HR Periscope

Social Networking in the Workplace

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Popoola) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:02:00 +0000

I believe most organisations have come to accept the fact that Social Networks such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace are here to stay. Facebook specifically is fast becoming increasingly popular not just amongst young people, but also with older people as well. This has become increasingly evident to me in the last few months when I have noticed a number of friends from school that I haven’t spoken to for around 20 years, signing up to Facebook. Although, personally I have been a user of online networks for a number of years, I previously only found people of my age on business online networks.

There is no doubt that as individuals use social networks, they need to be cognisant of the fact that a lot of the information and I emphasis images placed on social networks are public and therefore accessible by both current and potential employers. If I ever doubted the extent to which employers used information from the internet to vet potential employees and suppliers, it became clear to me when I attended a meeting with a potential client, who had in front of him a printed copy of my online profile from Ecademy (a Social Business network).

A number of organisations have banned employees from access Social Networks at work for fear of the security of their IT systems or out of concern that employees will spend all their time on the networks when they are supposed to be working.

On the other hand, recognising the power of social networks to breakdown silos, build relationships, allow for collaboration and the sharing of ideas and solutions to problems an increasing number of organisations are creating internal social networks. Although I think this is something great that should be encouraged, the truth is that it doesn't replace the external social networks that enable employees to interact on a social and professional basis with friends and associates outside of the organisation. Until you log on to a social network you may be unaware of the diversity of activities on the sites which often include a number of professional/business focused groups, in addition to the more general social chit chat and activities.

Furthermore, as the 21^st Century employee increasingly seeks flexibility and freedom in how they work, I’m not sure that a simple no access policy is a good way of retaining the support and employment of good employees.

Rather, I believe there is a need for a middle ground which protects the organisation, whilst allowing employees reasonable access to social networks. So organisations concerned about the security of their IT network can have a few computer terminals that are not linked to the company’s network, placed in communal areas which employees can access during lunch or coffee breaks. Enabling employees to only access Social Networks in communal areas should also deal with employer concerns that employees may be sitting at their desks accessing social networks throughout the day.

Most important of all, an organisation should have a clear policy on employees use of social networks incorporated into its Policy on the Use of IT. This is important not only to clarify what is acceptable access to Social Networks within the workplace, but equally to ensure that employees specifying their employer’s name on profiles, blogs etc maintain a public image which is consistent with that of their employer.

Susan Popoola
Conning Towers
HR Transformation & Talent Management
Leveraging the Power of People

Copyright 2008 This document is the specific intellectual property of the Conning Towers Consultancy. Content may not be reused or reproduced without the specific permission of the owner or a reference to the source. Opinions may be generated from content obtained from other sources and such content is referenced as appropriate.

A Few Thoughts on Talent Management

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Popoola) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:34:00 +0000

I’ve noted that there are an increasing number of organisations that offer Talent Management services, include it in job titles or simply speak of the need for it. To an extent this is good or at least the Management of Talent sounds positive. The only thing is I believe there is a lack of clarity as to what it really means. In deed people using the terminology often mean different things.

By Talent Management, I’ve found that typically a number of organisations use Talent Management as another name for Leadership Development, while a number of others use it to describe recruitment and development (of the top tiers) of staff within organisations.

I take a more holistic approach to Talent Management as I believe that although Leadership Development and Recruitment & Development may be important elements of Talent Management, they cannot by themselves be truly effective.

Talent Management needs to start with an understanding of a business’ objectives – both immediate and for future years in line with an organisation’s business plan. (This is the reason why whenever I work with an organisation one of the first things that I do is come to grips with the organisations business plan and objectives.) These objectives need to be translated into resourcing requirements, ideally in the form of a Competency Framework. This may be developed at either an organisation-wide or departmental level.

This Framework forms the baseline for Talent Management as it enables for the Resource Planning or Workforce Planning that provides an understanding of the human resources required by the organisation both immediately and into the future. It further enables an organisation to measure the required resources against those currently in place, to identify where the gaps exist and plan for the future.

It is against this backdrop, that we can talk of the recruitment and development aspects of talent management. The starting point of this is the development of staff to work effectively in their current roles. From here there is a need to move on to consider the identification and development of staff for succession planning. This often focuses on the development of Leadership staff. Good leaders should in turn look to the development of their teams.

