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

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.

Last night I went along to the first Digital Citizens Event in Sydney. You have heard me mention Social Media Club Sydney before and how I admire the way in which people in the media industry network.

Well a few of their members broke away from the group and wanted to start something a bit different; hence Digital Citizens was born. The alternative organisation is “aimed at attracting a wider audience than marketing professionals” according to Mumbrella.

In a release to announce the launch of Digital Citizens the group said:

“The intention is to provide an open forum which encourages free and frank debate. Digital Citizens is an inclusive, informal organisation dedicated to knowledge sharing and discussion of social, political, ethical and professional issues related to new technologies and the social web. It’s agency agnostic and the only qualification for participating is the desire to speak.

So I’m thinking- this is great. Social media isn’t just about those in the media industry. People in communications, PR, HR, small businesses are all getting into it and want to hear about how to do a good job.

So the topic last night concerned the grey area between one’s personal online presence and representing the brand. There was lots of the usual banter around whether you should be allowed to say whatever you think about your employer or clients if you are using a personal account with a disclaimer etc.

There were some important points around this that were made last night regarding the law in Australia that I don’t think people are aware of. Despite the hugely popular notion of ‘Freedom of Speech’ derived from the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights in the United States there is no explicit legal protection of freedom of speech in Australia.

The Human Rights Act 2004 does talk about an individuals ‘right to freedom of expression’, however for those working in the Australian media industry, this intricate area of the law tries to balance the need for the press to have that ability to disclose information for public interest versus the media’s benefit of releasing information for commercial advantage.

Not a journalist? Why does it impact me?

Often society finds itself in a predicament whereby the law needs to catch up with technological advances as they impact upon how we live life and interact with others. The arena of defamation law is no different, particularly as these advances impact upon the way in which we now communicate. The real implications for defamation law impact upon the ordinary citizen and this is for two reasons. The first is that they are not trained in defamation law and the second is the fact that in modern society, many conversations that would normally take place in person in a verbal conversation are now taking place online in a written format.

Although the comments whether spoken or written remain defamatory in nature, individuals who now publish online are exposing themselves to a much more heightened risk of being prosecuted for defamation.

A lot of people last night on the twitter stream were saying things like ‘just use commonsense’ but as @megsandbacon says:

What’s defamation anyway?

Defamation may be defined as ’the wrong of injuring another’s reputation without good reason or justification” and the part of defamation that we are concerned with is that of ‘libel’ which is defamation by written or printed words, pictures. In the 1996 report on defamation law (A.C.T. Community Law Reform Committee. 1996 [Online]) it was stated that “a defamatory statement is one that is likely to cause ordinary, reasonable people to think less of the person about whom the words or images are published. An inference that casts a defamatory imputation is enough to bring an action” (Electronic Frontiers Australia. 2006, [Online]).

For example in Western Australia, an academic was charged for defamatory statements which were published in an online science bulletin board (Rindos v Hardwick). Harwick made a statement which imputed that Rindos had sex with a minor and basically that his whole career had been built upon his ability as a bully rather than as researcher. Whilst gossiping is rife within most workplaces, these statements were published online where approximately 23,000 academics and students have access internationally and subsequently Hardwick was ordered to pay $40,000 in damages to Rindos as he couldn’t justify the comments or use an alternative defence.

Another recent case in Perth illustrates that even if you have an anonymous account- you can still be found and sued.

I would encourage organizations to think carefully about this. If everyone had commonsense this wouldn’t be an issue, but everyone’s workplace has it’s very own village idiot so what are you going to do to protect your brand from stuff like this?

So now with my HR hat on I would say that employers need to seriously consider an education piece around social media that is built into their current polices, values and culture. Don’t rely on peoples commonsense.

Inspired by the folks at #Trulondon I thought I might try my hand at some more video content even though I hate watching myself on camera. I seriously didn’t realize the weird way I talk (has everyone else noticed this?? LOL).

