#CIPD11 Bloggerversity

 

   There was much more on social media at the CIPD conference yesterday.

Eg Matthew Hanwell and Neil Morrison did a session on social media and Sarah Beauerle from KFC an interesting one on social recruiting at the same time.

I also did another twitterversity, and by chance, a ‘bloggerversity’ as well… Neil had been a superstar in supporting both of the twitterversities, helping to coach people on their tweeting, so I thought I should support his ‘how to blog’ session.  I turned up 5 minutes late and although there were about 20 people waiting for some inputs, there was no Neil – it turns out that the CIPD hadn’t told him he was supposed to be leading the session!  So Gareth Jones and I ended up taking this one too.

Particularly since we hadn’t prepared anything I thought this worked well.  We answered some of the attendees’ questions then set up a blog – you can see this here.

The key principle for me behind both the twitter and bloggerversities is to get people over that first hurdle of updating.  That once people have done this a few times – tweeted some tweets, posted some blogs, it won’t feel so scary anymore.  Actually, I think it’s a broader habit that social media teaches as well.

I was talking to someone about this last night (drinks, tweet-up, drinks, curry… I can’t quite remember where or who - sorry) and they suggested that tweeting was like putting your hand up to ask a question – that you’ve got to be prepared to do this.  And it’s true – it’s like when I asked for volunteers to do a short video for the blog we were setting up, only one person volunteered.

I think  social media teaches you that it’s OK to put up your hand, and to say what you think  - whether this is in a conference room, on twitter, a blog, a video, or whatever it may be – even stepping in to present a session when someone else hasn’t turned up.

It’s an important requirement that we were talking about at the press dinner on Tuesday night – that HR needs to be prepared to loose their job by standing up for what we believe in.  And Arviunder Dhesi, now with RBS, said something similar on Thursday – suggesting that the original cause of the recession was that we have all been too willing to follow – and that HR needs to be willing to be the lone voice.

 

And this is why I’m so pleased to see more on social media on the CIPD agenda.  It’s not just that it’s such a big enabler for social recruiting (and social communication, learning, recognition etc etc) or the social business, it’s that it teaches more social behaviour too.

(Not necessarily like this photo from the tweet-up!:

)

 

Social media is about social behaviour (a focus on participation and relationships), it’s not about social technology.  And it’s generally HR which is most knowledgeable about changing behaviour – so this is an agenda which HR has got to take on.

Signs are, it’s starting to understand that’s the case as well.

 

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