a shel of my former self

FIR Cut: What options for CIPR facing financial crisis?

2009-11-06T12:08:25+00:00

PR Week: CIPR Seeks To Calm Concerns Over Looming Financial Loss. (Referenced: IABC wipes out deficit by Allan Jenkins, Feb 2006.)

Download the file here (MP3, 2.54Mb; length 5:33), or sign up for the RSS feed to get this cut segment and all future ones automatically.

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #498: November 5, 2009

2009-11-05T19:32:29+00:00

Content summary: Shel’s on his own in Toronto; How the Union for Reform Judaism used Twitter and Facebook to solicit member questions for Tony Blair’s live appearance at the group’s biennial; Google Wave and Twitter List reminders; Dan York’s report; Media Monitoring Minute; News That Fits: Novell introduces Pulse with Google Wave integration, the move from stickiness to spreadability, more on Twitter lists including a how-to guide from Mashable, Second Life takes enterprise software into beta; listener comments; and more.

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For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for November 5, 2009: A 66-minute podcast recorded live from Toronto, Pntario, Canada.

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the show notes home page for info.

FIR #498 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR, or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

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So, until Monday, November 9…

What Employee Communications looks like in the networked company

2009-11-04T00:09:01+00:00

Awareness is rising of the impact on business of networked employees—those workers who are continuously connected to their social circles and can tap into them at will. The discussion seems to be shifting, ever so slowly, to the characteristics of companies that, rather than inhibiting these traits, want to reap the benefits of a networked workforce. Recent posts by Olivier Blanchard and Valeria Maltoni have speculated on the nature of these companies. Olivier calls them P2P companies; Valeria refers to them as connected companies.

They both see the recruiting process changing, for example, to one of inviting people already connected to the company through online and offline social networks to come work for them. The IT department becomes the ET department—Technology Enablement. P2P companies don’t outsource customer service. Collaboration is supported by the use of the best tools available. And, according to Maltoni, “Facilitating conversations inside and outside the connected company means designing business through interactions.”

You’ll recognize more and more of these traits as existing companies evolve into networked companies and startups embrace the P2P model. But succeeding under the P2P model won’t happen just because it seems right. It’ll take work. Companies have to implement systems to support the model.

Employee Communications is a critical function that must adapt in order to accommodate its role in a networked company. Inspired by Valeria and Olivier, I’d like to offer a list of characteristics of the employee communications function in the networked/P2P company.

Ease employee access to social networks. Both Olivier and Valeria have noted that connected companies won’t block access to social networks. Leaving access unfettered is, indeed, a requirement, but companies will need to go a few steps beyond unshackling employees from the restrictions that keep them from connecting. It will be incumbent on the internal communications function to identify communities within social networks where the company’s products, services, operations, and other dimensions are discussed and even summarize the nature of the conversation taking place in this communities. Helping employees identify where the conversation is can help them begin participating in a more meaningful way. After all, it is within some of these communities where employees will establish and build relationships with people who are likely to become candidates for employment. These networks are also where employees will glean insights from customers that could lead to product or service innovation.

Show employees who’s saying what, right now. Employees already participate in the networks and communities aligned with their interests. Some may be interested in engaging elsewhere, such as communities they’ve never heard of where the company or its brands are being discussed. At the least, companies should provide a directory of these communities. Ideally, however, companies will let employees see, in as close to real time as possible, what the members of those communities are saying about the company. You might consider this a curator role for Employee Communications, one that demonstrates the sentiment of real people with real influence who are having real conversations about your organization. I can easily see a dashboard on the intranet portal with the very latest customer sentiments along with a link to more detailed content from these communities.

Communicate research results. Organizations of all stripes spend a ton of money on consumer research. Few share the results of the research with employees company-wide; it’s data that, for one reason or another, is usually made available only to brand team members. With all employees networking with customers, knowledge of the study results can inform the conversation. Internal communications needs to become a channel for sharing the results of market research throughout the organization.

Increase business literacy. Employees need to know the business. It’s a sad fact that most frontline employees couldn’t answer basic questions about the business beyond the work of their own department. It’s equally sad that this is most often true because nobody bothers to teach them about the business and the resources for them to teach themselves aren’t readily available. Employee Communications needs to focus considerable effort on ensuring employees are savvy about the company for which they work.

Build awareness of business initiatives. In addition to general business literacy, employees need to know about specific initiatives. Employees in a hospital that has started marketing its quality ratings should know about the effort. Employees in a manufacturing organization that has taken steps to be more sustainable should be able to talk intelligently about what that means.

