Great to see my new book, The Social Organization , out in the UK. Use code AHRTSO20 on the Kogan Page website for a 20% discou...
To some extent this is down to my latest shiny new toy. That's Google Plus, or more specifically, Communities over at Google Plus.
I don't often write about social media here. I'm much more interested in the social impacts of these tools than I am the tools themselves. So apart from Blogger and Twitter, I don't use any other tool that much. I've never found Facebook that compelling and though I've got lots of contacts on Linked, I'm not on there that much (particularly with the removal of Events and Answers, which I thought were some of its best features).
But I really, really like Communities on Google Plus. In fact I really like Google Plus, but prior to Communities hadn't found anything that made me want to spend time there. I tried a few Hangouts / Hangout On Airs which I still want to experiment with, but my efforts towards the end of last year weren't very successful.
But Communities are great. They're easy to use, nicely formatted with link pictures appearing automatically and I just find them much more compelling than groups on Facebook or Linkedin, or even Twitter.
Added to that you've got potential benefits supporting AuthorRank, linking back directly to what's still going to be the world's leading search engine, so it's a good place to be spending time contributing.
I'm spending most of my time in two communities that I'm also moderating:
Do have a look at Google Plus, Communities, and both Social HR and Employee Engagement if you've not been over there before - it'd be great to see you.
Though I will soon be getting going posting here again too.
Technorati Tags: Engage for Success, Google Plus, Google +, Communities, Social HR, Employee Engagement
Though head farming was horribly expensive, social media makes the same sorts of approaches straight forward, eg this case study from Coca Cola, but still requires a good level of skill.
And I’ve sort of thought I know quite a bit of what I need to in this area (or quite a bit of what you need to, since I’m not actually a sourcer or recruiter, but I still want to understand it to show you what you’re missing out on. And actually I still use the approaches in various other applications – eg finding business prospects. I’d almost suggest it’s becoming a core skill that everyone should be taught at school in today’s networked world.)
That’s until I tried Irina Shamaeva’s international people sourcing contest a couple of month’s ago. And… err… well, I realised I didn’t know quite as much as I thought I did (basically, I didn’t have a clue.)
So, I’m currently setting out doing some initial self-study (I might post more about this in early January) and will be attending Irina’s People Sourcing Certification Program on, and following on from, 29 January.
Again, I’ll give you a taste of what I’m learning around then, but if you really want to understand sourcing, and how to do it, why not take the programme too?
My proposal was actually a response to reading the tweets and blog posts about Malcolm Gladwell’s session in Atlanta last year. I love Gladwell’s thinking, but I didn’t think he linked his inputs to the activities HR already understands, or the social technologies with which it is becoming increasingly comfortable. So I wasn’t sure that HR practitioners would be able to maximise the opportunities that social network design provides.
So I wrote:
“Malcolm Gladwell has introduced SHRM attendees to the importance of networks and social organisations as opposed to hierarchies. Many are now conversant with social media. But these are just a couple of the many tools available to HR to redefine its focus.
The point of performance in most organisations has for a long while been the team. And increasingly, this focus is being supplemented by the increasing importance of communities and networks too. So why is it that most of what we do in HR focuses on individual – their engagement and capability etc, and on whole organisations – structure and processes etc. Why don’t we focus more on the white space between these levels – the relationships between our people?
These relationships are important. The value of relationships, or social capital, potentially provides the largest and most untapped source of competitive advantage within a resource based strategy (which is also increasingly being seen as the main opportunity for competitive success as opposed to strategic positioning or the use of core competencies).
Increasingly, organisations are attempting to influence their peoples’ relationships, mostly through the use of social media and networking (enterprise 2.0). These efforts are typically led by IT. However, the success of these tools depends on effective behaviour and cultural change and hence this really falls within HR’s remit. In addition, many more traditional tools from HR’s kitbag can be used to develop social relationships. These include team based HR activities, facilitation, organisation development, community focused leadership development, workplace design etc.
The key need is not simply to use all the potential tools but to shift HR’s focus onto this new agenda – using social networks and technologies to enable social capital – this is the New HR.”
And I’m on:
I hope I’ll get to see you there!
The CIPD’s social media conference has kicked off with a session from Bill Parsons, EVP HR at ARM Holdings. I met Bill at ARM in Cambridge earlier this year, so this post is a combination of his presentation, and my earlier notes.
I’ll start off by saying ARM is one of my favourite companies – and in fact it’s one of the world’s favourite companies too. ARM’s vision is to be an effective innovative company (not just a wacky one) – a creative productive machine – and it has been consistently judged as one of the most innovative companies in the world.
