Dec 22
The end of a year is frequently a catalyst for reflection on the past and attempts to predict the future. I know I’ve been thinking about the future of HR, and my place in it, and have enjoyed reading (and re-reading) many of this year’s visions of HR’s Christmas Future.
One of the more intriguing visions of HR’s next incarnation that haunted our profession this year was the role of the ‘Performance Advisor’. Read more
I was supposed to be an Anthropologist. Seriously. While completing my undergrad in Anthro, I was President of the students’ Anthropology Society. (Yep, I was that cool). So, you’ll understand that the topic of organizational culture is of particular interest to me. And organizational culture is having its HR moment right now…articles, blog posts, seminars- everyone seems to be talking about culture!
That’s why it’s especially unfortunate that we are so sloppy when it comes to what we mean by ‘culture’.
Let’s face it: HR has engagement-fever. If you and your organizations haven’t been infected yet, it’s only a matter of time (or maybe a matter of one more headline trumpeting yet another study correlating ‘engagement’ with organizational performance and even profit margins). Combine this incessant stream of engagement coverage with the current abysmal employee engagement numbers (such as those presented by the recent Ipsos Reid study I discussed in my last post), and you have a recipe for organizational hysteria.
But let’s put aside (for a minute), the need for a much clearer definition of what everybody means (and does not mean) by “employee engagement”, and the need for an increased understanding of the relationship between engagement and the other organizational data it has been correlated with. Put that aside, and jump on the bandwagon with me for a short ride to consider engagement, transparency, and the human brain…
Last week I had the pleasure of attending a Canadian Management Center National Thought Leader Series presentation, delivered in conjunction with Ipsos Reid, on some of the results of a recent study conducted by Ipsos into Canadian employee engagement. The data contained some real surprises for me, including how my fellow Gen Xers are apparently falling off our collective “organizational engagement radar”, and the rather frightening numbers associated with Canadians’ views about the trustworthiness and credibility of their senior leaders.
I have a post-it note stuck to the wall behind my desk with these words scrawled across it: “More value than complexity!” I’m not sure where I saw this phrase, and I barely remember writing it on the post-it note, but every day there it is, floating in my peripheral vision. It’s a powerful idea; one that I think should guide our approach to developing and improving HR programs and processes. Too often, processes become overly complicated and bureaucratic, and attempts to improve them may focus on making things easier for the process administrators, rather than employees, managers or candidates.
I am so attracted to this concept- the idea of instilling elegance and logic in processes and programs, that a few years ago I signed up for a course at a local university focused on business process analysis and management, with mixed results.
Have you tried a MOOC yet? That’s a Massive Open Online Course…but you’re forgiven if you thought it sounded like a new cheese snack for kids (They’re Moooocalicious!). It’s likely that 2012 will be remembered as the year that MOOCs hit the mainstream. Udacity, Coursera, MITx and edX- premier institutional organizations are offering their courses to anyone, free, online. Is this the future of education and learning? Does it signify that open education ideals have been realized?
Are you as fascinated as I am by the recent surge in attention to neuroscience as a source of insight into how our brains impact our productivity, creative problem-solving, and capacity to deal with change at work? NO?! Then one of us really needs to get out more…
…and when you do we should go to the NeuroLeadership Summit in New York, because I think we’d leave smarter people, even if it’s only via osmosis. Lucky for us, these neuroscientists are generous folk, and they were kind enough to stream this year’s event for free (and I have to say that it was of superb quality as well).
Last Friday I was fortunate enough to attend TEDxToronto – an independently organized TED event, which took as its theme: Alchemy, the seemingly magical process of taking ordinary elements, usually of little value, and combining them to make something extraordinary of great value.
TEDxToronto was thought-provoking. I’m definitely still contemplating some of the messages and speakers. But here are two key insights that I left with, which struck me as impactful for the future of HR:
1. The technology innovators of the future are not learning their skills at school
I feel so very fortunate to have attended Impact 99 this week – an HR Summit intently focused on igniting a social workplace. Putting aside the inspirational hosts, terrific participants, and enthralling presenters, I’ve just spent the last hour looking over my notes, the tweets, and the speaker presentations, and what I really can’t get over is how many actionable, practical ideas I came away with.
Hello everyone. My name is Jane…and I’m a late adopter. Yes, it’s true. I’m ashamed to admit this, but until last year I still had…a flip phone. It feels good to finally tell someone.
The truth is that I’ve always been late to the party. Cell phones, Facebook, Linked In- I boarded the bus late on all of these. Believe it or not, I may have been the only person on Earth in 2002 that somehow still didn’t know that Haley Joel Osment could see dead people.
Talent Vanguard 