Social Media Trends for 2010

As we enter the “write-off” month – the one where everyone is focused on end of year reports, completing tasks on their performance plans and writing predictions for next year - I came across this interesting story about social media trends: http://socialmediatoday.com/SMC/146209.  I am hopeful that the concept of social media (and can we come up with a new name for it?) takes off, particularly as it applies to building internal capability and connection.  I would also love to see the blurring of internal/external lines.  I love the idea of customers and employees building organizaitonal community together.  

I am not going to do the prediction thing, myself, but have made a “hope” list.  I hope that organizations:

• Recognize the power of changing their paradigm and consider alternate ways of training and supporting employees
• Stop talking about Twitter.  Either figure out if it has some value or not.  Just because Barack Obama is on it, doesn’t mean you have to be!
• Can count on the LMS producers give us a game changing product that includes “social” in a way that is more than a tacked on function
• Begin to play with new technology and create some space for employees to participate
• Feel fear no longer dominates organizational planning – in other words, the end of the recession and a return to more positive future-oriented stuff

What is on your hope list?  Are you daring enough to make some predictions?  What are they?

Have you future proofed your people strategy?

I’m working with a client right now to help them to prepare their workforce of the future through the development of a talent management framework.  Sound familiar?  How many others are struggling with this challenge?

They need to know what types of jobs there will be in their industry and their organization, what skills might be needed, what external trends to monitor, how to decide what programs to invest in, how technology might change, demographics, etc.   

How does the head of HR figure out what capabilities they’ll need in the future when many can’t even be sure of what capabilities they have currently?

Is there a technology solution to this?  Is it simply a process?  What does talent management mean anyway?  I can provide oodles of information on trends and possible scenarios, but it seems that at the end of the day, there is nothing that will replace the hard work of figuring this out team by team in your organization, regardless of what fancy model, framework or approach you use.  Some might call it the ”heavy lifting”.  When faced with a herculean task, one does not know where to start, so crafts a plan.  Doesn’t actually make the work any less, just more logically planned and executed. 

However, here are some questions you can ask yourself:

• What do the demographic predictions (shrinking labour pool, increased migration, university graduation rates, etc) mean to my organization?
• Have we thought of what role technology might/could play to change the nature of the jobs, how we could prepare/train people, etc?
• Are we prepared for new types of work?  Worker co-ops or alliances could replace temp agencies.  Micro-work, outsourcing, trades, are all viable options, but can HR handle it?  Will HR be trapped in policy-land?

Most importantly, it is critical that you spend at least a little bit of time thinking about the future of your organization and what it means to the people programs that are delivered.  You can go sophisticated and do scenario planning for HR or you can brainstorm by yourself or in a group.  However you do it, make sure that it is something that gets done and doesn’t just sit on your to-do list as a “important but not urgent” task.  It’s both.  If you don’t someone else will do it for you, and you may find your role outsourced.

Are you thirsty?

You’d better be if you want to drink from this proverbial firehose: Alltop has an “elearning” page, which contains oodles and oodles of newsfeeds and blog posts from some of the industry thought leaders.  I counted 51 of them.  I have sampled and now am bloated from too much of a good thing.  I like the roll-over feature of Alltop – it gives you the first few sentences of the article or post, which helps you decide if it is “click-worthy”…

Mobile learning at LearnTrends

Not live blogging today, decided to take a little time to reflect instead.  I found Judy Brown’s session on Mlearning fascinating – she introduced me to so many things that I thought of, but not as deeply as she obviously has.  There was also the fun experience of watching the slides, listening to her talk and following the chat.  So many ideas, suggestions and sources for more ideas and suggestions!  But, all good.  You can read more about “mobile learning” here. 

One of the most fascinating aspects was the discussion around codes – like barcodes, only digital – on things that “spoke” to your handheld (blackberry, iphone, new google phone coming out) and directed you to an item of learning or information about it, which would automatically pull up on your handheld.  Sounds sci-fi, but moving into mainstream in Europe and Japan.  Some of you may have heard of a cellphone communicating with a vending machine and our cellphones can talk to parking meters, so why not extend this into learning? Say you work for a financial institution and your employee is making an ATM card and it isn’t working out quite right.  Employee could wave their handheld device (let’s call it an iphone for argument sake) and a short online video appears walking them through the steps to fix.  Hm, it also reminds me of the movie “the Yes Men” and their infamous “Management Leisure Suit”, which you can watch here.   

