HR Tech Central

Employee Loyalty is Dead. Long Live Employee Loyalty.

Posted by Jason Averbook May 17, 2012

Company Loyalty. c. Jimmy Johnson

Loyalty, engagement, commitment, putting the company’s interests first… all ways to describe the kind of employee relationship most employers crave. However, now many are beginning to think “employee loyalty” is dead.

There is an excellent article posted on the Wharton/UPenn blog entitled, Declining Employee Loyalty: A Casualty of the New Workplace. Whether an employee or employer, I encourage you to give it a read as it paints an excellent picture of loyalty in the modern workplace, and how we got here.

I don’t know if employee loyalty is dead, but I have a pretty good sense that it’s on life support. Most organizations we talk to struggle to measure the bottom line impact of loyal workers, but believe engaged employees are more productive, contribute more to the organization’s success, and place a premium on employee loyalty.

On the other side of the equation, most employees say they want to work for an organization that “looks out for its employees,” pays attention to their career path, and provides opportunities for growth. These are the things that would make them want to stick around, despite feeling underpaid.

Some say the employer/employee relationship is no different from any other. The company and the worker each make an investment in the other, and expects that the level of commitment, energy, and effort put into the relationship be reciprocated.

I’m betting we have all have experienced a “one-sided” relationship in some area of our life (friends, partners, business relationships, even with companies, restaurants and brands) and ended up walking away from it because we’re just not wired to put up with unfairness or inequity for too long. We simply expect to get back what we put into our relationships.

This is not a difficult concept and forms the basis for much of the analysis of the state of employee loyalty. Essentially, most in our industry see the lack of engagement, or employee loyalty as an imbalance between the “stuff” employers offer and the “stuff” employees really want. Employees have their list; certain level compensation, benefits, 401(k)’s, career development, opportunity for advancement, etc. and employers have their list; putting the company’s interests first, ignoring other job offers, meeting long term commitments, sharing knowledge and expertise, and evangelizing the brand, to name a few.

So, we go back and forth tweaking the equation on both sides to try to achieve balance. In this exchange, I often hear statement like, “You can’t expect employees to be loyal, if you’re not providing opportunities for career development and advancement.” Or something like, “If the company is willing to lay off workers to achieve shareholder value, how can they expect employees not to consider other job offers as they come along?”

So, here is why I chose the title of this entry, and what I know about long-term, committed relationships. The title has to do with a proclamation that says one reign is over, but another is beginning – and I believe that is the case with loyalty. What I know about long-term, committed relationships is this:

First off, they are not equal, even, unbiased, balanced, and most definitely they are not fair. But we don’t enter into them for fairness, or to get an equal measure of something in return. When we truly engage in a relationship with energy, passion, and commitment, we are not concerned about getting our fair share.

The second point is this; if our commitment is to the other party in the relationship, it will most assuredly fail. I know what you’re thinking but hold on… At best you’ll hit a few snags, bumps in the road, have a few differing points of view. At worst you’ll be deeply divided over important issues, at complete odds with each others’ ideologies, or feel like you’re giving your all with not much coming back your way.

This is where commitment to outcomes, and results trumps individual requirements of staying in the relationship. Long-term relationships survive the bumps, not because the parties are committed to each other, but because they are committed to an ideal – something greater than either party’s “self.”

You want employee loyalty? Don’t ask for employees to be loyal to you, or your organization. Give them a mission, a vision, a purpose to commit to. And if that mission ends in 6-months, 1 year or 10 years, so what? Do you want to haggle or change the world?

The working relationship is changing -and so is the idea of loyalty.

Is it cold and impersonal to create a strategic workforce plan that may mean moving individuals in and out of the organization to achieve success? Is it disloyal for an employee help an organization grow to a point and then take their skills to another small company where they can shine?

Am I suggesting there is no value in building more than a contract relationship here? No. What I’m suggesting is that when companies begin to honestly and openly share their vision of success, and show each employee how they contribute to that success – things like great benefits, or advancement opportunities become less a part of the loyalty equation, if not all together irrelevant.

The truth is, many of the fringe benefits we see today were born out of employers trying to keep employees from unionizing decades ago. Yes, there are dozens of examples of great companies who attract and retain the industries best talent by creating an employee-friendly environment.

But for the vast majority of organizations, play-structures, scooters, swanky cafeterias, and massage rooms are not part of the loyalty equation. And for the vast majority of employees – they don’t need to be.

I believe that if you show your employees exactly where you’re company is headed, what it will take to get there, and how they contribute to that success in specific, transparent detail you’ll experience a new kind of employee loyalty – not to you, but to the cause. Not only that, but if each of you come to the conclusion that the worker either can’t, or no longer wants to participate in meeting the goal, breaking up isn’t hard to do, and neither side questions the other’s loyalty.

