In summary over the last 1,825 days:

• I have typed out 1,313 posts, a little under one a day
• You have made 1,873 comments
• I have worked for 4 different companies, well 5 as I now work for myself
• Watched the rise and fall of many companies
• Watched the rise and fall of many blogs
• Met some amazing people, I was going to try and list a few but it became too hard.

When I decided to start a blog after reading several blogs for a while and finding very very few covering HR, Recruitment and Technology, ok there were none! I also want a place for my ideas in a format that others could provide feedback so the blog format was perfect.

Thank you to all who read my writing, I really appreciate it. If you have never commented it would be fantastic to hear from you over the next year.

Finally I am looking forward to another 5 years of typing away on this blog.

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The day kicked off with Reid Hoffman CEO of LinkedIn giving us an amazing presentation on LinkedIn. One of Reid’s main messages was that every individual is now their own small business, which means everyone needs their own brand. Therefore you need to build the asset value of yourself. Further if every individual is a small business, every individual is an entrepreneur and everyone will have/need an online profile. Some interesting food for thought.

Reid also provided some interesting statistics on LinkedIn ; 1 million new signups every 17 days, 41 million professionals in over 1 70 industries across 200 countries with the highest per capital membership being from the Netherlands!

Next up was our tour of the Google campus. While only short it was still very hard to take it all in. Some of the highlights included:

• Meng’s wall of Presidential photos
• Free food, of course!
• Two outside lap pools with a lifeguard
• Lots of random things such as old style phone booths, steal shark fins, pink flamingos all over the campus
• 24 hour free gym
• Free blue bikes that you can just take to get around the campus
• Posters. There were posters everywhere advertising all sorts of things. Not like most companies where there are “official” locations for posters. Not at Google it seems you just grab your poster and tape it up where ever you want.

For the first concurrent sessions I decided to try the unconference sessions on the assumption that the others were being streamed and I should be able to download the video and audio later. The session was Social Recruiting ROI. As with some other unconference sessions I have attended the session was a bit confusing and didn’t really answer any questions. The reason I believe was a mismatch in expectations between the audience and session facilitators. We had about 80 people in the room most hoping to hear from the panel how to identify ROI, while the panel was wanting to hear from the audience. My takeaway from this session is we need some metrics, but no one really knows what they are, yet.

After lunch we had Sacha Chua from IBM talk about the “most awesome job search ever”. A fantastic session looking at social recruitment from the candidates point of view. Sacha had been blogging while at university and during the process had connected with several people from IBM. She told a very funny story of going for her first interview at IBM. Beforehand she did all the right things and prepared for the interview but was very nervous about the process given she really wanted to work for IBM. At the start of the interview, the hiring manager introduced themself and essentially said “it is great to finally meet you I was a bit nervous about meeting you face to face”! Sacha was in shock because that was exactly how she felt! The profile she had developed online meant that IBM wanted her to join them and they were concerned that IBM would not be “good” enough!

Sacha then went on to talk about how productive she was from day one because she already knew so many people inside IBM. She knew more about IBM before she joined than she could ever get off a career’s site. This is essentially Cluetrain Thesis 84:

We know some people from your company. They’re pretty cool online. Do you have any more like that you’re hiding? Can they come out and play?

So why don’t more organisations allow their employees to connect with potential candidates? Don’t know how to do that just find employees who are passionate about your company and let them tell stories. Don’t have employees who are passionate? You might just have a problem.

Next up was Joshua Khan who’s presentation was about sacred cows and social recruiting. An interesting look at some of the work he had been doing with Geek Squad and Best Buy. Josh went through multiple examples giving the audience a great run down of what worked, what didn’t and what he has learnt from each experience. One of the key messages from Josh was that lots of social recruiting ideas don’t really cost a huge amount of money, if any at all.

The greatest learning here was that there was nothing new. The work I have been doing with clients in Australia is basically the same as what Josh has been doing in the US. So is Australia really 2 - 3 years behind? Now I will admit I had been speaking with Josh in the morning on the shuttle bus to Googleplex about the level of social media maturity of the audience, which neither of us knew. So this does mean he could of held back some of the really forward thinking ideas and approaches?

The final session was from Shannon Seery Gude on employer online reputation and social recruiting strategies. Even though I have known Shannon and her husband Julian for many years we have never actually met! Shannon knows her stuff and this was the best presentation of the day. Shannon gave the audience an inside look at how Bernard Hodes develops online strategies for clients, just this session provided enough practical tips and hints to cover the cost of event ticket.

You can see her full presentation on her blog.

So the real question is was the event worth the travel and expense. Yes.

My only regret I wish it went on for two days, in fact several people mentioned the same thing. The main reasons were the day felt rushed and I had to make some very hard decisions on which sessions I attended.

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We kick off tonight with a Tweet Up, which happens to be in the hotel where I am staying. Some of the sessions from tomorrow include:

• A Conversation with LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman
• Google Campus Tour
• Mobile Marketing
• Ubiquity & Authenticity in Social Media
• No Sacred Cows: Making Sense of Social Recruiting
• Online Employer Reputation & Social Recruiting

The event is very community focused, while each formal session is 1 hour in length on 30 minutes has been allocated to presentation. The rest of the time is for audience engagement. In addition there are three unconference sessions which anyone can speak, including yours truly.

