Thursday 25 February 2010

Developing new talent management strategies for 2010

 

  I’ve been reading a couple of research reports on UK business and HR in 2010.

One is IRS Employment Review’s HR roles and responsibilities: the 2010 IRS survey (available at XpertHR – subscription required).  This survey of 253 HR practitioners in October 2009 identified two important issues and initiatives for HR over the coming year.

“HR is still busy dealing with restructuring and redundancies, and coping with the ensuing workforce and succession planning.

HR is also grappling with the aftermath of restructuring programmes that have resulted in job losses and the impact on remaining employees. Many HR practitioners referred to the need to boost employee engagement or morale, directly related to the impact of restructuring and redundancies.”

 

The other research is PwC’s annual CEO survey which finds that "changing the talent culture" will be one of UK businesses' main priorities this year.

"Delivering organic growth in a world more sensitised to risk will need careful leadership and management. Success in 2010 will in part be dependent on how companies motivate, manage and reward their talent pool.  Here in the UK there are some promising signs of CEOs tackling this issue.

  • 42% of UK CEOs expect headcount numbers to increase in the next 12 months
  • 52% of CEOs plan to make significant changes to their staff morale/employee engagement programmes
  • 65% plan to increase investment in leadership and talent management
  • 78% plan to changes their talent management strategies in the wake of the financial crisis.

The scale of anticipated change suggests that for whatever reason, existing HR practices did not support the businesses when the crisis hit. The past year has demonstrated that many reward models are broken, CEOs did not have sufficient flexibility to redeploy talent when the crisis hit and that different skills will be needed to compete in the new landscape."

 

Two things leap out to me here.

  1. I’m not sure HR appreciates the scale of the challenge (or the opportunity).  CEOs want you to make a difference, if you’ve got the ambition and imagination to do this!
  2. The change isn’t all about restructuring and engagement.  CEOs want to increase investment in talent management, but they want to manage talent differently too.

 

Stuck for ideas?  Give me a call.

 

 

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Wednesday 24 February 2010

informatology 2010

 

   On 28th April, I’ll be speaking at informatology’s 2010 "Good Practice for Great Performance" conference, which is designed to give business and talent leaders inspiration and insight to help their organisations be as successful as they can be.

The conference sounds like a lot of fun, with plenty of 2.0 and even an unconference thrown in!

Key themes include managing change, leadership, customer service, executive coaching, engaging and utilising talent, great places to work, the professional services sector, e-learning, making video, the future of workplace learning, team collaboration 2.0 (my session), sharing knowledge 2.0, enterprise 2.0, and learning & performance 2.0!

Other confirmed speakers include...

  • Professor Robert Winston - Professor of Science and Society and Emeritus Professor of Fertility Studies at Imperial College, world-famous author and TV personality delivers the inspirational opening keynote
  • Michael Izza - CEO, The Institute of Chartered Accountants chairs the session focusing on the Professional Services sector
  • Jo Causon - CEO, The Institute of Customer Service chairs the "Great Customer Service" session
  • Tom O'Byrne - CEO, Great Place To Work® Institute UK, chairs a session featuring winners of their award
  • Professor Andrew Mayo, frequent speaker, writer and facilitator in international HRM, specialising in people and organisation development, chairs the session on Great Leadership
  • Julie Starr, Author of the bestselling “The Coaching Manual” chairs the session on Executive Coaching
  • Nick Shackleton-Jones, Online & Informal Learning Manager at the BBC leads a whole-day masterclass with his BBC colleagues, on how to create video on a shoestring
  • Jane Hart leads a whole-day masterclass on Learning & Performance 2.0
  • Sudhir Giri, Global Head of Learning Technologies at Google, speaks on Sharing Knowledge 2.0
  • Clive Shepherd, a consultant specialising in learning and communications technologies, chairs the session on Great e-Learning.

 

The conference will be held at Baker Tilly’s Conference Centre in London from Wednesday 28th to Friday 30th April, 2010.

