TM - January 2008 - (Page 36)

recruitment & retention assessment & evaluation compensation & benefits performance management learning & development succession planning Enterprise 2.0: Collaborate Today Perform , Today and Tomorrow Christopher Faust Web 2.0 is not the future. It’s here today, and its impact on HR technology can improve workforce effectiveness. Web 2.0, the perceived “second generation” of Web-based communities, such as social networking, wikis, blogs, RSS feeds and podcasts, aims to facilitate greater collaboration and information sharing. Enterprise 2.0, the corporate world’s version, provides more business-focused applications with the same theme. These concepts and new technologies offer increased opportunities for organizations to open up company culture, overcome organizational barriers and enhance global workforce performance. Human resources, in particular, has a crucial interest in facilitating better internal communication and knowledge sharing to increase employee engagement, keep employee morale and motivation high, and provide a dynamic source of knowledge sharing. As more and more organizations consolidate resources to achieve more with less, increasingly multifunctional roles also are driving the need for more real-time employee development. In a recent Softscape study, 35 percent of organizations now have most employees in multifunctional roles across disparate geographies, and 55 percent plan to deploy new talent management systems to better prepare their workforce. Enterprise 2.0’s roots in social knowledge-sharing can enable organizations to organically develop employees and teams through realtime development, collaboration and mentoring. Leading talent management software providers are starting to offer integrated and contextualized capabilities to help organizations promote development of employee skills, competencies and intangibles, to share institutional knowledge and to boost workforce performance. Companies can nurture high-potential employees and promote colleague-to-colleague learning within the workplace while employees fine-tune their skills, communicate and collaborate across business divisions and secure “just in time” guidance to complete deadline-critical projects. By weaving a rich social network into the fabric of an organization’s people management system, companies can draw out latent skills and fully tap employee strengths and experiences. More importantly, unique working relationships can be forged from each employee’s individual need to improve his or her job performance, meet career goals and support strategic business objectives. Companies are then energized by greater teamwork, innovation, faster and more effective problem solving and better decision making — all of which help HR drive business performance. However, HR professionals are now savvier with new technologies than in previous years and are not interested in new technology for new technology’s sake. As more and more vendors try to ride the latest wave of “what’s hot” and offer myriad features, HR professionals must sift through superficial jargon to find real solutions that solve real business problems. The future of HR technology is in leveraging information, not just storing it, and providing insight into existing knowledge and skills across the entire enterprise. The era of the traditional employee and manager relationship is also changing. Now, by focusing on collaboration and information sharing, people working in multiple roles across different geographies have the opportunity to maneuver in a more fluid fashion. Web 2.0 technology can support this via online networking, videoconferencing, desktop sharing and other collaboration tools with nonhierarchical organizational structures. The primary strategic goal for HR professionals is to ensure their people are equipped with the right skills at the right moment and connected to the appropriate resources to achieve the best results. By capitalizing on expanding Enterprise 2.0-enabled talent management systems that help individuals do their jobs better each day, organizations can empower their employees to drive corporate effectiveness more rapidly to achieve a new level of impact on the business and success of their company. Christopher Faust is executive vice president of global strategy at Softscape, an HCM technology company providing expertise in people management. He can be reached at editor@TalentMgt.com. 36 talent management magazine www.TalentMgt.com http://www.TalentMgt.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of TM - January 2008

TM - January 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Learning Connections: Working With Those People Leading Edge: Hub Caps for a Buggy Human Performance: Hawthorne Effect Revisited Beyond Affirmative Action: The Changing Face of Recruitment Assessment Centers in Talent Management: Strategies, Use and Value Nontraditional Benefits- How to Hook the Best Talent Intersection of Web 2.0 and Talent Management Cross-Training for Workforce Agility Mapping Talent Among Younger Workers Dashboard: Using Personality Data to Identify and Develop High-Potential Leaders Application: Shaffer Title Uses Myers-Briggs to Develop Common Corporate Language, Jump-Start Growth Insight: Dreier, Stein & Kahan LLP: Using Strategy to Bring Back the Law Profession Advertisers' Index Editorial Resources Full Potential: Stop in the Name of Leadership

TM - January 2008

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