#NEXTCHAT: Is HR Tech Really Making Our Jobs Easier?

Note: Today at 3:00PM ET, I will participate in SHRM's We Know Next #Nextchat, a Twitter conversation that SHRM has created to continue to explore important issues in the workplace. Below is the 'preview' post I wrote for today's #Nextchat.

There is no doubt that HR Technology plays an increasingly important role inside our organizations today. Whether simple, in-house developed tools for tracking employees in a very small organization, more complex and comprehensive ‘enterprise grade’ systems in use by most large organizations, or any of the myriad of newer HR technology solutions that are deployed via the web, in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model - the influence and importance of workplace technology continues to grow.

But making sense of this fast-moving and changing market can be tough for the HR pro that has about a thousand other worries on their plate, and it can be easy, tempting, and expedient to only think about technology solutions as a kind of band-aid, or worse, as a necessary evil, deployed only to ensure essential processes like Payroll and Time Tracking get carried out correctly. And while today’s savvy HR professional knows there are a growing number of areas where new -- and existing -- solutions offer them, and the organization, fantastic opportunities to increase efficiency, gain better insights on their talent, and help leaders, managers, and employees make better decisions, it still can seem like a long climb -- and possibly an insurmountable one -- to get where they really want to be.

For several years, I taught in an HR Master’s degree program conducting a kind of seminar, or overview, of HR Technology, a pretty wide and deep subject, that’s getting more complex with each passing year. While we don’t have a 13-week semester together to talk and learn from each other about the state of HR Technology, we will try to hit some of the more important questions, ideas, and concepts in the HR Technology space today.

I’d like to see that the chat not be about specific solutions, really. Simply shouting out one product name or solution provider that you like or use, while it might make sense for you, often makes no sense at all, or doesn’t fit well in another organization. Rather, I think it will be more useful and beneficial to talk about the reasons behind why certain decisions were taken and certain projects were pursued, and to share more universal tips around getting a great return on your investment and supporting and promoting user adoption. That way we can focus on what matters more to HR professionals, and how to better think about, understand, and hopefully utilize HR Technology solutions in our organizations.

I am looking forward to the chat on August 15, and I hope you will be able to join in!

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Please join @weknownext on August 15 at 3 p.m. ET for #Nextchat with Steve Boese (@SteveBoese). We’ll be chatting about HR Technology and will want to know your thoughts on the following questions:

Q1. What is ‘HR Technology’ anyway? What does HR technology encompass, and how is that changing?

Q2. What are some of the key considerations when making an investment in HR technology?

Q3. What are some ways HR can realize the expected benefits of technology investments?

Q4. How can the HR professional become better educated on the current HR technology market?

Q5. What are some of the leading-edge developments in workplace technology that the HR professional should understand?

Q6. What single HR or recruiting technology has made the largest positive impact in your organization?

Just Because You Can... You Know the Rest

A video clip of the comedian Louis C.K. bemoaning social media and Twitter as being 'awful' made the rounds on the internet in the last few days, where the funnyman has a go at the service, and the kind of shallowness that underpins much of the activity on Twitter and many other social networks. Initially my reaction was that the routine was kind of funny, but that it also was a little narrow-minded; after all, for every silly and insipid update on Twitter one can also find examples of progressive, authentic, and meaningful applications of the service for business, community, civic, and other benefits.Why can't I have a Google Plus Page? Why?

Social networks are altogether a personal experience, and we all run the risk of gross oversimplification by assuming our experiences are somehow indicative or predictive of anyone else's experiences. So if Louis C.K. or your Mom, or your CEO tries Twitter and finds it 'stupid' or 'awful', well all that really proves is just that, and while their conclusions are perfectly rational and reasonable, they shouldn't matter to anyone else. 

Who cares if Louis C.K. thinks Twitter is stupid? No one should. Even if he is possibly right.

But one thing Louis did say in the video does have merit, the social media take on the old advice of 'Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should'. 

I was thinking about this late last night when I discovered that some friends and colleagues had opted in to the new capability Google had released for it's new social platform, and created new Google Plus pages for their businesses or blogs. It hit me, that I too should have a Google Plus page for my blog or for the HR Happy Hour Show.

So I raced over to Google Plus to stake another claim to a tiny portion of the internet, and much to my frustration and confusion, I was not able to create either of the new Google Plus pages I wanted. No real reason, just some unexplained 'Unable to create page. Try again later' message from the great Goog as soon as I clicked the 'Create Page' button.

