Categories - Total HR

I recently heard a story about a troubled HR manager who was in the market for a compensation system. She had been comfortably working in a jumble of spreadsheets for quite awhile – until she ran into some major legal problems. With no knowledge of the kinds of systems that are available, she hired a costly consultant to make the decision for her.

I’ve heard a handful of similar stories over the past month about HR professionals who are technology adverse. In this digital age, and with so many great HR tools available, I’m a bit surprised and worried, so I thought I’d address a few possible reasons for this technophobia.

Some people don’t understand technology. Sometimes I find it hard to imagine that the Internet and personal computers didn’t always exist. We often take for granted the great innovations that we work with every day, but it wasn’t long ago when employees weren’t tech savvy because they didn’t have to be to be productive. Many people in today’s workforce weren’t required to be masters of technology for most of their careers, but they now find themselves at a disadvantage to workers who grew up with technology at their fingertips. To succeed in the modern day workplace, these veteran employees need to adapt by embracing and understanding technology, or they will be quickly replaced by those who already do.

On the craggy shores of the California coast, just south of Santa Cruz, there is an idyllic little village called Aptos. The quaint heart of town is a tiny little canyon/valley, about two blocks wide and six blocks blocks deep. There, 200 yards in from the Monterrey Bay beach, is the headquarters of HRmarketer.com.

Since launching in 2000, HRmarketer has worked with more than 700 vendors who serve the HR Industry. HRmarketer is a soft spoken but highly influential component of the HR landscape - and Kevin Grossman, the firm's president, is its soft-spoken yet charismatic leader (and a Kris Kristofferson lookalike). With a decade of HR marketing experience, Grossman has a front row seat to watch the progress of the industry. If an idea emerges in the industry, he sees it. If a trend catches fire, he knows about it. His blog  is a great source of insight for vendors and practitioners alike.

I had interviewed David Manaster as he was wading through the user feedback on the beta for ERE's Web site. If you don't know him, David is the quintessential Brooklyn entrepreneur. The mid-thirty something executive is the founder and CEO of ERE (formerly known as the Electronic Recruiting Exchange).

ERE is ground zero for the Talent Acquisition (Recruiting) industry. The enterprise combines an online community, national trade shows, a news service, local events and specialty offerings for specific kinds of Recruiters. Manaster has navigated the firm through the wild economic and technical turbulence of the decade in which he built the company.

Chances are your company has made some tough decisions over the past year in order to cope with the economic climate. Perhaps you’ve frozen salaries, reduced your bonus pool, or cut an employee benefit. You probably agonized a bit over making the changes, but did you spend as much time talking with employees about the changes as you did planning and making them? Probably not, which could be a problem for you. Aside from confusing and upsetting your employees, you may have hurt your bottom line.

Watson Wyatt’s recently released Communication ROI Study details how effective employee communication is an indicator of financial performance, since better communication leads to more engaged employees, and engaged employees are more productive and reach their performance goals. When all else is equal, the company that makes great employee communication a priority and delivers on it will perform better than the company that does not.

Lucky for you, Watson Wyatt’s recipe for successful employee communication seems simple enough. All it takes is a bit of courage, innovation, and discipline. Here’s my take on what the report says:

Our last Salary.community meeting was hosted in London last week. I’ll admit, I’m a bit sad. I'm tired and relieved too, kind of like how it feels after your last party guest leaves for the night. The preparation beforehand can be lots of work, but seeing the party go just as you had planned makes it worth all that went into it.

In the end, no matter how much you plan every moment, it is the unplanned events that make your day special. Though we arrange for a full agenda of presentations and roundtable discussions, we understand the importance of unstructured networking time. User groups, professional associations and other organizational  meetings are a great opportunity for HR professionals to leave the office and talk to other professionals about the problems that they are facing in their organization.

Cross-training is receiving renewed attention from companies around the globe. In Singapore, for instance, GlaxoSmithKline plans to cross-train employees to make them “more flexible in a fast-changing business environment.” W.R. Grace’s new Customer Centre of Excellence near Barcelona encourages cross training among product groups, “allowing for increased productivity and efficiencies.”

Inc.com  defines cross-training as “teaching an employee who was hired to perform one job function the skills required to perform other job functions.” Cross-training can enhance an employee’s depth of skills (e.g., training a veteran sales person to sell other types of product lines), or add to an employee’s breadth of knowledge (training a compensation analyst to administer benefits.)