Can you attend this event?  Book here.

 

 

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New Trends in personnel management, Bratislava, Slovakia

 

   On 17th March, I’m in Bratislava, Slovakia for Trenkwalder’s New Trends in personnel management conference, where I’ll be presenting on HCM.

The forthcoming 16th Year Annual Conference NEW TRENDS Personnel Management will be held on 17 March 2010 (Wednesday) in the congress hall Austria Trend Hotel Bratislava. As well as the success with 15 years of constantly trying to bring you something new and inspiring of human resource management, this year we start a new tradition, which exalts our conference on 1 Czecho-Slovak Congress - New trends in personnel management 2010th Given the current labor market situation, the upcoming congress will be held in a spirit link HR and business processes with the name "HR AS A BUSINESS PARTNER”.

Prestigious scientific event is intended primarily to senior managers, personnel managers and specialists in human resources management. Every year, will welcome around 150 participants and speakers from the Czech Republic and abroad. This day will bring you many new stimuli, information, rare meeting with colleagues in human resources and exchange valuable experiences.

 

Pripravovaný 16. ročník každoročnej konferencie NOVÉ TRENDY V PERSONÁLNOM MANAŽMENTE sa uskutoční 17. marca 2010 (streda) v kongresovej sále Austria Trend Hotel Bratislava. Keďže sa aj po úspešných 15-tich ročníkoch neustále snažíme priniesť Vám niečo nové a inšpirujúce z oblasti riadenia ľudských zdrojov, tento rok začíname s novou tradíciou, ktorá našu konferenciu povyšuje na 1. česko-slovenský kongres - NOVÉ TRENDY V PERSONÁLNOM MANAŽMENTE 2010. Vzhľadom na súčasnú situáciu na trhu práce sa pripravovaný kongres bude niesť v duchu prepojenia HR a business procesov s názvom „ HR AKO BUSINESS PARTNER“.

Prestížne odborné podujatie je určené predovšetkým vrcholovým manažérom, personálnym manažérom a špecialistom v oblasti riadenia ľudských zdrojov. Každoročne privíta okolo 150 účastníkov a prednášajúcich zo Slovenska, Českej Republiky i zahraničia. Tento deň Vám prinesie veľa nových podnetov, informácii, vzácne stretnutia s kolegami z oblasti ľudských zdrojov a výmenu cenných skúseností.

 

If you’re attending, come and let me know you’ve read this on my blog.  And if you’re otherwise in Bratislava on 17 March, I’ll be at the Austria Trend Hotel – give me a call and come and say hello.

 

 

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Tuesday 23 February 2010

Culture clash

 

The last session at TRU London was one I was hosting with Steve Boese, and he was broadcasting on HR Happy Hour – so you can listen to it too!:

 

The background to the session is that:

“The world is shrinking and networks are going global. #trulondon is a testament to the narrowing of borders combining the leading brains in our sector from the UK, the US and Canada.

What are the shared views of the community and where do cultures clash between the continents? What do you need to keep and what do you need to be open to when networking or trading cross borders.”

 

I thought it was a good conversation, and useful too, if no reason that I’ll be doing a couple of conference presentations on global HR later this year….

 

 

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You’ll never be rich (it’s tru!)

 

My main take-ways from TRU London were new and deeper relationships rather than many learnings about recruitment.

But there were a couple of conversations that got my thinking going.  One was a session on HR Leadership, which included Mervyn Dinnen, Laurie Ruettimann and Bill Boorman, and which got into some fairly deep and challenging issues.

Oh, and of course, I come come away with a few new perspectives too.  I’m even more committed to using more video on my blog, thanks to encouragement from Jim Stroud, Lisa Scales and Marie Journey.

So here’s a video on the HR leadership session.  It’s about why we need to think about other things than money if we’re not going to become bitterly divided:

 

 

For more on the research pieces I refer to, see:

 

More on this (probably in written form) after the session at the RSA on Thursday.

