Monday, 7 November 2011

#CIPD11 / #CIPD11Tw Twitterversity

 

   I’m up at the CIPD conference for the next three days and will be blogging from a few of the conference sessions.  But I’ll also be delivering a Twitterversity session together with Gareth Jones, my co-founder at ConnectingHR.

The Twitterversity sessions are really for HR practitioners who are not yet using Twitter, but we’re also hoping that we’ll be joined by a few Twitter pros – maybe even Laurie Ruettimann who’ll be over from the States, and of course has delivered her own twitterversity sessions in the past (and the slide above is one of hers).  Our twitterversity will be rather different, for example, we won’t be using any slides (it’ll all be on Twitter instead).

So if you’re at the conference, please do pop down to join us at one of these sessions in the Interactive Zone, and help us provide some smaller group coaching to Twitterversity attendees.  Or at least drop into our stream - #CIPD11Tw (we’ll be dropping into yours, ie #CIPD11).

And if you’re not at the conference at all, please try to join us on the #CIPD11Tw stream at one of the following times:

  • 1.00pm Tuesday 8th November
  • 1.00pm Wednesday 9th
  • 10.15 Thursday 10th

(all times GMT)

 

 

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Julian Birkinshaw on Human Centric Management

 

   And while I’m on the subject of human centricity, let me point out that I, and ConnectingHR, are not alone in prioritising this.  For example, it’s interesting to see that Julian Birkinshaw’s latest research is on “Employee Centred Management”.  And in a session at MLab recently, Birkinshaw encouraged everyone to see management through the eyes of their employees.

Basically there are two ways of managing people – as a resource to support the business (HR), or as the driver for business success.  This is what I’ve been calling strategic HCM (human capital being based on employees’ latent skills and enthusiasm):

 

Birkinshaw concludes that to become a better human manager by seeing the world through your employees’ eyes you should

  • Spend time in their shoes, in their space
  • Package work - even routine work - into projects
  • Work yourself out of a job.

 

You can find further advice on this blog, or my book.

 

 

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Sunday, 6 November 2011

#HRTechEurope Human-Centric HR Technology

 

   My other current interest, other than integrated talent management, is human centricity (see this post on the recent ConnectingHR unconference).

So I had this article published in the HR Technology Europe conference guide:

 

“One hypothesis that I will be testing out is whether Europe’s generally more progressive approaches to HR (versus the hire and fire culture in the US) results in a different focus for HR technology use.

I believe there are three different ways that organisations can gain value from HR technology. The first, and I think least significant, of these is through the provision of a single (or at least a clearly defined) system of record. This type of technology gives HR robust and accurate data about the people the organisation employees and means that HR can start to take more sensible decisions about the workforce.

The second way that HR technology provides value is by informing the decisions of line managers and business leaders. This value is provided by talent or human capital systems, particularly the new integrated platforms, that allow managers to interrogate data for themselves, to gain better understanding, and as a result of this, better leverage, of the people they employ. I think this is where most HR technology professionals, at least in the US, have been most focused over the last five years.

But the third way that HR technology provides value, which I think often provides the greatest benefit, is by enhancing the productivity and performance of individual employees. This is where office systems have long been focused but it is where some HR systems have acted too. For example, well over a decade ago I was involved in setting up a self-scheduling system for a train operating company. Because this allowed individual employees to enhance their own productivity, it had a much more significant impact on the performance of this business than anything we could have done to give managers more oversight of the way that shifts were being set.

The opportunity to provide HR technology for the workforce is currently being enhanced in two main ways:

  1. Firstly, there is the very rapidly increasing ubiquitousness of mobile devices which are starting to be used by HR system vendors for their applications, and provide a very real opportunity to give employees much more input and control over the way that they work.
  2. Then there is the similarly exponential increase in the use of social media tools, often used by people on their mobile devices, to connect people together and offering a new opportunity to significantly impact the performance of organisational networks, communities and teams.