I thought it was ironic that I was participating in this session and jotted down notes on the piece of paper that was closest at hand in my dining-room/office.  I’m sure you can’t read the title, but it’s “Next Generation Talent Management: Insights on how workforce trends are changing the face of talent management”.

Live blogging an online conference

This morning (and perhaps longer, depending on other deliverables and my ability to multi-task), I have been attending Learn Trends, a free online conference organized by Jay, Tony and George.  What fun!  I have really enjoyed the value of online discussions, both as a participant, but also as a good reminder for my webinar coming up on Tuesday.  Jay is live blogging, which I guess is what I’m doing, too!  Probably not as sophisticated as them, but ya gotta start somewhere! 

This morning I learned about Elgg – which I think I had dismissed as a moodle-esque product for higher learning institutions, but is actually very cool (a social learning tool) and while I caught part of a solution from Thomson Reuters, which looked like a virtual world.  Now I’m listening in to a librarian talk about information services from Sun Microsystems.  You should check out the conference, too!

It’s not about the tool

I just spoke at a conference for HR issues relevant to credit unions and my topic was on 21st Century Learning in Action: using Web 2.0 to train, develop and support your employees.  One of the points that I hope I got across is that it isn’t about the tool.   

Here’s an example: I worked for an organization who had identified that producing some screencasts (they called them “videos”) of common errors as a reference for employees when they became confused over how to complete a task on a piece of software.  They were novel at the time and stood out, but not for the right reasons.  We were bombarded with requests for “videos” and other groups were dazzled by the possibilities.  We had to take each request and pull it apart, to determine if the video was the right solution.  Guess what?  Mostly it wasn’t. 

So, for everyone trying to figure out if Twitter is worth the effort or how youtube might be used in an organizational setting, STOP.  Think about what your learner needs.  This is how I see it.  If you are in the field of learning and development (or training), then your job is to figure out what people need and match the right tool, not to pick the tool that everyone seems to be talking about and reverse engineer a use for it. 

I believe, employee’s or learner’s needs fall into connected and overlapping areas and that most of the web 2.0 tools can provide learning and/or help and/or connection.  If you want to know more about it, you can read my opinion here, or come to my webinar on November 24th.

The value of a network

I thought I’d share with you the value of building and maintaining a network, both human and web 2.0 version based on connectivity of the past few days, as there have been many interesting and unexpected connections…

1. I am on the planning committee for BC HRMA’s 2010 conference, sourcing speakers.  I was approached by a former colleague, who is the chair.  I spoke for this track earlier year, when my name was put forward by another former colleague.  I suggested two speakers, one of whom we “signed” and the other had a scheduling conflict.  The team needed to select an alternate and I wasn’t available for the conference call.  The person chosen happens to live on the same small island that I do, unbeknownst to any of us, but when I looked at the name, it struck me as familiar.  I don’t know him (but I plan to connect with him).  The value – a possible connection for professional purposes close to home.  I’ll be able to help him prepare for the conference and we might discover complementary skills and interests.  Additional value comes from the connections with other committee members, a reduced conference admission fee, access to the speakers and public recognition at next year’s conference.
2. I wasn’t available because I was speaking at another conference, and I was asked to do a presentation on web 2.0 for learning, by a former co-worker, who liked my style and had worked with me before.  I received a small speaker’s fee for this and met more than 60 people who may or may not ever need my services.  The value of this was tangible.  Money. 
3. I was asked to do a webinar for BC HRMA due to another former colleague moving there and passing my name along.  Since I’ve done a similar version of this presentation, I am able to re-purpose some of the work I did for the conference.  Value is both the potential future clients, the exposure to the entire membership, the marketing and not to mention the value of doing the research of the subject matter, which has proved to be “invaluable”.
4. I received a note from another former co-worker who has recently moved to a new organization.  She was looking for some advice.  When we tried to coordinate a good time to talk on the phone, she mentioned that she couldn’t meet tomorrow because she was going to be going to meet with a client of theirs, who happens to be on the small island that I live on.  Coincidentally, I was on the float plane home with the CEO of her client organization, Salt Spring Coffee (I’m a loyal customer).  The value = I might be able to help her solve a business problem and if they engaged me for some consulting work, that would be another tangible value.
5. I sent out a LinkedIn invitation to a former colleague, who I know has a place on this island that I live on.  She’s accepted, and we may end up re-connecting in person.  When we spoke before, her future plans were in areas that I might be able to help her with.  Value = potential partnership.

