HR Happy Hour - With some Special Guests

So last night Mark Stelzner tweets:

As I tend to agree with the sentiment in Mark's tweet, I offered this reply:

After a quick convo on Twitter where Mark agreed to call in, and a hasty round of promotion and soliciting other callers, about 25 minutes later we went live on my Blog Talk Radio show, (the one I normally use to record interviews for my HR Technology Class).

It was a blast!  By my reckoning the following folks were live and participating on the call at one time or another:

Mark Stelzer, Charee Klimek , Shauna Moerke (you may know her as the HR Minion), Sharlyn Lauby (the HR Bartender), Joyce Chastain, Becky Allen, Michele Wagner, Susan Burns, and Michael Krupa.

Since the call was not planned, scripted, or rehearsed in any way, the conversation was pretty free-flowing and ventured into many topics: what is happening with JobAngels, an update of the upcoming Social Recruiting Summit in June, and some interesting discussions about employer branding from Charee and a great story from Shauna about 'coming out of the blogging closet'.

You can listen to the 'Happy Hour' here:

I really had fun doing this, and if there is interest from the HR community to do more of these, I am certainly happy to organize and host.  Hit me up in the comments, or sent me a Tweet.

Thanks so much for everyone that called in, and anyone who listened live to the show.

HR and New Technology - follow up

A quick follow up to the HR and New Technology post from earlier this week.  A point I should have made originally, in fact. Here it is:

If HR does not start learning, trying, embracing some of these new Technologies (Twitter, Yammer, YouTube, Facebook all the usual suspects), they will take root in the organization anyway, HR won't know what the heck happened, and jump back into classic 'regulate, monitor, make a policy so we don't get sued' mode.

Months ago I 'claimed' the Yammer domain for my organization.  I invited two or three HR colleagues (who are pretty tech savvy) and tried to get some interest and momentum in the tool.  But nothing happened.  Could not get the HR folks to see the value (or even attempt to see the value) in a tool that allows micorblogging, threaded discussion, image and file sharing, groups formation etc.  In a 'perfect' world, HR would lead the drive to adopt these types of tools in the wider organization.

Today, out of nowhere, I noticed a flurry of activity on our Yammer network.  It appears like one class of students have decided to sign up for Yammer and create a group to facilitate collaboration and information sharing. This could have just as easily been a faculty or administrative department, the specifics don't really matter.  What matters is that the organization did it on its own.

And what happens if this group discovers Yammer to be a great tool and spreads the word to the wider organization?  Maybe they'll get some kind of recognition or be recognized as 'innovators'.

Exactly he kind of PR that most HR departments really need.  That's ok, keep processing the forms, keep folks paperwork up to date, and try not to get noticed.

Rant off.

HR and New Technology

Over the cold, snowy weekend read this quote from Gartner's 'The Effects of Social Software on Your Employer Brand'

The typical HR department's failure to understand or take seriously social software and its effect on employer brand and Generation V is a significant weakness, and it will affect the ability to reach Web-savvy candidates and to mine the company's current talent base.

Flickr - Matt Hamm

The article goes on to exhort HR departments to take a few simple starting steps to begin to understand the Social Software environment and the potential impact on your Employer Brand.  Here a just a few simple, basic, and essentially free steps that any HR Department can take starting right now:

1. Start listening - review what employees and prospects are saying on Twitter, Glassdoor, and by Google Blog searches
2. Create some simple 'Day in the Life' videos hosted by some of your superstar or well-know employees and post them on YouTube
3. Create a survey or wiki page to collect and evaluate real candidate's experience and impression with your employer brand, your corporate website, and your application processes.  You may think you have a great site and simple process, but it doesn't matter what you think, it matters what the candidates think.  If you wnat to be bold, embed a Meebo chat room on your job site, and start interacting with candidates in real-time.
4. Start a blog. If your HR director does not blog at all, you are missing a huge opportunity.  The HR Director's title really could be 'Chief Talent Marketer'.  So marketl!
5. This one is important - Get out of the HR Department (yes, put down those files, I9 forms, and direct deposit authorizations) for a while and talk to your Marketing, PR, and even IT departments about what they are doing in Social Software.  Learn from their experiences and explorations and see if you can't leverage the internal experience for your HR initiatives.

There are loads of other approaches and opportunities for the informed HR pro to start leveraging and exploiting the new landscape. I won;t go on and on, if you want an even longer list, see Michael Specht's excellent list on 52 Social Media Ideas for HR.

The point really is, You can't get away much longer as an HR department ignoring these opportunities.

Otherwise, you'll still be pringing three-fold 'It's fun to work here' brochures and feeling satisfied.