 

Why I think this is interesting is that the key to these latter opportunities is an understanding of the people in a particular organisation, and the way they work. This is about HR technology becoming more people-centric in order to find those key needs that technology can support. It is also an almost direct contradiction to much of what is said about HR technology and the need for this to be more business-centric (see for example, this recent article at TLNT, ‘Why HR Technology needs to focus on being more business-centric’).

It will be interesting to see whether this different, people-centric technology approach comes out through the HR Tech Europe conference at all.”

 

Well, I can’t say it was a huge theme, but again, maybe that’s due to the general lower stage of maturity.  My hope is that the new HR technology conference will help Europe catch up a bit more quickly, and maybe evolve to a different, more human-centric, approach as well.

 

Also see:

 

 

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Saturday, 5 November 2011

#HRTechEurope Integrated Talent Management Technology

 

   There were a couple of differences between HR Technology Europe and an unconnected US based conference of the same name that I attended recently.  One of these differences was that there was more focus on core HR management systems and less on talent / human capital management and particularly integration between these systems.

I suspect that this was simply due to the lower state of maturity in Europe, shown in the CedarCornerstone research, and not much of a surprise to anyone (I will admit through that one surprise for me was the number of HR technology people who attended this conference – HR Tech is clearly a much more advanced profession in Europe than I had thought).  Eg there was some suggestion that the key need is data integration, not technology integration, which I think reflects this more transactional focus.

I did however want to address integration in talent management technology, simply because I’ve been looking at integration in talent management recently, and technology is obviously yet another aspect within this.

And it was addressed at the conference, eg Katherine Jones from Bersin noted their research which found that 33% of organisations would trade functionality for higher integration (but this was 2009, and US data, and will have changed a lot since then, and in Europe).  Katherine also noted the importance of an integrated employee profile as the new employee system of record (ESR) – something that had also come out at the Social Workplace conference – the other conference that I was chairing this week.

Lexy Martin wasn’t able to attend the conference but the CedarCrestone provides good up-to-date and localised findings with sound recommendations:

  • ”In order to use technology to truly optimse  the workforce contribution to the organisation, it is imperative that all functionality needs to be unified end-to-end and integrated within an ecosytem.
  • For the integrated talent management arena, we see two predominant approaches:
    1. European organisataions are utilising the talent management capability provided by their core syste, of record vendor, with PeopleSoft the dominant choice.
    2. The other approach is the use of a best-of-breed integrated talent management solution of multiple talent management components provided by vendors such as Cornerstone On-Demand, Lumesse, and SuccessFactors.

 

CedarCrestone’s main conclusions are drawn from their worldwide survey report.  These include:

  • Standardise processes where it makes sense
  • Standardise data handling (minimise number of HRMS instances)
  • Adopt an integrated talent management approach
    • In 2011, that need not be an integrated talent management solution built on the same platform as your underlying ERP-based HRMS.  It can be an integrated talent management suite.  But one hallmark of the most successful organisations continues to be pervasive integration among processes, solutions and systems.  So if you choose an integrated talent management suite that is from a vendor other than your HRMS vendor, be prepared for integration activities.

 

Also see:

 

And

 

 

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Friday, 4 November 2011

#HRTechEurope – iTalent competition (and congratulations to MIIAtech)

 

   I think most peoples’ favourite session on the first day of HR Technology Europe, perhaps tied with Thomas Otter’s opening keynote, was the first ever European italent competition run by Jerome Ternynck, CEO or SmartRecruiters (who won the US italent competition at the HRDemo show in the US last year).

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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#HRTechEurope – emcee summary

 

   I’ve just got back from a great two days at HR Technology Europe in Amsterdam this week.  But since I was busy working as Master of Ceremonies, I’m going to struggle for time to get much out on my blog.