Is employee loyalty important in your organization? Who/what do you think is responsible for driving loyalty? I would love to hear your thoughts with a few comments below. I know you have an opinion!

Another infusion of knowledge…

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Could a Lack of a Strategy in HR Lead to Storming the Castle?

Posted by Jason Averbook May 16, 2012

Avoid an Angry Mob with an HR StrategyAs you know if you’re a regular reader here, I frequently write about social and mobile technologies’ influence on the direction of HR technology and the way we collaborate at work. Not only do I write about it, like you, I read what other thought leaders have to say.

One of the voices I pay attention to is Brian Solis. Solis is globally recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media. A digital analyst, sociologist, and futurist, Solis has studied and influenced the effects of emerging media on business, marketing, publishing, and culture. His book, Engage, is regarded as the industry reference guide for businesses to build and measure success in the social web, and his new book, The End of Business As Usual explores each layer of the complex consumer revolution that is changing the future of business, media, and culture.

You can find more about them here.

I came across the following quote while reading one of Solis’ blogs:

“Social media is not the catalyst for change, but merely one of its agents. We must remember that Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and the like are the networks that facilitate an uprising. However, it is repression, angst, injustice, inequality, vision, aspiration and hope that serve as the true stimulus for insurrection and progress. Technology plays a part in transformation and it is up to you to learn how social, mobile, real-time, and all other emerging trends are affecting your industries, communities, or markets.”

While I agree with sentiment, when I first read this quote, I was a little taken aback by the use of the word “insurrection.” Defined as an act or an instance of rebelling against a government in power or the civil authorities, an open clash between two opposing groups (or individuals), or an organized rebellion aimed at overthrowing a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict – the term has a negative connotation for me.

Certainly, no one would advocate for any kind of violent uprising against companies that don’t use social networking, or haven’t issued tablets to management. Nor would anyone suggest ousting the CEO by storming the boardroom with an angry mob because the company doesn’t allow employees to user their own Smartphones on the network.

Also, the idea of repression, angst, and injustice being the catalyst for such an uprising doesn’t sit well with me. But let’s be honest, these feelings do exist inside many organizations. Not because of the lack of available mobile and social tools, but because of the lack of strong leadership. However, here the revolt is quite. Not a mob, but one person at a time reaching their limit and taking their talent elsewhere.

The flip side is for vision, aspiration and hope to serve as the stimulus for progress. And this is my point, and I think Solis’ as well. Motivation for change can come from frustration, or inspiration. Transformation happens when people are fed up, or people are fed a vision. Anguish and ambition are equally strong catalysts for change.

The question is which do you want driving change in your organization? The reality is, both sides exist equally in your organization, and it is up to you to tip the scale in one direction or the other.

My experience has shown that doing nothing generally results in folks going to “the dark side” so it isn’t a game of hope – it is a game of strategy and intention.

Bringing people together and uniting them under common cause or mission is what leadership is all about, and why we work so hard to help our clients create HR and technology strategies to help them realize their organization’s vision of success – for everyone.

Maybe Solis’ quote was just a dramatic way to describe what drives people to change. Even so, I have experienced workplace frustration and angst in many engagements over the years – and I’m sure you have, as well. Do I think insurrection is around the corner? No, but I do believe apathy, a lack of transparency, and moving forward without a clearly communicated HR, technology, and business strategy is no way to get the kind of positive change we desire.

Avoid the angry mob. Now is the time to get serious about your HR strategy.

Another infusion of knowledge…

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HR Is In The Best Position to Lead the Revolution to the Cloud

Posted by Jason Averbook May 11, 2012

Lead the Revolution to the CloudIn an earlier post, The BYOD Debate: A Debate All In HR Technology Must Engage In, I touched on some of the arguments for and against allowing employees to bring their own devices (tablets, smartphones, etc.) into the organization and connect to the company network. The main concern from many in IT is that the corporate network would most certainly become compromised without direct control of the devices – something most users were not eager to give up.

And reading between the lines of most of the arguments for and against the idea of BYOD, the theme of “control” seems to run throughout. IT has legitimate reasons for wanting to keep it, but some new data from Gartner and PriceWaterhouseCoopers suggests the tide is moving towards more decentralized control – or what some are calling the “consumerization of IT.”

According to Gartner, by 2015, 35% of enterprise expenditures for most organizations will be managed outside the IT department’s budget. In similar data, PriceWaterhouseCoopers reports that at 100 of the companies they rank as “top performers,” IT controls less than 50% of corporate technology expenditures.

