Three to See this week looks into the "near present" with posts on the blurring of the physical and digital worlds, CV mash-ups and Generation-Y in the workplace.
Pranav Mistry's talk for TED: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology is truly awesome. Mistry has been working to develop ways of bringing the physical and digital world together and has succeeded with SixthSense Technology. Watch the clip:
In Mash-Up my Career on Digital Recruiting, Sinead Bunting makes the connection between the CV or Resume and new mapping tools that allow individuals to tag their personal history, experience or aspirations to a location. Bunting suggests that in the future candidates will be logging their career history not on CV's or Resume's but will instead create "a 3G biography" or "digital Career portfolio" that includes this type of information.
After reading the post I realised that, almost without thinking, I've been laying the foundations for the kind of mash-up journal described - every photo or video tagged or event RSVP'd represents a stop-off in my own trail across the Earth - some of which I share professionally and some personally. I'm interested to know what recruiters make of this - will information presented in the way described by Bunting help to make sourcing and selection decisions?
My third pick this week comes from Jason Seiden: This Is Bullsh**t: Managing Generations. Seiden opens the post with the statement "Picking your managerial approach based on someone's birthday is astrology not strategy". This is a fantastic and provocative piece in which Seiden argues that organisations should worry less about perceived differences in generations because they are not actionable and are masked by others factors such as:
As part our coverage of HR Executive's HR Technology Conference & Exposition 2009, I interview William Tincup, Principal with Starr Tincup the Human Capital marketing specialists, about his views on the conference this year and what is in store for HR practitioners over the next 12 months.
CE> Why did you attend the conference this year? WT> The conference is all about having conversations - whether it be looking back at what happened during '09 or looking forward to 2010 - there is an immense amount of thought leadership at this conference - be it in the presentions, panels or informal conversations. Its also good to walk the floor, meet people, make connections and see and hear the innovations of vendors and practitioners.
CE> What was good? WT> It is the one time each year that we can all get together to discuss the same topics. Last year the recession dominated the conversation - the fear of the unknown was the underlying theme where as this year there is a hint of optimism and the talk has been about economic recovery. I think there was a real atmosphere of having shared an experience over the past year.
CE> What are the priorities for employers over the next 12 months? WT> Well, I think we have to rewind 18 months to two years and dust off the priorities at that time, they haven't really changed, but organisations needed to shift focus to react to the economic situation. Back then the priorities were:
Engaging and incentivising employees
Retaining key staff
Succession planning for the gap between current leaders and those that are nearly ready
I'd add a new one to these three though - the need to displace inefficiency by integrating talent processes with the organisation's "System of Record".
CE> How should HR approach these priorities? WT> HR needs to switch gears and be more pro-active than it has previously. In 2010 reactivity is not going to benefit employers, HR leaders will have to look at the biggest weaknesses they have in their organisations and develop a plan to deal with them.
Next they'll need to work out how much its going to cost and where the return will come from - they will then have to build and present a business case to their CFO. In 2010 they'll be fighting for budgets and so it will be important to think about how to present the case and show the return on investment. They should involve their vendors in this - vendors that help HR to build the case and can share what is happening in the market and what other customers are doing will be the most successful.
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.
This week's Three To Read has an unashamedly techie bias with a look at how HR is using technology to tackle its Service Delivery priorities, a post on Enterprise 2.0 - the buzzword for institutional use of social media - and a timely guide to technology jargon past and present.
According to research by Towers Perrin, more than 60% of organisations are intending to maintain, or increase spending on HR technology in 2009. In the post Has the Financial Crisis Shifted HR's Priorities, Towers Perrin go on to assert that Talent and Performance management systems are the number one priority, with a number of other service delivery issues following closely behind, as illustrated in the chart below:
Larry Dignan over at ZDNet shared his views on why social networking tools will go enterprise: All your employees are using them. The post draws on Forrester's Third Annual Social Technographics Profile which indicates that more than 80% of US internet users are now active in social media. Dignan points to the table below showing the social activities of users and suggests that we're close to the tipping point where the use of social tools in the workplace becomes inevitable.
To finish off this week I've found something for those of us feeling overwhelmed by talk of virtual desktops, VoIP and 'the cloud'. Carolyn Duffy Marsan's post 12 words you can never say in the office is a helpful way of 'joining the dots' on technologies old and new.
I hope that you enjoy this weeks Three To Read - if you'd like more please browse my bookmarks.
In this guest posting from Sam Higgins, StepStone's US Marketing Manager, we hear about what some HR departments are doing to avoid the bloopers of previous downturns.
In reading a recent article by David Shadovitz over at HR Executive Online, I found some encouraging news for HR. Shadovitz quotes a report, released late last month by Towers Perrin, showing that 2/3 of companies surveyed planned to either increase or keep steady their level of investment in HR Technology during 2009.
This data, while counter-intuitive, dovetails with the anecdotal experiences shared by many vendors in the space of lengthened buying cycles, larger buyer selection teams, and a greater scrutiny of, and demand for, clear business value.
This graphic shows the breakdown:
What strikes me about this data, is that it seems to go against the conventional wisdom of the HR pros I have discussed this topic with in the past. For many, it is believed spending in these areas can often be viewed outside HR as a "Nice to Have" investment, and consequently one of the first areas on the chopping block when budget cuts are demanded.
In fact, we recently discussed this very topic with noted expert Heidi Spirgi from Knowledge Infusion. In the clip below (excerpted from this full Talent Management Webinar), Heidi shared with us the "Past Mistakes" that HR has made during previous economic downturns. These endemic errors in thinking are areas in which she spends a great deal of time counseling clients.
Past Mistakes Include:
Being Over Reactive
Engaging in little to no strategic planning
Allowing technology projects to come to a halt
Failing to see the opportunity available in the downturn
My question is this: Given these traditional shortsighted mistakes made during financial crises, coupled with this new data from Towers Perrin, it is fair to say that HR appears to have learned its lesson from history?
Are these new numbers indicative of a change in thinking about strategic talent management, or simply the result of a rising tide of talent technology ubiquity?
I would love to hear how your company's views on technology expenditures have changed, and how your HR Tech projects have been influenced or eliminated as a result of the events of the last year.
As part our coverage of HR Executive's 