Anyway here’s my summary of the key themes for me:

  • HR technology is really important, it’s taking an increasingly central role in HR strategy, and in business strategy too.  So it is a really exciting time to be in HR tech (though I don’t quite agree with Richard Mutter from HSBC that employee and manager self service is the reason why it so exciting!)
  • It’s increasingly complex too – with social, mobile, cloud, SAAS, analytics and big data, contingent workers and changing business requirements, all within an increasingly challenging economy (once again)
  • It’s still the social aspects of this that I think are the biggest changes, which I think came out strongly during the stream on day 2:
    • Brian Jones from Smiths Group referred to the combustible mixture formed from the mix of anarchic gen y and formal gen x - which we also saw in Mark Turrell’s keynote on toppling dictators – and I thought this was a good metaphor for the use of social technology and more traditional HR systems too
    • Eg we saw the potential disconnect between the sessions on recruitment taking place in the two streams when I received a tweet about Jerome Ternyck from SmartRecruiters’ suggestion that recruitment is a social conversation, not a process which can be automated at exactly the point at which Brian Dean from HSBC showed a slide of their automated process supported by Taleo and SHL.
    • But these things can be complementary – there doesn’t need to be a clash.

 

  • So HR technology strategy is difficult to get it right – but it can be done!  And I thought Andy’s presentation of the Aviva / Workday case study was a wonderful example of a company which has achieved this.

 

Picture credit: Recruiting Essentials

 

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Wednesday, 2 November 2011

#HRTechEurope – CedarCrestone survey

 

   It’s the HR Technology Europe conference in Amsterdam today where I’ll be acting as emcee.

Just in time, Lexy Martin at CedarCrestone have provided a summary of the European data for their global HR Systems Survey I encouraged you to enter earlier this year.

This is the 14th time the company has run this survey which in the past has been mainly focused on North America.  However nine percent of the 727 respondents are now from Europe which provides sound insights for this side of the pond as well.

Key conclusions include:

  • European organisations have lower adoption of almost HR technologies
  • Main areas of focus are HR systems strategy (good news, especially if this is supported by talent management strategy too) and talent management processes and automation
  • European organisations are more focused than their US counterparts on using competency frameworks (supporting Ahmed Limam’s conclusions)
  • There is less focus on the adoption of social media which has yet to enter the CedarCrestone’s list of the top ten activities for Europe (a shame as the company concludes that the outlook for growth of socially enabled HCM processes is ‘stupendous’)
  • European companies aren’t seeing the reduction in HR administrative staff which accompanies the use of HR service delivery applications in the US (because of the additional complexity here?).

 

There’s a lot of opportunity here, particularly as CedarCrestone find that higher adoption of HR technology leads to (or supports) HR being seen as strategic and improvements in business performance eg in sales per employee, profit per employee and operating income growth – see picture.  So I’m sure those organisations attending today’s conference will gain a lot of benefit from this.

 

There are some more interesting conclusions in the survey, which I may come back and report on again when I have more time.  But do check out the report yourself at www.cedarcrestone.com/research.

 

 

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Friday, 28 October 2011

The role of Recruitment in Integrated Talent Management

 

   I’ve posted recently on ‘The Executive Guide to Integrated Talent Management’ which I’ve contributed a chapter to, and also more specifically on the contribution of learning & development within this integration.

This post moves onto the chapters focusing on the integration of hiring / recruitment talent acquisition.  First up is a typically insightful chapter from John Sullivan who lists the main consequences of poor integration to include:

  • Delay in process cycle time
  • Increase in error rates
  • Mass duplication of effort
  • Limited process improvement or innovation
  • Lack of accountability.

 

He suggests that the five main direct relationships needed for recruitment are compensation (my chapter, which I’ll review next), onboarding, relocation, new hire training and global recruiting.  There are then eight indirect relationships: leadership development and succession, workforce planning, performance management, offboarding, retention, the innovation function, merger and acquisition teams and shared skills functions (temporary reassignments during slack periods).  I’d argue with the placement of these (leadership development, workforce planning and performance management seem like quite direct relationships to me) but it’s still a good list.