 

 

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TRU highs

 

serkis-as-ian-dury-004   It was a pretty mad couple of days and is taking a while to climb back down from.

One thing is certain, I’m never again going to experience the same sort of high after meeting just one solitary HR blogger as I have in the past.

Not after what seemed like a hundred of them at TRU London!

 

Tweets:

Take a look at this list of my post-conference tweets to some great HR and recruitment tweeters!

 

Posts:

You can read all of my blogs on the event here.

Also check out the following blog posts (there are LOTS of others too):

 

Podcasts: 

 

And photos:

 

 

 

Picture: Andy Serkis: From Gollum to Ian Dury

 

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Thursday 18 February 2010

TRU London: Employer vs Employee Branding

 

    OK, so it’s day 1 of (TRU) London.  And I’m still waiting to co-lead a track on employer branding vs employee branding:

“Following on from the popular Recruiter Cast debate “Is the Employer Brand dead?”, this track looks at the issue of employer branding. How to stand out as an employer and how recruiters can use employer branding. Has employer branding is turning in to employee branding as a result of the social media explosion and the growth of the personal brand. Branding experts Nick Price, Michelle Fischer and Sarah White from the U.S. will be debating all the issues in this key area.”

 

I didn’t see, and have not been able to track down, the Recruiter Cast debate, but it seems to have been one that followed on from TRU London 1.  See Bill Boorman’s summary of his learnings:

“Employer brand no longer exists.

My thoughts on this after I had contemplated [Keith Robinson] @Siteadvisors question is that he is probably right. Social media opens access to all that is being said about an employer directly or indirectly, but most of what is being said is being said by the employees directly. (There are Facebook groups dedicated to this.) In my opinion, social media makes personal branding much bigger than corporate branding unless you are a giant in the Pepsi or Coke mode. Most of us aren’t. It’s key that you are listening to what your employees are saying about you. You can influence this by reacting appropriately, changing things and getting the right things said about you by the personal brands within your organisation. Employee engagement is key in this and has more to say about how attractive you are to potential recruits than the glossy websites.”

 

Bill then went on to do a further post, Employee Branded?, and a guest post on Mike VanDervort’s The Human Race Horses blog,  The Employer Brand Is Dead?

“ I again outlined my view that employer brand was now employee brand and that the issue  was that the employer brand was set by the employees and what they were saying on Facebook and other social media. Keith added his view that employee brand was much bigger than this and was the D.N.A. of the whole organisation from the board down.”

 

Gareth Jones then posted on his blog, Inside my Head: ‘Real time’ engagement – the employer brand dilemma…

“Social media does without doubt have a potentially huge effect on the employer brand but I don’t think we will see it turn into the “employee brand” as Bill suggests.  Nor will it become a ‘new role for HR’ as it’s already in the HR mix, and has been for many years.”

 

Gareth seems to accept that corporate / product brands have become ‘customer branded’, but doesn’t accept the case for employees:

“So will social media shift the balance of ‘brand power’ to the employee in a similar way to customers?  Well, as much as I would like to think so, I dont think it will because the customer and employee relationship are fundamentally different in two key ways:

  1. Choice - If I take exception to the way Coke delivers the ‘customer experience’, there is always Pepsi.  Or some other brand pretender. Either way, I still get my cola fix. I can even buy a different brand everyday without impunity.  But I can’t do the same with employers.  Even the most talented and sought after can’t afford more than one or two ‘mistakes’ on their CV before the prejudice and hypocrisy of the recruiters cause them to start muttering about capability and poor judgement.
  2. Bad can be good – some people want a house to be perfect when they buy it, others are happy to buy a wreck – simply because they see the potential in it.  As an employer crown slips, even if it falls far, it will eventually become a ‘turnaround’ situation or something similar and a different set of equally talented individuals will queue up to join.  However, if Tesco starts serving up putrid meats at the deli counter I’m hardly likely to keep on buying it on the basis that I can see an opportunity to make it better!”

