Facebook and Talent Management Technology

Recently Talent and Learning Management vendor SumTotal Systems announced a set of new integrations meant  to present information from the system, "where employees live most, applications like Microsoft Outlook and Facebook". In Facebook, for example, and employee could see updates and alerts from the SumTotal system, and connect with their internal colleagues without leaving the Facebook site.

While most would not argue that corporate workers spend ridiculous amounts of time in Outlook, the idea that enterprise Talent Management systems should be connected with Facebook and LinkedIn is certainly an interesting and new development.

Heck, pretty much every day I see a new article or study on organizations that block access to Facebook and LinkedIn. But that is not really the 'core' issue as I see it.

I think the important message is not really about social networks and their use in the workplace, but rather a signal that the 'enterprise' platform as a required destination for employees and managers will erode in importance. More and more the 'official' home page or portals are going to be supplanted by interactions with the 'enterprise' information and processes via external networks (LinkedIn, Facebook), other internal enterprise tools (Outlook, intranets), and mobile (iPhone, Blackberry). If employees and line managers only have to visit a tool or system to accomplish one specific task, and that task is not somehow incorporated into their 'normal' workflow, the likelihood of adoption and effective utilization is far lower. 

You may have a fantastic system, full of incredible content, but if no one goes there to leverage that content then it may as well be not there at all.

Additionally, as the definitions of work shift, and the relationships that talent maintains with organizations become more fluid, much more versatile and agile tools for talent management will be needed.  Certainly part of the versatility will derive from embedded integration with Facebook and LinkedIn, but the larger work that remains is to convince organizations and vendors that their fancy home pages and dashboards, while interesting and exciting to look at, might not matter one bit to the employee and manager that never wants to visit them. 

For some time it has been fashionable in marketing circles to declare that the corporate web site is 'dead' and that no one really cares what is on there, I wonder if one day enterprise systems home pages will 'die' as well and be replaced with a collection of widgets, add-ons, browser toolbars, and mobile applications.

HR Technology Conference - Silos

Two of the consistent themes that I picked up on at the HR Technology Conference were:

One - Most, (if not all) of the Talent Management vendors (SuccessFactors, Taleo, Halogen, Salary.com, etc.), are working diligently to expand the breadth of their offerings. Some are introducing new modules to their suites (SuccessFactors now offers ATS capability for example), entering into partnerships with other vendors (Taleo with Learn.com) or building more functionality to 'compete' with or at least offer an alternative to traditional HRIS vendors for the coveted 'System of Record' position.Flickr - Zoom Zoom

Two - One of the most significant barriers to success in the implementation of these so-called Integrated Talent Management suites are internal organizational silos.  Said differently, in large organizations the Talent Acquisition, Compensation Planning, core HR, and Training and Development groups are separated in the company, are many times working at cross-purposes.  The needs of these different groups often have to be reconciled, and sometimes compromised to 'fit' into an integrated solution.

I heard this 'silo' issue at least three different times at the conference, and after being initially surprised it began to make perfect sense. The larger a system footprint gets, the more internal process and functions it impacts, the more people have to be involved, and the greater the need for increased coordination and collaboration.

The larger systems get, the more complicated they are to implement, and the more likely that some area of the organization will not get what they want.  This is almost unavoidable, and the reason why most of these Talent Management vendors have risen up in the first place is this phenomenon in the ERP market.

I think the challenge going forward for the vendors themselves, and for the customers looking to implement these ever expanding systems is to avoid the issues faced by the large ERP systems.  There is a fundamental difference as some of them transition from their position as 'Best-of-Breed' to something much larger.

Developing, selling, and implementing large systems that cross so many processes and organizational functions is a much more complex undertaking that slapping in a new stand-alone ATS or online Performance Management tool.  Customers will have to be smarter, vendors will need to get better at supporting these implementations, and HR and business leaders had better be prepared to deconstruct their silos.

Steve's Second HR Technology Interview - Stuart Agtsteribbe

The second installment in the HR Technology interview series for my upcoming HR Technology Class was recorded last week, and I was very pleased to have as my guest Stuart Agtsteribbe from Taleo Corporation.

Stuart is a regional sales manager for Taleo, and has had prior experience with several other major HR Technology vendors.

Stuart and I briefly discussed Taleo, what some of the important considerations are for an organization that is evaluating Applicant Tracking Systems, and what some of the latest trends are in both the ATS space, and what changes and trends he is seeing in customer requirements and expectations.

We then spent some time discussing the concepts around Integrated Talent Management suites and the challenges facing organizations and vendors with Integrated Talent Management deployment. We talked a bit about SaaS and it was interesting to hear that Stuart felt that the traditional concerns with SaaS deployments are becoming less and less strident, and that SaaS is close to becoming the 'de facto' standard for HR Technology deployments.