As this is going on there is a simultaneous need to creatively work on the recruitment of staff. Although recruitment is nothing new, the challenges of getting the right staff within an organisation is increasing becoming a challenge and the challenge does not stop with recruitment. If an organisation goes through great troubles to obtain staff, then it is only logical that the organisation will want to retain them.

This takes us on to the final aspect of Talent Management that I wish to talk about. This is the management and engagement of staff. The point at which performance management becomes important, not just as a means of measuring performance, but also a means of employee engagement to ensure that an employee’s role within the organisation is something that he or she feels valued in and that it helps to develop/enhance his or her career. Simultaneously it entails offering the flexible working options that provide employees with a work life balance of choice. All of the aspects of staff management and engagement mentioned feed back into Workforce Planning.

While the various aspects of Talent Management have always been important, there is a heightened need for a number of them due to the requirements of employment legislation. Most pertinent, however is that fact that we do have an ageing population and the younger generations of workers that we do have; popularly referred to as Generation X and Generation Y are increasingly demanding these options of their employers.

In effective while the various elements of Talent Management are nothing new what is, if not new, now pertinent is need to pull together the various strategies, processes and systems required for the development of an effective workforce.

Susan Popoola
Conning Towers
HR Transformation & Talent Management

Leveraging the Power of People

Overcoming the Peter Principle

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Popoola) — Mon, 07 May 2007 18:45:00 +0000

According to the Peter Principal, People are promoted to their level of Incompetency and sadly I can’t count the number of times that I have seen the Peter Principal take place and work to the detriment of both of the individual concerned and the department or an organisation as a whole.

This is particularly true, when an employee who is very good at working on an operational level is moved into a managerial role without being prepared for what it entails.

To avoid the Peter Principal and its implications there are certain questions that need to be answered before a decision is made to move them into a managerial role. Specifically are they prepared to:

Act more like a coach than a player?
Step out of the limelight and let their employees take the glory instead?
Both organise and motivate both themselves and their employees
Handle paperwork and details?
Spend a lot of their time planning and analysing rather than being with people?
Listen to complaints and resolve their employees’ problem?
Handle personnel issues, inclusive of disciplinary issues which could amount to firing them?

If the answers to any of these questions is “no”, it is not to say that an employee should never be moved, but that time should be taken to prepare employees so that the answers become “yes”.

This indicates the need for talent management, whereby there is an extended time to prepare employees for the moves and at times to develop more creative ways of promoting and fully utilising employee skills, without giving them responsibilities that they will never be comfortable with or readily able to cope with.

Susan Popoola
Conning Towers
Human Resources Consultancy
Leveraging the Power of People

Copyright 2007 This document is the specific intellectual property of the Conning Towers Consultancy. Content may not be reused or reproduced without the specific permission of the owner or a reference to the source. Opinions may be generated from content obtained from other sources and such content is referenced as appropriate.

The Need for Workforce Planning

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Popoola) — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 23:11:00 +0000

I recently read an article in the CIPD magazine that stated that according to a report by MPs, “Workforce planning in the NHS has been a disastrous failure that has led the service from boom to bust”, due to a lack of strategic planning by the Department of Health which led trusts to recruit more staff than they could afford.

The report goes further to explain that between 1999 and 2004 nurses in the health service increase by more than 67,000 – 48,000 of which were unplanned.

I don’t know much about the workforce planning that has taken place in the NHS, but I am aware of the positive impact of the planning or in some cases lack of planning in organisations that I have worked with.

Workforce planning is a strategic part of Human Resources as it involves planning for the future. Unfortunately, Human Resources departments are often too caught up with the day to day operational aspects of business to have time for future planning.

This unfortunately means that staffing plans are made based on the basis of short term and present requirements. Subsequently as medium/long term plans are not taken account there is a need to change plans on short notice leading to the need to suddenly increase or reduce staffing levels.

This could, however, be avoided or at least minimised by both medium/long term planning and more flexible working structures.

Ref: Personnel Management 5^th April 2007

Susan Popoola

Conning Towers

Human Resources Consultancy
Leveraging the Power of People

The Problems with HRIS

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Popoola) — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 23:15:00 +0000

According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), 82 per cent of UK organisations have some form of Human Resources Information System (HRIS) in place.