 

Right, well I’m guessing that we probably won’t end up discussing any of this in the session today, even if it does take place, but if we do, what are my ideas?

 

Well, I agree with Gareth that there is a difference between the corporate / product and the employer brand.  But for different reasons.  To me, the key point is that employees talk to each other – and this means the environment is more complex, emergent, subjective, and less controllable, than the consumer one.

Now OK, the consumer environment has changed too, largely as a result of social media, which is why I think we’ve got to ‘customer branded’.  But in most sectors ,customers still don’t talk as much or as easily as employees.

So  what does this mean about ‘employee branded’?

 

This is how I think employer branding works (although obviously a more mechanical description than it really is):

 

Running through this from left to right:

  • You need to start with a clear focus, a good idea of what the organisation is about (mission / vision / BHAG / strategy – or values / mojo etc – which provides the basis for Keith’s DNA)
  • You need to ensure that this is translated into an employer value proposition (EVP).  This EVP needs to be developed to fit your employees, but it’s even more important that it supports your BHAG / mojo (which of course, should also be informed by, and developed through discussion with, your employees).  The EVP should also influence your employees ie you’ll recruit people who appreciate the offer that you’ll provide.
  • You then need to deliver this EVP (or a tailored version of it) to each employee.  This is the difficult bit.  Firstly because the delivery is done by your line managers which you can’t completely control.  And also because delivery is down to your employees’ judgement about what has been delivered, ie its a relative rather than an absolute quality.
  • It’s the result of the delivery of this EVP which provides the basis for your employer brand (with some ability to accentuate the positives and the direction you’re travelling in).

 

So how much of this do you control?

  • BHAG / mojo: yes
  • EVP: yes (although clearly you need to listen to your employees and seek to meet their needs)
  • Delivery: not totally, but yes, to a large extent (even with social media)
  • Employer brand: because of the above, largely, yes.

 

Net result - employer branding has still got my vote.

 

 

 

 

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Wednesday 17 February 2010

TRU London time

 

      And so finally, its here.  TRU London 2 starts tomorrow.

I’m struggling to work out whether this is a really big deal, or not.  It sort of feels like it is, largely because a good proportion of the people I follow on Twitter have been tweeting about it, whether they’re attending or not.

And I am looking forward to the unconference experience, and hopefully learning a few things about recruitment too.  But what I’m really looking forward to is meeting more of the tweeters, and especially the bloggers, that I’ve been following over the last couple of years, and who I feel like I know well, even if we’ve never met.

Including, from the US:

And from the UK:

And Europe:

 

(The above are the people at TRU London I currently feel I know (some more than others) – I’m sure the list will change and grow significantly by the end of Friday!  And sorry to those I meant to add in, but have very temporarily forgotten!)

 

Anyway, going back to my point, I’m also aware, that for the large majority of the people I know, and given I guess that most of the ‘marketing’ for the event has been done via social media, TRU won’t be anything they’ve heard of, or ever will.  Which feels a bit strange.

So if you’ve not come across it, I’d encourage you to dip in, and see what it’s all about.  There are various ways to do this, including:

 

I’ll also be blogging at least once on both days.

So, see you at the event; here; on a podcast; or on the Twitter stream!

 

 

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Wednesday 10 February 2010

Rewards & Benefits 2010

 

  On 21st May, I’ll be facilitating a workshop on effective management of reward budgets for Osney Media.