I hope to blog and tweet (#socialrecruiting) about the event, although Twitter will be limited to PC based tweets as I could not get a decent prepaid SIM with a data plan.

Following the summit I have meetings with several key influencers within the recruitment industry, attending the San Francisco HR Technology Breakfast and catching up with Karen Beaman from Jeitosa.

I also hope to duck away and check out some of the Redwood Trees.

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HR/Recruiters should focus on ensuring their operational service delivery is excellent instead of creating unrealistic expectations that social recruiting will save them. Like any business there is no point trying to work out how to integrate Twitter, Facebook or any other fancy technology into your processes if your processes are fundamentally broken!

This excellent operational delivery includes treating candidates (and clients) as people, not as a commission. Here is a personal story of how bad third party recruiters have become in Australia. At the end of 2008 as the GFC started to really bite I had an amazing interaction with a recruiter from a well known agency.

Week 1

I was called ask if I was interested in contract SAP Project Management work. During the discussion the recruiter refused to provide the client name until they had an updated resume. I explained that they had called me because they had “found” my details in their system therefore if they wanted my resume they needed to open up. Eventually they told me the client and declined from applying as I did not like the employer. At the end of the call they asked for an updated resume, which I decided to send over.

Week 2

I was called by the same recruiter, not just agency the same person! However initially I did not recognise their name so I said nothing. The discussion was the same they had “found” my details in their system, was I interested in contract SAP Project Management work. By the end of the call I had remembered this was the same person I was speaking to last week, and they wanted an updated resume. I thought it would be fun to re-forward my original email to them as a subtle hint.

Week 3

About 4pm on Friday another blocked number called my mobile. Bingo a recruiter. Not just any recruiter my friend from the last 2 weeks who seemed to have no idea who I was! No they had “found” my details in their system,  was I interested in contract SAP Project Management work and could I send an updated resume to them! I declined.

6 months earlier when there were jobs a plenty this type of interaction was very common. But in December 2008 I was shocked.

So forget about fancy technology until your processes excellent.

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1. Using social media tools as part of recruiting
2. Building a community of potential candidates
3. Engaging with candidates as people not numbers

So what are the challenges?

1. Financial
2. Technical
3. Operational
4. Organisational

Let’s look at each in turn.

Financial

Many current approaches to social recruiting left unchecked actually increase the cost of hire and as my colleague Markus Hafner aka eskimo_sparky on Twitter said:

@mspecht I tend to agree with @trib. Many co’s also forget that using socmed poorly can damage brand plus increase cost per hire.

While the use of social media can be seen as “free” ie limited actual dollar spend there can be a massive time sink if not used in an educated manner.

Technical

The technical issues are everywhere for social recruiting. They range from data security, privacy, ability to access the services from within the firewall, integration with existing talent management systems to actually how does one use the tools.

Operational

How does the recruitment process get modified to include these new technical tools, organisational approaches and ideas? Clear management of both hiring managers and senior leaders expectations needs to be undertaken. Both from a “it’s cheap” and “it’s fast” point of view. What processes and procedures need to be modified to incorporate these new approaches?

Organisational

The overall structure of HR and recruiting functions will need to be modified to operate within a social recruiting world. What new roles need to be introduced? What roles need to be removed?

I am not setting out to answer all or any of these questions within these blog posts more just putting some thoughts out there to see what happens.

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Not sure about the survey here is a quick run down from Aleixa Martin Cedar Crestone’s Director or Research and Analytics:

CedarCrestone is requesting participation in the CedarCrestone 2009-2010 HR Systems Survey: HR Technologies, Service Delivery Choices, and Metrics Survey, 12th Annual Edition through June 22, 2009. The survey is a comprehensive research effort designed to provide organizations with important data to plan, justify, benchmark, and execute HR technologies and to address key deployment options. The survey questionnaire is available online at www.cedarcrestone.com/hrssv3.

The 2009 HR Survey is broad in its coverage, including questions about:

• Technologies to support talent management, business intelligence, service delivery, and workforce management as well as SOA and Web 2.0 innovations
• Deployment options and related expenditures (on premise, software-as-a-service, hosting, business process outsourcing, etc.)
• Comprehensive metrics such as employee/HR staff ratios, administrative costs per employee, links between technology adoption and financial performance, and many others

The survey collects responses from HR and IT management with knowledge of the HR technologies in use and planned, as well as those with an overview of key deployment decisions. The survey is targeted to respondents from organizations in all industries (commercial, public sector, and educational organizations) with over 500 employees.

While you are into surveys remember to take the Australian Sources of Talent survey and join over 390 Australian organisation’s who have already participated.

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In the comments Joshua Kahn from Find & Attract pondered:

Social Recruiting” isn’t that a bit redundant? It’s like saying “wet water”. For anyone who’s ever recruited, its social.

I have to admit the first time I wrote the post I called social recruiting a tautology. But then I thought a bit. Is social recruiting about using social media to recruit? Or is social recruiting as Joshua says a tautology? Or is social recruiting like cloud computing something we are all a bit confused about?

I see social recruiting as a broader topic than just social media, a broader topic than just all recruiting is social because you deal with people and broader than just community building. I see social recruiting as all three. As a rough cut:

1. Using social media tools as part of recruiting
2. Building a community of potential candidates
3. Engaging with candidates as people not numbers

Now these three points are defined from the Australian point of view which is very third party recruiter centric and looking at all phases of recruitment; attract, source, engage, screen and offer.

