You've got mail, you know Email

The marketing research firm comScore recently released its 2010 US Digital Year in Review report that measures and analyzes trends in digital communications, social networking, device usage, and so on.  The report is a fascinating examination of the forces that are shaping and changing the way we consume, share, and even produce content and information.  

There are a ton of interesting charts and data points in the 2010 report, and several that are/should be interesting and important for leaders of organizations and HR professionals that have an eye towards how people demonstrate their preferences and inclinations in the consumption and interactions with digital content.  One of the most notable findings in the comScore report has to do with the changes in the usage of Web-based email (Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and so on) in 2010.  Despite an overall increases in broadband access and total time spent online, web-based email usage actually declined 8% in 2010.

See the chart below from the comScore report:

Most notable in the results are the really dramatic declines in web-based email usage in the 12-17, and 25-34 age brackets, while the 18- 24 cohort was essentially flat in 2010. The only age groups that showed an increase in web-based email usage in 2010 were the 55 years and up groups, largely rationalized with explanations like 'C'mon Grandpa, get an email account so we can keep in touch'. For what it's worth, these same age groups also saw double digit percentage increases in their use of Facebook and Twitter.  Essentially, these older folks are getting online in greater numbers, and more or less doing the same things their kids have grown accustomed to.

What might this trend in decreased preference for web-based email as a method of communication by younger generations mean for the present and future workforce?

Well, it could mean nothing I suppose.  Or next to nothing. I mean once those 15 year olds grow up a bit and start entering the working world they will simply be forced to use email. I mean, email makes the working world go around, right?  Besides, you are the boss, not them, and if you declare that 99% of your electronic communications will be emails, then by golly that is the end of the discussion. Get with the program, Junior, just go easy on the 'Reply to all' button.

Or these macro trends in technology consumption, particularly by the upcoming generations of workers could be really important to the organization tomorrow, (maybe even sooner than you think).  Some would argue that the growing popularity and adoption of SMS text messages and social network status updates and connections as the de facto means of digital communication for a generation may and will inevitably change modern business.

The data continue to reflect shifts from the more formal and traditional means of electronic communication (email, voice mail), to more social, casual, and dynamic ones (SMS, social networks). The next set of new workers to join your organization will most likely see nothing at all unusual about sending hundreds of SMS messages a day, and looking over their Facebook news feed while brushing their teeth. 

What they are not as likely to understand, accept, and flourish in, is an environment where they might get 200 emails per day.  Emails are kind of long, mostly kind of boring, and usually have things like 'greetings' and 'salutations'.

Come to think of it, you may need to update the old acceptable use policy, to explain what a 'salutation' is, the next generation probably never heard of the term, and even Grandma is getting sick of crafting them as well.

It's a brave, strange new world out there. 

Postscipt - after finishing this post, I saw this piece on ReadWriteWeb - Smartphones outsell PCs for the first time ever. Stay thirsty my friends.

Emmitt Smith or the Tequila?

At this stage, there is almost nothing or more vapid than another tired, played-out missive with the ‘you had better watch what you say on social media’ angle.

Everyone gets it by now. If you put anything out there, whether it be a blog, a social network, or even a seemingly private Favrian text message, you have to prepare for the potential exposure (no pun intended Brett), of whatever ostensibly private information you are sharing.Michael Irvin likes this.

And even that is kind of an oxymoron, isn’t it?  I mean the phrase ‘sharing’ private information.  Once information is ‘shared’ it can’t really be considered private anymore anyway. Whether or not you buy in to Mark Zuckerberg’s vision that the age of privacy is over, it seems likely that the gradual erosion of the traditional notions of privacy online will continue. Everyone you know (okay, almost everyone), is sharing content of some kind online; most of this content is not embarrassing, does not present a risk to one’s current and future employment prospects, and quite frankly, is only interesting to a select few people, (if anyone).

Worried about the ‘privacy’ of your latest Facebook picture of your cat in a Halloween costume? Well quit worrying, no one gives two shakes about it.

But if eventually Facebook’s and Zuckerberg’s argument that society is changing to adopt a more open, public, and transparent attitude towards personal data and privacy gains more widespread acceptance (or is accepted by default by the millions of people that can’t figure out Facebook’s byzantine privacy settings), the implications will continue to impact individuals and organizations.

For the individual, the implications are pretty clear, and quite honestly haven’t changed all that much. Assume all electronic versions of anything, (email, Tweets, Facebook pics, texts, etc.) will eventually find their interested audience. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the ultimate interested audience is indeed the original target -  Aunt Sally, your friends from 4th grade, or the 17 readers of your blog.  As I said the rest of the world doesn’t really care, we have our own boring pictures to upload and 'what I’m eating for lunch' Tweets to craft.

