With Globoforce on Social Recognition

 

   I’ve just been attending an event with Globoforce and the Conference Board on social recognition.

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:

• Recognition is key to engagement.  Globoforce’s Mood Tracker suggests that ‘only’ 38% of (N American?) employees are searching for a new job, but that 49% would move to a company offering better recognition.  (I’m still not sure about this.  I think employees like recognition because of what this is likely to lead to, rather than because it’s an engagement driver itself – see this post on this Globoforce webinar.)
• Social recognition differs from more traditional approaches by being frequent and widespread.  (Yes, although I think it’s deeper than that – it’s about meaningful recognition, and it’s meaningful because it’s from people you know, and work with, rather than just people more senior than you).
• Social recognition allows organisations to overlay their structures with employee recognition moments, creating a representation of the power players in the organisation.  You can see who is participating in the corporate values and how deep these go across the organisation.  (Yes, though this is just one representation, and other tools will enable you to draw different types of social network too.)
• Organisations are increasingly interrogating social recognition data, overlaying this on performance and compensation systems and identifying the correlations, providing a sort of multi-person review.  (I worry about this – firstly because of the point that was made that there is a spectrum of people who won’t give feedback, and secondly because once recognition is any way linked to formal performance management and particularly reward, the potential for dysfunctional outcomes is dramatically increased.  I’d just keep it for engagement, and individual and organisational development.)
• Social recognition is a powerful lever for culture (deepening or) change.  Stanford research suggests that just 5-8% of the workforce providing weekly nominations is enough to develop a self-sustaining culture and significantly increase employee engagement scores.  (Yes, but 5-8% of the workforce doing anything involving discretionary behaviour is a powerful boost for change.)
• The need for social recognition applies everywhere although the way you might encourage it varies by geography.  (Yes, although I do think some cultures would take to it much more easily than others eg African vs Asia again.  Globoforce mentioned Celestica as an organisation that had cracked social recognition in Asia Pac, but then suggested that India was particularly active – well yes, they would be.  India is a very different place to the rest of Asia – at least as far as social media is concerned eg there are probably more bloggers in India than the rest of the world combined, at least excepting the US, but there are still very few people involved in social media travelling further East.)
• Social is broader than just social media (a suggestion you might have picked up previously in my blogs).  Eg GE managers in Asia go out to dinner with their employees’ families to support retention by applying a bit of ‘social pressure’ on the parents – a very nice idea.  (But shouldn’t you do that anyway – though perhaps with older employees with partners and kids instead?  It’s a great way to ensure you see your employees as whole people rather than just as interchangeable resources.)

 

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.

 

Technorati Tags: Globoforce,social,media,recognition,engagement

 

• 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

.

Social media in the hopeful continent

 

   I was in South Africa for a few meetings and a workshop on HR and social media last week.  It’s been a while since I’ve been to southern Africa but it was good to be back – particularly as this meant missing the news that the UK is possibly already back in recession and the announcement that austerity cuts are going to be deepened and lengthened, as well as the public sector strikes during the week (Jeremy Clarkson’s comments on the strikers were still well reported however).

In comparison, South Africa’s economy is getting along quite nicely thank you.  An article in the Economist this week suggests that Africa will grow by 6% this year and nearly 6% in 2012, about the same as Asia.  Although this relates to the continent as a whole, the article touches on a lot of the key themes from my week there too.

For example:

“Africa now has a fast-growing middle class: according to the World Bank, around 60m Africans have an income of $3,000 a year, and 100m will in 2015…

Population trends could enhance these promising developments. A bulge of better-educated young people of working age is entering the job market and birth rates are beginning to decline. As the proportion of working-age people to dependents rises, growth should get a boost. Asia enjoyed such a “demographic dividend”, which began three decades ago and is now tailing off. In Africa it is just starting…

Having a lot of young adults is good for any country if its economy is thriving, but if jobs are in short supply it can lead to frustration and violence. Whether Africa’s demography brings a dividend or disaster is largely up to its governments.”

 

This mixed opportunity and challenge was something that came up in several of my meetings.  Elijah Litheko from South Africa’s IPM suggested that the country’s dual economies is one of the major issues that HR practitioners there need to deal with, ie that they have a key role in nationalisation and economic development.

