Politics aside, I was glad when the President called for action to reverse unemployment and create re-employment during his State of the Union address the other night. It’s not a new buzz mantra; it’s one many of us have been advocating from the bottom of the heavy-gravity economic crater.
There are so many recommendations on what to do — the primary ones being changing the archaic tax codes, changing the banking system, improving our education system, embracing global trade, saving the Eurozone — but unfortunately so many disagreements on how to get there.
Employers added 200,000 jobs in December, twice the previous month’s pace, and the unemployment rate dropped to 8.5 percent from 8.7 percent the month before. But the even better news is that according to the AP:
“Perhaps the best evidence of that [economic improvement] was a 2.9 percent increase in so-called core capital goods, such as computers and machinery. That pushed total orders for the category to a record $68.9 billion.
“Economists pay most attention to so-called core capital goods because they are often viewed as a good way of gauging business investment plans.”
And with computers and machinery comes software, and with talent acquisition (both outside and in) comes HR and recruiting technology. My increased work with HR and Recruiting B2B vendors of late is telling that their businesses are heating up. In fact, because of the seemingly explosive boom of new innovative HR and Recruiting technologies — as well as the flurry of recent acquisitions by SAP and Salesforce — we took #TChat Radio to new heights last night with a panel of wise sages (Sarah White, Alex Raymond and Brent Skinner) to talk about what’s on the horizon for 2012 and what types of tech will make the business case for creating a new world of work efficiencies.
Technology itself isn’t the holy grail of recruiting and HR efficiencies, though. Automating a bad process still makes for a bad process. The lack of a quality candidate experience, for example, continues to haunt many employers. No matter what kind of talent acquisition system is in place, the experience is poor and that affects employer brand and business growth.
The same applies for performance management, compensation management, benefits management, wellness management — you name it. Software won’t fix your HR or recruiting processes.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately of going from best practice to making the business case. I’m talking about is the fact that during my tenure in the magnificent HR/recruiting marketing realm — both on the vendor side, as well as the practitioner side (and even before that in the literal B2B tech sector) — we spout and spout best practices over and over again to our “buyers,” and we don’t get to making the true business case to deploying a new software system.
But last night one of our guests, Sarah White, Talent Acquisition & Technology Adviser, moved and schooled me about getting to just “good enough.” Meaning, get HR and recruiting practitioners aware of their primary pain points in processes and get to good enough when improving efficiencies. Forget about “best practices,” because those are usually only attainable in a thought-leadership bubble, not in reality.
Getting to good enough will help with re-employment. Getting to good enough is how we’re going to heal.
Thanks again to our wonderful panelists last night — Brent Skinner, Sarah White, and Alex Raymond — the lovely Meghan M. Biro and Maren Hogan, and our ever-supportive Sean Charles and Kyle Lagunas for a wonderful #TChat Radio last night. Join myself and the rest of the #TChat team next week when we discuss the workplace economics of America’s dirty jobs! Same time (7:00p ET, 6:00p CT, 4:00p PT or wherever you are), same place. Right on.
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