My "Social HR" predictions for 2014

Twitter Meta Moo! too far? (Photo credit: Josh Russell)

Well I don't normally do such posts :) And as my professor from college advised "Predicting, specially about the future is hazardous" :)

But I thought, at the most, what can happen by Dec 2014? At worst I will have egg on my face, at best you'll not remember I posted this :D

So here goes:

• Employee Referrals will go social - more and more employers who hire in large numbers will tap their employees' social networks and leverage social tech like leaderboards and public recognition to drive referrals. On a related note I would love to see one or more of the larger Applicant Tracking Systems bake in social referrals within the tool.
• Gamification will impact Assessments, Onboarding and Learning - Gamification is the process of making tasks social, that require people to move from level to level with social recognition elements also built in will be deployed in organizations from Assessments, to Onboarding to Learning
• Large organizations will deploy their own version of MOOCs - Massive Open Online Courses are impacting how people learn (at school with firms like Khan Academy) to higher education (Coursera). In 2014 I think large organizations would leverage "internal MOOCs" to train new staff or some large organizational initiatives.
• Recognition will try to go social - Have mentioned this earlier in the context of referrals - but here I am talking about the individual and team recognition by peers on a social platform - spreading to the enterprise - however standalone recognition platforms will need to get integrated into intranets or Enterprise Social Networks for this to be happening better
• Employer Branding will move from social engagement to social advertising - As Facebook and Twitter both get pressured by the markets to monetize, more and more companies will be used Facebook ads and Twitter promoted tweets to reach different talent segments
• Content specialists will be used by HR - whether internal hires or by agencies, these would be the people who will showcase the culture and SMEs externally and role modelling behaviours internally triggering conversations and measuring impact.

What do you think?

Updated: Here's what I think will *NOT* happen in HR techonology (social or otherwise):

• Big Data - Let's admit it, in 99.99% of companies HR doesn't have the "small data" - so getting to big data and predictive analytics in 2014 is unlikely for HR folks.
• Wearable computing - Yes I've seen the video of how Google Glass can help in onboarding new employees, but that won't happen in 2014.
• Crowdsourcing - Some companies (which you can count on your fingertips) are turning to employees to crowdsource things from product to ideas on working policies, but 99% of companies will not do it (or fail if they do it - because the overall ecosystem is not in place)

30 Twitter users I learn the most from

When people ask me "But what do I do on Twitter, my friends and family are on all Facebook" I try telling them - that as an open platform Twitter allows you to follow and learn from the very best in the business - so I thought I would put together a list of Twitter users I learn from a lot.

1. Tom Peters - yes the uber-guru of Management - shares his views in his distinctive passionate voice and opinions on what is triggering his mind on a day to day basis. Follow him at https://twitter.com/tom_peters
2. David Gurteen - I have followed David's KM blog for more than a decade and his Twitter stream is focused on Knowledge Management, KM events and KM jobs. Follow him at https://twitter.com/DavidGurteen
3. Luis Suarez - Another person I have followed for the last decade Luis is a Social Business Enabler at IBM. You can follow him at https://twitter.com/elsua
4. Shel Israel - Shel and Scoble wrote the first book on business blogging many years ago, and have written the changing nature of computing in their new book "Age of Context" - Shel's a part of Silicon Valley ecosystem and coaches entrepreneurs to tell their story. Follow him at https://twitter.com/shelisrael
5. John Sumser - John is one of the most respected analysts of online recruitment - and his tweets link to articles on HR Examiner that he runs. Follow him at https://twitter.com/JohnSumser
6. Jon Ingham - Jon is from UK -  another HR blogger I have followed down the years and specially look forward to his live-tweets from the many global HR conferences he addresses and attends. Follow him at https://twitter.com/joningham
7. Ross Dawson - Ross is based in Australia and is a futurist - tracking how various industries and how people themselves will change in the future. You can follow him at https://twitter.com/rossdawson
8. Daniel Pink - Dan is author of multiple books and curates some very interesting content from across the world https://twitter.com/DanielPink
9. Sameer Patel - Sameer is SVP at SAP and a votary of how social has to be embedded in business processes to make it better for people to do work. https://twitter.com/SameerPatel
10. S Sivakumar - top executive at ITC, his tweets are a very amazing curation of extraordinary facts, news from around the world and beyond https://twitter.com/S_Sivakumar
11. Alan Lepofsky - analyst at Constellation RG, tracks the social collaboration marketplace and great to follow if you want to keep a track of what developments various vendors are doing https://twitter.com/alanlepo
12. Mark Fidelman - author and Forbes columnist - Mark tracks the social business space and how influencers are shaping product consideration. He's also co-founded a company in that space called Raynforest. Follow him at https://twitter.com/markfidelman
13. Robert Scoble - follow him at https://twitter.com/Scobleizer to know the latest development in the startup space in Silicon Valley 
14. Marcia Conner - author of The New Social Learning - Marcia looks at various trends shaping learning and training - follow her at https://twitter.com/marciamarcia
15. Ray Wang - Founder of Constellation RG, tweets about tech and also food :) Follow him at https://twitter.com/rwang0
16. Dan Tapscott - author and keynote speaker Dan tweets his points of view and also news and links to great content https://twitter.com/dtapscott
17. Karthik Srinivasan - Head of Social at Ogilvy India tweets about media, social media, his family and opinions about almost everything. Follow him at https://twitter.com/beastoftraal
18. Haroon Bijli - A twitter friend who is now a colleague, Haroon tracks the marketing, communication industry as well as tweets his views on Indian politics - follow him at https://twitter.com/bijli
19. Abhijit Bhaduri - CLO of Wipro, author and cartoonist - Abhijit tweets links to interesting articles about learning, storytelling and human performance. Follow him at https://twitter.com/AbhijitBhaduri
20. Dan Pontefract - Dan is author of The Flat Army and now helps firms become more collaborative - tweets about his views on the same :) Follow him on https://twitter.com/dpontefract
21. Susan Scrupski - Susan is a community builder and currently she is building a community of Change Agents, looking to reinvent the world of work. Follow her at https://twitter.com/ITSinsider
22. R Sukumar - CIO and Head of Innovation at Cognizant tweets links to an eclectic but always very very interesting items. Follow him at https://twitter.com/rsukumar
23. Harold Jarche - posts some blog posts and links to some thought provoking stuff about the new world of work and learning. Follow him here https://twitter.com/hjarche
24. NS Rajan - The CHRO of the Tata Group posts pithy observations about work and performance sometimes in a form of a pun and sometimes in rhyme. Follow him at https://twitter.com/RajanNS
25. Yashwant Mahadik - The HR Head of Business Transformation and Global Learning at Philips, Yash posts links to interesting news items and also the goings on in Philips too https://twitter.com/IndianYash
26. Kavi Arasu - The head of learning at Asian Paints, Kavi posts content from his daily reading that spans technology, social media and learning. Follow him at https://twitter.com/_Kavi
27. Vivek Paranjpe - the Group CHRO at Reliance Industries, tweets about India, skills and what people need to do to work better. Follow him at https://twitter.com/vivekparanjpe
28. Anand Pillai - The CLO at Reliance posts links to interesting news, inspirational quotes and you can follow him at https://twitter.com/Anand__Pillai
29. Rachel Happe - the cofounder of The Community Roundtable Rachel tweets about how companies are leveraging communities to achieve business success Follow her at https://twitter.com/rhappe
30. Jeremiah Owyang - tracking how the collaborative economy is disrupting business models and how companies are dealing with it - Follow him at https://twitter.com/jowyang