Make sure everyone knows the rules of the road. Too often, organizations assume that because a policy has been published, everyone knows what it is. Employee Communications needs to communicate the policies and guidelines that govern employee activity in online communities on an ongoing basis through multiple channels. No employee should ever be surprised to learn they have violated a policy.

Champion and support internal training. Some of the companies that have the most positive employee engagement are ones in which employees can attend classes to learn about how to engage. At Zappos, employees can take classes on Twitter. The Mayo Clinic offers tweetcamps, where doctors and other staff can learn about social media. Ideally, the Internal Communications team will partner with the Training department to develop learning opportunities—face-to-face and online—that will help employees get business-literate and learn about social networking and how their engagement can produce meaningful results for the company.

Enlist company advocates. Best Buy’s Twelpforce is one of the more forward-thinking initiatives for engaging front-line employees with customers. Blueshirts—the employees who work in the retail stores—volunteered to respond to queries sent via Twitter to the Twelpforce account. Companies can take this concept beyond the initiative level, finding those engaged employees—that is, the employees who want to make discretionary efforts on behalf of the company, train them, and get them into vital communities. (This kind of engagement must be disclosed and transparent, of course. I’m not suggesting anything deceptive, just a means of identifying and activating those employees who want to be part of the organization’s organic networking efforts.)

Work with ET to ensure systems support networking. If IT has transformed into Technology Enablement, they are the ideal partner for Employee Communications to identify and launch the tools employees can best use to network with one another. The technology department can also ensure the intranet supports the modules referenced earlier, such as business literacy training, communication of research results, and real-time updates of who’s saying what about the company in key online communities.

All of this has to happen along with much of the traditional work Employee Communications performs, such as letting employees know that benefits enrollment is coming, supporting an internal change process, and informing employees about decisions that will affect them. In a networked company, there’s no question in my mind that the role of Employee Communications becomes bigger and more important.

What other traits should characterize the Employee Communications function in the networked organization?

Twitter’s people search can’t find some some of its own account holders

2009-11-03T23:41:36+00:00

Here’s a curious little glitch in Twitter’s system: The people search function fails to find some existing accounts:

As I said in the video, it’s hard to add people to a Twitter list if Twitter itself doesn’t know they’re there!

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #497: November 2, 2009

2009-11-03T01:03:03+00:00

Content summary: FIR group on Google Wave up and running; Barbara Nixon suggests an FIR Twitter List; vote for FIR at Podcast Alley; Michael Netzley reports from Singapore; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; News That Fits: bridging the gap between corporate culture and the ‘Web 2.0 society’, what the connected company looks like, as sales fall newspapers must find a way to measure multimedia readership, has a PR industry meltdown begun?; listener comments delayed until next show; music from Mano Reza; and more.

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For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for November 2, 2009: A 68-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

FIR #497 show notes at The New PR Wiki

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So, until Thursday November 5…

Edelman blasted for claims it never made

2009-10-29T22:41:56+00:00

Last Sunday, a Chicago Tribune article focused on Edelman in its look at reverse mentoring, in which older executives learn about the digital space from the younger workers who grew up within it. The article notes than 95% of Edelman’s US senior executives have “rotmens” (that’s “mentor” backwards) and that the program is being rolled out worldwide.

Let the spinning begin!

Gawker headlined its view of Edelman’s program, “Huge PR Firm Has Bunch of Kids Digital PR Strategists” (the strike-through is Gawker’s, not mine). The story lead:

Here is just the latest example of how a large PR agency can be a huge, huge, huge, hustle, staffed by hustlers, who will charge you too much money to do dumb, simple things, on the internet. Edelman!

The Gawker post asserts that clients will be overcharged for work performed by 23-year-olds because the senior people don’t get it. (I left a comment more than 24 hours ago that hasn’t appeared yet. Something tells me it never will, since I asked if their claims were backed up by evidence of shoddy consulting).

Gawker’s point of view, though, is not far off from the assertions in a post by Gini Dietrich of PR agency Arment Dietrich, who repeatedly insisted that the article claimed:

Edelman is turning digital strategy over to its Gen-Yers
95% of Edelman’s senior staff are clueless about social media

Dietrich’s provocative headline, “Edelman Admits They Don’t KNow Social Media,” introduces a post that suggests that Edelman’s senior staff has no idea what they’re doing when it comes to social media. And in response to dozens of comments, Dietrich continues to insist that Edelman came right out and admitted it:

Edelman executives told the Chicago Tribune (and Sun-Times) that 95 percent of their senior leaders, 95 percent, don’t know how to use social media. I did not make up this stat. It’s in the article.

