Category Archives: Engagement

Review and Demo of @SlideKlowd – a Game-changer app for Events, Conferences and Training

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slideklowd

I’m on vacation in sunny California so I thought I would pull a few of my favorites from the archives. Check these folks out. 

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You never know who you’re going to connect with on the Twitters.

Back a few months I had tweeted a post in regard to me preparing for my SHRM Work/Flex presentation and happened to mention my Powerpoint. I received a follow from @SlideKlowd and checked into who they were – as I often do before simply clicking the ole “follow” button.

Upon my investigation I found out more about their amazing mobile and desktop app that allows greater engagement between presenters and their audiences whether it’s at conferences or events, online hangouts or training. I was so excited about the possibility of doing away with “the way we’ve always done it” and having to fill out those paper surveys after a conference session or keynote, for one. Secondly, I see how this can tremendously affect the way we communicate and present future events and / or training for HR and beyond.

Just think about the possibilities of having real-time engagement with your audience and being able to walk away with REAL data. I guess it could be terrifying to presenters who are boring and those who can’t engage an audience and the like.

My next step was to follow them back online and hear more about their product and services so I did just that. I was hoping to use SlideKlowd at my presentation in October but it was cutting it short.

I sat in with my new-found connection > Justin Foster, one of the founders of SlideKlowd, in a private one-on-one Webinar to share more about what they offered and I fell head over hills with this product. I like it so much, in fact, that I told several of my HR buds about it and scheduled a Google+ hangout for Justin to present the demo to them.

hangout with SlideKlowd

Here is the hangout >

Thanks Justin, for a superb job and for the fantastic job you guys are doing at creating a greater way to drive engagement.

Oh, you’ll want to check them out at SlideKlowd.com and connect with them on Facebook and Twitter. I can’t recommend them enough.

Here is their latest video introduction.

Finally an App to gauge Employee Morale

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morale.meWe’ve heard for several years now that employee morale is at an all-time low due to cut backs, cramming more work on our existing employees and employees are all like “I just want to be heard. This place sucketh.”

Unfortunately, we’ve been thinking that a $5.00 gift card was the answer to all of our problems (How’s that working for ya?). Let’s face it, giving your employees a gift card to Target or KFC isn’t the end all to your dilemma. We are insane to think that if we keep doing the same thing over and over one day it is bound to work. It’s not – it’s just not.

Smart folks are consistently looking for the best ways to solve problems especially in the way of technology. I love keeping these alerts on my radar so I can share them with you when I come across them.

One of my online connections Joel Cheesman, who I met a few years back at the Talentnet Conference in our fine city of Chicago, announced this past March a new tool for helping HR (among other managers) gauge employee morale by his new mobile app morale.me. Joel has been in the Recruiting/HR space for a zillion years and knows the ins and outs. He understands that this has been a real issue with getting crucial feedback and his new app is genius.

hangout with joel cheesman

In fact, I hit Joel up on Facebook and asked  if he would join me in a Google+ hangout to discuss employee engagement,  morale and his new app morale.me.

Here is the recording from the Hangout, in case you missed it (and I’m pretty sure you did).

I can’t wait to hear how this app explodes into our workplaces and changes our levels of engagement. After all, who doesn’t want to be heard and to know that somebody gives a crap about how they are feeling at work?

Now, hop on over to morale.me and check em out.

HR it’s about your people – not your seat at the Table!

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booster seatI often love to hop on to Youtube and watch a few videos of channels I’m subscribed to as a part of my ongoing learning in this space (okay, and a few funny videos).

I came across a fantastic video from Meet the Boss TV titled “Ten Best Practice HR Tips” that showcases HR and Executives from companies such as McDonald’s UK, KFC, IBM, Google and Mattel  It was interesting to hear how they change their strategies from what previously was being done in their organizations to what they are currently doing in regard to their people.