One of other things Elijah believes is different is that South Africans are more diverse and that therefore organisations have to deal with, and benefit from, more different perspectives (“everyone in Europe thinks the same way”).  I wasn’t there long enough to test this out thoroughly, but am prepared to accept the suggestion.

I think a result of this diversity, which I also discussed with people, and was demonstrated in my meetings, was that South African culture prioritises conversation, and that people are prepared to really listen to each other until they arrive at a consensus.  This willingness to participate also came through in my workshop (and our use of social media within the workshop, which, whilst not quite as much as I would have ideally liked, was more than I’ve been able to encourage in any other social media workshops I’ve run in Europe or Asia).  And I actually think this is a very positive indication of Africa’s future success as well.  (In the new world of work, organisations need their people to come forward with suggestions and contributions – I think the fact that some cultures don’t support this will limit their future development.)

 

And:

“Africa’s enthusiasm for technology is boosting growth. It has more than 600m mobile-phone users—more than America or Europe. Since roads are generally dreadful, advances in communications, with mobile banking and telephonic agro-info, have been a huge boon. Around a tenth of Africa’s land mass is covered by mobile-internet services—a higher proportion than in India.”

 

We discussed this development too, building on the statistics and presentation Bill Boorman had produced for Tru South Africa a few weeks previously.  We didn’t find any HR applications for the local tween focused networking system, MixIt, but did agree that mobile was going to be key for participant’s future social media activities (eg they liked LV’s mobile focused approach to social recruiting here).

We also hypothesised about the deep take-up of social media (especially Facebook) on a personal basis, but the still limited take-up within corporates.  We thought maybe that whereas Europeans in particular tend to do a lot of their mobile social networking on, or waiting for, public transport, given that people tend to drive rather than take public transport in South Africa, and given intermittent mobile coverage and security concerns that they wouldn’t want to try using an ipad in a car, there’s less time for people to go online for company purposes.  I’m not totally convinced by this, but again, am prepared to take it forward as a working hypothesis.

 

I’ll be back in South Africa again during February…

 

Picture from The Economist article

Technorati Tags: South Africa,HR,Elijah Litheko,IPM,social media,statistics,economy

 

• 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

.

Reviewing 70-20-10 at HCI Learning and Leadership Development conference

 

   One of the things I’ve suggested adding to my client’s learning strategy is the 70-20-10 approach. I use the form of this developed by Morgan McCall, Robert Eichinger and Michael Lombardo at CLC and popularised by Jay Cross, Charles Jennings and others in which 70% of development is provided through on-the-job experience, 20% through others including informal mentoring and coaching, and just 10% through traditional, formal training.

  

 

This version of the model was included in a slide presented by Robert Vulpis from Morgan Stanley at the HCI Learning and Leadership Development conference - the other recent partly virtual conference I’ve been reviewing:

 

There are also similar models which push the shift even further, for example at the HCI conference, Bob Cancalosi from GE Healthcare suggested these three amendments to the model:

 

 

 

There’s also this one shown by Carie Blum at the CLO Symposium:

 

Here social takes the top 70% (rather than the middle 20%) of learning.

Which ever model is used, I think it’s important that it is only ever seen as an indication or provocation of what a company should do  - and not as a rule! (or as an objective to be achieved).

(Slide presented by Joe Garcia from Home Depot at the HCI conference)

 

I guess David Forman from the HCI was making a similar point in emphasising the need to think about 70-20-10 as a portfolio rather than percentages:

 

Well, I did write that the model has been popularised – and I’m sure that after all of this repetition that attendees at the HCI conference (and now you, I guess) must surely be able to remember it!

 

By the way, if you’re not sure what types of learning go in each separate category, I recommend Dan Pontefract’s schematic:

 

 

 

More tomorrow…

 

Technorati Tags: 70-20-10,Morgan McCall,Robert Eichinger,Michael Lombardo,CLC,Jay Cross,Charles Jennings,Bob Cancalosi,CLO,GE Healthcare,Carie Blum,Xerox

 

• 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

.