Anyways, if you can’t view you tube at work the upshot is that I’ve been getting my nerd on and upgrading some bits of the site so I can make it easier for you to look at my stuff and connect with others. You can now subscribe via email to have all the posts delivered effortlessly to you inbox or delivered to the reader of your choice. I hope you are impressed because I even did some html coding. Yeah. Gees, what have I become?

Next some details about the next HR Club Sydney Event coming up on 8th April. Then some flashy music I was able to put in using Windows Movie Maker

Have an awesome weekend!

So this is a guy in the U.S. and he has targeted Razorfish because he really wants to work there.

Facebook advertising is quite cool in the way you can actually target the ads on really specific data on the users. You can target people based on the standard things like age,location and gender. However you can be even more specific than that.

You can target key words so this means identifying people who are engaged, or who like the Star Wars movies. I know I never realised how in-depth this was until I did a bit of research myself. Read more on the different target areas here.

In any case, here is the ad that was targeted to Razorfish employees.

When you click on the ad, it then takes you to his resume- a funky blog that invites you to learn more about him. You think that’s pretty crazy?

This guy even has a free iphone app. Yep, now there’s an app for that.

Funnily enough, Punk Rock HR’s Laurie Ruettimann has a post today from the perspective of a grad using social media to find a job.

What do you think? How far would you go to land your dream job?

We’ve all watched something on youtube (ok perhaps not for work reasons) and we’re seeing a big shift from print media spend in recruitment advertising to the use of video online. Instead of trying to build brand presence by buying ad space in prominent newspapers, companies are giving people insight to the organisation and what they are about using videos. Recruitment Directory does a great job explaining these videos and highlighting some good ones.

I have to admit I love these videos because it can really go a long way to getting potential employees excited about a career at your organisation and convey your employer branding message to the market.

Here are a few examples that I really like.

This one is actually CSIRO, and I like it because it hits all the key touch points about what it is like to work there.

This ones from Google and talks about the great benefits of working there and gives you a feel of the working environment. It’s a little bit corporate and scripted, but overall I still think they’ve done a great job.

I like this one from Atlassian because it’s honest, down-to-earth and gives you a great insight to working there.

I’m not really a tech expert, but I do have a lot of friends who are able to help me with my questions as they arise. I recently gave video a go on a blog that we created at my workplace for our student scholarship program. This is the first time I’ve ever created a video and it took me a while to work out how to edit the content, but I was really pleased in the end. While you might not understand some of the content (a bit sciency) I found it kind of interesting to listen to a student explain what they are doing and what the impact in the real world will be.

If making videos just isn’t for you, you still might enjoy watching them for personal pleasure or as a source of inspiration for work. Good friend and awesome guy Michael Specht has now launched Inspecht TV which is a site that he’ll be finding videos that will be of interest to HR people like us. Already there is a video on employee engagement and social media on there. If you like what you see, you can subscribe to the videos to get this info delivered to your inbox.

On Thursday 3rd December, I was fortunate enough to attend the ATC on Social Media: A Recruitment Revolution which was held on Collins Street in Melbourne.

Earlier this year I first met Michael Specht at the HR Futures Conference and since this time, I’ve been enthralled about the possibilities that Social Media has for us folks in the world of HR. The best thing about these conferences is listening to the case studies presented by those who been there and done it and meeting people like you, that are interested in using social media in HR.

A few mentions from the conference schedule include futurist Mark Pesce who spoke about how social media is changing Australian organisations, Joris Luijke of Atlassian about adding to your candidate attraction toolkit and Martin Warren around creating a social media community.

One of the biggest take outs for me though was from Margie Kwan of Ernst and Young.

Now if you haven’t checked out their facebook page- you should. They have over 34,500 fans who interact and engage with E&Y on the site.

Margie introduced herself to us, and explained that she had worked at E&Y for about two and a half years. Previously, Margie had roles in Marketing and brand management and went there to head up the Graduate Recruitment Team. She actually doesn’t have a recruitment background but was hired for the role because they realised that graduate recruitment was a lot about developing a marketing strategy and differentiating the brand- and they wanted someone with that particular skill set.