For many industries, and corporate lines of business this is a revelation. However, in HR it is something we’ve not only been experiencing over the past decade, it is something we have been driving!

From the first pay-per-use, online performance review, job description, and employee handbook creation websites (launch in 1998!), to the salary survey, benefits administration, and payroll processing web-based applications that soon followed, to the latest SAP/SuccessFactors and Oracle/Taleo nuptials, HR has truly been a driving force in decentralized control of technology in the enterprise.

Perhaps it was because HR technology initiatives never made it to “mission-critical” status in the minds of IT or the business, or maybe HR wasn’t skilled at defining technical requirements and was forced to find outside solutions. Whatever the reason, consumerization of IT has been going on for quite some time in HR.

So, guess what!? You might be the expert on how to approach decentralized enabling technology in your organization! That’s right, do a little victory lap around the office, maybe act a little smug (“Oh, you guys have never owned the technology selection and implementation for your department? Gosh, that sounds hard… **grin**). You’ve earned it.  You may not have always gotten it right, but you probably have focused on employee, manager and executive consumption of technology more than any other business function in your organization.

Now get busy helping your CIO, and other line of business leaders because, as you already know, this transformation is not going to be easy.

Michael Krigsman writes a blog for ZDNet called IT Project Failures. This week he wrote a great post on the consumerization of IT and offers some advice to those transitioning to the cloud, or consumer-centric technologies.

I suggest you HR leaders – implementation-veteran, technology-strategy-building, process-bending, user-adoption-achieving, experiencing-having gurus look at Mr. Krigsman’s TEN POINTS OF BUSINESS ADVICE FOR IT IN A CLOUDY WORLD and use your experience to lead the revolution to the cloud in your organization.

  1. Share your expertise on moving to the cloud with line of business folks in your company
  2. Provide the facts about opportunities and risk when moving to the cloud
  3. Serve as the cloud-provider clearing house for your organization
  4. Help the business select the right system integrator
  5. Take the lead on developing your company’s a cloud strategy and transformation roadmap
  6. Help your business counterparts adapt to the new technology
  7. Assess on-premise systems to determine the best cloud migration path
  8. Create a long-term cloud delivery model and strategy
  9. Lead the effort to standardize security, backup, and other centralized policies as they relate to cloud computing
  10. Engage senior management to ensure that cloud computing initiatives support your company’s core strategies


Are you helping your organization in this evolution?  Is the IT function helping you? 

Another infusion of knowledge…(and a few questions)

 

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A Rabbit or a Duck? It is Time for Disruptive Innovation in HR Technology!

Posted by Jason Averbook May 9, 2012

Coined by Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, the term “disruptive innovation” may not be a term you throw around the office, but is probably something you have experienced either on the job, or in your personal life. The idea of disruptive innovation isn’t necessarily to invent something new, but rather uncover a different use for a pre-existing product, service or technology. This kind of innovation “disrupts” the status quo, often leading to new opportunities that transform day-to-day life.

One example of disruptive innovation that is often cited is the automobile. When first introduced, its high cost prohibited many from ownership. However, when Ford introduced its affordable Model T, the market for horse-drawn carriages was “disrupted” with widespread adoption of autos. Certainly the automobile was a technological innovation, but it was Ford’s cost-efficient mass-production that allowed common folks to benefit. Other “disrupters” include the iPod (disrupting the CD market), or Wikipedia (all but eliminating the encyclopedia market).

Being a disruptive innovator not only means looking for new ways to use existing technology, it means challenging your own perceptions and beliefs about how things are/should be accomplished.

As we work with clients, we often run into a culture in HR that clings to the processes, technologies, and service delivery models that were designed and implemented a dozen or more years ago because they “work” for HR. Things get done, and items get checked off a list.

And even though many of the HR leaders we work with know they need to be more strategic and work with their counterparts on the “business side” of the house, there often remains an ideological wall between the two sides; both want the same result but see things very differently.

Take the First Step

The first step in becoming a disruptive innovator is the hardest. And disruptive innovation is what we’re talking about in HR technology. HR isn’t being asked to invent a completely new way of managing the workforce – HR is being asked to really examine its policies and practices under the “strategic” spot light to ensure the effort and investment being made is driving business results (not HR check-list completion).

So, the first step is truly challenging your own perceptions – and with it creating self-doubt. This is a good thing. Understanding the “other side,” who may have a different idea of how things work, is the only way you can forge a productive working relationship.

To illustrate this, and give you something to try with your business counterpart, look at the image below. What do you see, a duck, or a rabbit?

Duck-Rabbit-1

When this test is given to a large group participants are generally split fifty-fifty between seeing the duck and seeing the rabbit.