The key reasons given for introducing an HRIS are:

Improving the quality of information.
Reducing the administrative burden.
Improving speed of information
Improving flexibility of information
Improving services to employees.
Producing HR metrics.

There is, however, a question as to whether or not HRIS meet HR expectations.

My experience is that a lot of the time, they don’t.

Numerous reasons can be given for this, but I would like to highlight two which both relate to planning.

A lot of the time organisations are in a hurry to implement an HR system and therefore they start of by reviewing a few of the systems on the market and make a selection based on the functionality that they see.

Organisations are, however, much better placed to make a decision and to bargain for the system that they need if they start of by taking the time to outline their requirements and categories them under essential and desirable.

This means that when organisations talk to suppliers they will be better placed to ensure that the system meets their specific requirements and where it doesn’t to at least be prepared.

The other area that I would like to highlight relates to system setup. Everyone now knows that garbage in, means garbage out and so everyone places a lot of emphasis on the quality of data to be input to the system.

However, organisations are yet to realise that time needs to be taken to plan the structure of systems in relation to the different data types to be used within the system such as organisation structures, competency frameworks, monitoring data etc.

The planning of data sets and structures means that the system can be setup so that the data can easily be accessed and extracted from the system.

These are just key areas to take account of when developing HRIS. All in all the key message that I would like to give is that the devil is in the detail so plan, plan plan!

Susan Popoola
Conning Towers
Human Resources Consultancy
Leveraging the Power of People

Copyright 2006 This document is the specific intellectual property of the Conning Towers Ltd. Content may not be reused or reproduced without the specific permission of the owner or a reference to the source. Opinions may be generated from content obtained from other sources and such content is referenced as appropriate.

The Problems with Change

noreply@blogger.com (Susan Popoola) — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 19:24:00 +0000

Change is now very much a part of corporate live. Unfortunately, change made with the very best of intentions, is ill received and goes wrong.

According to Machiavelli, “There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions, and merely lukewarm defenders in those who should gain by the new one”.

I would like to outline some of the reasons why change fails, which automatically lead to ways in which they can possibly be avoided.

Purpose of Change

Many times organisations decide to go through change programmes because they are aware that other organisations have done so. The mistake they make is that they don’t investigation to ensure that that the changes are specifically relevant to them. Under such circumstances, they often don’t tend to have a clear vision for the outcome.

Lack of planning and preparation

Another mistake that organisations make in change programmes is that they often omit to take time to plan and prepare for change programmes before they commence. This means that they have not taken outcome of the different steps involved in a change programme and are therefore unprepared for some crucial steps in the programme.

Unrealistic Timescales

Linked the a lack of planning and preparation is often unrealistic timescales whereby organisations pick a date for the implementation of change based on another activity within the organisation without taking the time to ensure that it is practical to implement the change within the required timescales. As such, I always question the logic for the timescales of a project and the implication of not making the changes within the specified timescales.

The legacy of previous change

A key problem with rushed projects is that things are not done problem. This leads to a poor foundation for the next project and a lack of confidence.

The way we do things around here

Every organisation has it culture and way of doing things, but during times of change it is important to doing things in a manner that will lead to the best results, even if it deviates from the norm.

Poor communication & Involvement

Doing things differently logically leads onto the issues of poor communication and the need to involve the right people. It is important to ensure that representatives of the key stakeholders are involved in all stages of the project. This provides the opportunity for the various issues that may arise due to a change to be taking into account. As such, “the way in which things are done” can be considered and issues relating to changing them can be dealt with.

It is important to also communicate with all employees within the organisation that the change is taking place.

Employee Resistance

One of the biggest frustrations during organisation change is employee frustration. This is can, however, be minimised, if not totally eliminated by keeping employees up to date with the changes as mentioned above. This does not have to be detailed, but it should be open, regular communication, ensuring that employees are involved of the planned changes and the milestones to be achieved/achieved. Employee resistance is also minimised when employees are given the opportunity to provide feedback on their views and concerns regarding the change.

Ill-prepared employees

This all links into the issue of employees being ill-prepared for the change, which loops back to them resisting change.

Susan Popoola
Conning Towers
Human Resources Consultancy
Leveraging the Power of People