Last week, Cisco launched their annual research project to track how technology is changing the workplace. Arguably, the most notable finding from the survey is data showing just how connected young people are to social media; so much so that they will often forgo a pay increase if it means keeping social media access or their choice of a smartphone device.

Study Highlights:

• Many respondents cite a mobile device as “the most important technology” in their lives.
• Seven of 10 employees have “friended” their managers and coworkers on Facebook.
• Two of five students have not bought a physical book (except textbooks) in two years.
• Most respondents have a Facebook account and check it at least once a day.
• Half of respondents would rather lose their wallet or purse than their smartphone or mobile device.
• More than two of five respondents would accept a lower-paying job that had more flexibility with regard to mobile device choice, social media access and mobility than a higher-paying job with less flexibility. Read the rest of this entry »

A recent survey on internal communication revealed that in 68 per cent of firms internal communications to employees takes place but is lacking in some areas. Only 18 per cent of participants indicated that it was comprehensive and complete, the OperationsInc and Performance-Solutions-Group, Inc. found.

Since Pfizer launched the PfizerWorld platform in 2009 to connect the entire organization to a single platform, the biggest transformation was that, “Our messages are far more aligned across the enterprise than they ever were before,” said Bob Libbey, Senior Director, Global Colleague Communications.

“This was a major goal of the PfizerWorld Super Site Project – to speak with what we call a ‘One Pfizer’ voice,” Libbey, a speaker at the upcoming marcus evans 7th Annual Internal Communications & Situational Messaging Conference added.

The platform had more than 60 million hits and over five million article views last year. “This has raised both the overall awareness of the importance of internal communication and the profile of the function itself.” Read the rest of this entry »

Forward-thinking leaders understand that collaboration is crucial for any organization that wants to be productive, adaptable and creative. Collaboration allows employees to connect with colleagues, share information and ideas, discover who else in the organization is working on the same issues and increase productivity. People solve problems they wouldn’t otherwise have solved, get work done quicker than ever before and feel connected because they are working together toward a common goal. Why, then, is it sometimes so difficult to make the leap from knowing that a higher level of collaboration would be good for your organization to actually implementing it? What tools does your organization need to help facilitate collaboration, and how do you ensure that your personnel will use those tools?

The key in the corporate environment is to put collaboration literally at the fingertips of employees and to generate mass involvement – which is the only way that collaboration works. You need to eliminate any barriers to entry by integrating the collaboration tools directly into the programs and tools that employees are already using every day. The best way to accomplish this is to look at collaborative capabilities as a series of enterprise services. Read the rest of this entry »

Stephanie Hardman, Director of Organizational Development at Tim Hortons was a speaker at the Strategic Talent Management & Leadership Development Canada, which was held in Toronto, ON in July 2011. This is a recap of the presentation and challenges/solutions presented within

Ms. Hardman kicked off her session with an activity. The concept is that you are in HR and you are receiving a letter that is to be discussed in a small group. To break down the situation, Ms. Hardman provided several key questions:

• What are the issues?
  • An erosion of trust.
  • System implementation is impacting people’s ability to get the job done.
  • Rumors – communication from senior leaders doesn’t match reality.
  • Performance management has been delivered as an HR thing.
  • How did we get here?
    • Were stakeholders brought together?
    • Was there a pilot?
    • There is a focus on technology as the answer.
    • There doesn’t seem to be a good feedback loop to make iterations.
    • What can we do now? Read the rest of this entry »

The one constant theme that Human Resource professionals emphasize when it come to international assignments (expatriate employees) is that the experience costs a great deal of money. Most of you reading this will simply nod your head at such a cautionary warning, yet not fully understand the why of it. Perhaps the topic doesn’t concern you, for now, but as managers who may become involved in such adventures down the road, you need to know the cause if you ever hope to manage this expensive proposition.

While companies continue to try new strategies for employing talent overseas (shorter assignments, use of third country nationals, extended business trips, shared responsibilities, etc.) two central premises remain; 1) companies will continue sending employees on overseas assignments, and 2) the cost of those assignments continues to be a big pill to swallow.