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Social Recruiting is going through a similar phase as cloud computing, I drew this conclusion after reading the McKinsey paper on Clearing the air on cloud computing. Lots and lots of talk, hype and tremendous promise but technical and operational issues are hampering wide spread usage within large enterprises.

Let’s look at McKinsey’s recommendations to stabilise the cloud computing discussion and apply it to social recruiting.

1. Get an industry definition on social recruiting, Riges Younan and John Sumser have been having a discussion on this over at SocialRecruiting.com
2. Figure out how to get around the hurdles for adoption in large enterprises; Financial, Technical, Operational and Organisational.
3. HR/Recruiters should focus on ensuring their operational service delivery is excellent instead of creating unrealistic expectations that social recruiting will save them.
4. Everyone should take solid actions to limit the time in the trough, recruiters show clear ROI, technology vendors enhance integration, HR develop strategies.

More on this later.

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With a fair bit of fanfare on May 28th Google pre-released a brand new tool/suite/ concept/framework for collaboration called Google Wave. I am not going to cover all the technical details, you can see them over at http://wave.google.com. But you do need to understand that Google Wave is actually three things all in one package.

• The Google Wave product (available as a developer preview) is the web application people will use to access and edit waves. It’s an HTML 5 app, built on Google Web Toolkit. It includes a rich text editor and other functions like desktop drag-and-drop (which, for example, lets you drag a set of photos right into a wave).
• Google Wave can also be considered a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other web services, and to build new extensions that work inside waves.
• The Google Wave protocol is the underlying format for storing and the means of sharing waves, and includes the “live” concurrency control, which allows edits to be reflected instantly across users and services. The protocol is designed for open federation, such that anyone’s Wave services can interoperate with each other and with the Google Wave service. To encourage adoption of the protocol, we intend to open source the code behind Google Wave.

Think of a wave as the combination of an email and instant messaging but on steroids! Google describes wave as being equal parts document and conversation, which sounds very strange, essentially it is a fully integrated collaborative communications framework. Technically the tool is amazing; for example real time edits of a wave appear on all participants’ screens immediately and the ability to “replay” edits of a wave to see how the wave developed. The only part missing from the wave product is a VOIP client, but given that Google has open sourced the core of wave and the extremely flexible API framework a smart engineer should be able to hook one up very quickly.

Within an enterprise Google Wave, or at least the concepts behind it, have the ability to revolutionise the way people work! The flexible streamlined approach to communication and collaboration is both amazing complex and simple at the same time.  For example:

• Real-time foreign language translation allows everyone to easily collaborate naturally in their own language.
• Real-time updates on waves allow teams to create documents wiki style at a rapid pace.
• Changes that happen while you sleep can be replayed using the play back feature so you can see the context that trigger comments, suggests and ideas to be added to the Wave.
• Drag and drop images, and in the future other media types, allows fast real time collaboration of prototypes and ideas.
• The open API allows full integration of other products such as production schedules, or CRM tools.
• The protocol allows you to federate with other organisations for collaborative purposes.

Now this revolution will not happen overnight given the massive investment organisations have made on Microsoft Exchange and Sharepoint over the last few years. So initially I would predict Google Wave being picked up by smaller organisations and freelancers who need to collaborate with different people on projects across multiple locations.

A word of caution given Google’s track record of letting services die off time will tell if Google Wave becomes the next Gmail or Google Base.

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Credit: Flickr dbilly

Last month Watson Wyatt released their 2009 HR Technology Trends Report. So I grabbed my credit card and laid down US$45 to get a copy so I could see what they had to say.

Some thoughts:

• The report is very hard to compare with their 2007 HR Technology Trends Report as the format has changed.
• Intranets are still the most favoured method of communicating with employees 72%, with newer technologies making an entrance such as social networking 13%, Blogs 11% and podcasts 6%.
• Organisations are still use manual processes when it comes to some core areas of talent management; succession planning (53%), career development (48%) and workforce planning (55%).
• However 56% of organisations are planning to increase their use of talent management technology over the next two years. With leveraging existing ERP’s being the primary approach, 29%, integrated talent management systems are next with 27%.
• Across all talent management areas organisation have a higher satisfaction with external solutions than internally developed ones.
• However internally developed systems have a higher satisfaction than outsourced solutions in the areas of Recruiting, Compensation Administration, Annual Pay & Bonus Delivery, Succession Planning, and Workforce Planning.

So what next?

• Technology vendors who have best in class succession planning and workforce planning solutions have the potential for growth over the next two years as organisation move to automate these processes.
• Outsource providers in compensation administration, succession planning and workforce planning need to clean up their act otherwise they may see business dropping off.
• Emerging technologies will continue to grow in usage within organisations to streamline communications with employees.

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Credit:Flickr cambodia4kidsorg

Last week a US recruitment expert Peter Weddle called social media a SCAM for recruiting. He stated that it was a waste of time with no ROI, although he did not use the term ROI. Finally his prediction was that social media will not be the future of recruiting until 2014 while job boards will remain the predominant method of finding a job.  His source two survey’s one his own and the other by AfterCollege:

Social media came in at number 15 on the list of choices and was selected by just 10.9% of respondents which, of course, included those most celebrated for their use of social media—Millennials.