There’s more. PRNewser wondered, “We’re honestly trying to figure out how chatting it up all day on Instant Messenger equates to advising major corporations on their digital communications strategy.” Loudmouth Design and Communication headlined its article, “Big and Dumb,” and claimed the story characterizes “top PR agency management, who are used to hawking their expertise as current and dare we say ‘cutting edge’, completely in the dark and seemingly out of touch.” Law and More says the Edelman example should lead clients to unbundle their PR needs.

The problem is, nowhere in the article does anyone—Edelman or anyone else—claim that senior management doesn’t know how to use social media, only that 95% of the members of senior management are participating in the reverse mentoring program.

As Edelman Digital President Rick Murray (who heads up a team of some of the smartest people in the business, including Phil Gomes and Steve Rubel) said in a tweet, obviously reacting to the criticism:

That is, Baby Boomers can be well-schooled in social media and still glean tons of insight from those younger employees who were born into the digital era and have grown up networked 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Also, nowhere does the article suggest that the junior staff is setting social media strategy for clients. Nowhere. Not even a hint.

I’m with BlogHer co-founder Jory Des Jardins, who commented, “I think it’s brilliant that (Edelman’s) sr people are learning the more tactical aspects of (social media) from the digital natives on staff. Even if we old folks get the promise of social media, we don’t necessarily know how to build our Tweetdecks. Kudos to Edelman.”

But more, I’m bemused that so many people drew faulty conclusions from the article (which, by the way, was pretty poorly written in its own right) and then slammed Edelman based on those inaccurate assumptions.

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #496: October 29, 2009

2009-10-29T20:42:40+00:00

Content summary: Dan York suggests FIR Friends of Google Wave and goes retro with an email newsletter, has lots to say about Google and Facebook, and more; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; News That Fits: Edelman takes heat for ‘rotnem’ and a Chicago Tribune article and is defended by competitors, Twitter costs British economy less than people who gaze out the window, Pew reports on social media use, why there’s nothing to fear from Google Social Search; listener comments discussion; music from The Living End; and more.

Get FIR:

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for October 29, 2009: A 66-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Wokingham, Berkshire, England.

FIR #496 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday November 2…

Follow-up: Those damn Gen-Yers need to get off my lawn

2009-10-28T20:50:18+00:00

I never thought my previous post would become such a lightning rod for conversation, nor did I think it would require a follow-up. Yet here we are.

The objections to my assertion that recruiters should stop rejecting candidates whose profiles on social networks include photos of college partying can easily be summed up:

These people shouldn’t be hired because posting the photos demonstrates bad judgment that could carry over to the workplace.

My initial point was that millennials—raised in a world of 24/7 peer networking—are part of a different culture with different values. Not better. Not worse. Just different Because they are so incredibly networked, they don’t see the point of creating two distinct personae, one for work and one for the rest of their lives.

Posting a photo of a legal activity is not, to my way of thinking, bad judgment. Getting drunk and cutting loose is not illegal; most people don’t even consider it unethical. Plenty of people you work with like to party and like to drink. What’s more, you don’t have to work with someone long before you know whether they like a good time on Saturday night. The best boss I ever had—Ed Hahn, from Mattel, who was an organizational development expert—told me that the people with whom you work closely never remain strictly co-workers for long. Once you get to know them they become friends, acquaintances, adversaries, or any number of other roles, but not just co-workers.

How hypocritical is it, then to employ a “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” approach to hiring while you already know damn well that some of your best employees like to cut loose on the weekend?

I also utterly reject the argument that sharing such photos makes an individual more likely to share confidential company information.

That Gen-Yers share an open part of their lives—the social activity of partying—doesn’t mean they also share photos of activities that are criminal, deviant, unethical, or socially unacceptable. I wouldn’t hire anyone who shared a photo on Facebook that showed them robbing a gas station, performing acts of pedophilia, or offering a bribe. You shouldn’t hire them either. In these cases, the fact that they shared the photo is, yes, bad judgment, but the behavior itself is the real reason they shouldn’t be hired. I wouldn’t hire them (and neither should you) even if they didn’t share the photo themselves but were tagged in someone else’s upload.

But it’s a huge leap of logic to assume that an employee who posted a picture of himself drinking shots off his girlfriend’s belly is also likely to disclose material information, share a colleague’s private medical information, or reveal competitive plans. Do you really think millennials don’t understand the difference between sharing a personal photo of a good time and violating company policy, laws and regulations, common sense, and ethics requirements?

It’s an equally long leap to conclude that college kids who partake in binge drinking at frat parties are more likely than those who don’t post such pictures to commit crimes like vandalism and rape.