Fueling Persistent Cost

If you accept the premise that an employee sent overseas should be kept “whole” (expense-wise) with their home country situation (maintaining their income and expense exposure as if they had never left the U.S.), then certain incurred liabilities naturally fall to the company. Read the rest of this entry »

Stella Cosby, Senior Director of Human Resources at Agrium was a speaker at the Strategic Talent Management & Leadership Development Canada, which was held in Toronto, ON in July 2011. This is a recap of the presentation and challenges/solutions presented within.Ms. Crosby kicked off her session with a video showing how the demographics of the world are changing called “Did You Know” (the Human Capital Edition), available on YouTube.

Agrium has 13,000 employees worldwide and is growing in its global markets. In recent years they have had over 16 acquisitions and invested over $5B in technology.

Agrium’s 3 Business Units:

1. Retail – farm centers servicing local workers and farmers.
   1. This unit has been doubling.
   2. Wholesale – produces fertilizer sold to retailers.
      1. An engineering organization.
      2. Advanced Technologies – a specialty fertilizer business working with coated fertilizer that is slow-release over the course of a year.

Over the last five years, Agrium’s investment return has been 317%; and while the investment return is great, their higher purpose is to feed the world. Read the rest of this entry »

In her latest book, The Shift, London Business School academic Linda Gratton proclaims the death of middle management. The book contends that while the role of management was held in higher esteem in the past, the modern manager is often a figure of parody, with sitcom programs like The Office tapping into this zeitgeist perspective.

We live in an age where big companies can shed middle managers in the thousands and the public cheers their departure, deriding them as pen pushers and bureaucrats that add little value to either customer or employer.

“The days of general managers who know a little about a lot of things are completely over,” says Ms Gratton, further attesting that supervision and feedback is now increasingly given by peers rather than managers. She argues that rather than generalists, managers need to develop specialties in one or two areas.

The other side of the coin

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Developing any type of mentoring program is complicated. The likelihood of success is dependent on a number of factors: the design, participant selection, training and feedback. Today, I will focus on the selection of and matching of mentor program participants.

You have probably heard before that there is a science and an art to matching mentors and mentees. The science of the selection process often uses data while the art taps into our intuition and gut sense of who will work well together. Relying on one of these is often not enough; using both of them will increase your program’s success.

Companies that haphazardly determine mentoring matches are more likely to see a higher failure rate.  It is important that the mentor and mentee have trust and solid common ground to build their new relationship.

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There is a strong internal drive, not just within HR, but also within the entire organization to bring current talent to the next level of leadership. The urgency lies within internal transformation, driving competitiveness and the organization’s achievement towards its strategy and goals.

Mr. Thomas (TJ) Hammond is the Director of the Leadership Institute at the United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM).  He provides strategic and operational program direction and guidance for workforce initiatives and development.  TJ joined USSTRATCOM in July 2004 as a member of the training division.

TJ answered a series of questions, written by marcus evans for the forth coming 7^th Annual Talent Management & Leadership Development Conference. All responses represent the view of the Mr. Hammond and not necessarily those of the United States Strategic Command.

Questions: What are the principle concerns that need to be looked at when designing a leadership development program to solidify organizational success?

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As anyone who has found themselves knees-deep in a friend’s tagged photos can tell you, social media sites can be addicting. So it’s no surprise that this newer medium scares the pants off of many companies, causing them to block sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube at the office.

In fact, according to a 2010 survey by OpenDNS, Facebook was blocked by 23 percent of the provider’s business users, making it the most blocked website last year, beating out Playboy and Limewire.

This trend comes in stark contrast with the 2011’s projected $3.08 billion in social media advertising revenue from companies screaming, “I want to play, too!” And it’s making me think something here is amiss.