Measurement by Belief (Liberty Mutual at CLO Symposium)

 

   There’s so much going on in the UK at the moment, with tomorrow’s Spending Review and Wednesday’s public sector pensions strike.  And I still haven’t got around to posting on last week’s report from the High Pay Commission.  But I’m out in South Africa at the moment and feel a bit cut off from these issues.

But today, as well as a couple of meetings, and a bit of time by the pool, I’ve been finishing off on an input to a UK client’s learning strategy, and have been reading some research and watching a couple of webinars as input to this.

One of these has been the CLO’S Virtual Fall Symposium which took place live back in October.  (Quick reporting isn’t something I always do well eg I’ll probably only get round to posting on cuts, strikes and exec pay in 2012!).

There were a few interesting sessions at this, including:

• Another excellent session from Dan Pontefract
• What was probably a great if unrecorded conversation facilitated by Jay Cross and team (though I can’t say that playing hooky from the workshops sounds terribly conversational to me).

 

However, the one which most interested me was by Larry Israelite from Liberty Mutual.  This suggested that measurement can (I would say should) be based on an organisation’s beliefs, not just on data or current goals:

• The data based approach is based on a cycle of data – information – judgements – actions.  As well as being HR driven, focused on the current state and reactive, the main problem with this approach is that there’s a disconnect between actions and data – you can take actions but don’t know what led to the data in the first place.
• The goal based approach is based on a cycle of goals – measures – results – actions.  It’s still HR driven, but focuses on refining the current state, defining outcomes and being more proactive.  You’re looking for the impact of what people do but you still don’t know what these things are and they’re difficult to control so your ability to influence them is severely compromised.
• A cycle of beliefs informing behaviours followed by measures – results – actions addresses these issues because you can influence the behaviours, and if necessary revise the beliefs.  It’s also business driven, focused on achieving the desired state and much more proactive.

 

It’s about faith – a firm belief in something for which there is no proof, and something that is believed with especially strong conviction.  Eg Liberty Mutual’s beliefs include hiring the right people.  Their talent management measurement reports focus on 34 measures which reflect these beliefs.  Tracking against these strategic measures means they don’t have to prove how HR impacts the business: “We believe we’re effective and successful because the CEO believes we’re effective and successful.”

 

There were some good points in this – I agree that data without a strategic backdrop to underpin it is often valueless – which is why I am a firmer supporter of ‘big strategy’ than I am of the opportunities of big data.

And I also agree with the importance of beliefs, though I think we can push deeper and get to more unique needs than just something like recruiting the best people.   It’s why I like Gary Hamel’s focus on ideology (definition taken from Hamel’s forthcoming book, What Matters Now):

“Here's a word that probably doesn't get much airtime in your organization: ideology. Do a search of your company's internal website and I'm willing to bet you won't find a single reference. That's a problem. As managers, it's our creedal beliefs that prevent our institutions from being more adaptable, more innovative, more inspiring, and more noble-minded. We are limited by our management ideology.”

 

Also see my post on HR scorecarding – an approach which combines some of the aspects of Israelite’s goal and belief based approaches, without restricting focus to behaviours, and which also makes the data which is collected make more sense.

The separation between outcomes and business impacts in my model is why I also don’t support Israelite’s suggestion that a business has to be performing in order to be a good case study.  An organisation can have well developed behaviours and other human capital which, for a number of reasons, don’t result in the business benefits which are intended.

 

Technorati Tags: Larry Israelite,Liberty Mutual,CLO,Fall,Symposium,2011,learning,development,measurement,scorecard,belief,faith,ideology

 

• 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

.

Jack Dee on HR (or, “the comedian and the HR practitioner walked into a bar and…”)

 

    As a judge of the Personnel Today Awards, I get invited to their swanky black tie event on Park Lane.  Last night’s ceremony was another excellent event, unaffected by snow as was last year’s do, and only let down, from my perspective, by the failure of my iphone’s batteries meaning I couldn’t tweet.  Given this, I promised to blog on the event…

I suppose this was largely as I expected some deep insights (or at least sharp observations) on HR from MC Jack Dee.  And we started with something about the HR professional being 80% female and him and David Williams, and then the average age of the audience being 39 meaning that with him, it fell down to about 36.  You probably had to be there… although actually, I don’t think he lived up to Marcus Brigstocke last year.  And anyway, that was about it.