However the reason I like the company is that it’s one of the very few that I know about which isn’t just using social media, but has focused on becoming a truly social organisation. Rather than following ‘the Chelsea Model’ of simply having the very best people / access to the best human capital (‘human capital is about a group of smart people who don’t talk to each other’), ARM focuses on the best social capital – ie having the best networks, relationships and trust. Human, social and intellectual capital (the explicit stuff which they sell) are the company’s differentiation. Social capital has been at the centre of their HR strategy for the last decade – it’s the rocket fuel of the innovative organisation.
This starts with the company’s values which focus on things like teaming and selflessness (unusual in such a profitable company) – and are definitely not vanilla. They were developed and evolved from the organisation’s founders and focus specifically on ARM as a unique organisation (rather than the things which every other organisation does).
Part of the reason that ARM focuses so much on social relationships is that their strategy is about connecting, collaborating and hence innovating and their model for innovation is primarily about open innovation. They therefore need everyone to behave selflessly – for the greater good of ARM - in external as well as internal networks. It sounds idealistic but Bill says this really works at ARM (and I think I believe him).
It’s an unusual business model – ARM sees itself as being at the centre of an ecosystem of 500 competing companies collaborating. ARM itself only employees 2100 people – vs Intel, its main competitor, with 100,000 people. Their model only works by having a high surface area which it achieves by having its employees talking directly to customers. The company’s values and culture makes this easy – it’s clear what provides value.
These values are then used as the basis for HR practices eg assessing promotability, fast tracking etc. In fact the whole HR strategy is about creating the magical ingredients supporting the development of social capital. Eg rather than the Accenture corporate model in which people are fighting to get to the top, in ARM if anyone is seen to be overtly trying to be promoted, ARM will fire them! Rewards come to people who do things for the greater good.
So ARM does identify high flyer potential management talent and provides them with coaching and training to help them build their legitimacy. If you don’t have the buy-in and support of your peers and the people you’re going to manage you’ve got a problem. ARM ensures that these individuals have good business relationships and networks.
Compensation aligns with ARM’s social strategy as well. Ensuring justice is an essential part of a social strategy and ARM provide their staff with more equity than any other European company. This makes employees’ feeling of ownership more meaningful too. The corporate bonus is largely collective too (just a small proportion is individually driven).
Recognition also focuses on what people do together – they hardly ever celebrate individual success. Eg the company celebrated its 20 year anniversary last year (its been the highest performing company in the world over this time). But the celebration was really one of international collective being eg they gave everyone an ipad (they were founded as a child of Apple and Newton Computer). It was a 27 hour global party revisiting their global successes – not individual stories.
Leadership selection and development is aligned with the values too. Their CEO is probably the most understated CEO in the FTSE – the one with the highest humility. He works full time at ARM and keeps a low profile outside.
More generally ARM seek to grow leadership internally – ensuring cultural fit, and fit into the team based environment. Their feedback and development system also focuses on the company’s values, providing 180 degree insight about what employees think of their bosses.
Social media does have a role in all of this of course, in fact they’ve been using social media for at least ten years. This includes Skype, Linkedin and Facebook for external use, and blogs and forums internally. In addition, it uses:
They also run a Exec Q&A once a year in which their exec answer any question on anything from anyone. And it’s videod and podcasted so that everyone can see it.
Interestingly a lot of this, eg Yammer and their wikis, were started unofficially and took off from there, rather than being introduced by IT.
However, in Bill’s view, social media can become antisocial media – a barrier to effective communication. So you need to do face-to-face meetings to help people get to know each other. Arguably in advance of social media.
So in ARM, traditional communications plays a part as well eg ARM run twice the number of events (with a corresponding impact on travel budgets) than they need to – these are overtly opportunities to create social networks. Eg they have a 80 person forum in which they invite people who don’t know each other well to get together (some of which is done unconference style) to work on a range of OD topics eg on the organisation of the future. This ensures the organisation is constantly questioning its culture. To get round the biggest organisational barrier of any organisation which is not having the best ideas, they often invite internal customers along, and sometimes external customers too.
It all starts with dinner and drinks in the bar, and then the next morning a discussion on the topics – but what matters is the relationships and new networks that are formed. The same in their engineering conferences, code tests, transistor tests etc etc.
ARM have tried to measure their social capital through approaches like social network analysis, and they also measure engagement, though what they’re really concerned about is organisational citizenship behaviours – do staff understand that networking is part of their day job, and that they need to help the organisation rather than just doing their own thing.
It’s an impressive case study and it’s paid off too. ARM’s market value is £4m per employee which Bill argues is down largely to the company’s social capital and use of social media.