HR can be a game-changer in our organizations. The very ones who can quite possibly change the course of our ships and create amazing organizations; the very ones who can often change the definition of what’s expected from our leaders and our people. They can become the greatest company brand ambassadors and create amazing change within the structure of our organizations.

Sometimes that takes asking ourselves a few questions such as:

  • What are the business needs around our people that drive performance?
  • What is it that our people truly value about working at our organization?

When we determine the answers to these two things we can often create an energy that can be released around our people – from where it should begin first and foremost. From there HR can then begin to talk about the future talent needs of our organizations, how we can generate better insight around our people, how they can get rid of organizational silos that destroy our progress, and lastly – how we can support change in business.

Back to the video:

We must start thinking differently and perhaps going back to the basics where we do consider it more about our culture and the people that work there than our ever arriving at the table.

A lesson in Collective Leadership from the band Mumford and Sons

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Mumford-and-Sons-l-to-r-W-010It’s important that we surround ourselves with others that can encourage and inspire us to see things from a different perspective.

We’ve heard folks tell us that “It’s lonely at the top.” We’ve had discussions with many leaders who have shared their personal stories of feeling lonely and that they were the ones who took on the bulk of what happens in our organizations because it seemed as if no one else cared as much as they cared.

But isn’t leadership really more about inspiring others to become a part of the process? Isn’t it more about team-building and getting our organizations and people to work as one collective body? Heck, even pop groups understand that it takes more than one voice or one guitar player to create a whole?

I was recently encouraged by the music group Mumford & Sons in a documentary when they shared  “We try to always remember that our success lie in the collaboration of each member making the whole one really unique experience. We understand that each of us feeds off of each member and their unique piece of the puzzle and energy. This is what makes us who we are today.”

The collaboration model is nothing new and according to “Next Shift: Beyond the Nonprofit Leadership Crisis,” by the Building Movement Project, younger leaders are not attracted to hierarchical structures and are trying to find new ways to organize and structure work, ranging from entrepreneurial models to shared leadership and broader participatory structures. And more millenials are entering the workforce today than any other era.

Perhaps the time has come that we dissolve the lone hero leader mentality who comes in just in the “nick of time” to “save the day.” That instead, we take the opportunity to think of ourselves as facilitators of a process that engages everyone in our organizations. This can be quite challenging to leaders who are used to doing everything themselves or micromanaging out of fear that no one else can do it “quite like us” or that they are going to screw everything up and we’ll be left to clean up the mess.

Collective leadership empowers employees and teams and can in fact ease our burden.

Figuring out how to adopt this model is not an easy task but can be a tremendous asset to our cultures and the greater good of our organizations. Distributing leadership and responsibility is a balancing act, knowing when and what each of us needs to communicate to the team without overloading each other.

Collective leadership is the result of a process that brings diverse communities of people to create change, begins with a shared dream that forms the heart of a group of skilled and passionate individuals and emerges from our relationship building.

It is amazing what a handful of people can do when everyone’s leadership is tapped and others are allowed to share their insight and ideas. Who doesn’t like to be heard and feel as if they have a voice, especially at work?

This post originally aired at SHRM WeKnowNext. 

HR and your Social Strategy – Do you even have One?

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???????????????????I always love to go to my extra-smart friends for guest posts to mix it up a bit. I’m quite boring, in reality, and don’t wanna bore you to tears. Jeff Waldman is one of my go-to-guys in that respect. Check out this outstanding post and make sure to connect with Jeff and his team. You can find them all over the place. 

Photo Credit: en.blog.zyncro.

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SocialHRCamp business partner Salima Nathoo and I recently co-authored a 2 blog post series for SmartRecruiters and Blogging4Jobs on “Why HR Needs to Speed Up Social Media Adoption” and “Why HR is Slow to Adopt Social Media”.  The former post focuses on the business case and the latter on barriers to adoption.  It was a tough exercise to go through because there are so many reasons why HR needs to adopt and why HR has not already done so.  The focus of this post is on a simple question that can be applied across all business functions.  The question is… “What does social media adoption have to do with strategy”?

