I watched the first part of this ‘Going Social: The Payoff for HR’ webinar – HR platforms, market overview, with Claire Schooley, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research. She talked about how collaboration is now a strategic part of HR. It permeates all of the HR components and is essential for success.
(The remaining 45 minutes covers the SAP Jam solution – ‘join us to learn how SAP Jam enables a seamless process for hiring, onboarding, and training and generates an ROI of more than 500%’ – which people may find useful.)
Here are my notes from the webinar on what makes social collaboration so important for HR:
Recruiting and hiring
- Social has been an important development to find those passive candidates you were never able to tap into before
- Much more candidate engagement in the recruitment process
- The candidate wants to know more about the company and the culture before they decide whether or not to apply – this is why brand promotion through the career website is so important
- Google’s website really gives people a sense of what it’s like to work there and what the environment is like
- Recruiters can’t do their job without getting involved with social media
- Employees can help in this process by using their own social networks to talk to their friends about jobs
- A career website is important to communicate information about the culture, what it feels like to work in the organisation, and to hear from people working there now – the teams, the roles, the locations
- You can get a really good sense within 3-4 minutes of whether you want to apply
Performance and learning
- Performance management has typically been an annual process at the end of the year – it looks backwards
- Today it’s a continuous and collaborative experience
- The manager becomes much more of a coach in this environment to help the employee reach their goals
- Performance transparency around goals means that peers know how each is performing and can offer help/ideas/knowledge where needed
- Social interaction increases awareness of employee accomplishments and recognition
- Future orientated to look forwards rather than back – how you’re going to help the company meet its goals/strategy
- Traditional/classroom learning can be enhanced through collaborative activities such as interactive forums between F2F sessions
- Mentoring can be done online – 121 or group (video, audio, text)
- Special interest communities allow idea sharing
- Informal leaning with collaboration is growing strongly