The link to the full interview (about 35 minutes or so), is here and you can listen using the widget below:

It was a really great conversation on ATS and Talent Management and it really sheds some light on what is going on in the market and in the minds of organizations that are evaluating HR Technology solutions.

Thanks very much to Stuart for participating and agreeing to help me and my HR Technology Class, it was really good of you.

Finding the right talent (that I already have)

How can I find the right employee (one I already have)?

Recently, I heard high ranking information technology leader complaining about the lack of completeness of Flickr - Tambako the Jaguaremployee information (correct office phone number, IM names, etc.) in the corporate LDAP directory.  This leader was relying on the technical system used to provision corporate network computing resources to be a data store for employee 'profile' related information.

Now an employee office phone number probably does belong in an LDAP system, I can't argue with that, but external IM user names?  Surely, the LDAP system is not the best place for these.  And how about elements of the profile that are not related to 'devices' (phones, computers, etc.).  Things like experience, skills, interests, connections, and career plans.  All these, and many other attributes, combine to paint the full picture of the employee talent profile.

It is no secret that companies are under extreme pressure to leverage their internal talent, when faced with enormous marketplace challenges, and for most, little to no ability or funding to seek external talent, either new hires or contractors. 

So let's take an example of a possible situation where an organization might need to rapidly leverage the 'rich' employee profile data it needs to capitalize on an opportunity. A logistics and distribution organization, in an effort to expand to a new line of business and capitalize on a market opportunity, enters into agreements to begin supplying services to a high-end retail chain, it had not previously served. The challenge - identify rapidly a project team with the necessary skills, competencies, experience, and contacts to support sourcing new product, developing new distribution strategies, and with an understanding of the higher end of the market than they usually support.

Employee Profile Data - Sources

Legacy HRIS systems - These are typically decent repositories for basic information about the employee profile that may help our company assemble their project team.  Things like position or assignment history, demonstration of growth in salary grade or level might assist the Project Leader in assembling a team. But key information would certainly not be present in a typical HRIS, thing like career aspirations, competencies, training plans, and experience prior to joining the company. Many of the larger ERP-based systems may have the capability to 'fold-in' this kind of talent profile data, but most implementations of ERP do not extend very deeply into these areas.

Talent Management Systems - all good Talent systems will contain aspects of the key data needed to build the project team: information on past performance, current skills and capabilities, and possibly information on training and development that the employees have taken. These are all key pieces of the puzzle. Recently some larger Talent Management vendors have developed more rich 'profile' capabilities, SuccessFactors being one. Usually missing from these types of systems, especially ones that very rigidly look to automate performance management processes, are indications of employee 'fit' or perhaps desire to be included in this type of project team.  The information gleaned from these systems can tend to the strictly analytical, and not give the Project Leader any 'soft' insight.   And finally, these systems are not in place today in many, many organizations.

Internal Social Networks - In the last couple of years the market for so-called 'Corporate Social Networking' has grown rapidly. The idea is to deploy a platform or solution that provides the employees sort of a 'Facebook' like experience, usually augmented with the knowledge management and creation features of blogs, wikis, rss, and forums.  These systems usually have a profile feature that allows the employee to supply much of the same data they would typically post on popular external social networks. They can also utilize the Twitter concept of 'following' other employees to keep aware of the contributions of content, comments, and other information for the key influencers in their internal network.  These systems provide the Project Leader with a wealth of information relevant to the building of the team, they can review specific work products and content created by employees, they can see feedback left by other employees, and the profile data can typically be mined for keywords or 'tags' that may indicate the right experience or inclination for participating on the new project.  Some vendors to consider in this space are SelectMinds, HiveLive, and Socialcast. This really is an emerging space, and relatively few organizations have deployed these internal networks.

External Social Networks -  Jason Averbook from Knowledge Infusion has stated 'LinkedIn knows more about your employees than you do'. The truth is, many (or most) of your employees are providing vast quantities of personal and professional information on external sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. Key information like employee authored statements of skills and aspirations, former employers and assignments, third-party recommendations of their work, and some insight into their networks both inside and outside the company that they may be able to leverage to make the new project a success. Did any of your employees formerly work for the high-end retailer you need to serve? This information is likely on LinkedIn.

Should your company simply encourage employees to register for these sites, provide their information, while you take advantage of the information and profile data for essentially almost no cost? Of course the downside could be your competitors for the same talent could mine the information as well, but honestly they probably are already doing just that.

That really just scratches the surface of the various options that organizations face when trying to develop a strategy for capturing, analyzing, and making actionable their strategic talent data. Most larger organizations may be utilizing some kind of combination of the above approaches, or may have even built custom systems to help locate talent and deploy talent (the big professional consultancies for one).

Lots of options, lots to think about, a complicated topic.

I would love your thoughts and comments.