It is with absolute pleasure that I’m able to give away two tickets to RecTec today!

RecTec stands for Recruitment Technology Evaluation Convention. It is the only event dedicated to recruitment technology in the Australasian region.

If this were a festival, people would be talking about the awesome lineup. Check it out here. Each delegate also receives a free copy of ‘DIFFERENT THINKING‘ by Nicholas Beames. It’s a book on 20 of the most inspiration recruitment leaders in Australia.

If you’d like to snap up one of these passes, just leave me a comment on this post with your name and email address and I can liaise with you from there.

If you miss the free tickets from HR Club Sydney, jump online and check it out. Tickets are pretty cheap and it is also a great opportunity to meet other people.

22 Nov. Sydney. Be there or be square!

Happy Friday!

I’ve never worked in specialist recruitment before, but when you sit in the generalist seat you realise just how crucial having the right people in the right place at the right time is. It’s not just about bums on seats; its the start of something big in your talent management process.

Now we all know how to place an ad on seek, and what questions to ask (or not ask) in an interview, but how many of us really know how to source the best candidates for our business?

It gives me great pleasure to provide information to you about the first Australasian Sourcing Summit, on 11th August 2011 at the University of Technology.

Bringing together sourcing innovators from Australia and New Zealand, the Sourcing Summit will highlight the important role of sourcing in the region. The Summit will provide attendees with the opportunity to learn from thought leaders, practitioners and organisations who are deeply involved in the local industry and are at the forefront of sourcing excellence.

Whether you are a sourcer, researcher, recruiter or HR professional there is something for everyone at the summit.

Here’s the exciting part. All HR Club Sydney members (you must be a HR Club Sydney subscriber and a member of our LinkedIn group) have access to a 15% discount off the ticket to the Australasian Sourcing Summit. Simply go to http://sourcingsummit.com.au/register/ and enter the code HRCLUB11 to receive your discount.

If you can’t raise the moolah to go along, or want to contribute to a research study on the sourcing profession please also consider filling out this survey http://sourcingsummit.com.au/sourcing-report/. There is currently a lucky draw for the chance to win a free ticket to the Sourcing Summit- you’ve got to be in it to win it!

If you can’t come along to the AHRI National Convention this year, you can always follow along online and be updated as things happen. There are a few ways that you can do this and I thought it might be worth while taking a moment to explain.

Not that into social media and don’t have the time to browse online?

Damon and I will be blogging about the event so if you subscribe to our blogs, you can have the updates delivered straight to your inbox as they are posted. To do this just enter your email into the box and hit subscribe.

This will ensure you get any content we write and post but the real way to keep up-to-date with the conversation and what the speakers are saying is twitter.

No I’m not talking about a series of short, high-pitched sounds. According to www.twitter.com/about

At the heart of Twitter are small bursts of information called Tweets. Each Tweet is 140 characters in length, but don’t let the small size fool you—you can share a lot with a little space. Connected to each Tweet is a rich details pane that provides additional information, deeper context and embedded media. You can tell your story within your Tweet, or you can think of a Tweet as the headline, and use the details pane to tell the rest with photos, videos and other media content. See it in action.

You don’t have to build a web page to surf the web and you don’t have to tweet to enjoy Twitter. Whether you tweet 100 times a day or never, you still have access to the voices and information surrounding what interests you. You can contribute, or just listen in and retrieve up to the second information. Some people never tweet, they simply use Twitter as a way to get the latest information on their interests.

So what exactly does that mean?

You don’t have to panic and get a twitter account to see what’s happening on twitter. Simply head to http://search.twitter.com/ and type in the hashtag for the event #AHRINC to follow the conversation. It won’t just be status updates, but you will have access to links to further content, photos and video, and heaps of wisdom from the speakers- as they speak!

On Tuesday of this week, I attended a breakfast seminar hosted by A.S.K. learning at the Hilton with one of my colleagues from work. I was really looking forward to hearing Annalie Killian speak after following her on twitter and her posts on LinkedIn. In case you haven’t heard of Annalie, she’s the Director of Innovation Culture and Collaboration at AMP. She’s responsible for Amplify Festival of Innovation and Thought Leadership (check it out here). I enjoyed the event because it was a good chance to meet other HR people (Hi there Monica Stroehle!) and I always enjoy picking up a new piece of research of human behaviour.