OK, now take a look at this image. What do you see, a duck, or a rabbit?

Duck-Rabbit-2

In a large group, the majority of observers see a rabbit.

OK, last one. Duck or rabbit?

Duck-Rabbit-3

You might guess that by the third image, the results of the group (whether they said duck or rabbit when viewing image 2) are completely reversed.

To further illustrate the point, take a look at Joseph Albers’ famed green color block image:

Albers Green Color Block

Here, the small box in the right plank appears to be a lighter shade of green than that to the left, when in fact the green hue is exactly the same on both sides.

The exercise is meant to underscore how we all can look at the exact same object yet see something entirely different.

The point of this is that through self-awareness and, more importantly, self-doubt raised by engaging in simple exercises like duck-rabbit, the very basis of our polarization, or engrained ideas is challenged and we become more open to exploring possibilities.

And once we understand that by simply looking at the issue, problem, process, or technology from a different angle a whole new picture comes into view, we can begin to build a winning HR strategy with our partners in business to help realize the organization’s vision of success.

The world of HR technology has been very stagnant and doing things the same way over generations of technology from mainframe to DOS to Windows to Client/Server to Web.  It is time in 2012 to look at things differently.  Take the time before jumping into a ERP upgrade to look at the other path.  Take time before discounting a “suite” approach to talent management to look at the other path.  Take the time before just saying “we have always done it that way” to look at the other path.  The time is now to innovate!

Another infusion of knowledge…

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Why BDA’s are probably the next BFD’s in HR software??

Posted by Jason Averbook May 8, 2012

Big Data ApplicationsI came across an interesting article over the weekend on techcrunch.com entitled, The Rise of Big Data Apps And The Fall of SaaS. The article was written by Raj De Datta, who is the CEO and co-founder of a company called BloomReach.

The gist of the article is that just as SaaS and cloud computing has revolutionized the way businesses now operate, so will Big Data applications (BDAs). BDAs are defined as web-based applications that interpret massive amounts of data to deliver more intelligent results for subscribers.

De Datta makes the point that while SaaS fundamentally changed the way software is consumed (and delivers a range of high value benefits), it does not do one important thing – it does not change the functional capabilities of the core application. In other words, changing the delivery model just made using what was already available much easier and cheaper.

The article also points out that Big Data on the consumer side is pretty well understood and being used by companies like Google and Amazon to make their applications smarter and stickier as massive amounts of data pour into their core engines. De Datta says BDA’s are making their way to the enterprise space and gives a couple examples of emerging efforts:

  • Linkedin is a BDA for the recruiting/talent acquisition software market. LinkedIn doesn’t ask you to add your contacts in an isolated contact list, it networks those contacts, connecting users with users and recruiters with key competencies. Every user that joins LinkedIn adds a signal to the LinkedIn BDA stack, enabling the recruiter to harness all their millions of profiles, not just their individual silos. As a result, smaller, specialized recruiters are competing with the biggest executive search agencies with comparable reach.
  • Bazaarvoice is a BDA for social sharing. Bazaarvoice collects customer reviews from across the web, then powers multiple websites with that information. The traditional SaaS-based approach to this problem would simply have provided software to accept and publish reviews on individual sites. Instead, Bazaarvoice collects review data from across the web to make sure when you pull up a product on one of its customer websites, the right reviews are presented to you. Bazaarvoice gives all sellers comparable review databases to Amazon.com.
  • Salesforce (NASDAQ: CRM) understands that BDAs are the future of SaaS. When it acquired social listening software company Radian6, real-time performance management and social enterprise tool Rypple and contacts company Jigsaw (now Data.com), Salesforce understood that the powerful application for brands would be aggregating social data points on brands from across the web and networked contact information to salespeople.
  • BloomReach is a BDA for marketing – the next $10bn category in software. Rather merely analyzing websites to identify missing relevant content that could drive revenue across search, social and advertising traffic BloomReach analyzes and interprets web-wide demand to build semantic models around web content for a given customer and then dynamically augment websites with the most relevant content for their users. BloomReach analyzes the web’s data and then acts on it to drive more traffic and revenue to our customers.

Finally, De Datta says that BDAs are inherently better than their SaaS equivalents because they have all the delivery model benefits of SaaS, plus a “network effect” in the data being collected.

This network effect is the aggregate value of each user’s unique data put to work – an asset that grows over time for both the subscriber AND the application provider.

De Datta comments, “These days, there is so much more data outside the enterprise than within it, that the notion of re-packaging an enterprise’s own data for analysis and workflow seems quaint.”

