Salesforce launches @Rypple as Work.com and partnership with Workday #DF12

In the huge Dreamforce user conference by Salesforce here are some interesting updates in the HR tech sector.

You might remember that I reviewed Rypple on this blog which was acquired by Salesforce later. Well now Salesforce in its quest to become a total cloud and social ERP solution announced the launch of Work.com and a partnership with the hot cloud based HRMS vendor, Workday.

Work.com helps companies deliver performance in three key areas:

• Alignment — Today’s workplace is more fragmented than ever. We work remotely and virtually and have people spread across the globe. At the same time, the pace of business is accelerating, placing a premium on getting the right information to the right people as quickly and efficiently as possible. In fact, a recent study by Savo Group found that 40 percent of businesses suffer from poor alignment of messaging, sales tools, and seller skills. With Work.com, teams can manage in real-time, drive alignment with social goals, and solicit and receive ongoing feedback and coaching.
• Motivation — A recent study from Market Tools found that 76 percent of workers are unsatisfied with the amount of recognition they receive at work, while 77 percent said they would work harder if their efforts were better recognized. With Work.com, enterprises can create a culture of meaningful recognition at work. Now people can recognize colleagues with custom badges that reflect company culture and values. The recognition a person receives becomes part of their social profile in Salesforce, allowing people to build their reputation and colleagues to identify experts.
• Performance — Performance reviews are among the most hated processes in business. A study by Reuters found that 80 percent of workers are dissatisfied with their performance reviews and would like to see them better reflect their real work. Work.com enables painless, productive reviews that actually improve performance by capturing all the achievements, recognition, and feedback a person receives and calibrate performance across teams.

Work.com employee social profiles reflect their expertise, goals and performance right inside Chatter, helping them build their reputation.

Interesting times ahead for Social HR :)

Oracle puts its money in the #socialrecruiting ring

Image via CrunchBase

Image via CrunchBase

So after the Taleo ATS acquisition Oracle has now acquired SelectMinds, a cloud based social networking company used by recruiters.

“Recruiting candidates through employee referrals is widely acknowledged as the most effective method to find talent through trusted contacts,” Oracle executive vice president Thomas Kurian said in a release. “Making recruiting efforts efficient and seamless by leveraging social connections and through mobile applications helps companies find better quality candidates and continue to build the pipeline for future talent.”

Taleo has some social recruiting feature with Linkedin and it would really get bolstered by SelectMinds' acquisition which adds the ability for social job distribution, creating talent communities and Facebook pages. 

Musings on Social Learning

Learning has always been social, in the real world. Think about the time you learned how to cycle or drive a car. You decided to ask an expert you trusted. They gave you instructions. You practiced. They gave you feedback. You failed a couple of times. And then if you kept at it, you could cycle/drive - first tentatively and then with time, without consciously thinking about it.


However, learning in the real world is different from how organizations believe it to work.

In organizations, your manager decides you need to learn something (mostly because the "competency model" tell him to do a job, you need a skill). Your wishes on whether you want to learn it are hardly taken into account.

Then you are packed off to a "training program" where others like you have been "nominated" by their managers. And then you are subjected to some "training games" and exposed to some theory about whatever you have to be trained on. And if you're lucky you do some role plays, case studies and tests , post which you returned to your workplace with a certificate of training.

So training over. But when does learning take place?

Learning takes place when the "knowledge" gained is actually applied in the context of work. What happens with a person tries a new way of working that he has supposedly "learned"? Work suffers. He fails once or twice. And then his manager, impatient that time is passing tells him to get a move on.

So he reverts back to the old way of doing things. And learning is nipped in the bud.

That is the sad truth of "learning & development/training" in most organizations.

How could social technologies help?

1. First, creating a community of fellow learners before they "attend training" would help them to learn from each others' experiences.
2. Focusing away from "competencies needed" to people sharing their expertise and strengths.
3. The facilitator sharing content and theory before the training - so that face to face time could be used for practice and feedback
4. The community of learners could be a support and ideation group when they go back to the workplaces and implement the learnings.
5. The managers could also be a part of the community to understand how better to support their people's learning to be translated into the workplace

What are the other ways in which social technologies can aid learning? Share in the comments below

Social Media and HR at @SHRMIndia's #FirstPeople Conference

Society for Human Resource Management (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Next Saturday I would be joining Ravishankar (Chief People Officer of MindTree) and Aadil Bandukwala (Social Media Talent Acquisition of Dell in India) at SHRM India's conference "First People" in Goa.

You can see the sessions here.

If you're going to be there, do connect with me :)

If you're not going to be there you can still ask the panel a question on the topic on SHRM India's Facebook page here.

Social networking and job hunting

So I get featured in today's Times of India Crest Edition talking about how businesses are using social media to hire and find great people.

You can see the full article here

An excerpt:

opinion is echoed by Gautam Ghosh, a social media evangelist whose blog (www. gautamblogs. com) was ranked among the top 25 HR blogs globally by HRWorld. "The people that you are likely to follow on Twitter are usually your industry peers;some seniors and some juniors. Over a period of time, you are bound to use this community - where almost everyone is net-savvy, smart and well-connected - to seek a job or a 'hard working' employee because you know your message will reach the people who are interested in your industry and your work, " he says.