This workshop follows on from the Rewards & Benefits 2010 Summit on 19th & 20th May, which I also hope to be attending.  Speakers at the conference will include:

  • Dame Carol Black, National Director, Health and Work, Department for Work and Pensions
  • Paula McDonald, Deputy Director for Pay and Workforce Performance, The Cabinet Office
  • Duncan Brown, Director, HR Business Development, The Institute
    of Employment Studies
  • Joan Chaplin, Reward Manager, BBC People
  • Ken McSweeney, Vice President of Compensation and Benefits,
    Thales
  • Mary Rogers, Director, Compensation & Benefits, Europe, Hertz
  • Jane Vivier, Head of Reward, Cancer Research UK
  • Louise Phillips, European HR Benefits Leader, IBM
  • Paul Craven, Head of Reward, sanofi-aventis
  • Dev Raval, Head of Employee Rewards, BSKYB
  • Janet Mckenzie, Reward & Benefits Manager, Arqiva
  • Andrew Wood, Regional Director, AEGON Global Pensions
  • David Turetsky, Product and Solution Evangelist, Workscape Inc.
  • David Ewers, Subject Area Leader, Business Finance; Director,
    Henley Centre for Value Improvement, Henley Business School
  • Jonathan Chapman, FME Teaching Fellow, Cranfield University
    School of Management
  • David Turetsky, Head of Product Marketing, Hay Group
  • Guy Ellis, Director, PeopleStuf Ltd.
  • Robert Manson, Director, Employee Health and Performance,
    GlaxoSmithKline
  • Tim Taylor, Head of Reward and Recognition, TUI Travel UK &
    Ireland

 

Book online here.  And if you do attend, come and say hello.

 

 

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Tuesday 9 February 2010

Social media and employee engagement

 

   Next month (19th March, 2010), I’ll be moderating one of the sessions at Justmeans’ Social Media and Stakeholder Engagement conference in London:

Empowering Employees

Social media can inspire employees and generate new ideas when it is used as a collaboration tool.  Communication is no longer limited to a one-way delivery of information; organisations are participating in two-way dialogues and using social media to engage employees in innovative ways. How do you engage employees, create a shared vision, increase productivity and derive benefits from increased employee engagement? Many companies are increasingly concerned about the risks of social media and are reluctant to introduce it into their organisations.  How do you introduce and embrace the utilization of social media with proper planning and guidelines to ensure success and employee advocates?

 

Speakers for the session will include Tim Johns, VP Corporate Communications at Unilever and Ed Gillespie, Co-Founder of Futerra.

Should be fun!  Come along if you can.  You can book here or for more information, please contact Serina Mufti at smufti@justmeans.com or +44 (0) 203 238 2121.

And let me know if you’ll be there, or at least ensure you come over and say hello!

 

 

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Sunday 7 February 2010

HR and Enterprise 2.0 Collaboration

 

Morten Hansen Collaboration New HR Agenda   I’ve already posted briefly on one session at the Enterprise 2.0 virtual event this week, but want to write even more briefly about another.

This is Morten Hansen’s opening session on collaboration.  I’ve already reviewed Hansen’s book, Collaboration, on Talking HR, so I’m not going to go through his whole presentation.  But there were a couple of additions in this session.  One of these was a discussion on enterprise 2.0 technology which was a glaring omission in the book (leading me to shout out ‘hello! – wiki!!!’ on the show).  And I thought you’d be interested in the other addition which is shown on this slide: the ‘new HR agenda’.

Why?  Well, according to Hansen, there’s going to be a paradigm shift around (disciplined) collaboration – as this is the future of work.

To develop effective collaboration, organisations need to recognise that the motivation barrier is as great as the need to ensure it has the right technological tools.  This isn’t so much about 2.0 as these tools don’t fundamentally address the motivation barrier (duh!).  It’s much more about HR.

So one way of addressing the motivation barrier is through the development of T-shaped people, which Tim Brown, CEO at IDEO refers to as ‘a depth of skills and a disposition for collaboration across’  and which he believes is the backbone of IDEO’s collaborative culture.

And T-shaped people are developed by changing HR systems to focus on both individual work and collaborative work – so where is the right balance in the dimensions shown in the slide for your organisation?