Annalie started off her talk by saying that she is normally introduced as the “Catalyst for Magic” because that’s the title she created for herself in 2000 (she even put it on her business card!). People ask her how she got away with this in a business like AMP and she advised that the first secret is to not ask permission (I must admit, it’s a strategy that has worked well for me in the past also). Today the Chairman proudly introduces her as the catalyst for Magic and she thinks it’s great that she can be quirky enough to get away with that sort of thing.

When she first joined amp in 2000 she was hired to look after communication. The CIO who she reported into then asked her if she would look after innovation, the intranet and then knowledge management. So she thought this is ridiculous, how will I fit all of that into a business title. She considered it carefully and came to the conclusion that it was all about “catalysing the magic that’s in other people” and that her role is “to be the agent for releasing that creativity”. She made up the title- tongue in cheek- and waited for the corporate machine to kick in and it never did.

Annalie is also now well known for being the curator of the Amplify Festival of Innovation and Thought leadership. It started out as an internal learning event at AMP and she describes it as like a TED for business. Over the years, a number of people now want to apply to attend because they bring out such an amazing array of international speakers to Australia including top business innovators from around the world.

When Annalie talks about Amplify, she said it created an incredible learning and creative opportunity for her. In 2009 she describes listening to BJ Fogg as a serious ‘ah ha’ moment; saying it was like discovering the secrets to the universe. This is the piece of research I wanted to share on human behaviour.

BJ Fogg is the founder of Persuasive Technologies Lab at the Stamford University and he graduated with a PHD in specialising in behavioural change.

Basically he told the audience that if you analyse and compare everything back in terms of motivational theory; human behaviour can be reduced to three core motivators which have two sides and these emotional states drive most of actions and behaviours.

1) Motivator One-pain or pleasure
2) Motivator Two- hope and fear
3) Motivator Three- social acceptance or social rejection

She mentions this because it is really important in the context of creativity, innovation and transformational change.

Fogg goes onto say in his research to articulate a new model for understanding human behaviour. In his model, behaviour is a product of three factors: motivation, ability and triggers (each of which has subcomponents as shown above with the motivators). The model asserts that for a person to perform a target behaviour they must be sufficiently motivated, have the ability to perform the behaviour and be triggered to perform the behaviour. The three factors must occur at the same moment, or else the behaviour will not happen.

I thought this might be worthy of sharing because in HR we often talk about getting people to live our values and demonstrate key behaviours. This model may influence the way you think about transformational organisational change or even the performance management of individuals in your business.

Here’s a clip of him explaining his model using Facebook as an example:

Waaay back when I first joined twitter, I made friends with a guy who worked in HR in Boston, MA. Lovely guy to connect with and also hassle about when he’s coming back to Australia! Chris Ferdinandi writes at RenegadeHR.net, tweets at @ChrisFerdinandi and has written a few ebooks you may be interested in. “Culture Convo” is one for those interested in employer branding with social media.

For the second year running however, Chris has also produced “Do Amazing Things”, which is a collection of short, actionable ideas – things you can do in 2011 to become a better HR professional. This year I am proud to be featured in the book, so if you’d like to check it out grab your copy here.

As you might already know, my partner works in the media industry and I like to hear about what he does when he comes home just as he listens to me and my HR adventures for that particular day. He’s accompanied me to HR events and I like to go along to some of his events. I like to do this because I am interested in social media (not that that is all he does by the way!) and also because it reminds me to step out of that HR mindset at work i.e. I remember not everyone thinks like us.

Yesterday on Mumbrella, there was an article posted on Crust, (Gourmet Pizza Bar) because they tweeted this comment “Need a laugh? Hilarious compilation of female driver madness” and provided this link to a video showing bad female drivers.

There was a bit of a reaction on twitter about it being offensive and a few hours later they tweeted “Sorry guys, we apologise for the video and meant no offense to drivers, female or otherwise. Lesson learned and thanks for the feedback.”

People then started commenting on Mumbrella with both sides of the argument being represented. I posted the following comment:

Click to enlarge image

Basically what I was saying is, that even in the workplace there are times when this sort of thing happens and its no scandal or major issue because we are all human and diverse individuals. In a working environment there is bound to be times when someone makes a comment like this which in hindsight they might later regret. My point though was that this was clearly a one-off that they have already apologised for and not something that needs to be made into a huge deal. It was a “silly” comment, and even when bullying and harassment complaints are considered in the courts, they take into account how affected the individual was, what a reasonable person would consider to be offensive etc. I just thought people should lighten up a bit, as there are many more serious incidents which need to be represented.