Ghosh also speaks of a trend where job openings are now automatically posted onto social networks. "As soon as a firm posts a job vacancy on its website, the entry is now automatically pushed to Twitter and Facebook through specialized apps. In India, for instance, companies have begun to use My Parichay - an app that manages their recruitment efforts on social media. "

Looking for Social Business and HR help? Call me :)

So it's been a few months since I have started freelancing. I thought, I should again remind you what I am in the market for :)

1. If you're a large organization wondering how to train your HR team in leveraging social media for employment, engagement, recognition and learning, then call me :)
2. If you're an innovative HR technology firm leveraging social, mobile and cloud and want to reach HR decision makers, then let me know :)
3. If as a buyer you want help in deciding which HR technology to choose and which would would relevant for your organization's needs, then call me :)

To remind you, I have worked as an internal employee in HR as well as an external consultant in the social business space both in the services as well as product space, and hence can look at all sides of the equation :)

So what are you waiting for? Call me at +91-98731-41236 or email me at gautam@gautamblogs.com :)

How Organizational Culture is the key to social business success #socbiz

English: Diagram of Schein's Organizational Behavior Model (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Often you'll hear Social Business (or Enterprise 2.0) enthusiasts say - like we said in the days of KM - "The key to success is people, process and technology"

And then followed by the statement - "Success is dependent 80/90 percent on people"

And yet Wall Street and industry analysts cheer the technology mergers and acquisitions. (see a list Alan maintains)

I believe that "people" issues have a whole lot of other issues that get hidden behind that word that companies might miss. I have mentioned "culture" in the title of the post which is itself like "people" a composite of many other things.

Here are some:

1. Vision : Leaders and employees need to know why social technologies are being deployed and how do they link to the existing vision of the company. 
2. Role Modeling: Leaders need to exemplify the sharing and collaboration behavior on social tools that they expect employees to display.
3. Rewards and Recognition: Social tools have to be in the "flow of work" - but traditional reward systems that do not recognize and reward new behaviors would be a hindrance to widespread adoption.
4. Linkage with goals: The team focusing on implementation needs to learn with each and every group in the organization to map how social technologies can help them achieve their goals - in a faster and better way. Without articulating that, the support of crucial group leaders and middle managers would be a pipedream.
5. Finding and empowering employee advocates: Let's admit it. In most large workplaces the majority of the employees are disengaged. Expecting them to adopt new tools without being clear of future value is going to be difficult at best. Organizations must map the actively engaged employees who are active creators and sharers of content and showcase how the platforms have helped them achieve their goals.
6. Organizational values: These are the big ways in which shape the behavior of employees. Is dissent encouraged? What happens when people make mistakes? Can leaders be questioned and criticised openly? How do they respond to such questions? These are the "norms of behavior" which operate on the ground. Answers to such questions determine whether social, openness and transparency would thrive in the organization.
7. Education and Training: I won't say much about it but to share Charlene Li's excellent presentation on the topic:
   Training for Social Media Success from Charlene Li

There is no one way to do "Social" #socbiz

A segment of a social network (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Over the last few years the external facing groups of companies have embraced (enthusiastically or in some cases- gingerly) social networks and online communities to connect with external stakeholders. Marketing, Customer Service and PR groups in organizations have leveraged it to build an army of fans and advocates.

However, many feel that getting an organization ready internally should be the first step to being a true "social business" I also indeed believed that. Social can scale only if employees are engaged and connected to each other and external stakeholders.

However, the reality in most organizations is that the budget of the external facing groups is much higher. Social there also shows more immediate benefits and benchmarking is easy (however can get misleading)

So if there is budget available and executive sponsorship then an organization should focus on getting internally ready and externally focused at the same time. However for the vast majority of organizations the "social competencies" would be learned by folks in marketing, sales, PR, customer support and then travel to the other parts of the organization.

This is not to advise HR and other people in organizations not to focus on social - far from it. But to recognize that once top management understands the value of social media they would expect that other groups then leverage the tools for their business ends.

However there are differences. Externally social media campaigns can be done again and again to get across to more and more customers/fans. However when launching a social initiative internally, it would need to be successful in a far smaller group and would need to be designed to succeed.

More thoughts on how to do that in the coming posts.

The cost of NOT becoming a socially connected business #socbiz

For all the skeptics out there who still think that this "social thing" is a fad, here's some interesting numbers McKinsey has come up with:

According to an analysis of 4,200 companies by the business consulting giant, social technologies stand to unlock from $900 billion to $1.3 trillion in value. Two-thirds of the value unlocked by social media rests in “improved communications and collaboration within and across enterprises,” according to the report. Far from a distraction, in other words, social media proves a surprising boon to productivity.

Social technologies have the potential to free up expertise trapped in departmental silos. High-skill workers can now be tapped company-wide. Managers can find out “which employees have the deepest knowledge in certain subjects, or who last contributed to a project and how to get in touch with them quickly,”

Right now, only five percent of all communications and content use in the U.S. happens on social networks, mainly in the form of content sharing and online socializing. But McKinsey analysts point out that almost any human interaction in the workplace can be "socialized"--endowed with the speed, scale, and disruptive economics of the Internet.