 

I’m still hoping to explore this subject further with the Enterprise 2.0 crowd at the E2.0 conference in Boston this Summer.  And will definitely continue to do so in my Social Advantage blog and forthcoming book

 

 

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Saturday 6 February 2010

Social recruiting and conferencing part 2 (TRU)

 

TRU   One of the conversations I had on Thursday night (at the recruiting tweet-up, RTU) was about Mervyn Dinnen’s tweet last year, at Mike Taylor’s Social Recruiting conference, about there having to be a better (more social) way of exploring social topics than traditional conferences.

If I’ve got this right, Trish McFarlane responded with a tweet about last year’s HRevolution un-conference in (which I missed as I thought the travel time would be a bit excessive given that I had a lot of client work to do), leading indirectly to the first of Bill Boorman’s TRU un-conferences last year (which I missed because I was at the CIPD conference in Manchester).

According to Bill:

“An unconference is an event that has no fixed structure and only two rules, no power point and no presentations. The day is split into sessions during which a series of ‘tracks’ run on a theme with a track leader hosting the discussion, debate and learning. The discussion takes a life of it’s own with attendees bringing their own views, questions and opinions as well as debate. This takes many directions and concludes with real learning and opinion forming. The track leaders are carefully chosen for their areas of experience and knowledge and for the value they can bring to the “track.” They have been drawn from across the globe giving the unconference a genuine global view. We will be adding to the list of track leaders right up to the day of the event (and even during it.)”

 

Well, I think Mervyn, Trish and Bill are right.  Traditional conferences are increasingly out of synch with today’s more informal and social life and work styles.  And unconferencing is an approach that I’ve wanted to get involved with since speaking about it with Jay Cross (see Jay’s definition of an unconference) when we did some work together a few years back.

So I’m very excited to be attending, and track leading, at Bill’s second TRU (The Recruiting Unconference) event, TRU London 2 in just two weeks time.

I’ll be co-unleading (?) sessions on:


Employer branding v Employee branding

Track Leaders: Nick Price, Sarah White, Michelle Fischer, Jon Ingham

Following on from the popular Recruiter Cast debate “Is the Employer Brand dead?”, this track looks at the issue of employer branding. How to stand out as an employer and how recruiters can use employer branding. Has employer branding is turning in to employee branding as a result of the social media explosion and the growth of the personal brand. Branding experts Nick Price, Michelle Fischer and Sarah White from the U.S. will be debating all the issues in this key area.

 

Endangered Species

Track Leaders: Peter Gold, John Ingham, Steve Boese

From HR to recruiters, we seem to hear of the imminent passing of all the trades we recognise are facing extinction from a changing world. Who is next to start pushing up the daisies? This track promises to be lively and global looking at who is on the endangered species list, why and what they need to do in the future to ensure a brighter future.

 

The talent wars

Track Leaders: Trish Mcfarlane, Michelle Fischer, Peter Gold, Jon Ingham

We will fight them on the job boards, we will fight them in Facebook. We will never surrender! The battle to attract the best talent for current and future hires. is there such a thing as a passive candidate? How to track and engage with potential future hires. How can you pipeline and maintain contact in preparation of your next placement or hire?

 

Culture Clash

Track Leaders: Jon Ingham, Laurie Ruettimann, Geoff Webb, Alan Whitford

The world is shrinking and networks are going global. #trulondon is a testament to the narrowing of borders combining the leading brains in our sector from the U.K, the U.S. & Canada. What are the shared views of the community and where do cultures clash between the continents? What do you need to keep and what do you need to be open to when networking or trading cross borders.

 

H.R. Gen Z

Track Leaders: Laurie Ruettimann, Trish Mcfarlane, Jon Ingham

Never mind Gen Y,their here now. What will HR look like to Gen Z? Will HR exist in it’s current format? How could the HR role evolve and what will make it the career destination of choice to the bright young things? What do we want from HR now & in the future from a corporate & employee viewpoint? Are these the same things or something different? How can HR please all? How can HR prepare for the future while functioning effectively now?