So, what else can I post on?

How about the social media crew at the event?  As well as me and Rob Jones (missing from the photo of our parties meeting outside the hotel) and (who else do I need to add?) there was Doug Shaw, Gareth Jones, Neil Morrison, David Heny, Mervyn Dinnen, Steve (Rick) Toft and Kevin Ball (so doing our best to equalise the gender ratio):

 

 

And the awards?  Well, you can see my pics of these here:

 

View Full Album

 

Special mention perhaps to Sue Ryder which won the Corporate Social Responsibility Award but needs an extra £50k GBP to continue their work over the next year and are looking for an individual or organisation to sponsor them.  I actually visited one of their homes when I was at school in Leeds (a long, long time ago) and have kept an eye on them since then, so I know this would be a great value investment – if not to your own bottom line.

 

 

But congratulations to all the winners.  And if you didn’t win (or even if you did), well perhaps you need to develop some even better HR practices next year!

(And if you need help to do this, well, give me a call - on +44 (0)7904 185134…)

 

Technorati Tags: Personnel Today,XpertHR,HR,Awards,Jack Dee,Rob Moss,David Cooper,Royal College Nursing,The Co-operative,IHG,Sue Ryder,CSR,social responsibility,appeal,#ptawards

 

• 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

.

#CRSS2011 CERN social recruiting: social not just social media

 

   I’m at CERN today for a session that their head of recruitment, James Purvis (in the picture, sitting in the middle) has put together.  The session is on recruitment and sourcing, not just on social recruiting, but that’s been the main focus this morning.  There’s over 50 people here (over 30 who didn’t get squeezed in) and more people (from over 40 countries) watching on live streaming.

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.

 

Technorati Tags: James Purvis,CERN,recruitment,social,media,Robert Cailliau,www,world wide web,higgs bosson

 

• 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

.

Youth Unemployment, #CIPD11 and #ConnectingHR

 

   My favourite post from CIPD11 was probably this one from Graham Salisbury: Executive Pay: The Subject Which Must Not Be Named in which Graham questions the absence of discussion on today’s absurd levels of executive reward and obscene differentials between the highest and lowest paid in UK society from the CIPD conference’s agenda (possibly due to the CIPD’s own differentials perhaps?).

But for me, the other even bigger issue that was missing from the conference, not unlinked to the above is the truly dreadful level of youth unemployment which reached 1 million yesterday.  And it doesn’t look like things are going to get any better – the CIPD’s labour market outlook suggests that employers are continuing to hedge their bets on all employment related decisions leading to a slow, painful contraction in the jobs market.  It’s even leading to concern about creating a permanent underclass excluded from the prospect of employment.

This also came up at a session organised by Demos (and supported by the CIPD) on youth mobility which I attended yesterday morning (you can see my write up of this at Social Advantage).

Well even if the CIPD aren’t going to do anything about (though they have published some useful insights youth employment here), ConnectingHR will!  Following the community’s focus on graduate unemployment at our last unconference, we’re now planning a more serious intervention to help a number of grads get jobs, or at least get more prepared to be part of the workforce,  My own hope for this is that these largely individual actions will lead to some great community-wide conclusions, and we can perhaps put together our first ‘research’ report half-way through next year – and therefore have an even bigger impact outside of the community as well.

If you want to know (or do) more, particularly if you’re in London / the UK, check out connectinghr.org over the next few days, and join us there as a member too.

 

Picture credit: The Telegraph

Technorati Tags: connectinghr,youth,graduate,unemployment,uk,labour,market,social,mobility,mentoring

 

• 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

.

Blogger blogging #CIPD11

 

     Just four years ago there was hardly any focus on social media on the CIPD conference’s agenda, and only a few of us blogging and tweeting from the conference.  This year, the CIPD invited a sizeable blogsquad (‘blogger-bloggers’) to attend, and there were a number of other people blogging and tweeting too – making quite a loud backchannel (on Twitter at least).

Here are all the blog posts I’ve been able to find.