I also don’t like the piece on ‘anticipate resistance’ as I think we need to do more than this.  But it’s a good, informative chapter that sets things up nicely for the practitioner piece.  This is by Leslie Joyce at Novelis.

Most of the chapter is actually about recruitment, rather than integration, but that’s a small point, and the stuff about recruiting is very good.

I particularly like Leslie’s ‘brilliant exercise (her opinion, but I’d agree) comparing the decision making involved in buying a new car to that in taking on a new hire.  And this is supported by a six step process for effective recruitment:

  • Identify the talent acquisition strategy that best supports your business strategy
  • Create a compelling employment value proposition that clearly states what is different about your organisation versus others than top talent might consider
  • Capture the employment value proposition in a memorable employment brand that simply states what makes your organisation a great choice
  • Translate the employment brand into a talent brand that clearly articulates the calibre of talent working for your organisation
  • Determine the most productive channels to the talent you want
  • Measure your success.

 

It’s a sound process though I don’t agree that an employment brand is a tagline and don’t like the distinction between talent and employer brands – to me, the whole employer band should be based on talent anyway.  I also wouldn’t label job boards as innovative web-based processes.  And the difference between tactical measures and strategic measures isn’t one of time perspective – this is just about lead and lag.  The real difference is about contribution to competitive advantage, but lots of people get confused about this – eg this post on John Boudreau’s measures of efficiency and effectiveness.

Joyce does finally move onto the secret sauce of total integration and alignment of all the talent management efforts within the organisation and suggests there are two critical areas to this:

  • Alignment between the organisation brand and talent brand (in my terms, there’s an alignment around the organisation’s mojo)
  • Alignment between the talent brand and the organisation’s search and development processes.

 

 

This then takes us back to the same sort of partnering requirements discussed by Sullivan before, which in Joyce’s view are that:

  • Job descriptions and position postings reflect the characteristics of the talent brand
  • The ATS is optimally configured and functional to ensure that candidate management is proactive and comprehensive
  • Website information reinforces both the organisation and talent brand
  • Onboarding and assimilation processes reflect and make real the promises of opportunity made by the value proposition and the brand
  • Training and development tools and programmes are clear and support career development and growth.

 

So there you go – now you know.  But if you want to know more, do buy the book as well!

 

 

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Monday, 24 October 2011

Best global HR conferences

 

   I may not often comment on other peoples’ blogs, but I do read a lot of them.  My favourite post last week was Informa Group HR Director Alison Chisnell’s report on the HR Forum in Lisbon which made me think this was one event I should try to get to  (ie present at) one year.

As it so happens, I have recently provided one of my contacts with a list of what I consider to be the best HR conferences (core HR vs recruitment, L&D etc) around the world, and should probably add the HR Forum to that.

Anyway, I thought I would share the list with you as well, and would be really interested in your other recommendations too:

 

CIPD Annual Conference
Still the main event in the UK, with increasing focus on social media, if not yet the social business.  Don’t miss the tweet-up!
HR Director Business Summit (also the Pan European HR Forum)

 
A fair bit smaller than the CIPD conference, but definitely punching well above its weight and introducing new innovations year after year (eg, next year - the integrated unconference sessions that I’ll be chairing).
The unconferences (ConnectingHR, HRevolution)
Then there’s the real unconferences.  My contact wanted plenty of insight, but also good conversation – and if that’s what you want, then these are the places to go!
SHRM Annual Conference OK, I’m only guessing here as I’ve never been to this as it’s too big a trip without being asked to speak, or sponsored to blog etc.  Shame because SHRM merged its international conference into the annual conference some years back, but it’s still a highly US-centric event.
HCI Annual Summit
I’ve not been out to this conference for a few years though I have attended virtually.  It’s a good event, and HCI’s tie up with the MIX should ensure ongoing good content.
HR Technology Wow, I had a good time at this.  Whether I enjoy Chicago just as much as I did Vegas (and whether I go to Chicago next year) we’ll just have to see, but this regardless of your role in HR technology, this was a thumbs up event!
HR Technology Europe Nothing to do with the above show, but Europe’s first serious attempt to do something focusing on the strategic use of HR technology.  This year’s conference has a great line up if a rather suspect MC, and I predict great things both in this and in future years.