The article concludes with this idea:

The BDA revolution is just beginning. If we were building CRM again, we wouldn’t just track sales force productivity; we’d recommend how you’re doing versus your competitors based on data across the industry.

If we were building a financial application, it wouldn’t just track the financials of your company, it would compare them to public filings in your category so you could benchmark yourself and act on best practices.

Since we think most organizations will replace their core HR technology over the next 1-4 years, how will BDA thinking influence your selection of that technology? Talk about breaking down silos!

Another infusion of knowledge…

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Deploying Technology in 2012 – KNOW Your Audience

Posted by Jason Averbook May 1, 2012

Slackers!
Slackers!

Tomorrow I will be giving a presentation at the IHRIM 2012 Conference in Chicago.  While enough time is being spent during the conference talking about the millennial generation, yes we know they are coming, I want to share with you in this post some stats and then what you might want to do TODAY to prepare any deployment of technology going forward for your of TODAY!

Did you know that prior to 2001, you could only send a text message to people in your cellular network. Texting wasn’t really that big of a deal, a novelty really. In fact, only about 500,000 text messages were sent each day in the US in 2001.

Once the wireless providers began to connect their networks for texting the numbers exploded. Today, about 4 billion text messages are sent/received every day in the US, with 18-24 year-olds accounting for the bulk of the activity.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project

The youngest adults (those between the ages of 18 and 24) are even more proficient in their texting habits. Both cell ownership and text messaging are nearly universal among 18-24 year olds—95% own a cell phone and 97% of these cell owners use text messaging—and the number of daily text messages this group creates or encounters on a daily basis is far and away the largest of any group:

  • 18-24 year olds send or receive an average of 109.5 text messages per day—that works out to more than 3,200 messages per month. The median 18-24 year old texter sends or receives 50 texts per day (or around 1,500 messages per month).
  • One quarter of 18-24 year old text messaging users (23%) report sending or receiving more than 100 texts per day.
  • Just over one in ten (12%) say that they send or receive more than 200 messages on an average day—that equals 6,000 or more messages per month.

To put these numbers in comparison, the average of 109.5 texts per day among 18-24 year olds is more than double the comparable figure for 25-34 year olds, and twenty-three times the figure for text messaging users who are 65 or older.

Let me throw some additional numbers at you.

  • Two-thirds of 4- to 7-year-olds have used an iPhone or iPod
  • 6% of 2- to 5-year-olds have their own smartphone
  • 50% of 11 year olds have own cell phone
  • 10% of households with children aged 6-12 have iPads (compared with only 3% of other households); 35% of these households with young children plan to buy some brand of tablet computer in the next year
  • 72% of the 100 top-selling education apps in Apple’s iTunes App store this year were aimed at preschoolers and those in elementary school
  • One of the first products aimed at putting an iPhone into a baby’s hands (Fisher-Price’s oversize case, providing coverage against drools and tantrums, while doubling as a rattle), rapidly sold out on Amazon; the three apps designed for the case have been downloaded more than 700,000 times
  • Kids 11 to 14 spend, on average, 73 minutes a day texting
  • Over 25% of 2-5 year olds and over 40% of 6-8 year olds use the Internet
  • 88% of 6-8 year olds use the Internet to play games; 37%, to get help with homework; 25% to get the “inside scoop” on what interests them; and 22% to read and write email
  • 90% of tweens (10-12) play online games
  • Younger children spend over 10 hours a week playing video games
  • The amount of time all kids spend online daily has tripled in the past 10 years
  • Kids are media multitasking, packing an average of 8.5 hours’ worth of media into 6.5 hours a day.
  • 26% of young people are using one medium while they are doing something else media-related at the same time

So what does it all mean for employers of these future workers? Putting aside the debate over whether the behaviors of this hyper-connected generation are beneficial or dangerous, these are the behaviors shaping their perceptions and attitudes.

Tammy Erickson, an author and blogger for Harvard Business Review writes in post, How Mobile Technologies Are Shaping a New Generation:

Four themes emerge [from youth swimming in this digital soup]:

A pervasive sense of connection: Connectivity is the basic assumption and natural fabric of everyday life for this generation. Technology connections are how people meet, express ideas, define identities, and understand each other. Older generations have, for the most part, used technology to improve productivity — to do things we’ve always done, faster, easier, more cheaply. For this generation, being wired is a way of life.

Options (not obligations): Because technology is so intimately intertwined with this generation’s sense of self, they control it in a way that older individuals often don’t. While Boomers or X’ers may feel obligated to respond to the technology, this generation use the technology with choice – on their own schedule, at their own pace.

