Knowledge Infuser

Live for The Conference Board Strategic e-HR Conference - San Diego

jason.averbook — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:08:49 GMT

This morning I have the opportunity to be in San Diego at the Strategic e-HR Conference produced by The Conference Board. We are lucky enough to have many of our clients here and look forward to the interaction. There are about 100 in attendance.

Leading off the conference is Rob Bernshteyn from SuccessFactors.

Rob leads off with "What impact will the recession have on HR and Business Performance". Very interesting how this message is spreading as the media continues to spread the message about a recession. Notice this link from CNN late last night...[Click here for article..|http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/05/news/economy/recession/index.htm?postversion=2008020512]

Rob did a good job of painting a picture as to why Talent Management is a big part of business today; not only a HR function, but a business function.
Good discussion about how strategic HR functions tie to business impact
Topic of discussion: Data...Where do I store my employee data and how can it be used
How can I make e-HR strategic in our company?

Retention
Number of skill gaps bridged through training
Conduct employee surveys to keep workforce engaged and a pulse on organization

Issues with how HR has rolled out technology up to now

Unable to support dynamic processes
Inability to support approvals
Hard to find data

What are we doing today around e-HR?

Organizations working heavily around a strategic, 3 year plan
If HR doesn't do this, we will be left behind by rest of enterprise

Technology today

Goal alignment crucial
Performance Management
360 degree feedback
Compensation
Using all transactions in non-intrusive way to build out analytics that matter

HR makes the mistake of LABELING our people (High performer, etc)

We all change on a daily basis
How do we look at performance data over time
Analytics drive this

Every employee is a potential user

Key point (The work we do at Knowledge Infusion very much aligned and pushing this thought as well)
Tools and products must be designed for everyone in the company
Must be easy to use to ensure adoption
Success is about RESTRAINING themselves and deploy what makes sense in Round 1
Dealing with change management (or as we call it, Deployment Excellence)

When thinking about e-HR, think simplicity
Discussion about Software as a Service

Much talk about Old Model vs. SaaS

Good education about what new model means
Interesting discussion about how vendors are "Not profitable" including SuccessFactors until the customer is satisfied in SaaS model

Discussion about how strategic HR customers outperform the stock market
Discussion about how organizations create value using e-HR talent management software
Good discussion about EMPLOYEE PROFILE and the value to the enterprise and all of talent management

Another infusion of knowledge...

Books Aren't Dead - Think about future of this device and Knowledge Management

jason.averbook — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 03:14:34 GMT

Newsweek drills into detail on the latest from Jeff Bezos and Amazon called the Kindle.

Great quote : "Technology is anything that was invented after you were born"

A few highlights from article:

Some of those features have been available on previous e-book devices,
           notably the Sony Reader. The Kindle's real breakthrough springs from a
           feature that its predecessors never offered: wireless connectivity, via
           a system called Whispernet. (It's based on the EVDO broadband service
           offered by cell-phone carriers, allowing it to work anywhere, not just
           Wi-Fi hotspots.) As a result, says Bezos, "This isn't a device, it's a
           service."
"There's 550 years of technological development in the book, and it's
           all designed to work with the four to five inches from the front of the
           eye to the part of the brain that does the processing " says Hill, a boisterous man who wears a kilt to a
           seafood restaurant in Seattle where he stages an impromptu lecture on
           his theory. "This is a high-resolution scanning machine," he
           says, pointing to the front of his head. "It scans five targets a
           second, and moves between targets in only 20 milliseconds. And it does
           this repeatedly for hours and hours and hours." He outlines the
           centuries-long process of optimizing the book to accommodate this
           physiological marvel: the form factor, leading, fonts, justification …
           "We have to take the same care for the screen as we've taken for print."
"The possibility of interaction will redefine authorship," says Peter
           Brantley, executive director of the Digital Library Federation, an
           association of libraries and institutions. Unlike some
           writing-in-public advocates, he doesn't spare the novelists. "Michael
           Chabon will have to rethink how he writes for this medium," he says.
           Brantley envisions wiki-style collaborations where the author, instead
           of being the sole authority, is a "superuser," the lead wolf of a
           creative pack. (Though it's hard to believe that lone storytellers
           won't always be toiling away in some Starbucks with the Wi-Fi turned
           off, emerging afterward with a narrative masterpiece.)
The answer is probably not, and that's why the Kindle matters. "This is
           the most important thing we've ever done," says Jeff Bezos. "It's so
           ambitious to take something as highly evolved as the book and improve
           on it. And maybe even change the way people read." As long as the
           batteries are charged.

Will this change paper based manual and documents forever? Probably not in the next ten years, but after that, I would bank on it. Will our kids still read textbooks in ten years? What will students think when they enter the workplace when they haven't looked at a book?

Once again, e-HR strategy in the 21st century is so important. Most aren't giving the User Interface, Portal, Social Networking, Mobile Device and Accessibility enough credit. Knowledge Infusion helped its first client launch an internal Facebook community last week with many more planned for the next few quarters. Going forward, it isnt the back office software that will drive success, it is the workforce facing tools.

Another infusion of knowledge...

Click here to read fascinating article

The Generation Gap At Work

jason.averbook — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 03:55:14 GMT

Everyday, Knowledge Infusion works with large, global organizations preparing their enterprise for the future workforce. This includes everything from still debating the value of employee and manager self-service to whether employees should receive paper direct deposits to using Facebook to communicate.

CNNMoney.com had an interesting article entitled "The generation gap at work". The combination of this article along with some deep client work this past week got me thinking:

How will the four generations work together?
Does the age of the VP of HR have anything to do with how well they will work together?
Does the industry?
Does the vertical?

Take a read of the article. Dan Kadlec does a great job helping us understand how we might get past the tattoos and belly buttons in the workplace. (His words not mine - smile)

The article should help you form your 21st generation e-HR strategy. This is much different and needs to be thought of as opposite of deploying employee and manager self-service.

Take a read and think - "what can i do to make a difference in bridging the generational gap using HR technology?"

Another infusion of knowledge...

Link to article

Google Phone - What it might mean to HR and why you should care

jason.averbook — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 13:12:43 GMT

On Monday, Google made another one of it's major announcements even before we at Knowledge Infusion could write a blog about OpenSocial (coming soon). Google Mobile enters the fray. This could easily be called the single most important announcement to the HR service delivery space ever. Lets look a bit under the covers:

The Google announcement/initiative is designed to turn cellphones into powerful mobile computers. From a Knowledge Infusion standpoint we often hear, "the reason we dont rollout technology is that we don't have PC's where employees are". This argument appears to be on its last breath.
This quote says it nicely - “The Internet is going mobile, and it’s not just top down, its
one-to-one and many-to-many all at the same time, and that’s what the Google guys get.”
Software developers “will build applications that do amazing things on the Internet and on mobile phones as well,” Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said at a news conference.

Who will be the first in the HR and talent management space? Will something be shown next year at HR Technology 2008? Lets make that a goal!

We have attached a link to one of the better articles on this topic from the NY Times below. Take a read and continue to watch this trend. The issue for HR direct access and better connectivity and communication with employees has always been the device. Is this about to change forever? Thoughts?

Remember how the generation entering the workforce today communicates. Text messages.

Don't want for the Google Phone to revamp your e-HR strategy. This has to be part of your HR strategy into the future.

Another infusion of knowledge...

Link to article