Employee engagement

I have been meaning to write this post for a while, about 4 months, and today Penelope Trunk provided the platform.

Penelope wrote about how to be a good manager, a great post but in my mind it can be summed up in one sentence.

So the first rule, and probably the only rule of management, is to be respectful.

She goes on to discuss Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and how they relate to management, well worth the read.

This bring me to the original post back in January about employee engagement, where I pointed to a video from McDaniel Partners. The video uses a hypothetical village of 100 people to show how many employees in a typical organisation are engaged. The numbers break down like this.

Of the 100 people in your village:-

  • 54 men and 46 women
  • 27 are engaged, committed and loyal to your organisation
  • 59 are just not engaged
  • 14 show up and do not care about what they are doing
  • 77 feel burned out
  • 33 are chronically over worked
  • 67 are overwhelmed by the daily bombardment of communications and information

The story gets worse!

  • On a typical day employees are interrupted 7 times an hour, of which 80% of the interruptions are trivial
  • 50% of your senior managers are too tired to talk to their spouses after a day in the office
  • 7 of your 100 employees are sinking into depression
  • 96 want flexible working time and more control over their time
  • 73 would curtail their careers in favor of more family time!
  • 15 are actively pursuing new jobs
  • 50 are passive candidates and would jump if the right opportunity was offered to them
  • Only 40 are interested in a career in senior management

The closing message in the video:

Treat people as people and you gain their loyalty.

Australian web traffic statistics

Yesterday I received my copy of the May 2008 Hitwise Newsletter which tends to cover lots of general high level internet traffic trends in Australia. (Over the last few months I have been ignoring them, they are probably archived somewhere in GMail if I went to find them.) This month I decided to read it.

Of real interest was the traffic analysis for the News & Media – Print industry.

First up the leading sites were:-

  • Sydney Morning Herald (14.25%)
  • The Age (10.39%)
  • Herald Sun (5.81%)
  • The Daily Telegraph (3.62%)
  • The Australian (3.4%)

What would be interesting is to see how the traffic compares to the online news site, ABC News and News.com.au. But this is not the point of this post.

The point is the traffic drivers to these sites. Firstly Google’s Australian property drove a massive 13.34% of a traffic! Second was ninemsn with lowly 3.11%. The surprise for me was that Facebook is 5th with 2.76%. The surprises didn’t stop there!

Digg is also mentioned as a driver of traffic, now remember these are Australian print news and media properties. Over the last year Digg’s traffic to these sites has grown 120.8% and is now 18th driver of traffic.

What this tells me is use of social media/network services is growing within Australian and it is grown outside of the geeks. For many this might be old news, but for me it is good to see it in hard numbers. This has two implications.

Firstly “traditional” media are probably starting to see a pay off for their entrance into using these tools. By entrance by putting those fancy little “Submit to …” links at the bottom of their posts. The nature follow on here is the board room will take notice and we could see changes in the market.

Second it means the general public is starting to use these services. Which I guess means they see value, well why else would they use them?? When people see value they tend to expect all sites to offer similar services.

Now.

Enterprise 2.0…

New job service for casual workers

Today I was listening to the 2WebCrew where Cameron Reilly mentioned a new Australian startup PloyMe. PloyMe is a job board with a difference. It is aimed at casual workers where job seekers once registered only apply for shifts via SMS. Shifts are sent to a job seekers phone and the first to reply “wins” the shift.

The benefits are huge for both the employer and job seeker, from their web site PloyMe provides a good summary:-

Employers

  • No expensive temp agency hourly rates
  • Casuals become YOUR employees
  • No Agency Placement Fees
  • Search for available Casuals 24/7
  • Need Staff Now!
  • Sick of paying $165 on Job Boards and getting no results

Job Seekers

  • No resumes, no interviews, no hassles
  • Shift offers sent by SMS and email
  • Free for casual workers
  • Name your hourly rate
  • Work the hours you want
  • Pickup extra shifts to pay off your bills

Now obviously this service will not for for your $1000/day project managers or consultants (or could it??), but for casual hospitality work I can see great potential. I will be watching what happens to them.

New model for management

Couple of related posts appeared in my feed reader today.

First was from Mark Pesce who wrote about the fact that education provided in schools currently does not reflect modern communication cultures. When a kid goes to school they have to disconnect from the “hyperconnected” world.

What this means, in a practical sense, is that students have lost respect for the classroom, because it has no relevance to their lives. Yes, they will be polite – as they’re polite to their grandparents – but that is no substitute for a real working relationship. School will be endured, because parents and state mandate it. But it’s a waiting game.

This drawing parallels to how many a Gen Y approaches the modern corporation. They turn up because for many it is the only way to make money but it holds no relevance to their lives. They are generally not engaged.

The challenge for managers both today and in the future is to make the corporation relevant.

Or is it?

This brings me to the second post, from Collab@Work referencing a HBR article, which develops the notion that leaders in MMORPG games, like WOW, are the future leaders of business.

