#SBF11: HR as Humane Relationships

 

  I gave a short presentation on ‘The New HR’ to the Social Business (Enterprise 2.0) Forum in Milan today.

I wanted to make two main points to emphasise the importance of E2.0 folk involving their HR colleagues in Social Business projects:

1. That thinking about the cultural change required to support Enterprise 2.0 technology implementation (which is a good thing to do), is not the same as planning for the outcomes of cultural / social change – which may then involve technology, or HR, or something else.  From a simplistic perspective in the first situation, HR acts as the traditional support function.  In the second, HR is the main act.  (I still don’t think this change in perspective is widely understood which is why I tweeted about E2.0’s schizophrenia earlier today, and why I think that as a community, we’re still on a journey from Enterprise 2.0 to this bigger and more important thing, the Social Business.)
2. That they may need to help HR needs to step up to this new challenge and think about HR as Human Relationships, not just Human Resources (I’ve blogged on this before here).  The point on Human Relationships got tweeted and retweeted, and was then improved by Dan Pontefract, suggesting we should perhaps say Humane Relationships instead?  I think that’s a great build.

 

I also talked briefly about the opportunities for HR to use 2.0 tools, and 2.0 thinking - ie the same combination of technology and other physical, but social, approaches – within HR itself.  This was probably more content than I had time to deliver, but I wanted the E2.0 (technology) practitioners in the audience to also consider the opportunity that HR needs them as much as they need HR.

 

You can find out more about these two things, ie HR’s support for the social business, and then also social HR, in these two webinar archives:

• Social Business
• Social HR: archive / slides

 

I’ll be posting more general perspectives on the conference, and on my schizophrenia point, at Social Advantage over the next few weeks.

 

Technorati Tags: Social Business,Forum,Milan,2011,Enterprise 2.0,Open Knowledge,HR,culture,outcomes,#SBF11

 

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