On social media:

• http://stopdoingdumbthingstocustomers.com/engagement/social-workplace-nokia-style/
• http://stopdoingdumbthingstocustomers.com/inspiring/tools-trust-and-toilets/
• http://mastersorbust.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/label/
• http://mastersorbust.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/the-one-where-the-contrast-is-lost/
• http://change-effect.com/2011/11/09/the-speaker-experience-cipd11-day-two/
• http://rapidbi.com/management/social-media-talent-communications/
• http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/2011/11/cipd11-cipd11tw-twitterversity.html
• http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/2011/11/cipd11-cipd11tw-twitterversity-2.html
• http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/2011/11/cipd11-bloggerversity.html

 

Engagement:

• http://stopdoingdumbthingstocustomers.com/engagement/how-do-i-love-thee-let-me-count-the-ways/
• http://rapidbi.com/management/employee-engagement-talent-management-cipd11/
• http://hrcasestudies.blogspot.com/2011/11/theology-and-hr-converge-at-2011-cipd.html
• http://www.jobsite.co.uk/insider/trust-is-the-word-9359/
• http://hrcasestudies.blogspot.com/2011/11/executive-pay-subject-which-must-not-be.html
• http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/2011/11/human-and-machine.html

 

Innovation:

• http://stopdoingdumbthingstocustomers.com/engagement/innovation-incongruence/
• http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/2011/11/no-innovation-from-asking-customers.html

 

Business:

• http://rapidbi.com/management/hr-its-all-about-the-business-customers/
• http://stopdoingdumbthingstocustomers.com/leadership/tesco-terry/
• http://mastersorbust.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/the-one-where-the-elephant-stays-on-the-table/
• http://mastersorbust.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/the-one-with-a-few-pre-match-thoughts/

 

The conference:

• http://mastersorbust.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/the-one-where-it-must-evolve/
• http://hrcasestudies.blogspot.com/2011/11/hr-organisational-development-and-all.html
• http://hrcasestudies.blogspot.com/2011/11/how-to-experience-cipd-conference.html
• http://hrcasestudies.blogspot.com/2011/11/where-have-all-blonde-girls-gone.html
• http://change-effect.com/2011/11/07/confluence-time/
• http://change-effect.com/2011/11/08/is-there-anyone-out-there-cipd11-day-one/

 

The CIPD also has some blog posts here.

Plus there’s also the blog we set up in the ‘how to blog’ session (pictured).  Perhaps next year some of these attendees will be blogger bloggers too?

 

If you want more traditional reporting, check out People Management (including day 1 and day 2 live blogs), HR Magazine, XpertHR and HR Zone.

Thanks to Martin for the prompt to do this post.  And most importantly to Tony Chapman and Rob Blevin for their invites to the conference.

 

Technorati Tags: CIPD,conference,2011,summary,social media,blogger,blog,posts

 

• 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

.

The human and the machine

 

   The best session at CIPD11 by far was on efficiency and performance and was delivered by John Greatrex, Group HR Director at Unipart, and Franceso Mereu, Director, HR, Corporate Planning and CSR at Toyota Motor Europe.

For Greatrex there is a growing perspective that there needs to be more of the Human in HR.  He described the need not just to be lean and efficient, but for this to be combined with employee engagement too.  These are both central to the Unipart Way which includes beliefs about there always being a better way, that no problem is a problem etc, but also that engagement drives performance.

Unipart have some great approaches to support this, eg the communication cell providing a framework for daily 10-15 minute briefings ensuring that structured communication takes place every day.

I also liked the way their engagement survey is dealt with in work teams with the results only being passed up to group level if the team can’t deal with them, or the survey process needs to be improved.

More generally, they attempt to measure the process, not the score.  Eg they don’t compare everyone’s engagement score but look for and spread best practice.  The objective is to identify problems – they don’t want people to disguise them.

For Greatrex, all this is about combining lean tools with an engagement philosophy.

In a similar manner, the Toyota Way is based on continuous improvement and a respect for people with a big focus on teamwork.  This needs mutual trust and respect:

• Setting goals together
• Involving in decision making
• On-going sharing of information.