I could go on, but the important thing is that building and maintaining a network is an essential part of not only doing business, but living as a human being.  I’ve written before on the bad rap that networking has (it isn’t about schmoozy lunches), but it is really about making connections with other humans.  Who knows if you might meet a lifelong friend, a mentor, or your next client.   The beauty of the social networking tools out there (I have both Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, but really only use LinkedIn) is that it can help you keep the connections alive.  The person who contacted me for advice – I hadn’t spoken to since we worked together about 2 years ago.

Using Social Media for Performance Support

I recently read this post on the Human Capitalist about the role that Twitter played in a customer service scenario, and I immediately thought “hey that is a great idea for performance support for employees and an application of Twitter that makes sense”.  I’m not a big fan of Twitter, but someone could use an instant message (IM) tool, a status update or other method that may already be in place in your organization to put out a call for help into the ether and have an “e-coach” monitor things and respond as necessary.  This would obviously not work well in some circumstances, but what about these times:

• An employee is trying to fill out a complex form
• A manager is confused about how to administer a reimbursement request
• An employee is reviewing new product information and needs clarification on one of the features
• An employee completes training and afterwards is unsure of the steps to set up their machinery
• An employee is entering information into the “customer relationship management (CRM)” or “learning management system (LMS)” and is not sure of the right way to do things
• An employee is reviewing a customer file and is unsure of company policy on the situation

These are a few scenarios where I could see this working for organizations.  I worked with an organization where employees often needed help and called the help desk, but the help desk did not provide user-help, just technical support.  The training department would act as ad hoc performance support on a case-by-case basis (usually if someone knew their direct line or could find them on the employee directory), but we often debated how to deal with these situations.  We considered taking shifts and creating an email address for employees to just send a message for help, but it never really got off the ground.  However, I still think the concept is important. 

When employees need help doing their job, organizations often have a patchwork of “solutions” – ask your co-worker/cube neighbour, track down your supervisor or manager, take a course, review a job aid.  Or worst of all, employees just fumble through, don’t bother completing the task or go ahead and do it anyway and end up with a big mess.  The focus for most organizations, though, is the “formal” learning – the course or class that is designed to “train” employees.  I think it is a wasted opportunity and would love to see an organization put a % of their budget towards performance support and track the impact.  Start with 10% or 20% and see what happens.

Did they…

• improve the time to mastery for employees? 
• reduce errors?
• improve customer response times/customer service scores?
• increase sales?

All of these have financial measures to help make the case that training and supporting employees on the right things is a smart thing to do.

Free Online Conference

For those of you struggling with declining budget dollars, here’s a great way to learn/connect: Learn Trends 2009!

Hosted/organized by some heavyweights in the organizational learning arena:

• Tony Karrer – he of the e-learning blog fame
• Jay Cross – Mr. Informal Learning
• George Siemens – prof at University of Manitoba, so has the higher education side of things covered (and he’s Canadian)

All sessions are online and recorded and since it isn’t a conference organized by a professional association or vendor, it seems pretty collaborative and topics are open.  Check it out and maybe consider joining the ning group, too.

Goodbye “HR”, Hello “People and Brand”

A friend sent me this link today: http://ow.ly/pyWY about an organization that has dumped their Human Resources department and replaced it with a multi-functional department which includes marketing, corp comm, culture, talent management among other areas that they are calling People and Brand.   I actually think this might be a good idea. 

Here’s why:

• Corporate communications and HR (particularly training) are often confused over who actually does what.  This has gotten worse with Web 2.0.  When a business analyst once asked me “when is it communication and when is it training?”, I knew that we aren’t really helping our internal clients, we are creating bureaucracy.
• Customer Value Proposition and Employee Value Proposition – shouldn’t they be connected somehow?  Recently I watched this video at TED, on motivation.  If marketing and HR aren’t talking about the same thing, then cusotmers or employees (or both) will be disappointed and gone, a costly loss on either account.
• Talent Management needs to be driven by future needs, and shouldn’t marketing help us define this?  Vice versa, couldn’t marketing tap into the existing talents as a way to identify marketspace that is underserviced? 
• Technology is forcing us to consider networks for working relationships, not clinging to hierarchies and functional silos.
• Customers should be more important than employees.  This is the classic mistake that HR makes, just because you advocate for employees and “manage” them, doesn’t mean that they are the end-all, be-all.  Without customers, what exactly would the organization do? 

What are your thoughts?  Do you think this is a good thing for organizations (someone else might: http://www.byteeoh.com/whats-a-sustainable-workforce-look-like/), is this another GM, or does this represent another knock against HR?  Do we take up the challenge or shout down the opposition?