 

Future Strategy

All track leaders

At the close of each day all tracks will spend 45 minutes consolidating the learning & thinking of all the attendees in open discussion in order to focus the mind on the next step.

 

 

As you might be able to tell from the names above, Bill’s brought together many of the biggest and brightest names from the recruiting, HR and social media worlds (including most of the people that I met on Thursday night), and it should be a really good event.

So look out for plenty of blogging, tweeting, podcasting, waving and other social media stuff coming to you on 18th and 19th February.

And if you’re not attending the unconference in person, you’ll still have the opportunity to contribute to the conversation through Paul Harrison’s live lab:

“The room splits in to tracks and each has a track secretary and a micro-blogger. The questions for the tracks, and opinions come from the twitter stream using the hashtag #lab. This could be huge and a great opportunity to involve many more than those in the room. Hats off to Paul for taking this on, and for twitter job search for providing a venue where we can project on the side of the building!”

 

Oh, and if Bill’s OK to have me back, I’ll also be unleading at TRU USA in Madison on April 20th and 21st - note I’m prioritising it above the CIPD (HRD) conference this time around!

 

 

Photo credit: Sara Headworth

 

 

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Friday 5 February 2010

Social recruiting and conferencing part 1 (RTU)

 

 

I was at a recruiting tweet-up (RTU) ie Twitter meet-up that was part of Social Media Week London last night and was delighted to meet lots of new people and some old friends including Mervyn Dinnen, Gareth Jones, Wendy Jacob and Bill Boorman (pictured) – plus Paul Harrison after I’d put my camera away.

Before that, there was a presentation / discussion on social recruiting which focused around what this is / isn’t, including some examples of good case studies (Microsoft, Cisco, Sodexho, Deloitte NZ).

Matt Alder (see here and here) kicked the presentations off by explaining what social media isn’t, ie advertising.  And I think the final definition that was suggested(a bit hard to be certain above the noise of the clinking glasses) was people having a conversation on-line.

But I liked Wendy’s suggestion: “talking to people, that’s all it is – getting to know the real you”.  I like the ‘real you’ piece – SR’s not a conversation about a job, it’s about the person.  And I like the absence of the ‘online’ bit.

To me, SR is something we’ve always done, but which is now substantially easier because people are online, and particularly because they’re on 2.0 too.

So as Matt said, it’s different to non-social recruiting in that it’s not just about advertising jobs.  And it’s not just about receiving applications.  It’s linking the organisation and an individual together through conversations and by developing a relationship.  So something like an employee referral scheme would come within the definition of SR for me.

But there is another bit here too though.  I’ve previously suggested that social learning should mean learning of the social unit (the team or the organisation as a whole) and not just learning socially (generating, co-creating and sharing content, collaborating etc).  And I think this should apply to recruitment too.  So I’d suggest that SR isn’t just about using relationships to recruit, it needs to be about developing and then maintaining relationships because these are going to be critical to engagement, retention, collaboration etc after a person joins.

 

The presentations then moved on to the benefits of SR and the suggestion was that it is good for recruiting young people cheaply.

As you might guess from my definition of the concept, I think this benefit is a bit weak.  SR isn’t (shouldn’t be) just about young people, and it’s not just about efficiency.  The opportunity is to use SR to get people you’ve never been able to tap before, and to provide your organisation with more / better people with better relationships between then too (higher levels of human and social capital).

SR provides an opportunity to transform what your organisation is capable of doing.  If all you focus on is activity (doing things on line) and efficiency (doing HR more cheaply) don’t be surprised when you find it hard to engage the business in this!

 

 

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Thursday 4 February 2010

Lynda Gratton on the Future of Work

 

   I’ve been reading Lynda Gratton’s newish blog on the Future of Work over the last couple of days.

It’s a blog that a definitely recommend to you, full of the deep insight that you’d expect from Lynda Gratton, and particularly valuable as it’s based on her Future of Work consortium and therefore the inputs of 200 executives from some of the world’s smartest 20 companies.

