Enterprise Knowledge vs. Individual Job Security

There is lots of energy and interest in implementing 'social' collaboration systems inside the Enterprise.  Flickr - steve took itThese systems have many goals, chiefly the facilitation of employee collaboration, development of a corporate knowledge base, and to provide a platform to speed new hire productivity.

For any of these 'social' systems to be effective, they must engender enthusiastic support and adoption by the organization's ranks.  Employees must see the benefit in contributing and participating in these systems. They must be comfortable sharing information and sometimes explicitly documenting the 'how' of their work processes.

But in a climate where it seems like corporate America sheds thousands or workers every day, does it make sense that many employees will be reluctant to openly share and document this tacit knowledge?

If an employee feels like the safeguarding (in their heads), of this critical information is their best defense against a possible layoff, are they likely to enthusiastically participate in social systems, that rely on making such 'internal' knowledge transparent.

Is it possible that the implementation of corporate social systems can benefit the enterprise, but harm the individual employee?

What do you think?

When you rely on technology...

be sure the technology is reliable.

Backstory - our hosted, ERP-based e-recruiting front-end and applicant tracking system has been rejecting all candidate document uploads for about four days now.

That's right, no resumes, cover letters, recommendations, etc.  Worse still, the error message EVERY candidate sees is 'Your document could not be uploaded, it has a virus'. 

Just great.  Not only are we turning away and turning off scores of candidates (although in this economy they may come back anyway), we are scaring the crap out of them that their own systems may be infected.

When you rely so heavily on third-party, hosted or SaaS solutions, particularly for your public-facing applications, you better be confident in their reliability, the vendor or host's ability to respond quickly to a problem, and your own capability and actions plans to mitigate and deal with the fallout.

Hold your vendor's to their obligations for uptime and issue resolution. When they fail, make sure they prove to you how they will ensure it won't happen again. If they can't prove to you they won't continue to let you down, then take your business somewhere else.

How many good candidates are we losing right now?

The Sacred Cow and HR Technology

The single most influential book I read in college was from my Sociology 101 class.

The book was 'Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture' by Marvin Harris.

 

From the summary on Amazon:

This book challenges those who argue that we can change the world by changing the way people think. Harris shows that no matter how bizarre a people's behavior may seem, it always stems from concrete social and economic conditions.

The most memorable passage, I recall, was the observation that if a starving Hindu farmer relented, and slaughtered the family cow, that while he would temporarily improve his family's hunger and other conditions, he would almost be certainly sealing his doom, since the cow (when alive) provided so much more than a few cuts of beef (most importantly the potential to breed and produce another cow).

Over time, the sacred cow metaphor has come to stand for unquestioning adherence to an organization or ideology or process.  Something that is so entrenched in mindset, that it sort of perpetuates on and on, whether or not it still makes sense or adds value.

 How does the sacred cow analogy tie back to HR and in particular HR Technology? 

Well, do you post every one of your job ads in the exact same manner and on the exact same job sites?

Do you continue to have employees provide feedback and questions on HR programs to a single 'general' e-mail address, viewable by only internal HR staff?

When pursuing technology projects to increase automation and improve efficiency, are you really just taking a old, long paper form and 'webifying' it?

These are some of the most challenging economic times in memory, can you afford to cling to your own Sacred Cows, or do you need to think about and explore opportunities for improvement.

I am running an experiment right now, designed to help show how changing things up from the standard is a good and necessary idea - this is a link to one of our open engineering jobs, the job has been open for a while, and for whatever reason we can't get it filled.  Take a look, pass it along, lets see if 'advertising' the opening in non-traditional ways leads to a better result than the same old methods we have been using forever - Engineering Job.

Bring something to the table

We have all read ad nauseam about how HR needs to 'get a seat at the table', where organizational strategy and plans are discussed and developed. Well, if you want a seat at the table, be sure you bring something to the table.

Flickr - katesheets

Something innovative, groundbreaking, difference-making.

Something they may not have heard or seen before.

A plan to exploit 'Web 2.0' for improved recruiting or employee collaboration.

A strategy to assess the current skills and competencies of the current organization, so as to be poised to act when the economy rebounds (and you know it will).

An effective plan to keep valued staff engaged, even if you are forced to let some of them go. 

Don't just expect to turn up and be included because of your relative position on the org chart.  No one in that room will get excited if all you have to offer is compliance reporting and maybe a new employee discount at the local dry cleaner.

Times are tough - be willing to take a chance, make a difference, and earn the seat at the adult table.

Social networking and HR

Virgin Atlantic sacks 13 staff members for inappropriate Facebook comments - link.

Things are just going to keep getting trickier for HR. 

The Virgin Atlantic staff were probably out of bounds with their activity on Facebook; if there were truly safety and health concerns they should have taken them up with their management.  But the danger in this story getting so much play is the actions that some firms may take in response; bans of Facebook use, increased monitoring of employee internet use, and in general more suspicion of employees and less openness and trust.

Flickr - Torley - 'I'm going to tell you a secret'

I would argue that is the very last thing companies should do. Companies should be thinking about the issues in these terms:

1. Where are my employees congregating and conversing online?  Facebook, Twitter, somewhere else? And what kinds of things are they saying and who else is listening?

2. Should the company attempt to join or monitor the conversations on these external sites, or create and support an internal social network or collaboration environment? 

3. When comments or conversations take place among employees that are not exactly flattering to the company, what should the appropriate company reaction be?

These are difficult question for sure, especially for many HR organizations that may not be that well-versed in these technologies to begin with. For now, I would offer these simple recommendations:

1. Trust your employees to do the right thiing

2. Create an environment of openness where employees feel like there are meaningful internal mechanisms for complaints and honest feedback

3. Make sure that employees understand that you are not trying to control or monitor their private lives

So much of corporate communications and processes be it marketing, product development, customer support, etc. are gradually and inexorably moving to more 'open' platforms.  It is also inevitable and necessary that communications among employees and between employees and the company will become more 'open' as well.

The smart company will recognize, understand, and capitalize on this shift.