Well Peter’s comments got a few people all flustered, including Paul Debettingnies and Jim Durbin also known as The Social Media Headhunter.

I am not going to comment on the posts more a comment on the ROI of using social media for recruiting in Australia (some have links to stories others are examples I have picked up in the marketplace):

• First up Darryl King from Ireckon hired his new Project Manager via Twitter.
• The boys from Happener use social media as the backbone of their business.
• Amneisa Rasor Fish hired their Director of Social media through Twitter.
• Amy Cato from Cato & Hall hires a vast majority of her placements via Facebook.
• Thomas Shaw has many customers placing candidates through his Facebook apps.
• V set up a dedicated careers site on MySpace to allow young Australian’s access to 60 ‘never-to-be-advertised’ positions. 4,000+ applications and all positions were filled and V achieved over $750K in marketing exposure.
• Deloitte Australia actively uses social media sites as a talent pool source.

I could continue but I think you get the point this also ignores all of the recruiters using LinkedIn and LinkMe to source candidates.

I have said it before and will continue to say it social media does have a place within your recruiting strategy but it is NOT a recruitment strategy on its own! The key is to understand where the talent hangs out online and then develop a strategy to engage with them on their terms.

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The Forrester Social Technographics 2008 report shows that Gen Y (18-28) are significantly higher Creators, Critics, Collectors and Joiners then other generations up to 49 index points. While Gen X overall are more likely to be Spectators (63%), Joiners (41%), Critics (32%) and finally Creators (24%). Young Boomers do not participate with social media anywhere as often as Gen Y or Gen X, Young Boomers are Spectators (48%), Critics (29%), Joiners (27%) and Creators (17%) which is not a lot different to Older Boomers or Seniors.

So if your target market is Young Boomers (43-52 year olds) leading with a social media is not the right move. If you market is Gen X you need to develop a method for them to be consumers of social media or even critics.

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I am very happy to announce the launch of Australia’s first Source of Talent Survey!

If you’d like to contribute to this, as well as receive a free advance copy of the report, click here to begin our short online survey (it takes less than eight minutes to complete). You’ll also go into a draw to win a Nintendo Wii or one of five book vouchers.

While there are international results on sources of hire by Gerry Crispin we are very interested to see the results from Australian organisations. For example, do Australian organisations collect this information, if so what systems do they use, and are they experimenting with social media as a source of talent.

This is a joint project between myself (Inspecht) and Phillip Tusing from Destination Talent, with support from our sponsorship partners: JobAdder, JobGenie, PageUp People and PeoplePulse.

To find about the survey and the report visit our microsite http://talentsource.com.au for more information.

Sponsors

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The RCSA is the peak Australian association for the recruitment and on-hire sector (according to their web site) but I do wonder sometimes if they know what is going on. (Disclosure I am not a member and have only attended a few of their events so my comments are very biased.)

The RCSA is running a “How to use Twitter in the Recruitment Process” webinar in June. Which on the surface is a great initiative.

Except. 

They are changing $143 for non member! Um hang on didn’t Thomas Shaw run one for free last month? You missed his session don’t worry just download my free guide! No don’t download my guide, have a search on Google for a guide.

Sorry it had to be said.

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SAP has built a Social Network Analyzer prototype for inside the organisation. (Hat tip James Governor.)

It aggregates existing enterprise data to display and discover organizational relationships. It provides the missing link between social networking platforms and enterprise information systems, by letting organizations leveraging data available in corporate information systems.

SNA helps jump-start social networking within the organization by letting you import and aggregate all the corporate relationships between people that are already recorded in your business applications, such as:

• Management hierarchies from your human resources system
• Data on who worked on which deals from your sales force automation system
• Partner, customer, and partner supplier contacts along your supply chain
• People who work on similar transactions within your operational systems

The early images show a product user interface that is very different to anything I have seen from the German Giant.

The tool bring data from disparate systems across the enterprise into a single view to see who is interacting with whom via relationships there can be significant talent management benefits, other than collaboration:

• Look at the interaction of at risk high performers, are their other high performers that also might be at risk due to social relationships?
• Top talent referrers, who else do they interact with and are they providing referrals, if not why?
• Do poor performers interact together?
• Do top performers interact together?

The tool can import any data that describes a relationship between two people or objects you can uncover relationships between individuals, groups and departments that do not appear in the traditional organisation structure.

Now what if we added into the mix information about external social networks??

Let’s not forget the privacy issues, to quote James:

I thought it was kind of funny, though obviously not surprising, that one of the reasons SAP has been slow to turn the prototype into product is European data protection law. While American firms would consider metadata about employee interactions to be company property, under German law that is certainly not the case - no, in Germany it would be called spying.

Will this product see the light of day? Will it be deployed in many organisations? What would trade unions think of the tool? All these questions and more will ultimately determine the future of this particular technology.

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So where to next?

I usually look at future technology trends with two view points, the Gartner Hype Cycle and Chris Anderson’s, from Wired Magazine, four key stages of technology viability.

First let’s look at the Gartner Hype Cycle. 