They wanted someone who could take a different approach to recruitment and give them the competitive edge.

One of the main tasks was to ensure that their branding and communication really reflected the reality of what it’s like to work at EY- and they wanted to attract more of the right candidates to the firm- and have these people self-selecting to the their process. Another part of their job was to look at the way they differentiate their employment offering and building a facebook presence was one of the ways they did this.

Margie believes that candidate attraction is much the same as consumer attraction so the key is to think like a marketer.

E&Y recruit up to 1000 grads each year- and aside from last year they had witnessed increased competition year on year with more organisations entering the market for grads. E&Y has a particular challenge in that their brand is so strong in the accounting space- but they look to hire grads in all different areas such as HR, IT, Science and engineering etc. However many candidates aren’t aware of this.

Why did they do it?

Margie says most people have slick websites these days, glossy brochures and advertise on the same websites so the aim was to be heard above the noise. They were looking for an alternative avenue for the students to engage with E&Y. They wanted it to be relevant to candidates, exciting, and make a real statement about who they are. And they wanted to move away from traditional one way communication- they wanted to show they were willing to have a two way dialogue.

Most of their target audience was already on facebook and comfortable with using it as a medium to communicate (as opposed to direct emails). She also mentioned that Facebook allows you to deliver specific messages to targeted segments of the audience. For instance people can be targeted by age group, geographic locations or whether they are in high school or university. Facebook provides students with the opportunity to experience life at the firm through interactive videos and other content.

Margie asserted that “It allows us to apply experiential marketing techniques to provide a flavour of the people and the culture inside the firm in a manner that is more powerful than previously possible.”

She also talked about viral marketing- one of the best things about facebook. When a user sees that there friend has joined a group, become a fan of a page or liked something- what better than a recommendation from a friend?

I really enjoyed listening to Margie speak, and its inspiring to really think about what is possible in this space. It was duly noted that this came from someone with a marketing background however- and what I take from that is- in our job as HR Professionals we can’t always play with the same cap on. Some days we need to be a lawyer, a strategist, an internal comms officer and even a marketer. The ones who do the best work in HR will be flexible enough to move within these roles with the respect of people in the business.

Wow what a whirlwind the past two weeks has been! I have some explaining to do so here goes.

So I last left you with MC Hammer. Now, some were disappointed that MC Hammer didn’t come out wearing hammer pants, dancers and music playing in the background. He is still going by the name ‘MC Hammer’ but a very different man appeared on the stage. Dressed in a suit and speaking on the very important business of social media, the crowd was excited to hear what he had to say.

For a full report on Hammer’s insights into how he transformed his personal brand into a social personal brand from a real Social media pro, check out Digital Tip (from the Program Director for Social media Club Sydney).

Next up on the agenda was the AHRI National Awards, held at the Crowd Palladium in Melbourne. I must admit I was putting off thinking about the even because I was really nervous- I even bought my dress at about 4:30pm the day before I flew out to Melbourne.

I went with my boss at CSIRO, Paul; my Group HR Manager, Linda; the Deputy Chief that I work with onsite for my division; and my better half, Joel. We all got frocked up for the occasion and enjoyed a wonderful evening.

I was a finalist for the ‘HR Rising Star Award’ and I am very pleased to say that I was awarded the winner of this category (read more online). I couldn’t believe it, and my table was ecstatic when I won. It was incredibly exciting to win, and I am extremely grateful to all the people in my life who have contributed to this and I guess the person that I have become. This includes my family, friends and work colleagues.

More specifically, I would like to thank my awesome boss and the great people I get to work with including my HR team, NSW HR team and greater HR community at CSIRO. The leaders in my division here (my clients) have also been of huge support to me in a challenging time over the past months- without it I would not have been able to achieve a thing.