Someone anonymously replied to my comment with this:

Click to enlarge image

While I find this person’s language towards me offensive (lol), I would like to reply and invite your comments as well- as the Sydney Human Resources Community.

Let’s treat this as a real workplace scenario. Someone in the workplace makes a comment about females being bad drivers in a clear attempt to be humorous and make others laugh.

Workplace bullying or harassment involves the persistent ill treatment of a person (get NSW info here). In other words:

It is repeated or persistent over a period of time
It is offensive, intimidating, humiliating, or degrading and ridicules or insults the person at work.

The tweet concerned was not repeated or a persistent message over a period of time so you would be hard pressed getting this one across the line as bullying and harassment. Not to say it should be ignored, it should be addressed if the individual wishes to, but it’s important to note that it isn’t bullying or harassment generally until it is repeated (serious breaches would be handled differently). Now I acknowledge that some may have found it offensive or even degrading towards women- so let’s run with that line i.e. you have someone that comes to you at work saying that they feel that way.

As a HR professional, the steps that I would normally recommend to someone who is being bullying would be listed as following:

Keep detailed records about the incidents- this could be jotting down something in an email or on paper
Talk about it with someone who can provide assistance such as your manager, HR staff or an Equity and Diversity Officer.
If you feel comfortable let the bully know that their behaviour makes you feel uncomfortable
Do not retaliate- and walk away from the situation if it becomes out of control
Seek resolution – informal or formal process

So in the workplace, the person who was offended would have come to me and as per the above, I would recommend that they speak with Crust Pizza and let them know that it makes them uncomfortable (which the twitter community did). What was the outcome?

Crust Pizza apologised and reiterated that it “meant no offense to drivers, female or otherwise”. They then articulated that they had learned their lesson and then thanked the community for the feedback.

You couldn’t ask for this to have gone any better in the workplace.

My personal opinion was that it wasn’t a big deal and I personally wasn’t offended by it. I am able to have a laugh at myself and acknowledge that I will make mistakes. Coming from a sport background it’s important to remember that Babe Ruth is remembered as the home run king even though he still holds the record for the greatest number of strikeouts!

So keen to hear your thoughts. Did I deserve the bashing from @HR Infraction for voicing my personal opinion?

My better half introduced me to a cool new app on the iphone, and I’m interested to see how it will pick up at networking events, conferences etc.

Have you ever been out somewhere and for some reason had no business cards on you? Or would you like to remove the hassle of having to input someone else details in contacts- or worse entering in the info and then forgetting who they are or where you met them?

I’ve admitted before, I’m pretty hopeless at remembering people’s names and faces particularly if I meet a lot of people at the one time. So I am pretty excited about this.

Basically you can go in and set up your profile. You can add a photo, website, the company you work for, contact phone numbers, email addresses, and your job title. It only takes a few minutes.

When you meet with someone that you’d like to trade contact information with, you just open the app and literally bump the phones together. This then tranfers all that persons details into your contacts.

It is so quick, easy and really cool.

Here’s a short video that explains the process although the way it looks might be slightly different now as the video was from last year.

Shall we “bump” at the next HR Club Sydney event?

On Friday I attended a breakfast which was organised by Robert Walters (FYI they have an AWESOME view of Sydney from their office- check it out if you get the opportunity).

It was called ‘HR & Social Media’ and it was presented by Richard Spencer from the Daemon Group.

It was set-out and explained in a very simple but effective manner and I really enjoyed the presentation from Richard.

He reminded us that when we say ‘social media’ we’re talking about blogs, microblogs (Twitter), RSS, networks (Facebook), Chat, Forums, Videos, photos and podcasts- so no its not ALL about facebook although it is hugely popular.

• Some key take outs for me (from my scribbles in my notepad):
  ‘55% of the HR Professionals rate word of mouth as the best source of candidates’ HR Next
• ‘I’ll be stunned if 50% of candidate referrals aren’t coming through online communities in the next 5 years’ Taleo
• Around 73% of Australians have access to the internet and about 25% use it everyday
• 45% of employers screen social media sites
• LinkedIn has over 1 million Australian members from a working population of around 9 ½ million people
• The sum of all jobs publicised on twitter makes it the 5th largest job board in the world

I still become amazed at these stats as they keep coming and coming, and its inspiring to hear how other companies are doing amazing things with it.