Oh Right… Strategy…
Does it not make sense that the activities that you perform during the course of your work day support some strategic aspect of the business you work for?  Sure there are tasks that one would describe as mundane, repetitive, pointless, etc… but if you ask yourself “why” you are doing those tasks you probably could, or should come up with some strategic reason for why you do them.  The same holds true for social media.

Ah Ha Moment…
Before you dive into the social media maze you need to clearly understand what your core HR business challenges are that you are trying to solve.  Forget about social media for a second; every organization has challenges and strategic objectives that are being tackled.  If they did not exist there would be no organization to work for.

Ask Yourself…
Pull out the dusty HR strategy and the business strategy and identify the top 3-5 priorities.  Are you trying to attract higher quality talent to “hard-to-recruit” jobs?  Are you trying to solve a growing retention issue?  Are you trying to support the business expand and enter new markets?  Will you be tasked with organizational restructuring or acquisition initiatives?  You get the point but it’s critical for you as an HR professional to figure this out first.

2nd Ah Ha Moment…
For all you non-HR people reading this blog post this also applies to you too.  It does not matter what area of business you work in, the fact remains that you need to understand the core business challenges you are trying solve before you dive into social media.

Now You’re Ready to Think About Social Media…
You now have a crystal clear idea of why you want to use social media; now it’s a matter of identifying the social media platforms that will enable you to achieve the best results.  The task of figuring this out will be so much easier if you have a clear idea of why you want to use them in the first place.  Sorry, just slapping up a Facebook page because “everyone else” has one is a complete waste of time, and will ultimately make you look foolish.

So, think strategy first, then social media second.

This blog post was originally published in the Social Media Camp blog.

About the Author:

jeffSocial media enthusiast, entrepreneur, social HR strategist and educator, Jeff is the Founder of Stratify, a social HR solutions consultancy and SocialHRCamp, the first-ever global HR unconference. With a background in business, HR and marketing, and a diverse career spanning all facets of HR Jeff has been carving out and leading the way in a growing niche that brings together HR, social media and business. Founded in 2012 SocialHRCamp helps the global HR community adopt social media into HR business practices and will be running events in Canada, United States, Singapore, Philippines and India.

Facebook Groups and Events – A little Do’s and Don’ts Lesson

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block meFacebook can be a great platform in getting your message out there, staying connected and for information and knowledge-sharing within groups. It also allows for the creation of events within those groups.

In allowing you to create groups within the platform, Facebook gives us the option to make the group and / or event,  private or public. What this means is if the group is public and and all updates within the group will show up on all group members walls. These postings will be make public.

If you change the setting to private, no one but those within the group will be able to see the postings going on within the group. These options work great when used properly – and I get it, we’re all still trying to figure out what “properly” means.

I’ve created, as well as been a part of a few groups over the past year or so and I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t work (IMHO) and a few considerations. Let’s start with a few examples of what I like about Facebook groups and events:

  • I’ve been added to private groups such as that of my High School class back in Alabama which allows me to keep up with the local news and happenings around my small home town, stay connected with friends and keep up with class reunions and get-togethers. These groups should remain private so as not to bug anyone else who didn’t attend the same school and don’t want to be bothered by our banter.
  • There are some fabulous HR and professional groups I’m part of where we share blog posts and interesting articles. It also allows for great crowd-sourcing and knowledge sharing. It’s appeared to be a great gathering of peers and experts to share and learn within the theme (mainly Human Resource related) and create great engagement. It works, nicely.
  • I have created a few groups for specific events I was involved with (think ILSHRM and the Social Press Team), for upcoming LIVE Google+ Hangouts that I wanted to invite my industry friends to and it was a great way to stay in touch with the team that I had invited in sharing the event information (dates, times, place). A great new addition from Facebook was document sharing within the group. If folks had questions they could also post them in the group. After the event, I was able to go back and thank everyone for attending, share the link to the hangout if they weren’t able to make it, and answer any additional questions. It seemed a great way to communicate within our favorite platform – Facebook. Oh, and it didn’t cost a thing save for a little time.