I kept trying, maybe four of five more times, before giving up in a ticked-off huff. Never mind that I have no real idea or plan for a Google Plus page for the blog or for the show. Never mind that I hardly even go on to Google Plus right now. Never mind I have a million other things to do and don't really need to add 'Google Plus page administration' to the list.

Nope, forget all that. Google Plus pages are there. And darn it, I had to have mine too.

Finally I (sort of) snapped out of it and quit trying to create something I don't really need, don't have time for, won't help me write better posts or have better radio shows, and won't really accomplish much of anything except give Google Plus a little bit more of my time and attention.

The lesson in this little tale? None, really. My experience and conclusions are valid only for me. Just like it doesn't matter if Louis C.K. thinks Twitter is stupid, it doesn't matter that I felt like a doofus trying to set up Google Plus pages. It might make a ton of sense and hold a lot of value for you. Your mileage will vary.

But the ancient advice is still valid though - just because we can, doesn't mean we have to, or even that we should.

And Louis C.K. does use Twitter.

And I probably will try again to create those stupid Google Plus pages. 

Just because it is good advice, doesn't mean we know how to follow it.

Summer Hours and Fear

By now you have likely heard something about the latest 'fired for something you Tweeted' tale, this one from the Philadelphia area where Social media specialist Vanessa Williams was fired from the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp. after using its Twitter account last weekend to tweet the following:

You can argue about the relative offensiveness of the tweet and whether or not the agency overreacted in its rapid termination of Williams following the Tweet, but it seems to me beyond doubt that this Tweet only became noteworthy, and the publicity surrounding the affair massively augmented by the decision to fire Williams, rather than simply issue a clarification, retraction, apology - whatever, and move on.

While I have no access or insight to private communications between members of the Lehigh Valley community and the agency following the 'Summer Hours' tweet, and thus don't know if the tweet truly resulted in a flood of outrage and angry calls and shouts about 'wasting the taxpayers money', I can see from the LVEDC's timeline that the public Twitter 'backlash' to the tweet was pretty tepid. In the moments after the tweet was sent, it appears only one other Twitter user, @KBlumenau, directly engaged with the LVEDC account on Twitter, and even his comments were not outrageous or all the angry. LVEDC, for it's part, offered a few responses about how 'no one is leaving early' and 'how the finance department was making deals'. Kudos LVEDC, I am sure we were all in fear that a couple of slack hours on a Friday afternoon in June would destroy the Lehigh Valley economy.

Certainly after the news broke the the LVEDC had fired Williams, and the news of the firing began to spread on the web, a flurry of tweets, most all of them expressing disappointment and disagreement with the firing decision for what most observers took as at worst an honest mistake. Williams herself has hired a lawyer, and wants to have her 'name cleared'.

We talk quite a bit in the blogging/tweeting/social communities about transparency and openness. And how organizations that come to more fully embrace the new modes of engagement and communication that social platforms provide will be the ones that can innovate more rapidly, attract (and retain) more dynamic talent, and be able to respond to customers in a meaningful and proactive manner. And of course many of us try to convince our organizations or advise other organizations that this kind of openness is really the way forward, and gives us the best chance for success and plays a role in crafting the kind of organization we'd be proud to work for.

But in order to do that, obviously, organizations need to trust that their newly empowered people will do the right thing, will act honestly and responsibly, especially when acting and participating in public forums on behalf of the company. Trust is essential. And the LVEDC had already taken that step, by placing their trust in Williams to Tweet on the official agency account and as part of her job duties. The LVEDC trusted Williams to do the right thing.

The problem was after the mildly inappropriate 'Summer Hours' tweet (again, very arguable), the LVEDC didn't trust that their community would not over react and become enraged at the most slight perception there was something amiss at the agency. The reason Willliams was fired, and the ongoing interest in the story is completely centered around the LVEDC's lack of faith in the community, businesses, and people they serve. The LVEDC assumed the worst of them, that they could not understand a simple comment about summer hours and golf on a Friday in June would bring the whole house crashing down.

If you don't trust your employees, then social media probably is not for you.

If you don't trust anyone, well, you have bigger problems than social media.

Where can we find someone that knows...

Check out the embedded map below (email subscribers may need to click though).

It is from a free service called Map My Followers, a site that presents a mashup of information about a given user's followers on Twitter, superimposed on a Google Map.