… players who lead teams in the game are learning skills that they will be able to use in business situations, when they will become leaders in the organization

The authors focus on three main components of this leadership: speed, risk-taking and temporary aspect of leadership position.

So, does it matter that the modern corporation has no relevance to the future generations because they will change the corporation to suit?

My take. It does matter, today, and only to corporations not Gen Y. It is the old story you want to attract Gen Y you need to engage them, companies that don’t will go out of business, while those that do will prosper.

The post from Collab@Work goes on to discuss leadership as temporal. Just cause you were the leader of project X does not mean you are the leader of project Y. A very interesting idea which I will explore later.

Talent Management Marketplace changes

Last week we saw the announcement that Taleo will acquire Vurv, essentially number 1 taking number 2 in the Talent Management marketplace. This is both good and bad news for the other players in the market. Bad because the combined entity will certainly be a major player, good in that both companies will have to work hard not to lose focus during the acquisition process.

Jason Corsello from The Human Capitalist has some good analysis of the deal, and fundamentally asks is this good for the customer? I suspect only time will tell.

Further to this I tend to agree with other commentators the consolidation of the Talent Management application space is not going to stop anytime soon. Inside Recruiting as a good interview with Authoria‘s president and CEO, Tod Loofbourrow about the deal. A key quote from Tod:

“Short term, the consolidation from 45 to a handful simplifies recruiters’ technology choices. But the factors driving the consolidation — the broader talent management opportunity — will force recruiters to go beyond a recruiting-only mindset, and come to grips with more strategic organizational needs and talent management opportunities such as quality of hiring; filling gaps in leadership pipelines; and retaining high performers.”

There has been lots of debate over the last few year about what is Talent Management, most recruiting vendors have added some talent management features but no one really has an end to end strong offering, assuming talent management is covers workforce planning, acquisition, performance management, career development, succession management, e-learning and compensation management. A thought confirmed by James Holincheck in his December 2007 report for Gartner, sorry there is no easy link directly to the report search for his research it will costs you US$195 for the report.

Another thought what does it mean for our local Australia vendors in this space? Will the combined entity make competing against them too difficult at the high end, and limit local vendors to the Small to Medium end of the market?

Corporations in virtual worlds

There has been a fair amount written over the last couple years of corporation running public presentations and employee communication sessions in virtual world such as SecondLife. Some of the largest users have been IBM, Sun Microsystems and Cisco, however most fo this work seems to have been public type presentations.

A couple of weeks ago Nortel conducted internal presentation using a prototype “virtual mixed-reality world”. This environment joined together several technologies such as voice, corporate security and identity management.

Everything was linked to our telecom infrastructure, corporate security and identity management systems. In other virtual reality experiences, like Second Life or multi-player on-line gaming systems, you need to go into their footprint and are limited by their capabilities. For example, although a name may be attached to an Avatar, you have no way of really knowing who that individual is in the real world. Yesterday, the virtual experience (complete with high-quality spatial audio) became part of our own IT ecosystem.

What will be interesting is how these environments scale, which is something Second Life has struggled with for years. Where each island (read server) is limited to about 50 simultaneous users which makes management of large scale events very difficult.

However these types of technologies (telepresence, virtual worlds etc) once mainstream will have a profound impact on the way organisations operate in the future, think learning and collaboration.

Innovating to Reboot

Over last several months I have gone through several changes in my life which has resulted in me reviewing many things.

I have been struggling with how to conduct this process, but I figured it is a bit like a reboot but I can’t really turn myself off and on again like a computer now can I. Then I remembered the 10 areas for innovation from Doblin, while designed for product and organisational innovation I figured it might also work for me to complete my “reboot” process, which in some part is a review of my personal brand.

The 10 areas for innovation are split into 4 main categories; Finance, Process, Offerings & Delivery, below I have outlines some of my initial thoughts on how they can be applied to a personal reboot.

Finance

The finance has two components your business model and you networks/alliances.

The first part business model, covers how you make money. Can you change this? Supplement it? Begin consulting or take a full time role in a company. If you are a consultant, could you create a “product” out of your knowledge and sell that on top of your billable hours, this sort of decision allows you to make money while not actually out working. Remember that this decision will either influence or be influenced by the rest of the innovation areas. For example it is not very good if you want to be a consultant but are not involved in a professional network.

The second covers your social/professional networks and alliances and what new arranges you could make for mutual benefits. Are there new or different groups you could get involved with? Could you take a more active role in an existing network? Involvement in networks and alliances increases your visibility and this will in time translate to additional work and income.

Process

The process section covers both enabling and core processes. Enabling process look at how you support core processes, for example time management, exercise, and social activities. Review these processes; can you modify or update to help support your new direction, will an update open the doors to a new direction? Remember if your enabling processes are not supportive of your overall requirements then you quite possibly will fail or not operate at 100% efficiency.

