Key Engagement Question: Would You Recommend a Friend to Work Here?

One of the most important questions when it comes to employee engagement is, “Would you recommend a friend to work here?”

One of my Gen Y mentee’s called me last week. The problem was I was in Boston on business and she knew that. So when she called I knew there was a problem. As I glanced at the phone, my thought was, “What now?”

When we finally talked she told me that a friend of hers was applying for a position at her company and had asked if she could do an internal transfer of her resume to the hiring manager. She wanted to know, “what is it like to work there?”

Would you recommend your organization?

The New Org Chart: Identifying the REAL Information Brokers in Your Business

New York City is known as a city to people watch.

As I ride the subway each morning, the ride takes me through neighborhoods that have both private and public schools. The cars are inundated with teenagers on their way to school. Just try and imagine a room full of teenagers, all divided into small groups.

I always look up as they come in the subway car: Youth and lots of noise. I watch and try to pick the leaders in each group, and it is so easy to spot them in their clusters.

Who are the real leaders?

Volunteering: How You Can Turn It Into the Ultimate Team-Building Event

My daughter decided to volunteer through a program at her job.

Each employee has the opportunity to volunteer their services and receive a day off in return. She was up early on a Saturday morning and headed into New York City to work at a soup kitchen in the Bowery.
To her surprise, basically the entire division that she worked with was there. She was really surprised to see the senior executives there in their jeans and sweatshirts.

She could not stop talking about the experience and how wonderful for her company to sponsor such an event even if there was not a day off in return. She met many of the people in the kitchen and got a chance to really have a conversation with a number of them one-on-one.

Employee Engagement? In a Business, It Needs to Start at the Very Top

A fish rots from the head down, as the saying goes.

While the word rot sounds offensive, let’s just say it starts from the top.

This week, I was having a conversation when someone mentioned to me that their new CEO of her company was in town. She was slated to be in the New York office for a couple of days.

This CEO met with the senior staff, and as they gave her a tour of the building, she passed numerous employees. In that passing she acknowledged no one — no eye contact, no nod of the head, and basically no “how are you?”

High Performance HR? It’s All About Technology AND Social Media

I only have 90 connections, I know but I was only connected to LinkedIn about a year ago.”

“Yes, I did look her up on LinkedIn and I thought “ ‘how you could be the head of HR and only have 32 connections?’ ”

These statements came from people I spoke with last week concerning the use of LinkedIn.

It seems that a lot of folks (professionals) have been asleep at the switch. The use of social media has transformed the landscape. I know of people that are dissatisfied with their career but they spend all their free time on Facebook instead of Linkedin. These same folks basically set up a page at one time on LinkedIn but never really went back to it.

Social media: THE most important tool for HR

Over the past couple of weeks, LinkedIn has slowly uncovered some new tools coming our way: Linked Classmates and LinkedIn Talent Pipeline. I can only image that what we see now from Linkedin will look nothing like what it will be in the future.

How could this be?

Social Media has changed the landscape of not only corporate America but our personal lives as well. Organizations are struggling with social media policy and how to integrate it within the cocoon of their organizations.

Our personal lives have been transformed with the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr. I often wonder sometimes what it was like before the onslaught of these tools. I call them tools because that is the way that I view each of them.

Their use allows each of us to connect with people that we could not in a thousand years ever connect to. It allows us to connect and keep in touch in ways that snail mail, or phones for that matter, never could.

Are you kidding me?

But in my sphere, LinkedIn is by far the most important tool for HR. Where else can you get a glimpse of a person or eavesdrop on someone’s profile in a legitimate way? This is what talent scouting is about. But when you look at senior leaders in the HR profiles it sometimes makes you shake your head, because there seems to be no real use of it.

My daughter told me an incredible story of a senior executive of her firm that refuses to use the computer. He writes out everything longhand and gives them to his assistant to type. All senior executives were given iPads to use in the sales calls and he flat out refuses to use one, saying it is a waste of time.

I recall a senior level executive who everyone assumed was way in over their head in their new role. This was confirmed when the executive had to prepare a presentation and he did not know how to put a deck together. He finally had to admit that he had never had to assemble one, not only from the technology vantage point, but even from just composing the slides.

Yes, one of the main competencies going forward for will be the use of HR technology.