The image above presents a visual representation of a sample of 100 of the folks that follow me on Twitter, overlaid on the standard Google map, and hovering on the little marker for each person pops up their Twitter name as well.  On the lower right, a tag cloud of common terms from my followers profiles is displayed, which provides additional insight (beyond geography) of these 100 followers interests.

Sort of neat, kind of cool looking, and quite honestly the kind of capability, presentation, and wow factor usually lacking in the traditional workforce analysis tools that attempt to perform similar functions. 

Imagine if you were the person in charge of sourcing and staffing a project team to support some new organizational initiatives.  Factors like geography, skills, interests, availability, and prior experience would all come in to account as you attempted to assemble the team. Instead of a map of Twitter followers, your 'map' would be sourced from core HRIS information,  internal talent profiles, internal skills inventories, and perhaps even insight from the CRM system (as to the size and strategic importance of the opportunity), and augmented by your database of external talent (maybe even a custom LinkedIn or boolean search result on top of that).

Build in more advanced filtering capability and have the tag cloud on the right be user configurable and actionable (let me click on a tag and have the mashup highlight all the people that match that tag), and now you have the start of more dynamic and adaptable tool for insight and action into the workforce (and perhaps even all the available and accessible talent).  Make hovering over the map marker pop up a lightweight bio, with essential information displayed, and include the ability to quickly contact the person via email, IM, or even a Tweet.

I love checking out all these new and innovative services that seem to be proliferating lately, the cleverness and industry these developers show simply by accessing open APIs and re-imaging the data is outstanding.

What I don't love is after spending a lunch time playing with a cool site like Map My Followers is having to try to piece together similar organizational insights in an aging set of enterprise tools that were designed in a different age.

No Twitter for You Mister

Catching up this weekend on a backlog of unread blog posts and news articles, and I stumbled across this piece on SportsBusinessDaily - ESPN's Bill Simmons Discusses His Two-Week Twitter Suspension.

For those that may not be familiar with Simmons, he is an extemely popular writer for ESPN.com, and author of several books.  He is active on Twitter, tweeting under the account sportsguy33 and has amassed over 1,000,000 followers. Flickr - sean_alexander

But his Tweets recently landed him in hot water with ESPN, and the article describes how Simmons tweeted that ESPN radio affiliate WEEI in Boston employed "deceitful scumbags".  This was AFTER, the radio station named Simmons its "Fraud of the Week" on its website and on the air. Simmons claimed that his tweet was an expression of frustration in that ESPN failed to intervene on his behalf after being ripped by WEEI.

Let's see if we can break down the series of events.

1. Employees (if not direct employees, at least employees of an 'affiliate' organization WEEI) publicly ridicule and blast another employee (Simmons)

2. After employer (ESPN) apparently does nothing, Simmons takes matters into his own hands, and fires back at WEEI via his Twitter page (which appears to be a personal page)

3. ESPN then declares Simmons to be in violation of its corporate social media use policies and suspends Simmons from using Twitter for two weeks.

4. But Simmons is on a multi-city book tour, and is permitted (or simply decides) to continue to Tweet about the tour and book signing details. So it is really a 'partial' Twitter suspension.

A really strange set of circumstances and while I am sure there is more to the story that has become publicly available, it does point out some really interesting questions.

1. What should employers do when employees start taking shots at each other in social media?

2. When employees have exceedingly strong and large personal networks (as Simmons does), does the employer need to manage this much more carefully than Joe on the loading dock?

3. At what point does the employee's network and activities on social media become too powerful, and begin to eclipse the company itself?  Or does this ever really happen?

4. Did ESPN act hypocritically by ostensibly allowing WEEI to say whatever they liked about Simmons, but only stepping in when Simmons went on Twitter to fight back?

My take - ESPN at the very most should have asked Simmons and WEEI to bury the hatchet and apologize, or at least try and play nice in public.  If that was not going to be possible, then at least get them to stop taking shots on the air on on Twitter.  Not all employees have to like and respect each other. Just keep it off the air and out of the Twitter stream of 1,000,000 followers.

But as an employer, especially such a high-profile on like ESPN that wants to be a player in social media, you can't have it both ways.  Sometimes you are going to have flare-ups and embarrassing situations. The right thing to do is manage them reasonably and consistently. 

The wrong thing is to issue a half-baked 'Twitter suspension' on the guy who tried to defend himself.