More personally, over the past two years I have been exposed to a diverse range of people who have really opened my eyes to a lot of different things and different ways of thinking. Not just HR or recruiting people (but these peeps have definitely had a huge impact on me too), but people from digital and social media, adverting, writers, journalists- even luxury wallpaper designers! I still remember going to @mspecht HR Futures Conference and thinking- wow this is all so amazing- I want to be apart of this!

So here is a quick shout out to just a few of these people I want to thank:

@sarahsez
@Afficionados_HH
@jaredwoods
@tiphereth
@mikecasey
@aarondodd
@jo_knox
@chrisferdinandi
@SteveBoese
@PhillipTusing
@mspecht
@thomasshaw
@trib
@dannuroo

None of this exposure would have happened if it weren’t for the sheer persistence of @JoelyRighteous. I am at the best of times stubborn and also a bit difficult to argue with over opinion pieces sometimes with the people I love. I wish I had recorded our first conversation about twitter. I think it went something like this:

Me: That is the stupidest thing ever.
Joel: Nah its awesome!
Me: How is it awesome? It’s just status updates, I don’t even understand why you would care what other people are doing?

Oh dear… so thank you Joely.

Thanks to everyone for all your support. I have been in Thailand for the last week and a bit- some more on this tomorrow.

Tonight I’m a bit excited because Social Media Club Sydney is hosting an event tonight with special guest- MC Hammer!

Social Media Club Sydney is the local chapter for http://www.socialmediaclub.org/ and it’s essentially a place for a diverse bunch of people (including people like me who don’t work in marketing or advertising) to get together for a drink, share learnings and insights gained in the social media space.

Check out this video of Tiphereth Gloria talking about how it came about, and its huge success in Sydney.

So what does MC Hammer have to do with social media?

In case you’ve been living under a rock, MC Hammer was massive in the late 1980s/early 1990s as the rapper and entertainer that bought us Hammerpants and made us want more Hammertime with his hit ‘Can’t touch this’.

These days, he is somewhat of a social media guru with over 1.5 million twitter followers and a regular speaker on the topic. He’ll be at UTS tonight to discuss “Building and Managing Online Audiences”. I’m intrigued as to what he has to say, and what we can learn from his experience- so I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, enjoy this!

There is so much going around the HR circles at the moment about social media and what HR needs to do to be prepared. I love working in HR but sometimes I feel like we (and our legal counterparts) get our knickers in a knot about things when really we should just take a chill pill.

For instance, just this week I read an article on how your company may own your tweets, pokes and YouTube videos. I get it. We sign a contract that says any intellectual property created at work is owned by the company. Now, I’m not sure that anything I’ve said on twitter could be considered intellectual, nor some sort of property to be fought over (!) but in the scheme of the fine print on my contract- sure they would own a lot of my tweets, facebook status updates and some of my blog posts.

Really though? It comes back to that fear that we in HR have about what people are doing at work. What if people are spending time on social media sites when they should be working? How we will performance manage these people?

It’s all about controlling people, power and micromanaging. What sort of message would that send to employees? Beware: if you are creative or express yourself at work remember we own that. People aren’t your property and I don’t think we should own people’s thoughts or feelings. If it is of great commercial value perhaps, but otherwise I just think it’s over the top and unnecessary.

If we think back to our management theories from uni (and yeah I remembered this one along with Maslow), it’s a lot like McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y.

Source: McGregor, D. 1960, The Human Side of Enterprise.

Do people really hate work that much that we have to control and direct them all the time? If you answered ‘yes’; why did you hire those lemmings anyway? I want to work with people who are enthused, take the initiative, and think outside the box- not zombies that need to be controlled at work. I certainly don’t want my people to think that I own everything they do between 9-5.

Secondly, if you have a theory X view of your employees perhaps you are encouraging them to be less creative, be unproductive and actually hate work. It’s discouraging and disengages people.

I think perhaps more bureaucratic workplaces with rigid structures such as the public sector, and also large organisations with a huge public presence (such as telcos) could be guilty of this.

How do you view employees at your workplace?