Corporate Social Networking Vendors - Here's your chance

to give something to the community, support an educational program in Human Resources, and get some free publicity.Flickr - pascal.charest

Some background - I teach a graduate course at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in Rochester, NY.  My course is one the very few in existence 100% devoted to Human Resources Technology.

We cover the fundamentals of HR Technology (ERP, HRIS, SaaS), the important Talent Management processes (Performance, Succession, Comp, Recruiting), and lastly the emerging and growing area for corporate social networking and collaboration tools (blogs, wikis, Twitter, and such).

Since I started teaching HR Technology almost two years ago, I have spent considerable time soliciting assistance and trying to build partnerships with the HR Technology vendor community, in an effort to get more hands-on access to software and 'real' experiences for my students, the vast majority of which have not ever had such an opportunity before my class.  To date several vendors have graciously offered access, assistance, and support, most notably Halogen Software and SpectrumHR. To both of these organizations, once again, I offer my sincere thanks, and I certainly hope that we will be able to continue our partnerships in the future.

But for my next class that starts in June, I am faced with a new challenge that makes integrating a core HRIS (like Spectrum's iVantage), or a robust Talent Management suite (like Halogen) quite difficult. I will have  a class of students unfamiliar with these types of systems and the course will be offered completely online.

No 'in-person' class meetings means no opportunities to do 'live' demos or in-class exercises that were the primary benefit of using these 'donated' platforms. Based on my experience with the class so far, attempting to integrate these systems in the manner that I would prefer is going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible in an 100% online delivery method.

So for the new class, the online class, I still need to provide a 'real-world', 'hands-on' experience with a relevant technology that the students could very well encounter in their workplaces, or better still, bring to their workplaces, armed with the expertise and knowledge gained in class.

What better technology then, than Corporate Social Networking?  The very type of solution that is designed to foster connectivity and collaboration amongst a dispersed workforce, is meant to be simple enough to use to achieve rapid and widespread adoption in the organization, and is growing in popularity in the corporate world, thus exposing the students to a technology that is suddenly 'hot'.

My idea is to essentially 'run' the class in the social network, have the students collaborate on assignments, post and respond to discussions, create 'HR related' content and resources typically housed on corporate intranets, and interact with each other in real time from their dispersed locations.

The types of vendors that I think would be a good fit for this project would be SelectMinds, Jive, or perhaps Telligent. There are many other vendors as well that would be a fit, too many perhaps to list here.  Or perhaps one of the newer, less well-known vendors would like to participate in the project to generate some publicity.

It would be a pretty simple effort on the vendor side, since I need a hosted solution, the vendor would need to create an instance for my class, with perhaps 20 user licenses for a period of about 3 months. I would set up and administer the class network, and the students would be the 'users'.  At the end of the class, the vendor could simply close off access to the network.

In return for the software use and support, I would offer good, constructive feedback from the class as this project amounts to a 3 month extended 'test', I will publicly blog, tweet, and otherwise promote the product and the vendor, and make myself available to the vendor as a reference for articles, internal blogs, press releases etc.  It is a mutually beneficial arrangement that I think worked really well last class with Halogen, and I think it would be a good opportunity for the right vendor.

Ok, that is the pitch.  For any social networking vendors who might be interested in this project here is my contact information:

E-mail - steveboese@gmail.com

Twitter - sbjet

Or simply leave a comment on the post and I can get in contact with you.

Thanks in advance for your support of my class and the education of some future HR leaders.

An opportunity for HR in 2009

Ok, you are probably sick of reading blogs, analyst opinions, and watching Webinars that all keep saying the same thing: in 2009 there are opportunities for HR Technologists to make substantial impact deploying systems or platforms to improve collaboration, networking, and information sharing. 

Take a look at this quote from the Collaborative Thinking blog by Mike Gotta:

An opportunity for HR in 2009

Generational shifts: GenY and aging workforce trends create opportunities for HR groups to take on a much more strategic role. Employee, retiree and alumni social networks for instance have the potential to help organizations become more resilient and agile by allowing it to capitalize on its internal and extended relationships - often in ways not constrained by formal institutional structures

 How about this one from the Aberdeen Group's Kevin Martin:

While HR and IT can often butt heads regarding HR systems implementations, Aberdeen's research has uncovered that HR should collaborate with IT to advance Web 2.0 initiatives and achieve the above-referenced common organizational objective: organizational knowledge capture and transfer.

And if you come to the realization and conclusion that social networking and collaboration technologies are the right tools for your organization and want to champion their adoption and deployment but are faced with skeptical or less-informed management? How do you convince the 'old-guard' managers and influencers that social technologies are a valuable, soon to be essential tool, and not just a distraction from 'real work'? How about this answer from Knowledge Infusion:

 Don't try. Start at grassroots level with a ripe and receptive department or business unit. Once there is success and viral effect, the old school executives will take notice and support an enterprise approach.

You know, deep down you know, that jumping in to the Web 2.0 world is the right thing to do in 2009.  The start-up investment is extremely low, the learning curves are short, and there are loads of articles, blogs, case studies describing how numerous organizations have approached and have had success with these tools.

Don't wait for the jokers in IT to do this and grab all the glory a year from now!

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.

I'm happy to tell you all about myself

The great Jason Averbook CEO of Knowledge Infusion has said 'LinkedIn knows more about your employees that you do', meaning that for many organizations, the volume, depth, and quality of data that their employees have voluntarily posted on sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, far exceeds whatever data you may have about them in your 'official' corporate systems.

Gartner refers to this disparity in terms of 'volunteered' data (the kind on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, personal blogs, etc.), versus 'mandatory' data (the kind you compel your employees to provide, primarily for legal or administrative requirements).

Gartner theorizes that by 2012, this so-called volunteered data will surpass mandatory data in volume and business value.  To be a leading HR organization, you need to plan for this shift, how to expoit the trend, and build processes and systems that will let you both encourage the proliferation of volunteered data as well as take leverage this information for your organization.

 Although it is very difficult in 2008 to know when or if this shift in importance and source of information will occur, there are certainly some things as HR leaders you can do today to assess the trend for your own organization.

Some quick thoughts:

1. Evaluate your company's LinkedIn profile.  What percentage of your staff maintains profiles?  How connected are they?  What organizations did they come from? Of folks who have left, where did they go?
2. Is your company on Facebook?  Have smaller indivudual groups adopted Facebook groups or pages? Are your staff conducting important conversations there?
3. Are you on Twitter? How many of your staff are?  Who are they following?  Who is follwing them?  Are your employess bypassing your standard sources of assistance to reach out to the Twitterverse?
4. Check out Ning.  Are there Ning networks for all or parts of your organization?  Are there related industry networks frequented by your staff?  Should you sponsor or create your own Ning network for your staff?

Let me be clear, this is not about 'spying' or 'monitoring' what your staff is up to.  This is about learning more about what your staff is passionate about, who they turn to for insight or help, and what important experiences and skills they have, that are not reflected in your old, boring HRMS.

It is about accepting the fact that your staff is quite likely offering up critical insights and knowledge outside of the systems that you control.

It is about accepting the new culture of collaboration.

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