The HR Age of Enlightenment

In his session at SHRM 2014, Glassdoor Head Talent Warrior Will Staney spoke of the pre-web days of HR as “the Dark Ages.” Companies blindly advertised jobs in newspapers, and job seekers blindly scanned the newspapers. Maybe the right candidate happened to be reading the right newspaper and spotted the right ad. Probably more often, they did not.

Those Dark Ages are over and HR has moved into a new Age of Enlightenment in their recruiting abilities, Staney said, thanks in large part to the power of social. Dawn broke on this new age with Web 1.0 sites such as Monster, Dice and Careerbuilder. Today it Web 2.0+ sites such as LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, Craigslist and Staney’s own Glassdoor are shining more light than ever on the entire talent acquisition process.

No longer are the blind seeking out the blind. Companies have multiple ways of finding and contacting prospective employees, including connecting with them through current employees. The flip side of this is that it puts more pressure than ever on the company to have a powerful and authentic employer brand. The company must be one where its employees would want people in their networks to work. It must also be one that comes across well on the sites that candidates are visiting when researching potential employers.

That employer brand, however, is not in HR’s hands, as Staney pointed out. It’s not something the company decides upon, it’s defined by what brought the individual employees together at the company, what values they share. A company can uncover its employer brand by talking to employees to find out why they work there, how they landed there, etc. HR then can – it must – use social tools like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook to tell the story of what it’s like to work at the company. In this way HR will build internal advocacy and engagement and give employees a way of amplifying the employer brand.

Of course, HR’s ability to find, recruit and retain the best workers goes beyond social media. In this Age of Enlightenment, leaders in HR and throughout the organization can use robust analytic tools to elucidate mountains of data – from social media as well as from in the workplace – in order to identify top performers and their behaviors and habits, devise best practices and attributes based on those findings, find the best workers (externally and internally) to fill roles based on those attributes, and continue to develop workers throughout their careers.

In this way, the advent of social media and other smarter workforce technologies are proving to be a boon not just to HR professionals, but to everyone in the workforce.

You can view Staney’s deck from SHRM 2014 at http://ift.tt/1jonRAY.

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Our Gutenberg-Scale Moment

Thomas Friedman may have a New York Times column and three Pulitzer Prizes to his name, but he’s still worried about his 70 million competitors out there on Facebook, Twitter, blog sites, what have you. Despite that, the internationally renowned reporter and author used his speech at SHRM 2014 to offer his competitors some words of advice: average is over. If you want to succeed, you must take advantage of the above-average resources available to you to stand out.

Those resources are the result of the technological shift we are still living through, one that Friedman called a “Gutenberg-scale moment,” akin to the invention of moveable type. The convergence of the PC, the Internet, workflow software and search have given individuals the ability to create their own digital content, distribute it far and wide, and collaborate with others on creating new content. Those shifts have evolved in just the last seven years, from PC to the smartphone and the iPad, from the Internet to high-speed broadband and wireless, from workflow software to crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, and from search to big data and analytics.

These shifts are pulling jobs in three directions, Friedman said. The jobs are being pulled up as they require more and more skill. They are being pulled out as more machines, software, robots and labor compete for them. And they are being pulled down as they are “outsourced to history.”

So for those of us in the workforce, the challenge is to find ways to use those above-average resources to become above average ourselves. We must do so with and through creativity and adaptability. Easier said than done, of course, but Friedman offered some guidance here as well. His five lessons to walk away with were:

1. Always think like a new immigrant – stay hungry and never think your job can’t disappear.


2. Think like an artisan – take pride in what you do.


3. Always be in Beta – never think of yourself as “finished” or you will be truly finished.


4. PQ+CQ > IQ – a high passion quotient plus a high curiosity quotient always trumps IQ.


5. Be relentlessly entrepreneurial.

There is a tendency throughout history for people to feel their era is exceptional, but Friedman makes a strong case for our day and age. Living through an extraordinary period such as this can be both scary and exhilarating. I’ve known people who lost their jobs and spent a year or more unemployed, only to reinvent themselves and come out stronger and happier for it. That’s not everybody’s tale, to be sure, but if we follow Friedman’s advice, and we make the most of all the advantages today’s smarter workforce has to offer, we can continue to play our part in this historic moment.

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Download the New IBM Connections 5.0 Desktop Plugins

A new post on SocializeMe:The new IBM Connections Desktop plug-ins for Microsoft Windows have just been released to our app catalog.



There's a couple of things that I would like to call out here. First, IBM Connections 5.0 will be available for download next week. This is the first time that we have released the desktop plugins before the actual new server code is available. This is because the new desktop plugin also adds new features even if you are not using 5.0.



Second, this is yet another simultaneous release for cloud and on-prem. Cloud customers can download the update directly from the "Apps - Downloads" page within Connections.



Third, as I mentioned earlier in the week, this is the plug-in that adds File Sync capabilities for those that are using IBM Connections 5.0 or later.



Fourth, this release also adds access libraries from IBM Connections Content Manager. Of course, this was already possible before but required installing a separate plugin. In this release, you now install only one plugin simplifying the deployment and adoption process.



Lastly, but not least, this release also adds the ability to browse and access community folders.



Here's a demo that walks through the File Sync capabilities:





So go get it and download today!

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A Pacesetter Perspective: How SaaS Is Fueling Powerful Competitive Advantage

Alysha LaFountain, Demand Programs Professional, North America Demand Programs, Social Business, IBM Collaboration Solutions

The use of Software as a Service (SaaS) has skyrocketed over the last few years and shows no signs of slowing down.

A recent global SaaS study of 879 decision makers found that reducing costs is still a primary reason companies turn to Software as a Service. But 47 percent of the cloud leaders surveyed are discovering how SaaS can help them achieve a much broader and more strategic goal – unlocking competitive advantage.

Join this webcast to learn how Pacesetters are using SaaS to provide their entire enterprise with a wide range of powerful benefits. SaaS can reduce costs, yes. But more than that, SaaS can engender rich and far reaching collaboration, lead to better decision making, and help your organization be more customer-focused and agile in the marketplace. That’s not to say that the route to the winner’s circle won’t take some planning and preparation. You can start by asking yourself the right questions.

Please join us on June 4, 2014 at 2 pm ET.

Speakers:

Janet Sifers, Program Director, Worldwide SaaS Market Segment Management, IBM @JanetSifers

David Stachura, Sales Enablement Program Builder & Social Learning LMS Expert, AMD @DaveStachura

Ken E. Molter, Director Integration/Quality Testing Global Supply Chain Solutions, Ryder System Inc.

Tristan Woods, Chief Technology Officer, SafeGuard World International

Register here.

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