The intersection of technology and analytics

HR technology and analytics is helping to transform HR into a decision science with a measurable impact on business. The expanded use of the Internet for the delivery of HR applications, especially on a service basis, is also emphasizing the importance of HRIS for organizations of all sizes. This creates new roles for HR professionals and the imperative to develop strong HR technology competencies.

Technology is fully embedded in so many aspects of business, so much so that understanding the use of technology in all areas of the business, and particularly in relation to human and organizational capital, enables HR professionals to speak the language of business in an environment that is increasingly technology-driven.

The use of social media leads to new ways of collaborating, organizing work, building teams and developing new knowledge and skills, and this can help further build organizational and human capital.

High Performance HR

Research indicates that companies with the most high-performing HR function behave differently when it comes to the use of HR technology in efficiency and effectiveness metrics. And, they also operated with 16 percent fewer HR staff.

So yes, the landscape of HR technology revolves not only around HRIS, SaaS and Talent Management systems, but also their new brethren of Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook on the other end of the spectrum.

Eventually all this technology will all collaborate for the greater good of the organization, so let’s all get on board.

Why You Need to Hire People With the Customer Service Mindset

“We hire happy people and teach them to make sandwiches.” ”To maintain a connection between the front lines and the back office, every manager is required to spend four days a year on the shop floor.” (Pret a Manager). 

“We hire ‘customer service people’ and teach them all about coffee.” (Starbucks).

This week, I ordered some merchandise from Amazon and an audible books. Problem was that I made a mistake and downloaded a Kindle book when I meant to order an audible book. I also ordered toner for my printer and when it arrived, it was the wrong toner.

What Steve Jobs Taught Us About The Power of Following Your Passion

My daughter lives upstairs and last Wednesday night I heard her running down stairs. When she poked her head in my office, she said “Steve Jobs just died.”

At that moment I wanted to say in slow motion, noooooo!!!! I got up and we went into our TV room and turned to CNBC to watch the coverage. My wife came in and we kind of sat around misty eyed as if we knew him personally.

My daughter talked about all the cool products that his company created. I talked about his prowess as a business disrupter who followed his passion and changed the world. My wife wanted to know if he had family, if he was married, and whether he had kids.

Over the next few days these type reactions have played out in all forms of media.

Business Innovation: Your Talent Management Strategy Is the Key

New technology and innovation has always had a central place in the growth of business. In today's digital world, innovation has become an even more crucial element of success in business. The recent growth of mobile computing, the web and numerous other technologies are constantly reshaping the face of business. Even business education is changing with a growth in websites like MBA Online offering online education as a legitimate means of getting a business degree. To see more evidence of the power of innovation we only need to read the latest business headlines.

On Friday as I backed out of my driveway, I heard news tidbits on the radio about a company that was possibly announcing bankruptcy. As the news recycled, it was announced that it was Kodak that was possibly going to make the announcement.

Also this week, Amazon announced that yes, they are getting into the tablet business with the new Kindle Fire. As a Kindle fanatic, I read everything I could about the product. At the other end of the spectrum, Borders officially closed their last store last week.

The Kodak dilemma was not a real shocker, but I was extremely interested in it. My hobby is photography and I remember buying dozens of boxes of film at a time. I even had a darkroom in my first house. And now, because of slow reaction to the transformation of the photo industry, they are down for the count.

Innovation as part of the business landscape

HR Transformation: The Old Way of Doing Things Is Over and Finished

Kay, my father’s way of doing things is over, it’s finished,” said Michael Corleone in discussing their business transformation in The Godfather.

 
Last week, it was announced here that the TLNT Transform conference is scheduled for February 26-28, 2012 in Austin, TX. The phrase that caught my eye was, “Share Fresh Ideas at a Different Kind of HR Conference.”

I once worked for a boss who told me that she did not think much of the strategic aspects of HR. To her,  it was the “fancy stuff” and we should all concentrate of the basic tenets of HR.

HR today is not your father’s or mother’s human resources. HR today is on the cusp of changing the entire profession.

Anyone that doubts this should just take a look at the level of articles being shared on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook by HR pros. Take a look at the various conventions held throughout the year and the type seminars being given. Everyone in this profession is at a point that they have to step up their game.