According to Gartner the visibility of new technologies peaks early with lots of hype and excitement, followed by a “trough of disillusionment” where inflated expectations hit reality. It is at this time when fundamental changes in both what the technology does and how we use them takes place. Sometimes technology does not survive but as the technology begins to prove itself we see it being used productively.

The trick it to know where a technology is on this curve. For example social recruiting, “peak of inflated expectations” or “slope of enlightenment”?

The second approach I have been thinking about was provided by Chris Anderson at TED in 2004 where he talked about technology collisions as a way of assessing its viability. The four collisions he lists are:

1. Critical Price
2. Critical Mass
3. Displacing another technology
4. Commoditise, nearly free

For example, job boards are moving toward being a commodity. Using free software anyone can create a job board for a community in about 24 hours.

Following FutureSummit I am also looking at the future in the terms of MegaTrends. The two trends of note here are the Rise of Asia and Connectivity. With connectivity, while social networking is all the rage now we don’t grasp what is going to happen as mobile connectivity really takes off. Could this mobility in social networking change influence?

So I have three attributes to consider now for technology each with their own factors to consider. I suspect somewhere in the mix is the future, now if I can only find it.

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(Credits: From Flickr aussiegall)

I guess the best way as being talked to for 25 hours in a 36 hour period! This is a very different format to many of the other events I attend which tend to be more collaborative.

This lack of collaborative time where the participants were able to discuss the future was my biggest complaint. Most of the panels discussed issues of today that need to be resolved, not what the future holds, and unfortunately any talk of the future was just that, talk. The session content also tended to be very hit and miss on the quality. 

Over the two days there were three that stood out.

First was Alison Sander from Boston Consulting Group’s (BCG) presentation on Megatrends (the second session) was one of the best sessions and eye opener. Maybe I am a bit slow but I had not explicitly thought about tapping into these trends as a method of growth. BCG tracks four types of trends; Terra, Economic, Technology and Meta but as Alison said just knowing about these trends is not enough. Action is what is needed. BCG provides their clients a four phase model on how to leverage megatrends:

1. Recognize
2. Understand
3. Act
4. Profit

I guess I have always done 1 and 2 but failed on 3 and 4, which is why I am not a billionaire ;-). A couple of interesting statistics I picked up, 60% of the world’s population is in Asia, and in 2006 the world’s population became more urban than not.

The next session of interest was not until late Tuesday morning looking at technology as an enabler of prosperity and growth. I had very high hopes of this session given the quality of the panel; Tracey Fellows MD Microsoft Australia, Holly Kramer Group MD Telstra Product Management, Dr Paul Twoney CEO ICANN, Professor Max Lu, and Glenn Wightwick CTO IBM Australia. While the discussion was a bit up and down some of the key gems came from Paul Twoney and Dr Lu.

Paul Twoney highlighted that while about 70% of the room had businesses that sold something on the Internet only about 2 people did so in a language other than English. Then came the kicker, Paul states that Brisbane, Sydney and Los Angeles are the only cities that have people who can speak all 38 languages of Asia (I would suspect Melbourne is very close). Dr Lu then went on to talk to us about solar being the ultimate energy source, nano ethics and social responsibility of nano technology and that the future of nanotechnology in manufacturing has a pervasive impact. The final key message was from Paul Twoney who challenged the audience to look at what we could be doing with broadband to help on climate change, water, globalisation and population growth.

The final session of serious interest was on harnessing Australian talent. Australia has been so successful building an international education program that we have reducing public funding to our own education institutions, which is impacting our ability to develop talent. International education students are a $15.5 billion industry for Australia, almost the 2nd largest export! One of the best quotes from the session came from Professor Gill Palmer of RMIT ”people are a countries competitive advantage”.

The talent session then moved to looking at corporate management of talent. I can’t remember who provided stated this but, Australia is the worst in the OECD when it comes to amount of money corporations allocate to educating their employees. Another interesting statistic is that 67% of boardroom conversations are deeply inhibited, through one reason or another, making only 33% of boardroom conversations useful! Australia as over 1 million citizens living overseas, why are organisations not trying to bring them home as a method of talent development?

I had several interesting discussions. First discussion was at the gala dinner with two individuals; one from big business the other a major educational institution. We were discussing the issue of clean energy. Both told me that much of the technology existed today; just no one had put it all together. So I asked why they don’t open source it, so we can solve the energy problem. The answer, no one can make money out of open source and how do you know that people will not hold back their key ideas. The second discussion was over lunch where we were discussing how to inform the average Australian business about Megatrends for business growth. One of the first answers was to create a government institution of trend spotting to then communicate to the public.

My final thoughts. Australia has a good future; however this future could be great if we as a society learn how to harness key trends. Big business also needs to radically change to institutions that open up communications internally, become more socially responsible and finally grow and develop their employees.
 

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Steve Hopkins is working for ADC and pulled together an awesome selection of social media people to attend to provide a unique perspective on the event. Along with myself others include:

• Kate Carruthers
• Bronwen Clune
• John Johnston
• Mick Liubinskas
• Ross Hill
• Duncan Riley
• Darren Rowse
• Markus Hafner
• Sam Mutimer

If you are on Twitter watch for the #futuresummit tags.