I’ve been a long supporter of Globoforce’s work on recognition, eg this webinar we did together, and also my support for their book – see this endorsement (which I still support) printed at the start of this:
“Recognition is a hugely underused and badly misused HR and management tools. It’s effective use isn’t helped by various myths and misunderstandings about the value of transactional recognition schemes. Using executive and research insights, supported by a series of ‘myth busters’, Mosley and Irvine provide a clear and compelling case for a more strategic approach – the time for Strategic Recognition is here.” Jon Ingham.
It’s been a natural progression for Globoforce to move beyond strategic recognition into the growing social HR space with a focus on social recognition too - though in a sense, recognition has always been a social sort of thing. (We didn’t really talk about this, but my perception is that Globoforce has moved progressively from enabling people to exchange thanks, to sharing points, badges, kudos etc – ie slightly more tangible ‘social recognitions’.)
Some of the most interesting points included in the presentation were:
Despite my concerns, it’s great to see the development of social recognition. I recollect Euan Semple’s remark at HR Technology Europe that all this is doing is formalising something that has (or should have been) always been happening informally. I think that’s right, and I do think the formalisation of the informal is a good thing. It’s just too important to be left to chance.
My only remaining worry about a system like Globoforce (and therefore also with Achievers / I Like Rewards, Rypple, Sonar 6, Small Improvements etc) is whether one of more of these areas is important enough for your company that this is where you want your social interaction to be?
Or do you want this interaction in your knowledge management, collaboration, innovation or CRM system instead? Because if so, you’re potentially going to be reducing the impact of both systems if you split the interaction in two.
So think about which you need to prioritise. Eg if your whole organisation is built around personal and organisational appreciation (eg using AI, strengths etc) then social recognition might fit well. If it’s based on more balanced performance management (failures as well as successes), you may need to use one of the social performance management systems. And if it’s about innovation, then I’d go for a social system that is built around this.
Of course, over time, all these systems will become increasingly integrated (through organic development or acquisition) in exactly the same way that best of breed HCM systems have all been joined together into a small number of integrated talent management platforms over the last five years. But until then, my advice would be to focus clearly on what it is you want.
Addendum: I thought that was a good last line with which to finish off the post. However, thinking it through, I’ve got one more: if more social appreciation isn’t what you want, then think about whether it should be (what you should want)!
Eg if you’re going to prioritise innovation, you need to be clear about which you think comes first – ie does appreciation follow innovation (you need to encourage appreciation to stimulate more innovation) or is it the other way around (that stimulating appreciation will most likely lead to more innovation taking pace)?
I think that increasingly organisations are going to have develop their people and build their cultures first (what I refer to as creating value). If you agree with this, then recognition is a pretty good place to start.
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There are a couple of different reasons why I think the event has proved so popular but one is the tour round CERN that we’ll be going on shortly (looking for higgs bosons), and the introductory keynote from Dr Robert Cailliau (in the picture, standing), who together with Tim Berners Lee developed the world wide web (the set of conventions and standards for delivering over the internet). This was a great session, particularly for someone who used to be an engineer, but it’s not the focus of this blog, so I’m not going to go into here. However, I did want to comment on Robert Cailliau’s closing statement:
“Let’s share what we know, not hide it away – that’s how we’ll save the planet.”
I really like this. Robert Cailliau and CERN both deserve huge amounts of kudos for giving the www away free, but both realised that it would have no value if kept as a proprietary tool.
And I especially like the fact that this has become a key principle of social media and social recruiting – that organisations are increasingly realising that they need to invest time in relationships, with an understanding that this may (but may not) result in returns later on.
In fact this applies more broadly to recruitment in general of course. I had a very small role in helping get one of James’ team a job here (not that this was particularly altruistic – I was simply trying to get a Geneva tweet-up group established – a need that Etienne Besson has now filled). And this was done over social media (Twitter) – but – the intervention had the outcome it had because it was social, not just because it used social media. I was talking to both people and thought that they should be talking between themselves (I shared what I knew, not hid it away).
I was tweeting about the same thing with Gary Franklin this morning. Yes, of course, if you’re job hunting, you’ve got to go to job interviews (though using Sonru night help?). But if I was job hunting head of recruiting, I’d want to be right here – putting myself in an environment where I could be socially recruited….
Anyway, what I really liked about today was that this wasn’t just a demonstration of social media, or even social recruiting, but that it was, in itself, a demonstration of being social.
Yes, Robert Cailliau and the higgs bosson were both a big draw. But actually, I think most people came here because of James Purvis being so social – being prepared to ask people to come along and find out what CERN have been doing and exchange some experiences and views. It may not be quite as big an output as the world wide web, but I still think it’s a great credit to James, and CERN, that they’ve been so happy to share what they know.