Following your enabling processes you now need to review your core processes. Your core processes are the things that make you and your offering function, for innovation here look at ways you can create new value, do you need to update your education, or if you are a consultant/product provider how about some aggressive volume/pricing/delivery contracts?

Offerings

The offerings area starts to get a little more complex, this area covers your performance, your systems or services. How can you innovate these fundamental items so as to modify what you deliver? Examples are can you adjust your product or service offerings and maybe package as a series of deals, example IT consultants could provide proactive system health check services instead of after the even reactive services. Think outside the box here, the more ideas the better.

Delivery

Having relooked at your revenue streams, processes and offerings, it is now time to look at how you deliver these offerings to the marketplace, in marketing speak this is your “Go To Market” strategy. Essentially you are looking at how you take your offerings to market. Examples if you physically visit clients can you do more virtual or remote work to allow more freedom? How to you communicate your offerings? Have you updated your resume, your web sites, brochures, blog etc. Do you need to update your wardrobe to reflect your new offerings? Do you need to market yourself as a brand? If you are now a brand make sure you pass the 15 words or less contest challenge to describe yourself & your brand. In fact if you follow Tom Peter’s advice on creating Brand You, you will most likely have rebooted yourself.

While I have looked at using the 10 areas for personal innovation, managers and leaders could do the same to reboot their teams or departments.

Hiring 2.0 is catching on

One of the problems of being immersed within an industry is you can quite often see things, the talk/blog about them a long time before real business actually takes these things on board.

Yesterday Stephen Collins shot me a note with a link to a post by Shel Israel on the Red Couch about Hiring 2.0.  My first reaction was, “So What? We’ve been talking about this for soooo long now” but then I realised that this is an example of the future of recruiting in practice, further Shel provides some good insight into the recruitment process.

At a basic level Shel states that the recruitment process needs to be transparent on both sides of the fence so that a better match is found. A great summary is in these 2 paragraphs:-

On the recruiting side of the table, people act as if this were the one company existing in harmonic bliss. There is no discussion of politics layoffs ridiculous customer or management demands. No one warns you that your co-worker has certain hygienic deficiencies The perspective employer is of one mind and voice and everyone working there seems delighted with the choreographed employee dance steps.

Both sides make decisions based on subtitles of what is not said in the recruitment ad or on the resume of what is not shown during the company tour.

A final thought from Shel:-

Ultimately, social media can not only restore the humanity to human resources. It can make the entire recruiting-hiring process a more accurate matchup at lower cost. Why would any company not move in this direction?

I fully support the use of social media to restore the human side of HR I would temper this in that Recruiters/Managers need to remember  that they are seeing the human side of a candidate. This means you are now seeing the personal lives of the candidate in a way that has never been possible. This means you will likely see and read things about their personal lives that you might or might not agree with. The trick is to understand which of those items will influence their ability to do the job?

8 random facts about me

I have been watching this meme float around the Internet for a few weeks or is it months, well not to worry, anyways a couple of days ago it hit me when Alison Young tagged me.

So the background/rules:-

  1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
  2. People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
  3. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
  4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

So here we go 8 random facts about me:-

  1. I lived in Papa New Guinea when I was 2 while my Dad worked on one his archaeological digs, I even have a vague memory of some events.
  2. I have traveled to more countries & done more sight seeing by myself then with other people. Unfortunately it is not the best way to sightsee, for example walking the Great Wall of China alone watching mist rising over the mountains while the rain gently falls all around you is an amazing experience, but better if I had been able to share it with someone else.
  3. I never got a university degree. Generally this is not an issue, other than for recruiters who tend to look at job applicants in a ticker box fashion.
  4. For about 5 years I suffered on and off from depression, but quite possibly I have suffered for longer.
  5. I absolutely, hands down, no contest love the snow and skiing. I might never make an Olympic ski team but I tend to be happiest in the mountains surrounded by snow.
  6. I love to cook. There is not a lot better than cooking up a superb meal, well yes when you do it with friends.
  7. I do not do details. Of any sort.
  8. As a kid I was heavily involved in the Scouting movement and am a Queens Scout.

I’m tagging the following lucky souls, if you have done it let me know:-

Hiring failures

This morning I wasted invested in reviewing a great site providing advice candidates. The advice. what NOT to do within the hiring process. The site Not Hired.

To quote their site:-

We are a group of HR monkeys and hiring managers who have worked with some of the largest search engines, vertical portals, and social-networking sites on the Internet, as well as for hardware and software manufacturers, universities, federal agencies, and accounting and consulting firms. In our jobs, we see thousands of cover letters and resumes every month. Some of them desperately need to be shared ;-)

If you come across a cover letter, resume, or job posting that you think everyone would enjoy, please send it along! We love user submissions and will post (anonymously, of course!) anything that makes us laugh.

Some of the ones that made me laugh:-

I hope you enjoy the laughs.