 

For example, business planning is based on the concept of ‘nemawashi’ or consensus building.  Toyota seek to prepare the ground gradually, building opportunities to work as a team through 20 group discussions with 50 managers walking about – looking at documents, asking clarification questions.  If someone doesn’t feel involved properly they can register their desire to be consulted.  It’s then the relevant department’s responsibility to do this.  This encourages the mindset for people to be involved from the beginning.

Also middle and senior managers’ ratings are aligned across the organisation, ensuring that rewards are based on company-wide vs just departmental interactions and ending a clear message that managers are part of a wider team.

 

I loved the way that people were so central to business strategy in these two examples.

The point came up again later in a session on leadership for the future with John Burgoyne who suggested that leadership shouldn’t be either human relations or management science but a mixture of both - the human and the machine.

And it’s what Marcus Buckingham was talking about in his point about organisational leaders’ challenge being to take what is unique in their people, and themselves, and make it useful (he’s been reading Strategic HCM!).

 

I also thought it was interesting to see this today as well: How social media can make your organization stronger:

“For centuries, we have been intentionally creating organizations that are machinelike — rigid departmental silos, detailed policies and procedures, strict roles and responsibilities, detailed strategic plans, etc.

Becoming a human organization is hard mostly because you’re going against centuries of tradition that have a track record of success. We accomplished amazing things in our mechanically inclined organizations, yet becoming more human requires that we change the way we have been doing things.”

 

Technorati Tags: John Greatrex,Unipart,Franceso Mereu,HR,Corporate Planning,Toyota,CIPD,conference,lean,management,science,human,relations

 

• 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

.

No innovation from asking customers

 

   I guess I should really be posting on the rest of the CIPD conference, not just my own interactive sessions (1,2).  There are a couple of reasons that I’ve not been doing so – firstly I was really struggling to find anything to blog on during the first day of the conference (I think I would have liked Robert Potter’s stuff on Individual Career Equations if I hadn’t tuned up late), and then secondly, I heard so much I could blog on during the second day that I didn’t get any time to post (ie this was a much better day).  And today…. well that will probably be the hangover.

Once of the best sessions yesterday, or one of those that sparked the most controversy was the keynote panel with Vance Kearney from Oracle (and Heather Corby from BT, Jane Marsh from IBM and Samantha Austin-May from ESO – but we’re going to focus on Vance).

And the piece that I want to pick up on from a fairly wide-ranging discussion on innovation was Vance’s comments that you can’t (radically) innovate by asking customers, but instead need to step back and think things through yourself (not through individual brainstorming, but by connection people with different perspectives together – so there was a social media aspect to this conversation too).

This comment seemed to produce a fairly shocked reaction, which I must say surprised me, as I’ve always worked on this basis, and it’s not as if it’s not come up at conferences before.  Anyone most people did seem to accept the point, being unable to think of any innovations which had resulted from talking to customers.  Vance did get challenged by one man, resulting in what some people thought was the first CIPD conference on-stage use of the word ********  - sorry for the deletion, but it would have been the first time I’d have used the word on my blog too (anyway, Vance says he didn’t say it).

Why I thought this was interesting was that it connected, for me, with the point made by Natalie Woodford at GSK on the previous day: that HR’s got too close to its customers and needs to step back in order to be more strategic.

Because maybe this is one big reason that HR’s not having the impact it would like - we’re too busy understanding the business, talking the language of the business, etc, etc, that we’ve lost the ability to innovate.  And hence why all organisations end up following the same ‘best’ practices, and then have to deal with the consequent low levels of engagement.

And actually this was the main thing that was missing from the whole session for me – there was a lot of sound advice on developing a culture of innovation across the business, but hardly anything on innovation within HR.  Yet if you believe the stuff coming out of the MIX, one of the main opportunities for innovation lies in HR.

To capture this opportunity we need to step back, reflect, connect, discuss and create some new approaches.  I’m not suggesting not asking your customers what they want – of course you’ve got to do this.  But that’s not where radically better processes and engagement (which I what I think we need) are going to come from.

No innovation ever came from that.

 

Henry Ford quote picture credit: Vovici

Technorati Tags: Vance Kearney,Oracle,CIPD,conference,CIPD11,innovation,panel,keynote,swearing on stage

 

• 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

.