Anonymity and the ability to hide: By connecting through technology, this generation reduces the need to connect face-to-face. Many have friends they’ve never met with whom they interact regularly. This creates a strange sense of anonymity — they can be everywhere if they choose to post or, depending on their preference, nowhere. Physical appearances can be replaced with avatars. The alarming epidemic of childhood obesity may be related to this generation’s ability to hide.

Confidence and control . . . to be an initiator, designer, problem-solver: This is a generation that is used to asking big questions — and is confident of finding answers. Will the water run out? How many children travel to school in a sustainable way? Are cities a good idea? Let’s check the Internet. They have had the experience of digging deeply into a burning question because they have access to a mountain of information.

It is time we start looking at these shifts in attitudes and behaviors as employment advantages, rather than liabilities. Many seasoned business professionals would bristle at the idea of turning over the organization’s biggest challenges to a group of teenagers to solve. Or asking a group of fresh-faced college grads to come up with a way to better connect with customers. These kids have to learn the ropes first, get the lay of the land – they can’t just start influencing strategic direction! They don’t know anything! They haven’t done anything!

When deploying HR and Talent Management technology, KNOWING your audience and what they see value in is essential.  I gave a keynote last night in Cincinnati where we debated “what gets people to use this stuff?” and the overwhelming them was value.  In order to determine value, we must understand what is important to our audience and then how to market to them in a way that “STANDS OUT”.  In a world where we receive thousands of messages a day, how will yours “STAND OUT” and gain attention; if people see VALUE!

I’m reminded of the 10,000-hour rule, so masterfully written about by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers: The Story of Success. Essentially, Gladwell says that it takes about 10 years to get really good at something. Today’s 15-year-old that is constantly face-down in his smart phone, connecting, conversing, solving, looking, reading, accessing and consuming massive amounts of information just to post an off-color joke on Facebook, will be an expert in problem solving, research and team building right about the time you need him.

If you’re unfamiliar with the 10,000-hour rule, here is Gladwell in his own words:

Another Infusion of knowledge…

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The BYOD Debate: A Debate All In HR Technology Must Engage In

Posted by Jason Averbook Apr 30, 2012

BYODI’m betting your company has policies (or did)  against using personal devices on the corporate network. I’m also betting several of your colleagues (not you, of course) are doing it anyway.

As part of any HR Technology Strategy in todays era, we must include discussions on BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), mobile, tablets and remote access to applications in general.  You cannot visit a vendors website in this space without them talking about their mobile/tablet applications.  Is this just hype?  Is this just another case of them saying they are ready for you but you are nowhere near ready for them?

A recent survey from Cisco Systems reveals that 64% of U.S. respondents say employees at their organization use personal devises for work without consent. Forty-eight percent say their company would NEVER authorize employees to bring their own devices to the office for work.

The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement is gaining serious steam, partly due to the rise of increasingly easy-to-use and powerful smart phones and tablets and partly due to the mobile, distributed nature of today’s workforce.

The arguments in favor of, and against BYOD are strong, serious, and passionate. Issues ranging from security, control, device ownership and management, data integrity, application development and on and on dominate the conversations – many of them contentious.

Those who advocate for BYOD boil it down to the argument that you can either look at it as taking control away from IT, or as an opportunity to mobilize an entire business in a way that would never have been affordable in the past. Organizations simply would not have been able to purchase or manage the dozens of different devices needed to meet their employees’ mobile computing preferences.

On the other side, IT raises some legitimate concerns. Can the corporate network be trusted without direct control of every device? What does the help desk look like with all these devises to support? Must we become proficient in Android, Ubuntu, Red Hat, iOS, Windows, etc.? How do we address device failure? What rights does the company have to access the user’s personal device? What about the use of pirated software by employees?

One IT professional added this comment to an article on the subject: “Is there full disclosure to the employee that once the device management agent is loaded that “Big Brother” knows where you are at all times? I have seen firsthand an executive force a tech to bring up the map and locate the phone of an employee that called in sick.”

There are even deeper, hidden issues that some have raised including, potential liability for activities employees conduct through the device (such as on social networks and elsewhere online); issues around ownership of work product and data on the device. What happens if IT decides to remotely wipe a lost or stolen device that includes personal content as well as company content?

In fact, remote wiping agreements could be a major issue moving forward and one that both companies and employees need to understand. Employees may not be fully aware that signing a remote wiping agreement gives the company the authority to delete all of their personal data, photos, and information stored on the device.

This means, even if HR isn’t using BYOD apps for HCM, they need to be front and center in effectively communicating to employees what BYOD means in terms of personal data and potential remote monitoring of employees.

