by Janine Nicole Dennis | May 28, 2013 | Life
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Saturday, May 18th, was the much anticipated #truNewYork event at the Stack Exchange HQ in New York City.
I was amazed by the amount of thought leadership and learning that occurred at this unconference. I am thoroughly a fan of no powerpoint presentations in the place of topical conversations that flourish organically in an effort to leave every participant with some meaningful takeaway. The learning and plethora of new ideas that emerged as a result of real discussions around HR and business was platinum. That is to say, you cannot attend one of these events and walk away without something you can use in your work. It is like free consulting hours for your HR issues.
I was lucky enough to lead a conversation around HR’s usage of social media. The concept is called ‘Social HR Minimalism’.
For those of you familiar with the concept of ‘Minimalism’, you know that it is the smallest impression of art garnering the greatest impact. ‘Social HR Minimalism’ is the development, implementation, and maintenance of a social footprint using the least amount of time and resources resulting in the maximum amount of visibility and impact.
What does this mean for the busy HR professional?
It means that there are no more excuses to be made about not having time for social. The foundation of my concept is simple. You will spend 100 days observing, learning and engaging. These are the three areas that I have identified as being meaningful to the HR practitioner. Social has to be meaningful to the work of the HR practitioner. When you make social meaningful, you can begin to quantify those aspects that will assist them in doing their job better. Is this the beginning of social media ROI? Perhaps, but I won’t go that far. What I will say is by the end of those 100 days, most reasonable people will find that they were able to find something in social media that is useful to them.
How does one become an ‘Social HR Minimalist’?
By embarking on this social journey/experiment, know that it is not about instant gratification. This concept is about influence and community. When you become more influential and when you are a part of a larger community, you will find the answers to filling positions and/or those daily HR conundrums. It’s about challenging yourself to learn and share knowledge. It is also about observing what works and what doesn’t.
The construct of ‘Social HR Minimalism’, says you must consistently spend 20 minutes observing, 20 minutes, learning and 10 minutes engaging for the first 50 days on whatever social platforms you feel are most meaningful for your business and customer base. The last 50 days you do everything in reverse; which means 20 minutes, engaging, 20 minutes, learning and 10 minutes observing. Essentially, we are talking about less than an hour of your time daily to observe behaviors on social media, learn through a chat, a webinar, a podcast, reading a blog and lastly engage with other HR practitioners.
I have found that people that are “too busy”, have all the time in the world. If you are one of them, I implore you to chronicle your day to see how productive you really are. I will bet you that there is some unproductive time in your day that you never realized was unproductive. Why not utilize that unproductive time to do something that could catapult your career or brand to the next level? Moreover, when something has meaning for you, you will likely make time for it. This concept is designed to help you find your way in social media by discovering those aspects that are most meaningful to your work.
There were a number of notable social HR figures at my track that echoed the importance and value of social interaction both online and offline. All in all, no one discounted the power of social media and each attendee walked away with an arsenal of reasons why they should get started. In addition, they were all charged to get their peers involved too. As I mentioned, it is all about community. The strength of the social HR ecosystem is dependent on the constant influx of progressive, knowledgeable HR practitioners constantly joining and engaging.
So….
Now that I have given away some of the goodies I shared at #truNewYork, what will you do with it? Will you share it with you anti-social media HR colleagues or boss or will you hoard this information for yourself? The time is now if you haven’t yet explored social media. It isn’t like it is going away anytime soon. Become a ‘Social HR Minimalist’ and let me know how it works out for you. I’m always here to support.
Many thanks to Bill Boorman for giving me the chance to explore this concept at #truNewYork. It was indeed a rare treat!
by Janine Nicole Dennis | May 16, 2013 | Life
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I am excited to preview the upcoming #truNewYork event coming to New York this Saturday, May 18th. This will be the first time I am attending the event and clearly I’m ambitious because I will be leading a track as well.
The #tru unconferences are the result of Bill Boorman’s creativity and non-conformist style in collaboration with Aki Kakko from Joberate. Just recently, Craig Fisher has joined forces with both Bill and Aki to form a new company that combines #tru unconferences and Craig’s successful #TalentNet Live Conferences.
The essence of these unconferences is they get people at a venue in cities around the globe to discuss topics like: social recruiting, employer branding, passive talent acquisition, HR Tech in by using a group discussion format. There are no powerpoint presentations, no exhibition halls, no scripts, no dress code just networking, discussions and well coffee breaks and drinks. Each topic is moderated by a track leader who lays the foundation for the conversation and engages the track attendees.
#Tru events are a refreshing change from the usual structured conference. It’s about connecting people and having real discussions around the hot topics in HR. Cool right?