For the organization, the implications are a little less clear, but no less real. Whether it is your silly 44-page dress code becoming the butt of countless internet barbs or the occasional online banding together of employees to ravage your paying customers, more and more enterprises will have to come to terms with their own erosion of privacy as well. And I think more and more, the organizations that embrace this new privacy paradigm will be the ones that attract the candidates that best fit their culture, (some bankers may have actually supported that dress code, so why hide it), connect with customers more directly and significantly, and finally position themselves as more enlightened and responsive, as they adapt and evolve along with the Facebook’s of the world (and their 600 million users).

In fact, I wonder if in a couple of years companies will give up on developing and deploying private social networking capability, and will simply figure out how to leverage the existing public networks for their purposes. Why build a private network that will never have the reach, familiarity, and ubiquity of Facebook?

If you have made it this far, many thanks, and I guess it’s time to explain the title of the post. I made my daily Facebook drop-in this morning, and in the right sidebar there was an ad that consisted of a weirdly grinning head shot of former NFL player Emmitt Smith, along with some promotional content for a new Tequila.  Just below the image of Emmitt and the tequila ad copy, Facebook informed me that one of my Facebook friends, a highly respected and influential HR professional, ‘liked’ this.  What I was left to wonder was what did my friend actually like - Emmitt Smith or the tequila?

Be careful out there.

The most useful social media site for business is...

What is the most useful social media site for business purposes?

LinkedIn?

Twitter?

Facebook?

What about the less publicized but more widely utilized social network called 'None'?

I was reading through the Rochester (NY) Business Journal print edition the other day, and I spotted the poll results that are in the image on the upper right.  Apologies for the poor quality, I could not locate the poll results online. 

Essentially of the about 600 respondents to the poll, and for now lets assume most people reading and responding to a poll in a local business newspaper are professionally engaged, 62% felt that social media sites were either 'Not at all important' or 'Not very important' for them in their work or profession.  

Pressed for more insight as to which social media site these professionals felt was 'most useful in your work or professionally', the leading choice was 'None' with 43%. LinkedIn as could be expected was the second choice at 37%, with Facebook and Twitter barely registering on the 'usefulness' radar.

I really don't have any profound comments or conclusions to draw from a small poll of professionals, in a small city, from a business journal that I bet is only read by folks that live here. 

Maybe it just sends a message that Rochester is in many ways an insular, kind of behind the times city. Perhaps the business community here is so small and tight-knit that traditional face to face, over the phone and/or email networking still predominates and is sufficient to help professionals meet their objectives.

I am not really sure, but I just wonder if I need to set up a new profile on the 'None' network and make sure my latest posts, tweets, and bizarre articles I share in Google Reader make it over the the 43% of folks hanging out there.

What it is like in your city?  Does the 'None' social network dominate as well?

The HR Executive Conference - What Wasn't Said

Earlier this week I was fortunate enough to attend the Senior HR Executive Conference organized by The Conference Board, (my summary of the first day of event is here).

While there were so many excellent presentations from the HR Executives on a wide range of topics, read this piece from HR Ringleader on the Unilever 'Agile Working' program for an example, I want to focus on what wasn't said at the event.

In a day and a half of presentations, casual conversations, lunches, and networking the subject of social networking use in HR and the leveraging of social media tools and technologies for HR, was largely absent from the discourse.   In total, I think we (the bloggers that were invited to the event) only Flickr - JFChenierobserved two mentions of social networking; one a reference to sharing family recipes on Facebook, and two; a representative from PricewaterhouseCoopers talking about how PWC using social networking tools to connect with interns and intern candidates.

That was it.

No discussions on using new tools for workforce collaboration, for internal expertise location, to improving the 'connectedness' of their global organizations, and definitely no talk about implementing innovative strategies and approaches for using social networking to find, attract, retain, and engage top talent.

Last night on the HR Happy Hour show, a 2009: Year in Review, we spent a large portion of the time discussing social networking and social media as one of the most significant themes and trends for HR in 2009, (when we were not playing the Sad Trombone).  

What gives? If social media and social networking for HR were really that significant in 2009, shouldn't there have been at least some talk about this development at the HR Executive Conference? Shouldn't have one Senior HR leader talked about how HR was able to exploit employee networks, new technologies, or public sites like Twitter or Facebook to drive some truly innovative solutions?

Why might there be a disconnect between those of us active in social networks and technologies for HR and what we heard (or more accurately did not hear) from the Senior HR Executives?

ROI- On the Happy Hour, Jessica Lee made an excellent point.  She essentially said that HR Executives have not seen the real organizational ROI of social media and social networking for HR initiatives, and therefore do not yet consider it important and/or essential.  I think Jessica is right on with this observation.  These executives don't want to hear 'Look our company recruiting Facebook page is up to 823 fans!'. They want to know how these tools and strategies produce results, better hires, at lower cost, and improved results.  That is it.

