#CampusJournos review by @Social_Samosa

So the folks at Social Samosa reviewed the employer branding campaign we started a couple of weeks ago, and had good things to say about it :)

Amid the slew of campaigns on Facebook and Twitter, this campaign is like a breath of fresh air.  While its target audience is B-schools students its move to host the campaign on WordPress is revolutionary and outstanding. Crafting a story instead of voting or sharing pictures with friends calls for greater effort and true creativity, thus posing a challenge much needed by B-schools students. As managers tomorrow they will have to think of ways to be different and lead from the front, this contest gives them the opportunity to think and write, something which is becoming a lost art in the days of “cut, copy, paste”.As an employer branding initiative seeking to change the way budding employees across B-schools in India view Philips, this campaign is definitely a pioneering one. Breaking away from Facebook and Twitter, moving to WordPress.com might be the beginning of a new trend in digital marketing by brands.  A bold move one would say as most youth across India spend a lot of time on Facebook and Twitter but certainly one that is likely to pay off by targeting the right audience!

Some facts so far:

No external agency involved.

Run totally in-house

No “ad spends”. Only cost so far - a $299 Wordpress upgrade and prizes for the winners.

Number of entries by 15  days – 400

Number of unique visitors – 37000 unique visitors

Total page views – 112k+

And the FB likes have gone up by 100% from 2000 two weeks ago J Totally organic!

Philips India's #SocialHR jouney @HRPhilips

Yesterday I co-authored a blog post along with my colleagues Zenobia Madon and Mansoor Hussain for Yash Mahadik's blog. Yash, by the way is HR Head for Philips India and the Global CLO too. It was how over the past year the HR team has "gone social" :)

Some excerpts:

During our 2012 annual HR strategy workshop – Yashwant Mahadik (@indianyash) shared his learning’s, forecast and vision about Social Media & HR and encouraged the team to come out with ideas and strategy to leverage Social Media in HR. 
The more we indulged in leveraging social media the more we learnt that, “it’s not an easy task” – you need certain capabilities to do it effectively (and not many of us had those capabilities – what we had in plenty was enthusiasm and drive). Then we explored partnerships and support from Digital and Social Media agencies, most of them were rather inexperienced in context of leveraging Social Media for HR and especially in the area of Employer Brand building. 
At this point in time @indianyash hired and attracted our co-author of this blog post –@gautamghosh to Philips India and he started off by building awareness and capability of Social Media in the HR team and the senior business leaders. @indianyash was very clear in his steer that, we will build the capability by learning and doing it ourselves. Oh boy!! we did it or are doing it and its so much fun!!
We then moved on to Twitter and the excitement and the learning journey was accelerated. We created a Philips India HR Twitter account and got the entire HR team (70+) on to Twitter. The team getting on to Twitter was awesome fun and the turning point. We had all of kinds – we had some early adopters who took to twitter like ducklings take to water and there were some cautious ones who observed and watched and gradually got on to it. The twitter world welcomed us with open arms. Very quickly, we all got hyper connected with the rest of the HR and Social Media stalwarts on Twitter

Go ahead. Read the full post :)

Related articles

• Reflections on 100 days of #socialMedia in HR at @HRPhilips
• How Can HR Create Value
• Young HR leaders in conversation with @IndianYash #PhilipsHRtalks
• How to Leverage Social Media in HR & Employer Brand Building

Learning Records Store: Capturing how people learn #socbiz

A classroom in Hraðbraut (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I've blogged earlier about the challenges L&D in organizations face.

I first heard about the 70-20-10 model in 2004, which says that 10% learning happens in classroom, 20% by coaching and mentoring and 70% is on the job.

If that is the case, why do organizations spend money and time on the 10% and ignore the 70%?

IMHO, that's because organizations don't believe that they can control or even the visibility to the 70% learning.

But what if they can? With social business activity streams that collate what an employee does at work, there is a new concept emerging. The Experience API (xAPI) or Tin Can API as it is known is hoping to track what an employee does that contributes to learning and store in a Learning Records Store, as distinct from the Learning Management Systems that we have today. In fact, many feel that this is the next version of learning standard (which is SCORM, currently), and will capture "social learning" a lot better.

More about the Experience API here.

It's a fascinating growth for the learning community and I hope to be following this closely as well as hoping to implement this sometime in the future. Do let me know if you're experimenting with the xAPI too.

Reflections on 100 days of #socialMedia in HR at @HRPhilips

So today I complete 100 days at Philips India - in a role that supports the HR team in leveraging social media and technologies to impact their effectiveness and to create new value for the organization.

So what did I learn in my first 100 days at Philips India HR?

1. Management support is critical: India HR Head and global CLO Yashwant Mahadik (Blog, Twitter) is one of the few HR leaders in India who "gets" the fundamental shift and power of social to business. His support in creating my role and then empowering with responsibility is what makes me successful.
2. Cross functional education: As a "social media" enabler in the HR function my role is to ensure that the existing groups within HR (like Recruiting, Learning and Recognition) - so educating and working with them to understand social and how it can help them achieve their own business results. One of the first things was a Social for HR education for all the HR employees.
3. Business education: Being one of the first "social media" hires in Philips India - I am working on "reverse mentoring" some business leaders on how digital and social is impacting businesses and am also working with groups like Strategy & Business Development and the Corporate Communication groups on helping them use social for their work.
4. Content is key: This cannot be over emphasized. As someone who is looking to engage with external audience - understanding who they are and what content they value is one of the main parts of making a role like this successful.
5. Agencies can help - but the strategy has to be yours. In the employer branding space in India I haven't really met agencies who can give you "big ideas" - most of them are great in execution, but you have to rely on your own ideas.
6. Challenge conventional wisdom: When we were thinking of CampusJournos.com - conventional wisdom says that if you want to engage with B School students you have to leverage Facebook and spend on ads to reach out to them. However we went for Wordpress as a blogging platform, spent zero money on ads and achieved more success in engagement than we had ever hoped for :)

#CampusJournos a contest for B School students by @HRPhilips

If you are a fresh MBA student in India. Here is an opportunity for you to tell a story, get noticed, win a prize and make a mark very early on!! 

A unique and fabulous initiative of Philips India HR, where the company is keen to connect with the early in career talent in India. 

We would love to hear your story!! :) Do check out Campus Journos.

Am in the list of the 100 most social HR experts on Twitter by @ValaAfshar

Image via CrunchBase

So Huffington Post columnist and CMO and Chief Customer Officer of Enterasys Vala Afshar, after compiling lists of most social CEOs, CMOs and CIOs compiled a list of most social Human Resources experts on Twitter and I was fortunate to make the list, and the lone Indian representative :)

Here's the full list !

Hope to see more Indian HR professionals on the list next time :)

Social Business thought leaders movements #socbiz

So Rawn Shah, IBM's social business thought leader has left IBM, and in his blog post on Forbes lists a group of social media thought leaders in the recent past who have changed roles, including the likes of Sameer Patel, Susan Scrupski, Chris Carfi, Peter Kim, Maria Ogneva, Eugene Lee and he adds me to the (gasp!) list!

Read the blog post here

Am on number 22 :)

3rd #PhilipsHRtalks Video - @IndianYash in conversation with young HR leaders

Recently we hosted the 3rd edition of the #PhilipsHRtalks ( Storify here)

Here's the video!

Here's a blog post by one of the winners, Rahul Kandhal on the "right" brained HR professional. Do read :)