Why Social HR is Ready for Prime Time

We?ve been talking about social business for? a couple of years now, but even though social media and networking have found their way into the enterprise, HR has been lagging behind.? This is now starting to change.? First let?s define what we mean by social business and Social HR.

A rather generic definition for ?social biz? is a company or business that leverages social communications and the social graph to accomplish a business goal or to maximize performance (optimize resources and talent) within a key business functional area. Examples include: sales (Salesforce, Chatter), customer service (Zendesk, CoTweet), talent management (UpMo), team collaboration (Yammer, Moxie, Jive), recruiting (JobVite, SmartRecruiters), and performance management (SuccessFactors, Rypple, WorkSimple).

HR goals must be aligned with business goals, so HR organizations are becoming more social to keep up with their employees, who are embracing social outside the corporation, but also other key business areas that have already taken steps into the social realm (sales, technology, customer service and marketing teams).? Hence, ?Social HR? is all about leveraging social tools to conduct human resource activities aimed at aligning its goals with the company?s business goals.

So what?s HR to do? All indications point to the perfect storm for HR to go social.? Why should HR act now before it?s too late?

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1) Right now, there are three generations working together in one place: GenX, GenY, and Baby Boomers (and Generation Z is right around the corner).

Despite the well documented demographic and psychographic differences, these groups have social media in common. According to a study by Pew Internet on social media usage, the most active age group on social networking sites are 18-29 year-olds (87% are users), 30-49 year-olds (68%), and 50-64 year-olds (49%). Not surprisingly, the younger the users, the more actively they use social media. Among the Millennials (GenY), for example, 42% of users check their social networking accounts several times a day. As older workers continue to embrace social media and the share of younger workers increases, this trend is poised to skyrocket.

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2) The growing popularity of BYOD demonstrates an increased use of mobile devices, and they?re being used for a lot more than status updates.

According to one study, 88% of executives report employees are using their personal devices for business purposes. This trend, driven largely by competition and other business pressures, has fueled the IT function?s acceptance of the need to acknowledge and leverage employees? choices with respect to mobile devices.? Beyond that, the ability to work from anywhere at any time is something that employees will increasingly demand, and the HR organization also needs to play a role here and ensure that their tools reach employees wherever they are.? More than that, HR departments need to ensure their policies don?t become deal-breakers for hyper-connected employees who are looking to work in environments that support their preferences.

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3) Learning is a social activity.

We pick up a huge amount of information every day via social media, document sharing, videos, articles, hashtagging, online events, and other social exchanges. Why? We all learn socially. We?re hard-wired for it and we learn how to do it from a very young age, going from little playgroups in kindergarten to study groups in college and grad school. It?s not so surprising that as we age, we continue to learn in a social manner.

As schools continue to wrestle with how to integrate social media into education, it?s clear that future generations will be even more social than the preceding ones. As these students grow up and become employees, they will take these social habits with them. Indeed, the rise of Enterprise 2.0 suggests that people do want to work together to accomplish business goals.

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4) Recruitment has gone social.

According to a new study, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are the leading tools for recruitment. I?ve spoken about the rise of what I call ?The Employee Theft Social Engine?.? BranchOut and BeKnown are enabling people to leverage their social networks to aid in job searches. And of course, UpMo is leading the charge to help employees mobilize around the company, not just up the career ladder, but laterally, and lattice, within their current companies. It?s clear that social recruitment is here to stay, not just outside the company, but also internally: how do you best find and place your existing talent (and their immediate networks) to work for the company.

But that?s just the first half of the equation. Social tools giveth and they taketh away, and the war for talent is often painful and costly. Social media and the open sharing of work-related information are surely having an impact. Remember that video (which may or may not have been a hoax) with the woman who called out her Farmville-playing boss?

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of employees who voluntarily quit their jobs is on the rise, despite the poor economic climate. In the fourth quarter of 2010 alone, roughly 2 million employees left their jobs to presumably find better opportunities. With poaching on the rise, growing talent shortages and the prevalence of social networks where employees ? and ex-employees ? talk openly about employers, HR people clearly face a lot of serious challenges.

Poaching in the tech sector is particularly notorious and shows no signs of slowing. A Dice.com survey of almost 2,700 managers and recruiters in Q1 of 2011 found that more than half of respondents expected poaching to increase .

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5) Onboarding makes more sense as a social activity.

Onboarding is inherently social, so it?s only natural that there would be social tools to help nudge the process along. Enabling employees to get a jump on things quickly through a social platform is a great development. Common tasks that can bog down newcomers ? uncovering connections, seeing who?s who in the company, and otherwise becoming oriented to new surroundings ? are now easily expedited. This is your new employee handbook on steroids.

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6) The next generation of HR leaders already feels that ?social? is a key aspect of their lives.

This is what we?ve been building to, obviously. It?s not just that the new generation of employees is becoming more social; it?s that these employees will soon be executives. Pretty soon, the C-Level suites will all be populated with people who will openly embrace social tools and expect the same of everyone around them.

Of course, not all HR functions can or should be social. Who wants their company?s termination process to go social? Anyone? Didn?t think so. Core PR functions, and compensation administration are probably best left alone. Other areas are also meant to be handled on a private, one-to-one basis, including the administration of salary, perks, probation, and stock options. But a good many HR functions are now social or ripe for it. Here?s a rundown, as we see it:

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Social:

• Recruitment Management
• Workforce Planning
• Internal Professional Networking (Go UpMo!)
• Induction Management
• Training Management
• Performance Management
• Attendance Management
• Enterprise Collaboration and Informal Performance Commentary (Go UpMo!)
• Timesheet Management
• Expense reports
• Employee Information/ Skill Management (Go UpMo!)
• Employee Survey
• Internal Mobility (Go UpMo!)

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Definitely not social:

• Exit Interviews & Process
• Health & Safety
• Leave Management
• Benefits Management
• Grievance Redressal
• Compensation & Benefits
• Overtime Management
• Pay slip Distribution

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Of course, sites like Glassdoor.com and others that share salary data, interview questions, and other employer practices in a social context pose key challenges to HR personnel. As people get increased access to perfect information, the equilibrium will continue shifting in employees? favor. It will be interesting to see what happens as more of these formerly non-social activities start to see the light of day via the lens of social media.? But not just external social media: internal collaboration platforms, career management, mentoring, and internal mobility are the next activities to become empowered by internal social networking.

Social HR is here to stay, and the perfect storm is brewing to make it happen faster than we all anticipate.? Employees can thank social technology and generational attitudes toward work for this, but it?s not just ?about me?:? workforce wants to do what?s right for them AND for the company they work for.? Social enables that alignment to happen naturally, for company goals and personal goals to fall into place without overbearing processes and top-down mandates.? Self-organization, aided by clear policies, culture and management buy-in, will thrive.

Image courtesy of Kevin Belson.

Source: http://blog.upmo.com/2012/03/14/why-social-hr-is-ready-for-prime-time-2/

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