So for example, the consortium has identified five themes which will most influence the future of work – demography, globalisation, societal change, low carbon and technology.

In her latest post, Gratton lets rip at executive reward and its negative impact on collaboration

“For decades, there has been a belief that the talents to be a CEO are very rare and the impact they make on corporate performance is very strong. That’s why, the argument goes, CEO’s are paid on average 531 times the blue collar workers pay (up from 42 times in 1980). However, if we reflect on the five future forces – globalisation for example is uncovering talent pools around the word, which no longer makes these executive competencies rare. At the same time, social technology has enabled ‘wise crowds’ to make the decisions only CEO’s could have made in the past. Plus of course increasing market turbulence will impact on the control the top team actually have on profitability. All these factors suggest that senior executive pay needs to change.”

 

Also, in a recent article on HR Magazine, Gratton suggests

"Talent management needs to completely change its way of building top leaders. The role of Top leaders will fundamentally change. In the future they will need to learn how to ignite communities of people. The company will no longer be the hub of loyalty and affiliation - instead value will come from various communities and ecosystems , and engaging such communities requires very different skills from today's leader.”

"The questions to ask are why is there such a huge discrepancy between what companies think they need to pay their top leaders, and if a collaborative, team-based approach will prevail in the future, do we need to pay our top leaders so much

 

Gratton goes on basically to suggest that the situation is only sustained by widespread collusion to support the status quo.  She suggests however that “very few HR teams, or consultants, or CEO’s are prepared to talk about this”.

Her advice to tackle this and other contested areas is as follows:

  • First, take a dispassionate view of the subject
  • Next, begin a conversation, create a task force, create a buzz, which surfaces the ‘undiscussables’
  • Third: make a stand.

 

I think this is really important advice, and taking a stand, in particular, which I’d suggest is a vital part of our role (eg in being one of Ulrich’s ‘credible activists’) is something we don’t see HR doing enough of.  (As I note in my comment on Lynda’s article at HR Magazine, “we've seen very little progress on new reward frameworks in the banks for example, despite a fiercely burning platform to change here”.)

On a personal note, you can certainly criticise me for not being dispassionate – but then passionate opinion is what blogging is about – but I hope you won’t feel that I don’t make a stand.  I think regular readers will all already understand my own views on executive & bankers’ reward, for example.

If not, see:

 

Enough “being prepared to talk about it” for you Lynda?!

 

 

 

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Wednesday 3 February 2010

The UK’s top HR blog – it’s official (sort of)

 

   Fistful of Talent have just published their 6th round of power rankings, and this blog comes in at #15 of 160 blogs in the talent management space (thanks guys!).

Not bad at at all, and I’m particularly pleased to see that Strategic HCM is placed as the top blog from the UK (in fact I think it’s the only blog in top 25 that’s from the UK – but I still need to check on this).

Still, it’s probably not quite enough to claim to be the UK’s top HR blog / blogger.

However, I have also just been put in top slot in Hub Cap Digital’s list of the top 10 HR bloggers in the UK (thanks to Michael, Stuart et al).

Add to this that I came in as the top, and again the only, UK based blogger in John Sumser’s list of digital HR influencers, and that this blog comes in as the UK’s top career related blog in RiseSmart’s Career 100, and I think that just about wraps it up.

Not bad considering I’ve had a bit of a bloggers’ block over the last week or so – I’ll have to stop blogging more often!

 

 

 

 

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  • Contact  me to  create more  value for  your business
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Monday 1 February 2010

Did you miss? (on Social Advantage during January)

 

Social Advantage box   Check out these recent posts from my other blog if you’ve not already seen them:

 

 

  • Consulting - Research - Speaking  - Training -  Writing
  • Strategy  -  Talent  -  Engagement  -  Change and OD
  • Contact  me to  create more  value for  your business
  • jon  [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com

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