Three keys for a successful HR vendor user conference

I'm just back from the inaugural HireVue Digital Disruption user conference in absolutely gorgeous Park City, Utah, a place where the only thing you can possibly complain about is how after about 15 paces you're short of breath (due to the altitude), and dying of thirst (due to the dry as dust air). It was a really great event, and kudos to the entire team at HireVue for executing at a high level on their first try.

During the closing reception at the event I got to talking with some attendees and in those conversations I shared how I have been to about 5 or 6 HR tech vendor user conferences so far this year, and I expect I will attend another half dozen or so before the end of 2014. And if it seems to you that sounds like a lot of vendor conferences you're right - it is a lot of vendor user conferences. So after having hit so many of these events over the last couple of years, I like to think I know something about what makes for a successful and valuable event, and since no one asked, here are three things I think are the most important keys or elements that can help make vendor user conferences more successful.

1. Executive keynotes - the best vendor executive keynotes are not the ones that show off the 5 new and amazing product features, they are the ones where the CEO/Founder/President shows his or her more human side, and actually connects with the audience, (especially the customers). I think we consistently underestimate how important the personal and human elements are in many of these vendor/customer relationships. Customers want to believe in you and what you are doing. They want to see how passionate you are for helping them solve their problems. They want to see you talk about your own team, hear something about your company culture and leadership philosophy. Mostly, they just want to see the CEO as a real person. So the best vendor executive keynotes manage to allow this human side to show through.

2. Content mix - the natural tendency at vendor user conferences is to program an agenda almost completely comprised of two types of presentations: Vendor reps talking about the products, and existing customers talking about how they use the products, often at a very detailed level. While both types of sessions can be valuable for attendees, I think the best vendor user conferences mix in at least some content that is not 100% product focused. Bringing in some more outside voices or even having existing customers discuss more of their HR and business challenges more broadly, can benefit the overall value for attendees. Often I talk with attendees who feel like many of the sessions simply repeated information about the products or how to use the products that they already knew. There should be at least a fair amount of content that can challenge, excite, and interest the most expert customer users, or else they don't really have a need to attend the user conference at all.

3. Attendee mix - while it is great that the vendor wants to enable as many of their own people to attend/participate/interact at the user conference, if the ratio between the vendor's own staff and the actual customers and prospects in attendance gets too skewed toward the vendor side, the opportunities for great customer-customer interactions get diminished. What the vendors really want and need is for their own customers to be their best advocates, to share their experiences and opinions about the vendor and the technology. It gets hard for them to do that freely if there are vendor reps swarming everywhere, (they are easy to spot too, since they all will have on the same color coordinated logo shirts). The best vendor user conferences manage to be more about the users and less about the vendors, if that makes sense.

Ok those are my three tips for creating and delivering a great HR vendor user conference. You're welcome, even though you didn't ask.

What else can HR vendors do to make their user conferences better?

Thanks again HireVue!

PODCAST - #HRHappyHour 181 - Wellness for the Modern Workplace

HR Happy Hour 181 - Wellness for the Modern Workplace (an update from ShapeUp)

Recorded Monday, April 21, 2014

Hosts: Steve Boese, Trish McFarlane

Guest: Dr. Rajiv Kumar, Co-founder and CEO of ShapeUp

This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve and Trish talked with Dr. Rajiv Kumar MD, Co-founder and CEO of ShapeUp, an online wellness platform for companies and health plans that leverages the power of a trusted social network to improve the health of large populations.

ShapeUp is the leading global provider of clinically-proven, social networking-based employee wellness programs that help people exercise more, eat healthier, and lose weight. Founded in 2006 by two medical doctors, ShapeUp has pioneered an innovative approach to behavior change that leverages the power of social networking, gaming, coaching, and financial rewards to improve the health of large populations and reduce healthcare costs. ShapeUp's social wellness platform covers two million lives across 128 countries and is used by more than 200 employers and health plans.

On the show, Dr. Kumar shared an update on the state of wellness and corporate wellness programs today as well as ShapeUp's approach and vision of wellness as a very social activity at its core. Additionally, we talked about the role of technology in the support of corporate and individual wellness goals. Mobile, gamification, wearables, and social concepts have transformed both the activities and the design of wellness programs in the last few years.

You can listen to the show on the show page here or using the widget player below:

Check Out Business Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with Steve Boese on BlogTalkRadio

Additionally, you can subscribe to the HR Happy Hour Show on iTunes, or for Android device users, from a free app called Stitcher Radio. In both cases just search for 'HR Happy Hour' and add the show to your podcast subscription list. 

This was a fun and interesting show, and I hope you check it out. Many thanks to Rajiv and everyone at ShapeUp for joining us this week.

PODCAST - #HRHappyHour 180 - Putting People First

HR Happy Hour 180 - 'Putting People First' (Live from Ultimate Connections 2014)

Recorded Thursday, April 10, 2014

Hosts: Steve Boese, Trish McFarlane

Guest: Cecile Alper-Leroux, Vice President of Product Strategy, Ultimate Software

Last week Steve and Trish were able to attend Ultimate Software's Annual Connections User Conference in Las Vegas and sit down with Cecile Alper-Leroux to get an update on some of the exciting developments and happenings at Ultimate Software as well as talk about some of the ways that putting People First - in software design, in the approach to talent management, and how that leads to the best outcomes for both individuals and organizations is the key to sustained success.

