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#TChat Preview: Why the Best Recruitment Means Smarter Workforce Marketing

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The TalentCulture #TChat Show is back live on Wednesday, January 13, 2015, from 1-2 pm ET (10-11 am PT).

Last week we talked about how to create the ultimate hiring experience, and on January 13 we will talk about why the best recruitment means smarter workforce marketing.

Today’s hiring economy is highly complex and competitive and finding top talent is harder than ever. In fact, attracting candidates and retaining current employees is a lot like attracting and retaining customers.

Candidates want to be valued and have an engaging and transparent experience and how you treat them has a direct impact on your brand. In today’s digital age, where people share experiences online, a poor candidate experience can be bad for business and translate to millions in lost revenue annually.

The fact is we are all job seekers and perpetual candidates, even if we’re currently happily employed. And candidates are the hiring organization’s to lose before they even think about applying for a job.

Today both employers and candidates alike are responsible for creating and marketing their brands — which can give both a symbiotic and differentiating competitive edge.

#TChat Event: Why the Best Recruitment Means Smarter Workforce Marketing

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Tune in to our LIVE online podcast Wednesday, January 13 — 1 pm ET / 10 am PT

Join TalentCulture #TChat Show co-founders and co-hosts Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman as they talk about why the best recruitment means smarter workforce marketing with this week’s guest: Abby Euler, Talent Acquisition Evangelist at IBM Smarter Workforce.

Immediately following the radio show, the team will move to the #TChat Twitter stream to continue the discussion with the entire TalentCulture community. We invite everyone with a Twitter account to participate as we gather for a dynamic live chat, focused on these related questions:

Q1: What digital marketing activities do recruiters need to deliver? #TChat (Tweet this Question)

Q2: What steps should employers and job seekers take to differentiate and market their brands? #TChat (Tweet this Question)

Q3: How can recruiting technologies improve the employer brand and candidate experience? #TChat (Tweet this Question)

Until then, we’ll keep the discussion going on the #TChat Twitter feed, our TalentCulture World of Work Community LinkedIn group, and in our TalentCulture G+ community. So feel free to drop by anytime and share your questions, ideas and opinions. See you there!!!

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Unleashing Innovation: Are You Up For A Challenge?

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Innovation, innovation, innovation. When CEO’s were asked by IBM how they envisioned their companies to grow in 2014, they all pointed to innovation of their current products and services as the main driver for improved results. Most of these leaders added they were looking for ways to bring about these innovations from within, but that they were not yet sure how that could happen.

Not far from now, we’re 100 days away from 2014 to end – and so we’re curious: where’s your company at? Did you succeed in finding ways to fuel innovation from inside of your organization? How many breakthrough ideas were spotted and put into the funnel for execution?

From what we’ve heard, most companies are still struggling with unleashing the innovation powers of their employees. It’s not an easy process for sure, as it is far from a one-time event.

Positively Impact the Bottom Line

If you want high quality and high volume of ideas for innovation, to positively impact the bottom line, it requires a culture different from that often still alive in most organizations: a culture built on trust, transparency, recognition, ownership and collaboration.

As we’ve come to understand, successful innovation is not about ideas – there’s plenty of ideas available, and even when you’d argue not all are good ones (which is absolutely true) and you’d pick a very tiny percentage of all ideas being born daily in your organization, our bet would be that the amount of these ideas-with-potential, is still large enough for distilling even further towards finding some real winners.

Three Crucial Elements

The trick is to have those ideas being out there put into action, instead of laying dormant inside the heads of your employees. When asked about ideas and the willingness to implement them, the majority of young professionals and aspiring corporate innovators mention they feel they lack three crucial elements, which keeps them from taking action: time, resources and support.

And those who do commit to trying anyways, report to find themselves unprepared for doing whatever it takes to get it implemented. Especially in your first years in the corporate world, you don’t know how it all works – decision making, politics, stakeholder interests, timing and alignment with organizational objectives.

Since a company culture can only be transformed by doing things the new way instead of the old, one action at a time, you best start with one single step. A great way to creating a company culture supporting innovation from within, building on these five elements mentioned earlier, is to facilitate those employees with a potentially good idea in taking the leap and converting their ideas into reality.

Where to Start

Start with reaching out to those employees with that imaginary light bulb above their heads. Tell them you value their ideas, and that you want to offer them a chance for implementing them. Offer them a challenge: you can spend some portion of your time on your idea, you get the resources and support you need, and you get the opportunity to develop essential skills. And add some motivation to the challenge by putting a clear deadline for delivering results – why not pick that horizon of 100 days before the year ends?