I could go on and on, but I think that’s enough for now.

Here are a few things I don’t like and a few other things to consider:

  • If you have an event going on in your local geographical area it probably isn’t a good practice to hit the “Invite all of your Facebook friends” button. I get a crap load of these things where unless it is a VIRTUAL event that I can actually attend – it just gives me more to do. I have to go into Facebook, click “leave conversation” and feel like a jerk because I look like I’m not into what you’re doing. To me, it just doesn’t make sense to invite someone to your local event – unless they live in your local area. And it’s annoying.
  • You can invite folks to your group and / or event and use it for some awesome things but if you do this non-stop and are adding the same people – you’re abusing your power. Let’s face it, we are so busy deleting and sorting through emails and blogs – giving folks more work through Facebook every day will have you unsubscribed in a Minnesota minute. They’re getting a zillion notifications and it’s pissing them off.
  • That being said, I should point out that you can change your personal settings so you don’t get all the notifications – even if you would like to remain in the group. Check them out, I think it will make your life more manageable.
  • Don’t take it personal if folks you’ve added to your group leave. Perhaps they are getting way too many notifications, maybe they can’t attend your local group cause they live in Zimbabwe or maybe they just don’t like the Facebook group thing. It’s more than likely not personal so keeping that in mind is key.

In the end, it’s not these apps and platforms that are driving us all nuts – it’s the way we’re using them.

Okay, what did I fail to mention? Do you have anything to add?

Photo Credit: KeepCalm

The value of using Google+ Hangouts within your Organization

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google hangoutIt’s been a year and some odd months that Google+ brought us the Hangout which we slowly eased into for fear of folks seeing us in our pajamas. Now, we hear about hangouts happening almost every day. And yes, even in Human Resources.

Sometimes we feel disconnected from employees that are perhaps overseas and we talk with them mainly via email or sometimes Skype and are really looking for a much better approach to talking with those with whom we converse on a regular basis.

I love Google+ Hangouts and here’s why:

  • They close the disconnect. Let’s face it, you can only do so much with email. And it’s a known fact, we spend tons of hours a day (up to 2 hours) not to mention the costs associated with it, trying to track folks down, see if they’ve read your emails, find out why they haven’t responded. Hangouts cuts out all that and allows for real-time face-time with up to nine folks.
  • Hangouts can be recorded.  This function can be a great asset to holding virtual sales meetings (or any kind of meeting) that can be recorded, automatically saved to Youtube (marked as private) and shared within your organization at any time. This is especially great for those who don’t show up or are late to meetings. Or, perhaps you have sales teams across geographical points, hangouts would be a great tool for management teams to gather together to share knowledge, brainstorm and then share with their teams.
  • You can share documents, videos and / or presentations within the hangout. Talk about opening new ways to train your team. I’ve used this in several of my hangouts especially with some very cool HR Tech developers to host a demo to those within the hangout. We were scattered all over the globe, yet we were participating LIVE with one another, while watching a presentation, while participating on the demo of the technology within our smartphones and/ or tablets. It’s really a shift in the way we do things…..
  • I’ve also used hangouts to showcase HR conference speakers and bloggers for an upcoming conference. What this does is allow the rest of the world to spy in on your conversations (if you make them available to the public) and really get to know your speakers and bloggers on a personal level. We’ve also used hangouts for LIVE STREAMING our events to those who weren’t able to make the event. It’s a win-win, really.

The only thing that is limited is your brain’s capacity to be creative in how you can utilize these fantastic technologies. These fantastic tools can assist you in creating better engagement, greater communication with your team members across the globe, and aid you in your everyday first-world problems within your organizations.

And did I mention it was free?

Here is an example of one hangout I did. Take a look and get a feel of what it can do for you!

For those of you not yet on the Google bandwagon, here’s a great guide “The Complete Google Guide.”