Ultimate Software, across their thousands of customers, supports over 15 million people records in the cloud. Cecile shared with us one of the primary considerations that Ultimate takes into account when building software for so many people - the almost radically different expectations people have in their relationship with any technology. People's personal lives are filled with technologies that are adaptive, responsive, fun, engaging, and are also simple to use. Those expectations and demands are now being placed on the technologies that we use in workplace as well. Cecile shared the key things to consider: provide user value, hook users in early with a great experience, and be useful and help them get their jobs done.

We also talked about the ridiculous labor laws in France and how we all want to live there.

Ultimate Software through their innovative technology solutions, focus on designing software experiences that place the individual's needs at the forefront, and from the deep experience that comes from over two decades of supporting their thousands of customers, have evolved to become one of the most important and influential HR technology solution providers in the industry today. 

This was a really fun and interesting show and I encourage you to give it a listen.

You can listen to the show on the show page here or using the widget player below:

Listen To Business Internet Radio Stations with Steve Boese and Trish McFarlane on BlogTalkRadio

Additionally, you can subscribe to the HR Happy Hour Show on iTunes, or for Android device users, from a free app called Stitcher Radio. In both cases just search for 'HR Happy Hour' and add the show to your podcast subscription list. 

This was a fun and informative show and I would like to thank Cecile and everyone at Ultimate Software for allowing the HR Happy Hour Show to be a part of Connections 2014. 

The next important HR Tech acronym: CALO

You already know all the big HR Tech acronyms - LMS, ATS, HRIS, SaaS, ERP, and on and on.

But the next big HR and workplace technology acronym you should start to become familiar with, as it promises to offer more for individual and organizational productivity and performance than all acronyms that have come before, is probably a new one to you.

CALO

CALO stands for Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes

Just what does that mean? 

Check the below from a piece on HBR titled, 'The Ultimate Productivity Hack Will Be Robot Assistants' :

The underlying technology behind all of the advances in robotic technology mentioned above is Artificial Intelligence (A.I.).  A.I., often referred to as the ability of computers to think like humans, has been a main goal of many computer and cognitive scientists for the last sixty to eighty years. And one of the principle goals of A.I. developers has long been to help humans be more productive.

The largest known A.I. project to date was instigated by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In 2003, DARPA contracted SRI International to lead a reported $200 million, five-year project to build a virtual assistant. The project consisted of up to 500 experts in machine learning, natural language processing, knowledge representation, human–computer interaction, flexible planning, and behavioral studies who were tasked with building a Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes (CALO).

The goal of CALO was to become what the technology industry now calls a ‘cognitive assistant,’ – similar in function to what many of us think of as a personal assistant. This ambitious goal envisioned a software program that learns by ‘observing and learning from the past, acting in the present and anticipating the future.’ CALO would be able to assist its user with organizing and prioritizing information, mediating human communication, resource allocation, task management decisions, and scheduling and prioritizing.

Read some of the goals of CALO again - organizing and prioritizing information, mediating human-human communications, allocation of resources, getting tasks completed, making decisions, etc.

These are all things that you, and everyone in your workforce has to manage every single day.

Unlike an LMS that an employee may have to check in to once a year, an ATS that they never see once they are hired, or an HRIS that they only access once or twice in a career, (if they move or have a 'life event'). 

And don't get me started on the Performance Management system.

But a CALO? A tool or technology that would actually help with organizing and prioritizing information and making decisions?

Your employees would use that tool every single day, and all day long. And if it worked, it would actually help them in their jobs.

I am not (yet) smart enough to know just how these CALO tools will enter the workplace, who will make them, how they will first find a way onto corporate platforms but I suspect that the smartest people working on workplace technologies are already attacking those issues.

And I also suspect these CALO tools will have a much bigger impact and influence on worker performance than all the HR tech acronyms that have come before.

From HR Exec: 5 Rules of Thumb on HR Tech

In my most recent 'Inside HR Tech' column for Human Resource Executive Online, I took a look at some general rules of thumb for evaluating HR technologies and HR solution providers.  Here is a little bit of that piece, and you can find the rest of the column as well as subscribe to get the monthly Inside HR Tech column delivered straight to your Inbox.

Here are five ideas and tips on what to look for and think about when evaluating HR technologies to get the most bang for your organization's buck.

The one HR technology-related question I get asked most frequently is some variation of "Which vendors have the best solution for (insert your HR process area)?", or said differently, "Which solutions should I examine for my particular problem or area of need?"

So for anyone who wants my official answer to any form of the question, "Which HR technology solution is the best?" here it is . . . . wait for it . . .  wait for it . . .

The answer, (drumroll, please) is "It depends."

The best solution for a given organization is quite likely different from the best solution for another -- even largely similar -- organization.

Unlike many commodity purchases, the HR or workforce technology that is "right" for one organization is often highly variable and dependent on a number of company specific factors, which usually will be distinct and important enough to make selecting the best software a complex and difficult process.

Since I can’t claim to know the "best" solution for your situation, I can try and help by pointing out a few (five to be exact) rules of thumb that are generally applicable in all HR-technology evaluation and selection processes. Hopefully, these can help you to make your own informed, and unique decision about software.

1. There isn’t a "Yelp for HR technology" . . . yet.

While there are some nascent attempts, (G2 Crowd, TrustRadius), at establishing a large set of Yelp-like crowd-sourced user reviews for enterprise or HR technologies, the truth is that, in general, the HR software market is still a little hazy. Finding reliable, vetted, and unbiased or independent reviews and commentary on most enterprise technologies is as difficult today as it has always been....

You can see the rest of the '5 Rules of Thumb' over on HRE Online, and once again, sign up for a monthly drop of HR tech advice and commentary from me, courtesy of your pals at HRE Online.

Have a great March Madness weekend everyone!