My track is called ‘Social HR Minimalism’. Here’s a snippet of the concept and what attendees can expect on Saturday:
The concept of ‘Social HR Minimalism’ is based on the fact that we have long known that most HR and business people have cited that “time” is a major reason for not participating in social media. I have often heard people say ” Janine, how do you do it? Who has the time to invest in this?” I’m way too busy.” The truth is people are indeed busy with work responsibilities and social media seems like another thing to add to their to-do list. My track will help people look at what they are spending time on and provide a simple methodology for getting engaged in social media where it doesn’t greatly impede other responsibilities.
‘Social HR Minimalism’ is my way of helping HR practitioners to understand the reasons their business should be on social media, why there is always time to learn, and how they can get on the social media bandwagon with little time and resources spent doing it.
I was one of those HR types that had “no time” or “interest” in social media. I really was busy and if someone would have told me 3-4 years ago that I would be as invested as I currently am- I would tell them they were crazy. It can be done.
If you think my topic of ‘Social HR Minimalism’ is interesting, consider joining us on Saturday from 9am-6pm at the Stack Exchange offices. There will be many more innovative and interesting tracks with some fantastic HR thought leaders. There’s still time to register, click here for more details. For those of you already attending, the hashtag for my track is #SocHRMini.
I hope to see you there!
by Janine Nicole Dennis | May 15, 2013 | Life
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After an impromtu week off due to my little one being sick and then me falling on my face, I thought it was only fitting that I return gangbuster style with a major media outlet interview.
I am honored and pleased to share my recent interview with US News Careers columnist, Miriam Salpeter called:
There are so many things I wish I had known eight years ago and even more recently three years ago when I was a jobseeker. Working an HR desk for over eight years, you become savvy to the tricks and sentiments around offer negotiations-particularly the salary portion of that.
In this interview, I am showing the “hand” of the employer in an effort to educate jobseekers on all the things we consider when making salary offers. In addition, I provide insights into ways you can detect whether or not you are receiving the benefit package of a lifetime or a dud.
I hope you enjoy it and find it helpful. It gives me great pleasure to discuss the least sexy topics in the HR spectrum of salary and benefits. Who knew salary and benefits could be so salacious?
by Janine Nicole Dennis | May 5, 2013 | Human Resources
Blogging is a full-time endeavor for me. It is time-consuming and it is something that requires energy I may or may not consistently have. I am an HR blogger juggling a full-time day job, plus a part-time consulting business, along with motherhood and marriage etc.
I am constantly asked by colleagues how I manage to find time to blog and hold down the rest of my responsibilities. The answer is when you are passionate about something you don’t think twice about doing it. I have had stories, ideas, anecdotes and best practices bottled up and fermenting in my head for years. I had very limited outlets to share all of this knowledge and so it laid dormant with no voice.
Information hoarding is a burden. Knowledge transfer helps us all.
Blogging has provided me with an opportunity to free myself of the burden of carrying around all of these thoughts about HR, the world of work and business. It gives me the chance to share my point of view and receive immediate feedback on whether my thoughts are universal truths or subjective musings of a professional.
There is a lot of noise in this space. Some of it is due to the lovely clamor of beautifully-orchestrated music being made by the best and brightest thought leaders in HR. The rest of it is due to saturation. That is saturation of purposely meaningless thoughts about HR and the world of work. All of it is disruptive for different reasons. As such, I aim to be a “signal in the noise”. At the top of the year, I wrote about“being a signal in the noise” and what that means for me. Essentially, I said that I may not be the loudest sound now, but I will be that noise that will make you stop and wonder how you missed it the first time around.
Content is king. Classics are worth the wait.
Do you remember how you used to enjoy purchasing music back in the day? I remember pre-ordering and/or waiting outside the record store for the new Destiny’s Child or Nas CD to drop. It was a feeling of great anticipation. You had no idea what you were in for, but you knew what to expect from previous albums. The album could have been garbage once you bought it, but the momentum to get you up and out to the record store and spending money was all based on previous experience. More importantly, your favorite band or singer could have been on a 2-4 year hiatus where you heard nothing but old songs from previous albums, but you waited patiently and played those old records out until something new presented itself.
I blog to deliver not just good content but the best content. Being the “signal in the noise” means that however, infrequent or irregular I blog in years to come, people will still be waiting for me to drop that next article. There is something incredibly affirming about having something so personal be so vital to someone else whether it is career advice or a resonating anecdote that hits close to home. I have had an outpouring of people from all over the world thanking me for various articles I have written. It is a feeling that is hard to explain when you receive that feedback. For me, it simply makes me happy and eager to write even more content.