There is one other thing I’ve noticed about this debate. Underneath all of the valid arguments is a contentious relationship between technology users and corporate IT. Language like, “forcing IT to give up control,” or “getting IT out of the way,” seem to permeate the discussion. One author of an article I recently read even compared the BYOD movement to last year’s “Arab Spring,” in which people in Middle Eastern countries rose up against the entrenched autocratic leaders. You can imagine what the comment section looked like.

What do you think? Is BYOD about efficiency to get things done in a mobile world, or freedom from the shackles of those darn policy-makers in IT?

Another infusion of knowledge…

 

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The Most Inspiring Thing You Will Read This Week. Spoiler: It’s an Employee Handbook

Posted by Jason Averbook Apr 26, 2012

Valeve SoftwareI’m betting this makes its way around to you (as it made its way to me) again, possibly even “going viral” – at least among the HR/Talent Management community.

The sub-title really says it all – “A Fearless Adventure in Knowing What to do When No One’s There Telling You What to Do.”

We don’t hear much about employee handbooks anymore. Most of what is contained in the average handbook has more to do with protecting the organization than it does helping new workers understand how to be successful in their new surroundings.

Valve Software, a gaming company in Bellevue, WA, is not only turning the employee handbook inside out and upside down – it’s success can be attributed to a talent management strategy that has done the same.

Here are a few excerpts to pique your interest:

How to Use this Book
This book isn’t about fringe benefit or how to set up your workstation or where to find source code. Valve works in ways that might seem counterintuitive at first. This hand-book is about the choices you’re going to be making and how to think about them. Mainly, it’s about how not to freak out now that you’re here.

What to Work On
Why do I need to pick my own projects?
We’ve heard that other companies have people allocate a percentage of their time to selecting self-directed projects. At Valve, that percentage is 100. Since Valve is flat, people don’t join projects because they’re told to. Instead, you’ll decide what to work on after asking yourself the right questions (more on that later). Employees vote on projects with their feet (or desk wheels). Strong projects are ones in which people can see demonstrated value; they staff up easily. This means there are any number of internal recruiting efforts constantly under way. If you’re working here, that means you’re good at your job. People are going to want you to work with them on their projects, and they’ll try hard to get you to do so. But the decision is going to be up to you. (In fact, at times you’re going to wish for the luxury of having just one person telling you what they think you should do, rather than hundreds).

Below is the entire Valve employee hand-book. Read it and imagine what it must be like to work in a place where every employee asks themselves, “With the bar this high, would I be hired here today?”

At Knowledge Infusion we talk continually about “cultural continuance” which is how to keep an experience going from the second someone hits your career site and applies for a job - to the experience they see and feel the day they arrive for DAY 1 - to how they feel ongoing.  The Valve employee hand-book is one of the best examples of cultural continuance I have seen.  Please pass around!

Another infusion of knowledge…

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Posted in Culture, Talent Management, Talent Management Innovation | No Comments »

Are You Hiring Supertemps? HR this is all about you, not procurement!

Posted by Jason Averbook Apr 23, 2012

Are You Hiring Supertemps?“In a global business climate that’s perpetually ambiguous—and that puts a premium on companies’ ability to test ideas and change course on a dime—knowing how best to engage this lower-risk, flexible, and faster talent model can be a source of competitive advantage.”

This is a quote from a great article at Harvard Business Review entitled, The Rise of the Supertemp, by Jody Greenstone Miller and Matt Miller. I encourage you to read it – right after you finish reading this post.

This idea of “talent flexibility” as a competitive edge is one we often think about when discussing workforce planning, or talent supply and demand. Most, I think, struggle with the notion of moving employees in and out of roles as an ever-changing business strategy would dictate.

It takes time to train, relocate, and bring employees up to acceptable production levels in new jobs. Not to mention the effort and expense of trying to plan for workforce supply and demand contingencies that truly deliver a competitive advantage. We’re not talking about reactionary, back-filling of positions to meet the new “go-forward” thinking. We are talking about proactive workforce planning that anticipates talent demand, and reacts in real-time to meet the needs of the business.

One of the reasons I think workforce planning isn’t more of a business discipline – or should I say, hasn’t been embraced as a common practice, is that we continue to imagine the workforce as we know it today: full-time, long-term employees.

The article provides some interesting history on how the idea of contingent, or temporary workers has changed, and given the “temp” such a bad rap.

“The idea that long-term corporate jobs are the norm is deeply ingrained, but in reality these jobs arose in the past 60 or 70 years. Even in the manufacturing era that began in the late 19th century, employment was initially casual, with annual turnover around 300%. Big companies outsourced virtually everything. One analysis around 1910 found that half the workers in production jobs were independent contractors. But as assembly lines burgeoned and industrial machinery grew more complicated, employers saw the need for a stable trained workforce to control quality and maximize production, while the concentration of workers in cities and industrial hubs led to unions and advocacy for better pay, benefits, and rights.