(It runs on 2nd and 3rd November)
Singapore Human Capital Summit (I also want to try the Hong Kong Institute event) Breaking out of Europe and jumping over the Middle East (though Fleming Gulf’s events are pretty good), we arrive at Singapore for this premier event.  Not to be missed if you’re in Asia (or even like me, if you’re not).
Australia National Convention I’ve not been to this event, but how could I say no if I ever got the offer?
Linkage OD I missed this one out but my client mentioned it, and although I’ve not attended it, I know a few people who have, and they’ve all raved about it too – so Linkage must be doing something right.
Bersin Impact conference And a heads up to China Gorman for reminding me that I missed this one too, which I shouldn’t have done – particularly as I attended virtually last year, and was pretty much bowled over by the quantity and quality of insight.
? So, what else?

Eg I obviously don’t get to South America or Africa as much as I would like, so what are the main programmes here?

 

Interestingly, I’ve now spoken at a good proportion of, though by know means all these events - even of those I’ve attended fairly regularly – eg the CIPD are stlll keeping me me off the platform at their annual conference for some reason, though they are letting me get involved in delivering a twitterversity session as one of the interactive gatherings in the exhibition this year.

It’s not going to help me share many insights with people, but it’ll be good fun, and I’ll get to meet lots of people – over a few feet of interweb, if not in real life!

Including you maybe?

 

 

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Friday, 21 October 2011

#CHRU3 #ConnectingHR Unconference: Human-Centric Recruiting

 

    I skipped most of our unconference yesterday – partly because I had a couple of meetings and really wanted to attend the Workplace Trends conference too.  And partly because ConnectingHR is a community, and the community is now running the unconferences, which is the way it should be.  This is still one of my favourite events, but I don’t have to be there now.

But I do still feel a strong attachment to the event (and even more so the community) so I wanted to blog something about it, even though I wasn’t there.  I asked a few people about what the main themes, issues, conclusions, agreements had been, and got a few snippets about different things, but nothing that bloggable.  Martin Couzins summed it up well – blogging from unconferences is really difficult because the whole day is so random and varied (that’s why I did a storify from HREvolution a few weeks back).

But the session that got people’s greatest engagement was clearly the one where the Spring brought in graduates who’d be unemployed for the last year to talk about their experience at the sharp end of the HR / Recruiting stick.  You can see Martin’s interview with one of them here.  The issue was clearly that recruiting is a bit of a one-way deal.  HR gets to sit back, choose who it wants, treat candidates as it wants to, and unless the get a job, the grads don’t get much back in return – certainly very little feedback which might actually help them get a job elsewhere.

Then there was a group session later on suggesting that we need for H for Human in the term HR (also see the picture from the tablecloth used during the world cafe session).  Michael Carty has blogged on this here.  That’s the key for me – it’s about respect and mutuality, and it applies across the whole area of HR, not just recruitment.

 

Human-Centric Workplace Design

It’s even largely what we were talking about at Workforce Trends, though I prefer human-centric to user-centric design.

It was obviously another good day, and in a way I regret attending Workplace Trends – don’t get me wrong: there was lots of great insight there, but there’s only so much a traditional conference format can achieve.

The good news is that we’re looking at getting Workplace, HR plus IT, OD, Communication and all the other professional functions together for an unconference next year – what this – and that – space.

 

Human-Centric HR Technology

Also look at for a post on human-centric use of HR technology, supporting the HR Technology Europe conference on 2nd and 3rd November.

 

 

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