Blogging is allowing me to leave a social and professional footprint that I doubt would have happened as expediently without it. I have always believed in quality over quantity, classic over trendy, best over mediocre. These are the things that push me to write until 3am in the morning as I am doing at this very moment.
Of course, you can not diminish the incredible opportunities to meet extraordinary people in your profession that have the same drive and goals to impact the world of work. I have found that in Chris Fields and many other HR professionals that I have met through blogging.
To Chris, I say remain a classic and a notch above the rest and blog on my friend. Onward and upward always! Happy 2nd Year Blog Anniversary Cost of Work!
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Apr 29, 2013 | HR Policy
Editor’s Note: I was initially interviewed and quoted for a piece called “The HR Department of 2020: 6 Bold Predictions”. The original author at ” The New Talent Times” was kind enough to provide me with a shorter version of the original article. The link to the full article is enclosed in the author’s bio below. Enjoy!
The HR Department of 2020: 3 Bold Predictions
Some have speculated that HR is a business function without a future. They say software will replace the entire HR department.
They’re wrong.
While software is changing how HR performs, it won’t eliminate the HR department. Instead, experts predict a renaissance period–a chance for HR professionals to transform their roles. Software Advice interviewed several experts to get their take on the HR department of 2020. Here, she lays out the changes they predict, as well as how HR professionals can prepare.
Prediction 1: In-house HR will downsize and outsourcing will increase.
This prediction might seem, well, predictable. However, the reasons the experts provide for the change might surprise you.
Industry analyst Brian Sommer, the founder of TechVentive, claims HR departments will shrink due to new technologies that not only perform many data entry tasks, but also allow for increased employee participation in HR processes. As he says, “Many businesses are going to get a lot of capability done by better technology, more self-service and the employee doing a lot on their own.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Janice Presser, CEO of The Gabriel Institute, predicts that many transaction-heavy HR jobs will be outsourced entirely to HR agencies or specialists. She even goes so far as to say, “Entry-level HR jobs, as they currently exist, will all but disappear as transactional tasks are consigned to outsourced services.”
But don’t despair! The internal HR function will survive. As Chip Luman, the COO of HireVue, explains, “Given the ongoing regulatory environment, the need to pay, provide benefits, manage employee relations issues, and process information will go on.”
Prediction 2: Strategic thinking will become in-house HR’s new core competence.
The remaining in-house version of HR will be leaner. And to thrive it needs to reposition itself as a strategic partner within the business. In fact, over half the experts Software Advice consulted advised HR departments to increase their strategic value to the business–or else.
Dr. Presser says, “This includes the ability to make accurate projections based on understanding the goals of the business and using metrics that describe more than lagging indicators, such as how long it takes to fill a job or the per-employee training spend.” Importantly, this strategy role cannot be outsourced. As she says, “Strategic planning requires in-house expertise.”
Prediction 3: The pendulum will swing back to the specialist.
Janine Truitt, Chief Innovations Officer of Talent Think Innovations,LLC, sees a cyclical shift in the HR field. As she says, “Every decade or so we fluctuate back and forth from the paradigm of the independent contributor-specialist to the generalist practitioner. We were in a ‘generalist’ mode and now I think the pendulum may be swinging back toward the specialist.”
Or, as Luman puts it: “HR generalists as we know them will disappear.”
Elizabeth Brashears, the director of Human Capital Consulting at TriNet HR, agrees. She notes, “There will be more specialized roles. I believe this to be the case as the employment landscape becomes more complex.
Preparing for 2020
What can current HR professionals begin doing now to prepare for these predicted changes? The experts all endorse one tactic: keep learning. Risk-taking and networking will help, too.
“Get ahead of the curve,” advises Dr. Presser, “Realize that many of today’s ‘best practices’ evolved under very different business conditions, and may well become obsolete within this decade. Learn everything you can about your industry, your competitors, and pending legislation that affects your business operations.”
Truitt advises pursuing additional training or formal education. As she observes:
One difference that we will see clearly in the next decade is that people will not be able to merely fall into HR. Long ago, when HR was ‘personnel,’ the profession was largely made up of individuals that happened upon the profession…it seems that the future HR practitioner will likely have to be formally educated in this discipline to be gainfully employed in HR.
Finally, Luman encourages HR professionals to develop their own personal brand–to find their voice and be active. As he says, “Network inside and outside of your field. Blog, communicate, read and help others achieve success. If you are not outside of your comfort zone, you are stagnating.”
Erin Osterhaus is the Managing Editor for Software Advice’s HR blog, The New Talent Times. She focuses on the HR market, offering advice to industry professionals on the best recruiting, talent management, and leadership techniques. For the full article, click here.