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I have to agree with the guy at Amnesia it is a little gimmicky, but as they said the site is getting attention.  A couple of interesting observations, the CV is optional

They are also meeting some of Gerry Crispin’s attributes on a good careers website:

1. When I apply, am I the one this employer is looking for? (Am I your Target candidate or is someone else?)
2. Is it clear to me why I should come to (or stay at) this company? (Engage me.)
3. Was I able to find the information I need to support my reasons for applying here? (Can you really Inform me?)
4. Was I thanked, offered next steps, promised feedback or status? (After I’ve applied, will you Respect me in the morning?)

This approach to attracting candidates is clearly showing the type of candidate they are after, this apporach is also engaging. But I don’t read Dutch so I can’t comment on if there is enough information on the site that is informing the candidate. Nor did they acknowledge my application immediately.

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For nearly 20 years geeks have been operating in the backrooms of your organisations communicating across the Internet using tools such as Gopher, IRC, Usenet and HTTP. Then in 1994 Marc Andressen released Netscape Navigator into the world, since then it has never been the same.

Netscape allowed non technical people for the first time to graphically see not only documents on the Internet but also their relationships. This was the birth of the web as we know it today.

Everything on the web today has been built on these foundations. Including social media.
The first true social technology was the reply all button in email. As much as we often despise this feature for the first time it allowed people, through a single click of a button, to engage and collaborate with a large group of individuals. The first social gesture.

I have spent the last 2 and a half days at the Australasian Talent Conference where there was lots and lots of talk about social media and its impact on business, talent and the workplace. However most of the questions and comments tended to be we don’t understand it, it is a waste of time, we are ignoring it and where is the ROI. There is fear, uncertainty and misinformation amongst many of the leaders in business.

To help overcome these issues I will initially be spending time look at the foundations of social media before taking an trip in to using social media in the workplace.

But first a bit about me, so who is Michael Specht?

I have been online for 20 years, in 1990 I experienced my first virtual social connections through a tool called Compuserve. For the last 15 years I have been working with HR technology and for the last 5 year commenting on its impact on HR and our workplaces. I set up one of the first corporate job boards in Australia in 1996, one of the first deployments of Employee Self Service in 1998 and a shared service environment in 1994!

During that time I have seen the rise of social media from something only the geeks used to a topic that is covered in the daily broadsheets.

As expected I have profiles on all of the major social media sites including LinkedIn, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and of course a blog which has close to 5,000 unique readers every month, the blog has also appear several times in Top HR blogs listing, the latest being.

You could say I live on the web.

For many social media is seen as Facebook or Twitter but it is more than that and has been around for a very long time. Before you can understand the impacts on the workplace you need to understand the history of social media.

So what is social media?

Some of the key attributes of social media are

• Participation
• Openness and Transparency
• Conversations and Communities
• Utilising the concept of wisdom of crowds
• And providing a rich user experience

It is also about relationships, not transactions, and treating people as human beings not numbers, objects or assets!

Social media has been built on technology called Web 2.0 which provides the enabling tools and techniques to deliver these rich and engaging applications. Web 2.0 provides the foundation for reuse, and the rich and engaging applications we have today.

But social media is not a silver bullet to an organisations woes, it will not save a bad or dying product. Allowing it in the workplace will not automatically make your workplace a better place. Knowledge will not be magically retained.

No social media is not a silver bullet, but left unchecked it can and will do damage to your workplace.

To quote the 34th President of the US “Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him”

Social media is the future and it is not going away any time soon.

You may be thinking wait a minute Michael are we not moving a bit too quickly could this all be just hype and we are stand perilously on the peak of inflated expectations before we dive down in the deep trough of disillusionment?

I say no, and here is why.

Put your hands up who has read or heard of The Cluetrain Manifesto? This seminal work was published 11 years ago before Web 2.0 before Facebook, Twitter and all things we consider social media.

Within this book the authors through their 95 thesis’s predicted the change in business. The move to a world that had no boarders, consumers worked together, share information and subverted the corporate hierarchies.

The ultimate thesis is the one that Markets are Conversations and that it is the end of business as usual.

Since then we have seen a dramatic growth in social media usage.

Remember your employees are using these tools even if you don’t realise it. They have it at home, on their phones everywhere.

Add to this that the workplace is changing. Those crazy Gen Y’s will make up 42% of the workforce by 2020, let’s not even begin to think about to ones behind.

You might be thinking ok this is BIG, but isn’t just a big waste of time?

Well yes if you do not understand how to leverage it. In the same way as the telephone could be just a tool for gossip, without many businesses would not survive.

The benefits of social media are as wide and diverse as the corporations you all represent. You can enhance communication between employees, and between employees and customers and even between customers. Social media also provides a cost effective method of connecting with your customers. Did you know Dell can directly show over US$1 million dollars in revenue from Twitter during 2008!

Bigpond Employee: 

“From an employees point of view, Jase, Steph & myself do feel more engaged. We are giving the ‘faceless corporation’, a face and are showing that we do care about what people say and think about us. Its not always an easy task, but it is one that we enjoy. Honestly, I look forward to coming into work and interacting with the twitterverse. We can only get bigger and better!“

Now for the workplace issues, this is what you came for. I can summarise about 80% of the presentation in to this one slide.

1. There are lots of issues
2. You need to understand them
3. But they are similar to existing issues in the workplace
4. It is just that the technology is different.

In 1683 British Quaker, William Penn said “knowledge is the treasure, but judgement the treasurer of a wise man“

These are four recent examples where employees use of social media may not of displayed the most discerning of judgments.

