Twitter in the classroom to assist not distract?

Happy Monday everybody!

I’m actually preparing to fly to Melbourne this afternoon for a group HR planning day tomorrow. I’m pretty excited because I have managed to snag 30 mins on the agenda to talk about opportunities for HR in Social Media.

It is a rapidly growing area- and one that can’t be ignored.

Once I’ve finalised the presentation I’m happy to share it so stay tuned.

In the meantime though, I came across this video this morning and thought it may be worth sharing.

I studied my Masters by distance and whilst I really enjoyed it- I just wonder how much better it could have been had they embraced some social media tools. Have a look and see what you think.

Employee engagement- can you do it on your own or should you get help?

Happy Monday everybody! I can hear the groans already. Mondays are a bit of a pain but then again, you have to start somewhere.

Aside from being a morning person, I opened my mail this morning to find this little gem inside!

A few months ago at the Twitter Beach Meet, I met Elinor Green and Lucie Snape from ‘the face’. We chatted about twitter, its uses in organisations and spoke about why we were there. I was so interested in what they did, we swapped cards. Again, disclosure- I haven’t been paid for these comments and I’ve only spoken with Lucie and Elinor on twitter since we met. I just wanted to share a great idea with the rest of you.

So I open up the card and inside it reads:

Dear Boss,

This is your star employee speaking. I don’t mind working for you, but I don’t love it either, When you talk about the future, all I hear are just words. And my colleagues feel the same. Wouldn’t you want us totally engaged and working at peak efficiency?

Of course you would. So, here’s a tip. If you want to get inside our hearts and minds, check out www.stoptalkingatme.com.au They really know their chit (and chat).

Now obviously it’s a clever ploy to get you to check out their website listing their services (which might I add is very cool), but it stopped me dead this morning and again I wondered what I could do in my workplace to improve both internal communication and employee engagement.

We know given the current environment that people are less likely to leave their current jobs, and given everything that is happening- they aren’t happy either.

Corporate Leadership Council Research (2008) tells us that disengaged employees are staying and they were 24% less likely to quit their jobs in 2008 than in 2006.

So given that we know that many employees are not engaged (some disengaged)- is it possible to turn this around internally or is it always necessary to engage an external provider to get things started?

Lots of companies use various tools like the Hewitt Engagement Survey, an organisational LSI or a company like ‘the face’ to turn things around. So if you’ve identified a problem in your organisation is it possible to go it alone or must we engage an expert? What are your experiences?

What are you ALLOWED to view at work? The grey area of social media in the workplace

Last week when I was chairing the Australian Employment and Workplace Relations Summit, the very last panel featured Pete Williams from Deloitte Digital and so the conversation skewed towards social media and what companies allow employees to access.

I mentioned that in my workplace, I have access to everything. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube- the lot- and I know it may sound silly, but I honestly don’t think I could work somewhere that didn’t allow me access to these sites. One of my friends can’t even look at this blog. Why am I so passionate about it? Because it helps me do my job.

Twitter- is awesome. It has allowed me to meet so many fantastic people (in HR and other industries) located in Sydney, greater Australia and across the world. Some of these people I’ve met in person, others just online- and others have become really good friends.

If I have a question about something, it’s a great pool of resources to draw upon. Invaluable to my work and mental sanity as the rest of my team is located in Melbourne. I also get access to so many fantastic articles and blog entries this way.

Facebook– I don’t use facebook as much for work, but in saying that I don’t spend very long on there each day. I have it as an app on my iPhone so I do the check-ins on facebook when I’m bored.

LinkedIn– another fantastic way to meet people that share the same interests as you, and share articles, information and personal experiences.

Youtube– an excellent resource for training, learning and creating entertaining presentations. We all know its important mix up the media you use (in order to escape death by PowerPoint), and it gets people engaged and sometimes excited about what they are seeing. Video has the power to invoke an emotional response- which is great for HR.

