Archive for January 25th, 2010

Last week, Steve Boese and Shauna Moerke (@HR_Minion) awarded the “Best HR City” to none other than area code 513, Cincinnati OH.  I’ve been a fan of hrhappyhour for quite some time now.  With all the good natured ribbing that goes on in the back channel, and the substantive show content, there’s no place better to be Thursday’s at 8:00 p.m.

I had the chance to interview Steve right before he started his new job in 2010, and this is what I learned.  Steve attended the University of South Carolina where he received a B.S. in Finance.  He was a Senior Principal Consultant at Oracle, and started his own Consulting Firm, Typhoon Consulting in 1999.  He taught a graduate course in HR Technology at The Rochester Institute of Technology where he served as an ERP Consultant and Instructor since 2003.  At the beginning of 2010 Steve announced his new position Director of Products, and Community On Demand Services at Knowledge Infusion . 

In addition to being an industry thought leader in enterprise 2.0, Boese he has a network that includes some of the best and brightest in Human Resource technology, IT, and Social Media.  My first question to him was-Where is the best starting point to learn more about social media? He recommended the book Enterprise 2.0 by Professor McAfee where emerging technologies are detailed.  Boese has been working with enterprise software 2.0 for the past 15 years. He started his blog in part, to teach his students, and to serve as a shared knowledge repository.  He teaches newer tools and technology to human resource development graduate students.  He had his entire class on a Wiki platform.  It was completely interactive, and was a hands-on learning tool.  Steve wants students to understand how this information can be applied to solve organizational problems.  He demonstrates how HR technologies can be a tool for organization effectiveness initiatives, and as an integral part of organizational improvement.

Before the new year, I wrote that I don’t personally take stock in year-end predictions; However, when Steve Boese talks, I listen.   He wrote a post entitled “What Shaped 2009 in HR Technology.” in which he made several clear key points.

1.  Social Recruiting-yes recruiting has “Gone Social”

The concept of social recruiting is not exactly new.  Sourcers have been using the internet to research and identify candidates since the mid-1990’s. However, there’s an undeniable trend that social media tools will become even more prevalent.  Recruiters now use facebook to source candidates, which 2 years ago was unheard of-and now, it’s commonplace.  Internal and external recruiters alike are taking advantage of emerging social media tools.  While some may argue that phone sourcing is still the best way to find candidates, there are others that say we are blind if we are not seeing and using all the social media technologies available. 

In my opinion, people are referring their friends from facebook for positions, especially when there’s a referral bonus for the taking.  Granted, smart Companies have to be leery of employee referrals, because they might wind up with slew of candidates that are not appropriate for the position.  I was reading an article that discussed how recruiters, and Companies are having much greater success recruiting from linkedin verses the other social networking sites.  With that said, all recruiting is social in one form or another, it’s a relationship business, referrals are taken serious from facebook friends and twitter followers.  The roads of twitter are littered with open positions, and now that the economy are more an more jobs are going to flow through new social networks, and this will continue to build.

2.  Employees are Networking

Social media has opened the networks and channels for communication.  Employees are using social media to do research, solve problems, and to gain access to vital skills to help them do their jobs better.  The erroneous fear that employees are going to abuse their intranet communication (via yammer, or wikis) is simply not grounded in the data.  Rarely do employees act inappropriate during working hours while using social media at work.  It isn’t logical, and most people know that is a good way to commit professional suicide.  Another key point is that other employees police each other.  If someone is trashing their company-other employees will typically nip that behavior in the bud long before anyone in HR has to step in-and level the velvet hammer.  Employees have access to social media channels and will say what they want, whether you like it or not. So why not let them have access to it—by allowing access during business hours, you can build good will.  You can’t always control the message, but you can influence the messenger while they are on the clock.

3. Enterprise Systems are getting more social

According to Boese “In 2009 a slew of tools and technologies that support employee collaboration, information discovery, and internal expertise location were either released or enhanced.  From wikis like Socialtext and PBWorks activity stream platforms like Socialcast or more robust internal networking technologies like Cubetree or Jive Social Business Software.” Steve said that it seemed that new technologies were released so regularly that we saw a new capabilities added to existing products.   Which made me wonder if the competition between vendors would raise the bar of what products can do?  Will the market demand more and more from these platforms? It is hard to keep up with all the new emerging technology-and as HR Professionals we have to read constantly, and experiment with the new products,if we are going to stay on the cutting edge. Activity Tracker  from talent management systems, and Halogen Software , according to Boese have created the most important technological developments last year.  They’ve moved to incorporate concepts from the popular external ‘status feeds’ to elucidate HR processes.  Bottom line: businesses are working hard to collaborate, innovate and connect in ways that have never before been possible.

4. As we look ahead, Boese muses, we will see more technological improvements and enhancements. 

Who knows what enterprise 3.0 will offer.  Stay tuned…And now I’d like to know what are you thoughts?  What trends do you think will catch on fire and spread throughout the business community?

Your twitter pal,

@HRMargo

Margo Rose  feel free to contact me at HRMargoRocks@Gmail.com  or leave your comment here.