The argument has also been made that maintaining privacy is important. I couldn’t agree more, but it’s not the company’s decision about what an employee or candidate chooses to keep private. When The Mayo Clinic launched its “Sharing Mayo Clinic” blog featuring patient stories, I asked whether these weren’t ~~HIPPA~~ HIPAA (Health Information Privacy and ~~Portability~~ Accountability Act) violations. No, I was told; the institution’s lawyers made it clear that once a patient opted to disclose that information him or herself, HIPPA no longer applied.

Job candidates should enjoy the right to make the same choice. And even then, sharing that you’re being treated for depression is a far cry from sharing that you like to play drinking games with your friends on Saturday night.

The ranks of millennials coming out of college include scads of brilliant people—some of them may be equipped to solve your company’s biggest engineering problem, create the next bestselling product, or even become your CEO. If you want criteria by which to judge a candidate, look at their qualifications and education. Scrutinzie their work samples. Put them through tests. Study their behavior during the interview. Check their references. Rate the degree of passion they demonstrate for the kind of work you want them to do. Run drug tests. But rejecting them because you don’t understand the culture of a networked generation and view a photo from a party as “bad judgment” seems self-destructive—but it’s great news for your more enlightened competitor.

Oh, and don’t forget that checking a candidate’s social network profiles without disclosing your intent to do so can cause your company serious legal problems, according to the PDF document, “Social Networks and Employment Law: Are you Putting your Organization at Risk?.

Recruiters shouldn’t care about that Facebook picture of your beer pong game in college

2009-10-27T02:35:31+00:00

It’s becoming a litany.

In a meeting or during a presentation, somebody—usually an HR rep or recruiter—will tell me how many candidates she has rejected based on something she saw on the candidate’s Facebook or MySpace profile. In every case, it has been something along the lines of a photo taken during a party at college. My response: “If your employer knew what you did during college, would you have been hired?”

College is for two things: Getting an education and being stupid. The only difference between college when I went and college today is that there was no Facebook, or anything remotely like it, during my days at university.

Today, we’re living through one of the most remarkable transitions in history. We’re moving from an era during which people were secretive and kept things close to the vest to an era where everyone is networked and everyone shares everything. And those who grew up in the soon-to-be bygone era are making hiring decisions about people who grew up in the era that is hurtling toward us like an out-of-control freight train.

It has become conventional wisdom for people of my generation to wag their fingers at millenials, warning them of the dangers that await if they’re too open with their extracurricular activities. Even Dan Tapscott, whose “Grown Up Digital” does an admirable job of explaining the Net Generation, insists that the one thing they don’t get is that sharing outrageous behavior today will come back to bite them in the ass a few years down the road when they’re trying to get hired.

That’s true today, with people who kept their late-night fraternity-house drinking binges on the QT. It won’t be so long, though, before the hiring managers have shared just as much of their social lives online as the recruits they’re looking to hire. The fact that people got drunk and engagred in questionable behavior in school just won’t matter.

Consequently, that Animal House behavior really shouldn’t matter to hiring managers today. Like I say, the hiring manager probably engaged in some pretty stupid behavior of his own when he was in college, too. The fact that he did shots off a co-ed’s belly when he was 19 didn’t make him a bad hire when he was 23.

Back in 1987, Judge Douglas Ginsburg didn’t make it onto the U.S. Supreme Court because he’d smoked a little pot when he was in college. Today, denying a job to anybody who ever tried marijuana in college carves a huge slice out of the pool of prospective candidates. A prospect’s social behavior in college is simply not a predictor of their value as an employee.

Recruiters and HR people can even eek out a competitive edge by overlooking a four-year-old picture on a Facebook page and focusing on their qualifications today. After all, that’s what today’s candidates will be doing in five years when they’re the ones making the hiring decisions.

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #495: October 26, 2009

2009-10-26T22:19:00+00:00

Content summary: Shel’s in Nashville; assembling today’s show; Neville’s conference experiences last week: different events but similar issues; Michael Netzley reports on Edelman’s country-by-country Digital Brand Index in Asia; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; News That Fits: Twitter is the killer app for customer service, Pepsi withdraws sexist iPhone app, Volkswagen USA to launch new Golf GTi via iPhone app, US government social media security guidelines, Boots launches health website and NHS website lets you rate your local doctor, big companies bypass the media and go direct to consumers; listeners’ comments discussion and FIR Friendfeed Room round-up; music from Sheila Nicholls; and more.

Get FIR:

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for October 26, 2009: A 55-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England.

FIR #495 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Thursday October 29…