During World War II, wage controls in the U.S. limited employers’ ability to woo workers with higher pay, so companies developed generous benefits and pension packages. The modern model of full-time, lifetime employment was born, and it offered great advantages to both workers and employers. Workers got security, benefits, and steady wage gains; companies got labor peace and the certainty of a return on hefty investments in firm-specific training.

But a scant few decades after corporate America had bulked up on cradle-to-grave employees, the pendulum began to swing the other way. Recessions in the 1970s and 1980s led to the downsizing of bloated corporate bureaucracies and helped brand temporary work as a sign of executive desperation.

Then came globalization. Technology and cheaper transportation made it easy to offshore production and even knowledge work to China or India, and the status of temp jobs as the last refuge of discarded managers was cemented.”

The article goes on to discuss other reasons for companies making such a dramatic shift from outsourcing to owning labor – and how so many of those companies grew into the large corporations we see today. Simply put, it is cheaper to keep resources and talent in-house than bear the high costs of transacting for labor on the open market.

Today, we translate that into: “It’s cheaper to retain employees than to hire new ones.”

However, the authors argue that new technologies and a developing spot market for high-end talent are driving transaction costs down and challenging assumptions about which management skills and professional talent belong inside versus outside the organization.

“When modular white-collar capabilities for which demand ebbs and flows—from strategy to innovation to product launches to contract negotiations to clinical trials—can become variable costs, and when those capabilities are sometimes as vital to a company’s success as specific knowledge of internal processes, the boundaries of organizational design may well shift.”

The authors go on to discuss organizations’ “internal readiness,” and the role that employee benefits plays in holding captive many talented professionals, who – in the words of the authors – “knew they could leave their permanent posts and get both a reliable flow of interesting, challenging, well-paid projects and group health coverage, traditional firms would see a mass exodus.”

Odds are, this movement will continue to gain popularity and group health coverage, and organizational readiness will allow organizations to tap into this market in the next few years.

I will leave you with this quote from the article:

“Companies may find that they need to create internal versions of project-based careers to retain their high performers. Many of them have experimented with flexible work arrangements, but mostly at the margins; the prevailing mind-set is still that high-end professionals must be permanent full-time employees.”

If you think we’re experiencing “buyers market” in employment today, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. You must begin to prepare your organization with talent management strategy to take advantage of these emerging opportunities, not be limited by them.

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know how strongly I feel about creating a talent management strategy. (And if you don’t: Read This, and Listen to This). It is an area we will continue to passionately encourage HR and business leaders to undertake, as talent management continues its high-speed transformation of the way we work.

Another infusion of knowledge…

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Posted in Contingent Labor, HR Executive, Talent Management | No Comments »

Time to Hire! – Not a Metric, a Call to Action For All Of US!

Posted by Jason Averbook Apr 19, 2012

I HiredEconomists agree that our unemployment crisis can only be resolved if businesses, small ones in particular, begin to create more jobs. Politics and policy aside, the simple fact is we need heroes to step up, be bold, and put people back to work.

This recovery depends on small business because:

  • Over half the population is employed by Small businesses (under 500 employees)
  • Small businesses have generated 65% of net new jobs over the last 17 years (U.S. Small Business Administration)
  • The overall time to hire is estimated at 96 days (Luxottica Group)
  • Hiring for a government job takes an average of 105 days! (Performance.gov)
  • If all 3.5 million open jobs were filled today, unemployment rate would decline by over 3% (Clinton Global Initiative)

In line with their mission to eradicate unemployment, SmartRecruiters is announcing today the “Got Jobs? initiative.” This campaign celebrates the heroes of our economy, the job creators, and encourages small businesses to create jobs. Their goal is to create 1 million jobs.

I support this effort, and you should too. Here are a few things you can do:

  • Tweet – The campaign hashtag is #GotJobs . Here are some #GotJobs Tweet ideas:
    • The #GotJobs campaign aims to create 1 million jobs http://goo.gl/Br1OS
    • Time to put America Back to Work. Time to Hire #GotJobs ? http://goo.gl/Br1OS
  • Share – Share the Got Jobs page on Facebook
  • Blog about the campaign and job creation from small businesses
  • Brag – If you have yourself created a job this year, then grab a badge and brag about it

If we all look to someone else to solve this crisis, we’ll be looking at each other for a while. HR and business leaders – now is the time to focus on creating and filling the jobs that will move your organization and this economy forward. Be bold! This is a great way to start.

Another infusion of knowledge…

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Posted in Talent Acquisition, Talent Management, Trends | 2 Comments »

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