1. Californian KFC workers were fired for publishing these shots of them bathing in a KFC basin on MySpace
2. Kristy and Michael ex-Domino’s employees in North Carolina in the US were firing and arrested after they published videos of themselves on the web fouling up customers’ food
3. 16 year old Kimberley Swann in the UK, was sacked from Ivell Marketing & Logistics for posting on her Facebook profile that her office administration job was boring.
4. Telstra Leslie Nassar who is the popular Twitter impersonator of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy

The first two are examples where the employees were in my opinion in breach of employment conditions. However the last two exhibit the grey areas that plague workplaces today.

This was Kimberley’s first real office job, yes she had been briefly employed at a call centre before but this was her first office job. Her employer only found out after she allowed another employee to become a “friend” on Facebook. In her status updates she never mentioned the company she worked for, and as an office administrator she was hardly an official spokesperson or a public figure where people reading her update could determine the company she was referring to. So publicly little if any damage.

Owner of Ivell Marketing & Logistics, Steve Ivell was quoted in the press as saying Kimberley was sacked as she obviously disliked her job and that Ivell Marketing & Logistics was a family company that did not tolerate this type of behaviour.

While the status update might not have been the smartest of things to do, but look how many 16 year olds are worldly wise? Also being a family company Ivell Marketing & Logistics might have done better to look after their young and naive employees and mentor them. Personally I don’t think it should result in immediate dismissal. The company would have done better to take on board the fact that she was bored and look at ways to use her skills, also explaining that posting on Facebook was not the smartest of moves. If she did it again then look at discipline actions.

Further to this if they had done nothing Ivell Marketing & Logistics or Steve Ivell would not have been all over the Internet, resulting in them having to remove the Contact Us page on their web site due Facebook users crashing their email server.

Leslie Nassar’s case is far more complex and has more relevance as it happened in Australia and in one of our leading public companies.

Leslie is a long time thought leader online and behind the ABC moving into podcasting before he moved to Telstra. Leslie has also been outspoken against government policy writing under his own name on the site “Department of Internets”. Leslie did not start the Fake Stephen Conroy Twitter account and only took it over last few months of 2008. Once he was “outed” as being behind the account things got very nasty. His immediate management told him to cease writing immediately; however no one told the rest of the organisation that this was the case. Resulting in several very embarrassing situations where on Telstra’s formal blog “Now We Are Talking” spokespeople were denying Leslie had been told to stop, when in fact he had. These perceived double crossing and cover up by Telstra sent Leslie over the top. At which point he “let rip” on Twitter publically calling Telstra out and swearing by name at the bloggers on “Now We Are Talking”. Following this Leslie was called to Sydney to meet the CTO who head eventually reported to. Even then there was more confusion as at one point it seemed Leslie had been fired.

Now last week Telstra launched their Social Media Policy, which had been in development for five months and tries to outline a framework for employees to operate within when using social media.

So what are the issues around social media in the workplace? As I have said there are many of them, I will cover them at a high level.

Uncontrolled social media can be a drain on productivity, there have been numerous commentator over the last couple of years stating how many billions of dollars Australia is wasting on Facebook or MySpace.

Confidentiality is another common concern that I hear from people. “What happens if my top secret project gets twittered all over the globe?” Well, um I reckon you have a bigger issue of it being emailed accidently to someone or a disgruntled employee walking off with it on a USB stick.

Inappropriate content! Well this is an issue with the Internet in general. Most workplaces have figured ways of providing access to the staff that need it without pornography taking over the workplace.

The biggest contributor to appropriate usage of the internet in the workplace has been user education. An anonymous survey last year found that only 1% of internet users used it inappropriately in the workplace.

Exclusion is another issue, and it can be real. Imagine the footy boys in the office create a Facebook groups just for them and exclude everyone else. Again a general workplace issue but employees may not realise that by doing so they could be in fact discriminating against others

Friending, can also be a process of exclusion. Where someone refuses to be another “friend”.

Probably the bigger issue is de-friending. Many people change the way they use social media over time. So over time someone in the workplace who was a “friend” is no more. Could this be discrimination, exclusions or bullying?

Harassment, in all its forms. I know of examples where employees have continued to request to be a friend of another work colleague on Facebook to the point where the colleague began to feel harassed, they went to the point of writing on others walls as to why the employee would not accept their friend request.

Employees need to understand privacy. All social media tools have privacy settings. Learning how to use them and what each mean are critical for a fun and safe experience online.
What about technology risks? Westpac allows Facebook to be used in the workplace. However in consultation with the IT department certain “port”, the method software talks to each other, have been blocked as they can allow a security risk.

Could we at the end of the day be extending the definition of the workplace into social media? What happens if you have a company sponsored group in Facebook. Does that mean you support the use of Facebook. Now if an employee was to join Facebook just to participate in the company group and then they are harassed is the company liable?
What does social media do for industrial relations?

Management of reputation and official messages are also critical. As a company moves into Social Media understanding how to distinguish between official and personal messages are critical.

Management of social media in the workplace is like regular management. It’s all management.

You need governance.