Echo Chamber - The HR folks involved in social media and active in social networking have formed a nice, tight cocoon around ourselves, and since we keep telling each other this 'stuff' is important, then darn it, it must be important.  But we are not doing a good enough job in and out of our organizations reaching the broader HR community, and certainly not the highest levels of HR Executives. Until those of us that are proponents of these approaches start doing a better job on outreach, the executives will simply not even notice, let alone care.

It really isn't that important - So much of the conversation and presentations at the conference centered around implementing consistent performance evaluation processes, identifying and retaining high-potential employees, and managing the workforce through this recession. While at least in theory social technologies and strategies could assist organizations in these areas, it certainly is not necessarily obvious how.  In these organizations more tested and traditional approaches seemed to be the preference, and based on the presentations, many companies claimed successful outcomes.  Maybe it still is possible to solve important workforce and organizational crises without social networking.

It's still too new - It quite likely could be too early in the widespread understanding and adoption of social networking strategies in HR for them to have 'bubbled up' to get the attention of the average senior executive, or to have achieved the kind of success that an executive would want to actually talk about publicly. Maybe when I attend the 2010 Senior HR Executive Conference (please invite me back!), there will simply just be more to say on the topic.  While 2009 was truly a year of dramatic growth in HR's use of social media and networks, it still really has a long, long way to go.

I have to say I was indeed a bit surprised how little attention these ideas received at the conference, but truly after reflected on them a bit, and from the comments and discussion on last night's HR Happy Hour, it does make sense somewhat.

For HR folks invovled in social media and social networking, what do you think needs to be done in 2010 to get these topics on the radar of the most senior leaders in the discipline?

Social Software in the Workplace

This week analyst firm Gartner published its 'Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace',  a review and categorization of 35 different solutions that in one form or another support internal employee 'teaming, communities, and networking'. Flickr - dsevilla

It is an expensive piece of research, but if vendor Jive Software is making copies available via its site here, (registration with Jive required).

I don't want to get into the never-ending debate on whether these analyst reports are biased or not, or even if the Magic Quadrant model is all that helpful, but I point out this research to illustrate for the HR community (the primary readers of this blog), how diverse and crowded the market for internal social software has become.

If you believe that organizations can achieve significant competitive advantage by more effective internal communication, collaboration, and teamwork, then you as an HR pro and leader will almost certainly be called upon to either participate in either a software selection project, lead an internal deployment of collaboration technology, or devise ways to design and implement performance, recognition, and compensation programs that reflect the impact of collaborative tools in the organization.

There are really several keys for the HR leader in approaching social software:

One - Identification of the business issues that can be solved by more frequent, effective, and sustainable collaboration and expertise and information discovery.

Issues centered on Research and Development and Marketing collaboration may require a different set of tools than ones between Account Management and Customer Support.  A large company in numerous countries and locations typically faces much different challenges than a smaller, single location enterprise. The point is that your organization's challenges are unique, and blanket approaches, 'Let's get everyone on Yammer', may not really solve any specific business problem.

Two - Assessment and selection of the best technologies that will support the solutions identified in step one.

The 35 solutions listed in the Gartner report, while all broadly defined in the 'social software' category, have unique feature sets, characteristics, capabilities, costs, and in some cases deployment options.  HR leaders will have to invest the time to develop a better understanding of market segment that they likely may not have much familiarity with.  Fortunately many of the solutions have free trials, or other low-cost options for targeted pilot projects.

Three - Design and implementation of the technology solution accompanied by change management, communication, training, etc.

Definitely part of this step is the development of new performance management metrics and possibly compensation plans to support the project's goals. 

Four - Evaluation of the solution and the implementation.

Are employees adopting the new collaborative technology and the associated changes in process? Do metrics like content creation, participation, activity, etc where you want? And most importantly, is the solution meeting the desired business outcomes?  Many organization are absolutely littered with rarely updated wikis, or internal blogs with only sporadic posts and comments. The causes of failure vary from the wrong technology being chosen, a company culture that does not embrace the new collaborative process, or perhaps a lack of adequate change management and communication to the employees as to the benefits of the new technology and process. 

Five - Refinement of the technology itself, or the process based on the evaluation in step four.

Does the organization need some additional or enhanced system capabilities? Have the employees taken the system to places you had not considered, but they find valuable? Unlike traditional enterprise software, where business processes are usually clearly defined and employees simply follow user instructions, with these collaboration tools employees will almost always adopt ways of working and using the tools that you as the HR leader and implementer had not considered.  Hopefully, your initial projects were successful, and now you can plan ways to expand the footprint of the solution to more employees in the organization.

For HR, the opportunity to help drive superior business performance by designing and implementing strategies to increase and reward effective collaboration has never been more apparent. Understanding the related technologies that support these initiatives is a critical component of the process.

In the next few weeks I will highlight some of the specific solutions reviewed in the Gartner report, particularly some of the newer ones, to try and provide some assistance in your learning process.

What do you think, do you feel as an HR leader prepared to drive internal social software adoption?