When stripped down, isn’t business simply all about communicating? Advertising the features of your latest product, talking to potential employees about job opportunities, fostering relationships with clients and vendors – it’s no wonder social media is the new forefront; it enables this communication to take place in a much more organic way. But companies need to harness its power internally just as much as they have begun to embrace it externally.

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This post is the fourth in a series written by Mary Jo Asmus for HRM Today on executive coaching for human resource managers. The first three posts can be found here, here and here.

When you think about an executive coach working with a leader, it may come as a surprise that there are more than just the two who are directly involved – or at least, there should be. I’ve always believed that there’s a better chance for success when the person being coached has a system of supporters to provide guidance for achieving the goals they’ve set for themselves. Also, as an executive coach, I like the idea of working my way out of the job of coaching someone with the assurance that others will support my client both during the coaching engagement and after. I make it a point to work with the executive to make sure they have a network for support.

The executive coach will assist the executive in assembling this network. The  executive is responsible for taking the initiative to assure that those supporters stay involved and remain as advisors throughout and after the coaching engagement. It’s this network that provides insight from different perspectives and assures ongoing guidance for the executive when they are no longer working with the coach.

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Over the past several years, there has been a rise in virtual working teams and a rise in fluid teams. A fluid team is one composed of individuals who work together to complete a project, but once finished, they disperse and go their separate ways to work on different projects, often with different people. This is in contrast to a fixed team, which works together often.

In such a dynamic working environment, knowledge management becomes crucial. To build high performing teams and maintain a high performing organization, it is important people have access to the existing knowledge about company processes. Clearly, recreating the wheel is inefficient. On top of that, learning from mistakes—ideally others’ mistakes—improves quality and saves time.

A bit of background info, knowledge management generally involves three processes: knowledge creation, knowledge retention, and knowledge transfer. Knowledge can be of three types: declarative (knowledge about something), procedural (how something occurs or is performed), and casual (why something happens).

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This post is the third in a series written by Mary Jo Asmus for HRM Today on executive coaching for human resource managers. The first two posts can be found here and here.

The discussion about what qualities, skills and background to look for in an executive coach is a loaded one. I am personally challenged by the question because it’s an emotional one for me. I’ve had to clean up after unqualified coaches made a mess of things and have had to defend my profession repeatedly. I’ve also been an executive coach for nine years, love what I do and have my own strong opinions about what those of you who hire executive coaches should be looking for.

I also received International Coach Federation (ICF) accredited training, had a credential through ICF, let it lapse and am now working to get a higher level credential. I let the previous credential lapse because I’m a successful executive coach who’s never been asked if I have that credential. I’m currently working to reinstate it because I decided that it’s important to me that I have it, even if it’s not important to anyone else.

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Recognize This! – “Facestabbing” in the workplace is a symptom, not the disease.

What’s your opinion of managing “Facestabbing” incidents in the workplace? When it comes to your attention that an employee has posted a negative comment of some kind about your company, superiors or colleagues, how does your company respond? How do you think it should respond?

Is there a formal policy? What is it? If not, do you think there should be a formal policy or procedure for addressing such comments progressively up to and including termination? Do you believe in a more informal approach?

Or do you see it more like my friend Bob Selden, author of the Management-Issues issues blog, who sees such Facebook commenting as “the old ‘water cooler gossiping’ or ‘heard it at the pub’ that have been part and parcel of work life forever?”

I tend to fall in the camp of how medical professionals might address Facestabbing – treat the disease, not the symptoms.

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Marguerite Copel, VP of Corporate Communications at Dean Foods Company was a speaker at the 5th Annual Internal Branding & Employee Engagement Conference, which was held in Miami, FL in February 2011. This is a recap of the presentation and challenges/solutions presented within.

Dean Foods a national provider of milk products through their Silk, Land O Lakes, Horizon Organic brands was growing so fast they were out of space, literally.  When undertaking the building out, and moving of 600 employees, from one corporate headquarters to another, Dean Foods took the opportunity to focus on communication and highlight how their new headquarters would be attractive, engaging, innovative, and enhance their corporate brand.

The Challenge:

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