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This competition is HR’s (or at least emerging recruiting technology’s) version of the X Factor. Basically, the format of this was that six shortlisted technology start-ups each had five minutes to present their technologies. We, the judges then voted on these, and the conference participants added their voice, and level of applause, quite literally through a noise meter on Jerome’s phone.
You can watch the process here.
The winner of the competition was MIIAtech with their natural language CV search technology, Goldfish, which closes the gap between structured and unstructured data. This is something to do with the system’s semantic layer, but I got a bit lost by this (why is why I only gave MIIAtech a 7 out of 10 for my vote). So here’s the official spiel:
“With MIIAtech’s GoldFish technology, users can phrase their search questions in natural language. Both the CVs and the job profiles within the database will be analysed and matched. The result is that the user receives only the best and most relevant matches between candidates and job profiles. No more mismatches like ‘speaks French’ with ‘worked in France’ and similar classic errors. With GoldFish, you’re able the find the ideal candidate, much faster and significantly more accurately that with any traditional keyword search.”
Well done, Stephane Lernout.
And well done Jerome – it was a great, fun session with an amazing line-up of judges, which I was honoured to be part of alongside Craig Fisher, William Tincup, Geoff Web, Thomas Otter, Gordon Lokenberg (‘the new Bill Boorman’), Peter Gold, Katherine Jones and Jonathan Campbell:
I voted largely (though not totally) along social lines – though not so much who I know best, but how much effort the founder and their company has been putting into getting to know me. You’ll probably think that’s a a poor basis for judging, but you’re not going to get me apologising for it. I think increasingly technology companies are going to succeed or fail based upon their social klout (small k), not just by the ‘quality’ of the functionality itself (eg BeKnown vs BranchOut).
(I also think it’s the way that most people vote – at least I know it!)
These were my top three pitches – with social justifications:
#3. Stephane Le Viet, Work4Labs: 8
This one is a bit of a cheat as I don’t think Work4Labs have made any efforts to get to know me or win me over, though I did see Stephane present a rather longer overview at Onrec recently, and was suitably impressed. What I do see though, is a number of Work4Us customers singing the product’s praises, which of course works even better than doing it themselves (which is why customer case studies work better than product demos at conferences!).
#2. Lisa Scales, Tribepad: 8
I see Lisa around a fair bit (at conferences, and on the twitter stream etc), and like the way she supports their product in the background, eg when Colin Minto presents what G4S have been doing with Tribepad, she’s there, but in the background, looking proud, and maybe doing a bit of tweeting, but that’s about it.
#1.
Hey I said this was HR’s version of the X Factor. You surely don’t think you’re going to find out about (x the x) my winner without a big dramatic pause do you? Try coming back tomorrow!
Yes, #1 has to be BraveNewTalent (with a vote of 9). I think the technology is potentially quite neat, though with a couple of 3’s, not all of the judges were convinced. But from a social influencing perspective, they’re clear winners. I’d back any team that includes Lucian Tarnowski, Maren Hogan, James Mayes, Jimmy Kyriacou, Charlie Duff and Gautam Ghosh (who am missing?).
Well done guys (even if you didn’t win – it’s the opportunity to contribute to gen y-ers, right?).
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If you’re in South Africa, I hope you may be able to come along to the session (or if you’ve got colleagues there, you can prod them!). You can get booking details from vitaltraining.co.za. I’ll also probably fly down a couple of days early, so if you want to meet up and talk about something else, we should be able to do that too.
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Sorry I ran out of time to take you through all the case studies I wanted to – I must admit I hadn’t anticipated taking my introductory inputs to take as long as they did. However, I do believe that focusing on these was important so that you all understand what all the case studies are about, ie what’s the similarity between them, and also why they are all so different (ie that the choice of social technology and social approaches is so dependent upon the social outcomes you want to create, plus the content you’re working in, and so on).
You’ll also find some of these case studies discussed on this blog (my HR one), and on my other one (my social capital one). And they’ll all be covered in my book – whenever I manage to complete it!
Sorry also that I ran out of time to have much conversation with you - I even forgot to ask what was going on in Twitter!:
Anyway, thanks for the questions you did ask. If you’ve got more questions that I didn’t manage to answer after the end of the session, please jot them down on the comments below, and I’ll do my best to answer with a comment on my own – and / or we can follow-up off-line).
And if you’re doing much of this yourselves, I’d love to hear from you – I am still after more case studies for my book. I’ve got quite a few for the different areas I discuss (ie the various technological, human, organisational and social actions) but only a few of organisations that are putting some of these different activities together.
And stay in touch - @joningham on Twitter, on my different blogs, and maybe even in real-life too, especially if you want any help on implementing HR 2.0 yourselves...
Cross posted on Social Advantage
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