Today companies tend to be taking one of four approaches to managing social media in the workplace. First totally forbid it, while I would not recommend this cause of action some may choose this path. Toleration of social media is a bit like sitting on the fence or the Ostridge approach. Using only for marketing this works for some organisations but it ignores the fact that employees are engaging in social media. The final approach is to encourage it, but still have a way to indicate personal vs professional communications.

Of course there are variations on the themes, and the key to any approach to the education of employees about their rights and responsibilities when using social media. Even outside of the office.

Before you start the process of building a policy you need to look at the overall governance approach. Without a good governance model, your employees and the organisation, will be left open to abuse and potential legal issues.

At a minimum, put down some “rules of engagement”, depending on your corporate culture, they can be simple or complex, preferably simple! Remember some of your existing governance models and policies will apply so don’t over engineer things.

You need to ensure that the social media specific issues are addressed. 

A specific policy increases certainty for employees and reduces risk for the company
While you need a policy but do you really want to create mountains of paper that your employees will dutifully agree to and then ignore as they continue to operate as they did before.

• Telstra, the 45,000+ ex Government organisation’s policy is only 6 pages long with one of those being the approval section and references!
• The Powerhouse Museum of Sydney’s blog policy released in April 2007 is 4 pages with 3 of content. 
• The Australian Public Service Commission’s document is 5 pages when printed. 

These policies are usable and enable the employees in these organisations to participate in the creation of social media without the shackles of paperwork and policy. A policy must match your organisation culture and at the same time embrace the principles of social media, that being;

• Transparency
• Conversations and communities
• Treat people as human beings
• Wisdom of crowds
• Rich user experience
• User participation and generation of content
• Joining groups of similar interests

How will your company use social media?

• What is your corporate culture
• Consultation with employees
• Remember we are all learning

Test your policy

I have five very simple themes that you need to cover, along with the administrative issues around implementation and execution.

First the policy must get employees to stop and think before posting. I am sure we have all written an email in haste and wished it could be taken back. Well in social media you can’t!

Once the Googles of the world index the content it remains in the search engine caches forever!

They must use the grey matter between their shoulder blades. If they don’t all sorts of issues can arise.

Disclaimers are critical. Not just the one where the views posted are the owners not the companies. What about client and supplier relationship if these are being discussed? And back to the views are those of the owner. Could this be in violation of your existing confidentiality and intellectual property policies?

The policy should ensure employees know to keep it real. These mediums are not for old school marketing. They are about conversations, communities and above all relationships. Corporate monotone will just not work.

Finally employees need to understand that they need to respect the tools and services they are using. A forum is not the place to resolve personal issues, Twitter is not the place to spam people about your latest products.

So what would a social media policy look like? What would it cover?

You also need to cover the more important administrative items that you need to cover include highlight employee duties, define consequences of non-compliance and you MUST MUST MUST actively support the implementation. Which leads us nicely onto policy implementation.

Some of the best practices that should be applied with social media in the workplace.

So how do you implement a social media policy?

Managing your brand or the potential impact on the brand is another common concern.
But regardless of what you do as an organisation people will be talking about you and your brand. As a test when you leave here today type in your company name into Google and the word sucks, see what come up you might be surprised.

If you are like most organisations your brand is critical to business success.

As consumers our attachment to a specific brand tends to be emotional not logical. For many we justify our brand decisions based on pseudo logical argument, but fundamentally at the end of the day attachment to a brand are about emotion. And how is that emotion built? Through our experience when interacting with the brand, usually this is with employees. We build connections and relationships with the employees of the brands before we make purchasing decisions.

So at this core brands are intangible it is the people behind the brands that engage us. However this intangible item has a worth far from trivial. The worth of the top ten brands in 2006 was almost $400 billion and eclipsed the Gross Domestic Product (PPP) of the world’s 80 poorest countries ($350billion). Kuwait’s entire economy was about the size of GE; meanwhile, Iceland equals UPS; and Brunei is MTV.

So your brand is worth something. People drive your brands worth. This is interesting because in the 2009 Weber Shandwick Survey of senior executives 34% know or admit to knowing of a fellow employee who has badmouthing their company online! This badmouthing has an impact on your brand and its worth. The process of reputation management is critical with social media.

So how do we manage your reputation online, this is both a corporate reputation and your personal reputation. We all know about employer branding and its importance. 

Many leading companies are targeting top talent through employer branding strategies
It is easier to hire good talent that comes to you. Last century potential employees would conduct Dun & Bradstreet searches to find out about an organisation. Today they use Google.

Australian example of witchery. Who has heard of Vouge Forums? It is a place where many Gen Y girls tend to hang out discussing fashion. This community also works as a sounding board on everything fashion related including working for different retail outlets. There are discussions several discussions on the site were about how Witchery treats their employees, what the benefits are like and how they compare to other retail outlets.

In Summary:

1. Social media is not bad
2. Social media has lots of benefits
3. You need a policy, but it must match your culture
4. Social media is there even if you ignore it

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Write an introduction document on Twitter for HR and Recruiting. 

There have been lots of documents/posts/articles on the subject in the last 6 months and for a while I thought the world did not need another one. Well in the last 10 days I have decided different. So in the interests of my memebership in the Cult of Done, I present my document on Twitter for HR and Recruiting.

The document covers:

• What is Twitter
• How to get value from it
• How to get started
• Australian HR and Recruiting people to follow
• Twitter Tools
• 15 tips on using Twitter

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