Call for nominations: HR Executive of the Year #HRExec

Quick break from the regular content on the blog to share an announcement and an opportunity for you or for the HR leader at your organization.

Each year over at Human Resource Executive magazine, (where I have a monthly Inside HR Tech column), the publication's editors award the prestigious HR Executive of the Year award to one HR leader that is recognized for making outstanding contributions to their organization and who exemplify the increasingly strategic role of Human Resources in business today. (You can skip the rest of my description and jump straight to the nomination form if you like).

Past HR Executive of the Year recipients include Google's Laszlo Bock, Mara Swan from Manpower Group, and last year's HR Executive of the Year, Mark James of Honeywell.

For Human Resources leaders, being recognized as the HR Executive of the Year is probably the most prestigious honor that an HR leader can receive - something akin to HR's version of the Academy Award, or for my sensibilities, the MVP of the NBA.

The qualifications needed to be considered for HR Executive of the Year are pretty simple - candidates must have overall responsibility for the entire human resource function in their organizations, three or more years of experience in their current positions and five or more years of experience in the field. 

One individual will be named HR Executive of the Year; up to four individuals will be named to the HR Honor Roll. For the HR Honor Roll, companies will be divided into two categories: those with fewer than 7,500 employees and those with 7,500 or more employees.

The 2014 HR Executive of the Year Nomination form can be found here and the call for nominations for this prestigious award closes on May 5, 2014.

I encourage you to submit your HR leader for this fantastic honor, and heck, if you are your HR leader then I encourage you to submit yourself!

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!

HCM World: Transforming HR With Technology

Last week I had the pleasure to attend and moderate a panel at the inaugural Oracle HCM World event in Las Vegas. (That is a pic of me on the right warming up the crowd prior to the start of the panel with a joke involving Larry Bird and Larry Ellison).

The panel was titled 'Modern HR Transformations' and focused on some of the many ways that the HR function, and even the organization overall, is being impacted, enabled, and transformed today, with much of that transformation being driven by advances in technology. Whether it is through leveraging a modern and integrated technology approach to Talent Management, the increased use of data and analytics to inform talent and people decisions, or even to predict the most likely business outcomes from a range of talent decisions, or even some more far-out applications of wildly innovative technologies like wearable computing or the Internet of Things - there is little doubt the next era of business (and HR), will be defined in many ways by the use and application of new technology.

It was a really engaging and lively discussion that was highlighted by the panelists, (Holger Mueller of Constellation Group, Debbie Damesek of Credit Suisse, and Maureen Brosnan and Anthony Abbatiello, both from Accenture), sharing of both the big-picture trends and imperatives shaping HR and organizations, as well as their specific and real-world experiences, successes, and challenges with large-scale HR transformation projects. It's kind of tough for me to recap the point-by-point of the session, (since I was kind of busy, you know, running the panel and keeping one eye on the clock, one eye on the audience, and one eye on the panelist), so I thought I would simply share a really cool resource on HR Transformations and the HR Technology role in them that has been put together by the folks at Accenture and Oracle.

The free E-book, titled: Accenture and Oracle: The Future of HR—Five Technology Imperatives, digs into the need for HR to change to better enable the organization to compete in today's faster, more complex business environment, looks at some of the external forces that are driving and influencing this new paradigm, and then examines some of the HR technology challenges and opportunities that HR and organizations can and are utilizing to help find and attract talent, leverage data more fully in talent processes, and deliver both a set of compelling career experiences to individuals and provide the organization the talent and capability it needs to meet its business objectives. And the E-book builds on the prior research on 'The Future of HR' that has been done at Accenture as well.

Above, I have cribbed just one snippet from the E-book to give you a feel for the style and content - I think you will find it an informative and educational resources, and a good summary as well of much of was shared and talked about at Oracle HCM World, both in the panel I was a part of, and the event overall.

Many thanks to the folks at Oracle for allowing me to be a part of Oracle HCM World! 

COMIC: Automation's slippery slope

Last week I had a take on The downside of measuring everything, for today, (kind of a slow, is it a day off of work or not a day off of work day, at least here in the USA), I wanted to share a really funny comic from XKCD on the topic of the downside of automation:

Pretty amusing, and also kind of accurate. Reminds me of the old line, maybe it was from Seinfeld?, 'It's funny because it's true.'

Anyway, it seems like as long as I have been around technology in the workplace folks like me have been promising HR and other business leaders lots and lots of free time and space to be able to focus on 'strategic things' once we've come in an automated everything else and beaten the old, manual, and inefficient processes into submission.

That has been at least partially true, but not completely. Primarily I think because there continues to be more and more processes that the technologists can and want to automate. The low-hanging fruit has all been picked, but the technologists are not stopping there.

But that is a subject for another day.

Happy MLK Day in the USA, and Happy Monday everywhere else!

LIVE Tonight - #HRHappyHour Show on Collaboration and Coaching

HR Happy Hour 175 - Improving Communication, Collaboration, and Coaching

LIVE - THURSDAY January 9, 2014 - 8:00PM EST

Call in on 646-378-1086

Tweet your questions and comments - use the Twitter hashtag #HRHappyHour

This week in the first LIVE show of 2014 hosts Steve Boese and Trish McFarlane are excited to bring Sean Conrad, Senior Product Analyst & Sales Trainer at Halogen Software back to the show this week.  Sean and Halogen are both big supporters of the HR Happy Hour and we feel equally strong about what Halogen Software has added to the industry over the years.  This week, we plan to talk about ways that organizations can improve their communication, collaboration and coaching techniques.
 
Halogen recently launched two new modules to address these needs.  Their new 1:1 Exchange meeting module and the Halogen Myers-Briggs module introduce innovative approaches to workforce improvements.  Listen in as we talk about the modules as well as other ways organizations can approach these challenges.

You can listen to the show LIVE at 8:00PM EST tonight on the show page here, or using the widget player below:

Online Business Radio at Blog Talk Radio with Steve Boese and Trish McFarlane on BlogTalkRadio

Sean is a interesting and fun guy and it should be a great show - make your plans to join us LIVE on Thursday or catch the replay anytime from the show page or using iTunes or on Stitcher Radio on Android devices.

Hope you can join us tonight!