work on an increasing number of platforms and devices, and be adaptable to a set of ever changing business needs. One more thing, these tools need to be 'social' too. Most people don't really know what they mean by that, but one thing we all agree on is 'social = good.'

Simple right?

Of course most of us agree that sorting out the new world of enterprise and workforce technologies is anything but simple, and that realization I think, is one of the main reasons that events like the Human Resources Executive Forum dedicate time on their agendas to specifically address some of these technology issues and challenges.

For my part, on the panel I will be talking about ways to transform data into information, and why that matters; some of the new, and non-traditional technologies that exist a bit outside the mainstream; and what the changing composition of the workforce and the demands that increased mobility will place on HR technology decisions and deployments.

I am looking forward to the session, and to attending the rest of the event.

Of course I will be tweeting and blogging from the event, if you are following on Twitter, look for the hashtag #HREforum11.

HR Southwest - Morning Day 1

HR Conferences start early in Texas.  It was pitch dark this morning on the short walk from the hotel over to the HR Southwest conference at the massive Fort Worth Conference center.  

An early start was needed to be able to attend one of the opening sessions that all kicked off at 7:00AM. 

Fortunately, for those of us that shook off the BBQ cobwebs from Sunday night, the HR Southwest organizers had supplied us well with piping hot Starbucks coffee.  

I don't care what anyone says, conferences that get the coffee right get a leg up on the entire event.

The early session I attended, with about 50 or so other early risers, was called 'Creativity Boot Camp for Leaders and Trainers', presented by Candy Whirley. Candy did a good job of engaging the attendees at such an early hour with a series of exercises that can be incorporated in various training and team building environments, (identifying your personal approach to creative thinking, building and branding a new team identity using games and props, and organizing the group along behavioral styles).

I think at that early hour, the group did appreciate the interactive nature of the session (an activity called 'Go Fish' was used to illustrate the importance of inclusion and incorporation of diverse thought). Again, the 50 or so attendees seemed to enjoy and identify with the lessons, and Candy was active and lively throughout.

The final activity required the attendees to self-identify into one of four 'animal' groups, Chameleons, Lions, Lambs, and Owls.  I won't get into all the definitions of each group, save to say that about half the attendees, all HR professionals, classified themselves as 'Lambs'. 

That seemed a bit scary to me, about half the room identifying with the 'Lamb' archetype, which from Candy's own book are often successful in occupations like Nurse, Receptionist, and Social Worker.

Which one are you do you think?  Lion, Chameleon, Lamb?

Or something else entirely?

First.

Trulondon Track Preview - The Endangered Species List

Next week I have the great pleasure of heading over to trulondon, the dynamic Bill Boorman's true 'global mashup' that will bring together Human Resources, Recruiting, and Technology pros for two days of discussions, explorations, and certainly a bit of fun.

The event, as is becoming more and more popular, is framed as an 'Unconference', meaning no formal presentations, no Powerpoint slides, and with discussion topics finding their own way to the forefront.  Good ideas and concepts get promoted, while others that are not so interesting or compelling simply Flickr - katmeredrift off.

This week I want to highlight the sessions I have the honor of co-facilitating, as a way of providing and introduction of sorts to the session, and perhaps as a way for the co-facilitators and attendees to tell me I am way off track (or perhaps not).

First up a track called 'Endangered Species' with track Leaders: Peter Gold, Jon Ingham, Steve Boese

Track Description:

From H.R. to recruiters, we seem to hear of the imminent passing of all the trades we recognise are facing extinction from a changing world. Who is next to start pushing up the daisies? This track promises to be lively and global looking at who is on the endangered species list, why and what they need to do in the future to ensure a brighter future.

It is very easy and provocative at times to declare some traditional concept, or field of endeavor 'dead' and those that continue to cling to those old customs, behaviors, attitudes etc. as a kind of dinosaur of sorts.  In 2009, on several blogs and on a really lively edition of the HR Happy Hour show itself we even talked about all of HR being dead.

Certainly business strategies, management philosophies, and approaches to managing and engaging candidates and employees have to evolve over time.  The words is changing faster than ever (although we were saying the same thing back in the 70's and 80's), and organizations and professionals that foolishly cling to increasingly antiquated strategies and behaviors will certainly be at a competitive disadvantage in the 'new' world.

But the trick of course is deciphering which tried and true practices are truly enduring, and while perhaps needing a few tweaks here and there are still relevant and important today, and dropping the practices and ideas that are really the talent management equivalent of the dinosaurs. 

Not so easy to do I think, because unlike that massive meteorite that smashed into the Earth and wiped out all the dinosaurs (I am not sure that is really how it happened, but just go with for the argument), the changes in business and the game of Talent Management and Talent Acquisition are more subtle, more complex, and certainly not universally accepted as important and/or necessary for success. 

But since I am a track co-facilitator I figured I better have some suggestions for the endangered species list and rather than wait until trulondon to find out that I am way off base, I'll list a few of the ideas here to see if you think I am on the right track:

Endangered Species #1 - The 'Not Invented Here' attitude

How many R&D staff does your organization employ?  How many marketers, IT, or HR pros? No matter how many, they represent a tiny fraction of all the available talent in those fields.  Leveraging all possible resources for product development, engineering, and research is a concept that has begun to take hold in many large organizations (see what P&G Corporation is doing for example). But I think that HR, Recruiting, and Talent Management has been lacking a bit in this area.  When times are tight, we see stories of training and development cuts, reduction in professional conference attendance, and even at times a reactionary 'circle the wagons' attitude.  I would think that the longer and more stridently organizations continue to only look inwards, and cling to the 'not invented here' approach, that in some ways they will be sealing their fates as marginal players in the future.

Endangered Species #2 - The Company Man

Unless the title after your name reads 'CEO' or 'Owner', there is a high probability that the job your are in, and the company you work for will not be your last.  Downsizing, bankruptcies, and a relentless push by organizations to wring increased cost savings (often via outsourcing or use of temporary workers) all conspire to make the traditional long tenures many professionals used to enjoy more and more unlikely.

I know, this is not exactly breakthrough analysis. But while most individuals have come (hopefully) to this realization, I am not sure most organizations have.  Nor have they adequately prepared for the effects on the morale, engagement, and capability of the staff that remain after any downsizing or outsourcing.  Finally, I don't think many have really thought how they might strategically leverage those ex-employees in the future.

Endangered Species #3 - The Specialist (aka the 'That's Not My Job' guy)

Much like the likely career trajectory or story that most employees will undergo will likely be more fluid and dynamic, so too are the skills and capabilities that people will need to see continued success.  Unless you manage to hit on the one great idea that you can leverage for years and years, you almost certainly will need to work harder, smarter, and yes maybe even longer to stay on top of your field. Even in the interview process, smart employers are going to want to know what you do to make yourself better, and in an environment of 10% unemployment in the US, the chances are high that the organization can find someone else who won't play the 'That's not my job' card.

So what do you think?  What else is on the endangered species list? 

Besides long-winded bloggers (how did this post end up at almost 1,000 words anyway?).