You can view the whole Daemon presentation below, or follow them on Twitter @daemonwithin

Recently I came across the HR Tech Report (you can download for free) which was collected, analysed and compiled by Navigo (who is an Australian HR IT company). The research was conducted by phone and email in 164 Australian organisations with over 500 employees, representing over 730,000 employees and the respondents were HR Managers (26%) or HR Technologists.

Here are a few of my key take-outs from the report:

Over 70% of enterprise-level (over 500 employees) in Australia use a Human Resources Information System (HRIS)

Wow. So there are 30% of Australian companies out there with more than 500 employees who don’t have a HRIS to easily measure how HR metrics are impacting the business, to assist with workforce planning or talent management?

HRIS adoption is diverse with 23 different HRIS cited. SAP HR and Chris21 are the most popular

HR Executives believe that strategic initiatives suffer through the time-intensive demands of transactional HR- the drive for efficiency is really a drive to free time and resources for strategy

This is a big one. HR professionals are constantly trying to get out of the transactional, everyday stuff and work on the more strategic, bigger picture stuff.  CLC research argues that this ‘inherent tension’ is why the HR Business Partner role is so difficult.  The strategic partner role requires HRBPs to focus on chronic challenges, while the emergency responder role requires the exact opposite—immediate responses to acute challenges. Similarly, the strategic partner role also requires organization-wide solutions, while the employee mediator role is focused on small groups or individuals.

Despite the efficiency-led cost saving potential of HR systems, the ROI is often quantifiable. Business cases for systems should strive to put a dollar figure on ROI, plus identify the opportunity-cost of pursuing more strategic actions

This is a tough one. Yes these systems will make things easier for you, you’ll be able to do more, and get into that strategic space, but I think this is a case of how much the business wants that too. It’s your job to sell the benefits in terms of impact on the bottom line i.e. if given the opportunity to be more strategic- how does that help your organisation achieve its goals?

Performance management, cited by other sources as a key differentiator, is very poorly represented in Australia with 52% of organisations employing manual systems or no systems for the task. Only 30% of Australian enterprises employ any succession planning technology

Again this one makes me cringe. Performance Management on paper is just terrible given all the online collaboration and sharing tools we have now. If you don’t have the technology at least put it online somehow- avoid the paper shuffle at all costs.

Obviously I’m a fan of technology because to me it makes me more efficient. I know I can do more in a shorter amount of time. I think the hard part is convincing the business that this is a priority and they should invest in it.

Ok so just one last thing after the Digital Citizens Event earlier this week.

I posted the question below:

and here are some of the responses:

Part of me wonders if these responses were just a knee-jerk reaction to someone questioning personal freedom on social media (hey guys you are preaching to the converted here! I’m all for social). I was asking the question because I think it poses some serious issues about what you would from both a HR and employer branding perspective.

The person that immediately comes to mind is Scott Monty.

For those who don’t know, he’s the head of Social Media for Ford Motor Company.

He has a blog and twitter account in his own name.

On his blog the following statement appears:

This is my personal blog, where I share my perspectives on social media – the convergence of marketing, advertising and PR on the Web – for marketers, agencies, the enterprise and the individual. This blog contains my personal views.

If you have a quick look at both those sites, it’s very much about Ford isn’t it.

I don’t know if anyone is a V8 fan, but there is a big rivalry between the two manufacturer’s Ford and Holden. My brother has been a mad V8 fan I’m pretty sure since he was born and I’ve watched Bathurst more times than I care to remember.

My point is about the fans. They buy t-shirts, hat, flags, quilt covers, watches- everything. They usually have a favourite driver too. So what happens when your poster boy switches lanes?

Well Craig Lowdnes is no stranger to this going from Holden, to Ford and then back to Holden again (for V8′s).

Me with Craig and Jamie

Yes drivers change team, people change jobs- but it doesn’t go unnoticed.

This article starts with “It is the sight Ford fans did not want to see – the V8 Supercar champion’s team now racing a Holden Commodore”.

So how do you as a business “get over it” when your high-profile star player changes teams? From an IP point of view, would you allow Scott Monty to keep his blog and twitter account? I think these are grey areas so I’m keen to hear your thoughts.