And as Laurel Papworth (Australia’s foremost social media expert) said recently in HR Monthly, “Anyone who would waste a huge amount of time on Facebook at work would only switch to email, internet surfing or playing solitaire online. Timewasters waste time. Don’t blame the tool!”

So what is your stance on this, or what does your organisation allow you to access at work? I know I’m Gen Y, and that is my perspective because it how I work- but I’m keen to hear a range of other perspectives.

Social Media and HR

Social Media is being talked about a lot lately. We’ve seen news break first on twitter, employees are fired for things on facebook and politicians like Obama and Kevin Rudd use it as part of campaign strategies or as a means to connect with the public.

It’s also becoming a way for organisations to build relationships with people, join the conversation, build brand awareness and recruit/attract staff.

So what is Social Media?

“Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM).” (Wikipedia)

So we’re talking about blogs, twitter, facebook, and social bookmarking sites like Digg or Delicious.

Social networking websites are online communities of people who share interests and activities, and who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. They typically provide a variety of ways for users to interact through chat, messaging, email, video, file-sharing, blogging, discussion groups, and images.
I’ll be presenting at my organization soon on where we can go with social media from a HR perspective, so I’ll share that with you when I can. However, I think that social media has huge potential for your personal development. I’ve learned so much off other people, some of whom I’ve met in person and others that I’ve just communication with online.

In the meantime, if you are interested I recommend you have a read of Michael Specht’s blog and his list of 52 Social Media ideas for HR and Recruitment.

If you are interested in connecting, HR Club Sydney has a facebook fan page and we’re also on twitter and LinkedIn.

Do you use Social Media and if ‘yes’, what do you use it for? If ‘no’, what has stopped you?

Lessons from Air New Zealand- HR and Recruitment

I was reading “Vendor View: Kiwi invasion of the Australian recruitment market” on Destination Talent this morning and was reminded of the great things that Air New Zealand are doing in the HR/Recruitment space (I also travelled with them to Queenstown on the weekend!).

Simon Pommeroy is the Recruitment Manager of Air New Zealand and he’s won various awards for his recruitment campaigns and strategies, and has worked closely with CEO and the Board of Air New Zealand to bring about a complete change to the way Air New Zealand recruits everyone – from aeronautical engineers to customer service.

He believes that many channels of communication (rather than just job ads) are necessary and uses both old and new communicative tools such as web pages, twitter and career newsletters to attract candidates. I think at the moment many of us realise we need to move away from just posting our jobs on typical job boards but are unsure of how to do it. Air New Zealand is a great example.

The recruitment strategy also focusses on the future needs of Air New Zealand with a big publicity campaign targeting future engineering cadetships (via a competition – How Far Can Your Kids Make It Fly). This campaign brought world-wide publicity (and was only 10% of the cost of previous campaigns). Similarly their careers newsletter was cheap to set up and has thousands of subscribers world-wide. It’s attracted over 1,000 additional resume registrations for their jobs.

Finally the most fantastic thing I believe is the ‘Would Air New Zealand Suit Me’ questionnaire. This on-line assessment, has helped Air New Zealand attract individuals more suited to their highly competitive environment (which requires resilience as well as customer focus). The CEO has received letters from would-be-applicants saying how much the appreciated the questionnaire, because it has saved them time applying for what would have been an unsuitable position. They could see that the highly competitive environment of the airline industry wasn’t right for them. Simon believes the rejection management of applicants is very important, because applicants talk about their experiences with others.

You should absolutely check them out- very impressive.

They also have a rather funny ad out now- “Air New Zealand have nothing to hide”

Using twitter for Employment branding

HR extraordinaire Chris Ferdinandi has teamed up with Fistful of Talent’s Jessica Lee to publish this article on using twitter for employment branding.

It’s a great read to get you started on twitter- and when you do get on there-there are HEAPS of cool HR people to follow, and HRClubSyd should be one of the first people you follow!

You can also follow Chris on twitter or check out his blog Renagade HR.