As part our coverage of HR Executive's HR Technology Conference & Exposition 2009, I interview Josh Bersin, CEO and Founder of Bersin & Associates, about the conference this year and the priorities for HR practitioners over the next 12 months.
Why are you at the conference this year?
What has been interesting at this year's conference (1m 03s)
What else are you interested in? (2m 48s)
What will be the biggest priorities for HR over the next 12 months? (4m 31s)
Apologies for a slightly belated Three To Read this week - I've been away at this year's HR Technology Conference and Exposition produced by HR Executive and have been busily blogging from the event. Indeed this week's Three To Read follow's on from the conference and the posts that I made each day.
In the day one post Allan Schweyer,one of John Sumser's Top 100 Influencersandauthor of "Talent Management Systems" shares his thoughts on the priorities for employers over the next twelve months and how HR should approach them.
There are also great contributions from Don Tapscott on The Dumbest Generation and useful insight into how organisations are enhancing HR service delivery by deploying broad portfolio's of HR Technology from the panel; HR Doesn't Stop in a Down Economy lead by Jason Averbrook.
In day two's post founder of the Saratoga Institute, noted author and a leading proponent of Human Capital measurement, Dr Jac Fitz-Enz gives his views on HR's approach to employer's priorities over the next twelve months.
There are also some interesting comments about the emerging structure of HR departments and what they look for from their technology from the Industry Analyst Panel: Today's Technology Trends and Predictions. Further details were described in the Recruiting Technology Panel:2010 and Beyond - A Corporate Perspective on the Promise, the Hype and the Reality lead by Gerry Crispin.
The post on day three, contained points from Lexy Martin's, presentation The Public Debutof the 12th Annual CedarCrestone Report where she talked about the relative levels of technology adoption in HR departments in different industries and the tools that HR practitioners believe are key to enhancing service delivery in the short-term.
The post also included contributions from Naomi Lee Bloom who set HR practitioners three great challenges and three clear actions for the year ahead.
Unbelievably the conference is already coming to a close. My day started by firing questions at William Tincup, Principal of Human Capital marketing specialists Starr Tincup - his response will be posted shortly. Then I attended the first of the day's sessions: The Public Debut of the 12th Annual CedarCrestone Report presented by Lexy Martin, which delved into the adoption of HR technology by organisations and highlighted some interesting trends.
For example, from their survey research CedarCrestone identified technology adoption by industries in three streams:
Early Adopters - Financial Services, Hi-Tech, Communications and Services
Main Stream Adopters - Retail, Manufacturing, Transport & Utilities, Health and Agricultural
Late Adopters - Public Sector and Higher Education
Interestingly, although considered late in adopting common HR technologies such as recruiting (75% of respondents ave already deployed a talent acquisition tool), the Public Sector and Higher Education were reported to be amongst the most aggressive in deploying Business Intelligence tools - one of six applications that respondents identified as key to service delivery in the short-term:
HR Helpdesk
Competency Management
Performance Management
Absence Management
Reporting & Business Intelligence
Social Networking
The final session of the conference was the closing keynote delivered by Naomi Lee Bloom - Do the Right Thing: HR Technology Strategies for the Best and Worst of Times.
In a humorous and warmly received session, Bloom shared her experience of the recession, her views on what organisations should be doing in order to ride the up-turn and what HR practitioners could do to help:
First find out what drives revenue and profitability in your organisation
Second, define how HR contributes to these drivers
Third, determine the most effective method of delivering HR
Bloom then went on to suggest actionable priorities for HR in the year ahead:
Clean up HR Systems data
Simplify - stop doing the things that do not add value
Review talent requirements and practices.
The conference closed on a high note, literally, as Bloom lead delegates in a rendition of the song from the musical; Annie.
Today started with an interview with Jac Fitz-Enz, CEO of Human Capital Source. In the video below he shares his views on the conference year's conference, the priorities for employers over the next 12 months and how HR should approach them.
Next-up was the Industry Analyst Panel: Today's Technology Trends and Predictions with Lisa Rowan, Naomi Lee Bloom, Jim Holincheck and Josh Bersin participating in discussion chaired by Bill Kutik. This was a great session starting with the panelists talking about Software as a Service as an important architectural decision for HR departments as it ensures that the newest functionality is always easily available to end-users and means that organisations are able to respond rapidly to changing business conditions.
The panel went on to talk about the trend toward less siloed HR functions and predicted the rise in demand for consolidated end-to-end solutions for acquiring and managing talent - either through systems integration or single platforms with modular capability - but issued a warning that organisations would be unwilling to sacrifice functionality to integration.
At the end of the panel I rushed off to meet-up with Josh Bersin, CEO of Bersin & Associates and asked him for his opinions about how HR should approach the challenges of the coming year. The video of this interview will be available shortly.
Rounding off the day was the very entertaining Recruiting Technology Panel:2010 and Beyond - A Corporate Perspective on the Promise, the Hype and the Reality moderated by Gerry Crispin from CareerXroads.
The panelists shared their experiences of using technology to recruit, identifying changing the mindset of practitioners and (internal) customers as the biggest challenge to successful implementation and adoption of new methods.
Interestingly the panel also agreed that one of the gaps in the tool set available to them was a way of gaining visibility over external labour markets: Current tools are concentrated around demand-side data to identify what the organisation needs but there are few tools for assessing supply-side data that enable employers to compare their own current strength in areas of the business to the external market and provide information about that market's profile e.g. size, location etc. Tools like this, the panel concluded, could reduce sleepless nights for many a practitioner with responsibility for Strategic Workforce Planning.
StepStone can be found in booth #315 at Human Resource Executive's 12th Annual HR Technology Conference & Exposition.
Already day one is over, but what a day its been: After Bill Kutik opened the event, Don Tapscott shared his thoughts on how the net generation is changing the world. There were many interesting points in his presentation, but I particularly liked Tapscott's description of what he called 'the generation overlap' - where the tastes and behaviours of parents and their children coincide and the introduction of his latest book, Grown Up Digital, through a short clip - The Dumbest Generation:
After leaving that session I met with Allan Schweyer, Principal with the Center for Human Capital Innovation and had the opportunity to ask for his thoughts on this year's conference, the priorities for employers over the next 12 months and how HR should approach them. Listen to his response in the clip below.
Next on my agenda was Jason Corsello from Knowledge Infusion who delivered an instructive session on why and how to use social tools in the work place, the contents of which was backed-up later in the day with some great real-life examples in the fantastic Talent Management Panel: HR Technology Doesn't Stop In a Down Economy, moderated by fellow Knowledge Infusionist, Jason Averbrook.
The panelists from Target, Dell, Nike and KeyBank shared their experience of building and articulating solid business cases, obtaining budget and implementing broad portfolio's of HR technology to achieve business value. My tweets from the session can be seen below but to get the full stream search Twitter for #tmpanel.
For me the key take-aways from the session were:
Repeatable, standardised processes that are globally applicable are the next stage for firms that have assembled broad technology portfolio's
Present a business case based on the overall benefits that the organisation will enjoy rather than the incremental benefits from individual components - show the total investment and total return, not each line item
In the fast changing economic environment HR needs to enable social collaboration between workers so that new strategies can quickly be designed and executed
So, a great first day with two more to come - roll on Thursday!
StepStone can be found in booth #315 at Human Resource Executive's 12th Annual HR Technology Conference & Exposition.