Maybe their idea is not that good, and it will not survive the first round of feedback from key stakeholders. Maybe some of them will fail because they find out their idea was not in sync with the overarching goals of your company. Maybe some will just do a lousy job of communicating their ideas and presenting a proper business case.

But maybe… some will succeed. Some will find ways through traditional barriers. Some will show exceptional qualities for storytelling and pitching ideas. Some will be natural-born innovators, suddenly being able to do something they really believe in.

It’s Been Said…

You never know if you don’t try. Or better said, you never know if you don’t get them trying. And we can help you with that in such a way that chances of success are highest. Our 100 Days Intrapreneurs Challenge is designed to guide the newest cohort of employees towards implementing their best idea for innovation, within 100 days. We’ve got impactful video lectures, personal coaching and mastermind groups lined up to support them.

Can you remember the first time you managed to change something or convinced a senior manager about your great idea? Possibly, that was one of the defining moments for your career. Offering your eager beavers the opportunity to grow in the same way, will not only lead to some great ideas being implemented, you effectively build that new culture – one employee at a time. What are you waiting for?

Apply Now

(About the Author: What if people feel fulfilled and engaged at work, and organizations thrive by having a positive impact on the world? Hans Balmaekers is driven to transform that vision into reality. He is the founder of sa.am, offering corporate mavericks, change makers and impactful leaders a global network of like-minded people, and an environment for collaboration and learning – both online and offline.

The next edition of the sa.am 100 Days Intrapreneurs Challenge starts on September 8, with the goal of offering 100 aspiring intrapreneurs the guidance, support and tools they need to turn their ideas into actual results before the end of the year. More info here.)

photo credit: Thomas Hawk via photopin cc

HR Catches Up To The Cloud #SHRM14

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One of the bonuses of my role is learning about how companies are using technology to improve recruiting, employee engagement, create workplaces where continual learning is encouraged, and meet with leaders who are bridging the gap between traditional HR tools and new, cloud-based systems of engagement. It’s pretty cool stuff.

Last week I had the privilege of participating in the IBM Big Data & Analytics Summit. The company’s commitment to HR and workplace technologies has grown with its focus on Big Data, Analytics and Cloud – not to mention Social – solutions geared to help businesses support employees who are adapting to the changing workplace. In short #Cloud4Data rocked. I met a lot of really smart and talented people along the way.

Although we’re seeing a resurgence in American manufacturing capacity (check out the Detroit-made watches here,) the biggest opportunities for talent in this country will always require advanced technologies. Those technologies, increasingly, are driven by insight mined from data, interaction enabled by social, and the flexibility, power and adaptive qualities of the cloud.

Because employees in this challenging market need to continually increase their skill sets, it’s essential for companies to create a culture in which employees can gain new skills. Adaptive learning systems hosted in the cloud offer companies a direct, cost-effective path to supporting a culture of continual learning.

Where does Big Data fit in?

It’s not just B2C companies that stand to benefit from learning more about their stakeholders. We might assume most interactions take place between businesses and their consumers or users, but equally vital and impactful are interactions with employees. Analytics help companies learn more about all the players in their talent ecosystem. Employees are a huge part of the ecosystem, because each employee contributes to a company’s overall value, culture and brand.

The cultural benefits that accrue to companies and leaders with a commitment to learning are enormous. We all learn in different ways. A friend of mine has auditory processing disorder; she needs to read, hear, and see words to assemble the pieces into working knowledge. Another deals with the daily challenges of ADHD. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle, relying on a mix of learning techniques: lots of notes, lots of diagrams, lots of instructor interaction. The companies in the lead today accommodate these very different learning styles by creating a culture of talent, with the appropriate tools, to support a learning culture.

In my work I talk to many companies that are either pioneers in cloud, data or social technologies targeted to the workplace, or early adopters of these technologies.  We have come a long way in less than a decade to have these tools available to employers and employees. It’s with a sense of curiousity, and anticipation, that I learn more about how workers and the workplace are changing.

I’m not a technologist in the strict sense of the word; I’m a humanist. I celebrate and follow people and talent. I follow how technology is changing because I care about the world of work. Events and initiatives like the #SHRM14 conference, the CandE Awards and the technology conference I attended last week reassure me that employers are on the right track as they adopt HR technologies which leverage Big Data, cloud and analytics and most importantly, find the balance of keeping it human. Let’s not forget – People hire people. This will not change. That’s a good thing. I’m excited to be back at #SHRM14 – See you in Orlando.