The Evolution of HR and Talent Management 3.0.
1.1. Key elements in the process of attracting and selecting talent
Generation gaps: Baby Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y, Generation Z
Understanding personalities and managing differences and diversity are the keys to profit.
Álex Rovira
To understand and appropriately use social networks in the selection of personnel, it is necessary to factor in the existence of the generation gaps that exist in organisations.
When we speak of generations in the context of managing diversity, we should take into account the fact that these generations exist as groups which, while they share various features, may also be very different. In this light, for example, along with the so-called Neither-Nor Generation (the generation of young people who neither work nor study), we also have another group of young people with high levels of academic qualifications and a positive attitude toward professional development.
It should also be borne in mind that it is also impossible to compare generations in different countries because of the various histories and culture, which means that they cannot be dealt with in the same way.
Nowadays we can observe a range of generations within the same organisation - the Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y (and in some cases, Generation Z which is now 17 years of age).
Generational diversity means the mingling together within a single organisation of people of different ages, skills, values, ideas, aptitudes, ways and forms of communication and consequently it also means that they are at different stages of technological development.
Chronologically we can separate them as follows:
Baby Boomers (1945 - 1963)
Generation X (1964 - 1981)
Generation Y (1982 - 1990)
Generation Z (1991 - 2010)
We can divide them up according to their history and values.
Baby Boomers
People who belong to the Baby Boomer Generation were born between 1945 and 1963, after World War II. Their dominant characteristics are: discipline, order and respect for others.
Discipline also reveals other positive qualities, such as work and stamina. They created and lived through profound social changes, including the hippie movement and feminism.
They tend to be stable in the employment world, and many of them will have remained with the same company or sector all of their working lives and are unwilling to change.
The important feature governing this group when it comes to look for work will be its serious attitude preferring fulltime work and displaying low levels of absenteeism.
These people prefer hierarchical organisations. A bigger office and a good car are status symbols and in many cases they are measurements of success depending on how fate has treated them.
A factor which should be taken into consideration regarding the Baby Boomers and their progressive adaptation to social networks is the outcome of the survey known as the Pew Internet and American Life Project which was carried out in May 2010: in the U.S., the use of social networks by internet users older than 50 has doubled over the past year, rising from 22% to 42%.
Generation X
Members of Generation X were born between 1964 and 1981, the children of the last traditionalists and the Baby Boomers. This is a generation that has observed the effects of globalisation. It grew up in a world that was already digital round the clock: mobile telephones, cable TV and the internet. Their homes have moved from black-and-white TV to the iPad.
They are breaking with the traditional patterns, including the creation of informal working environments and transforming hierarchical corporate structures into more flexible, horizontal entities.
They are loyal to their employers and they know the value of commitment.
A key value of Generation X is the achievement of a balance between professional goals and quality of life: reconciling family life with work.
Generation Y
Members of Generation Y were born between 1982 and 1993 during the technological era. They are also known as “digital natives” (a term coined by Mark Prensky), since they were born in a digital environment (as compared with “digital immigrants”).
This is the first generation of young people that has grown up in an environment of collaboration and interactivity and with all modern conveniences.
Their beliefs are very different from those of Generation X; they believe that freedom of expression is more important than self-control. They are unable to exist in poverty. Even if they are not rich, it is important for them to have an easy life, simply because they grew up surrounded by comfort.
Because of this attitude to life they tend to be completely indifferent to job security. They have no fear of change and can change their jobs quickly, as they are not loyal to their employers, unlike Generation X. They prefer immediacy. What looks like a lack of loyalty in Generation Y is replaced by the value that they attach to their relationships with their workmates and supervisors.
They are also dubbed “multitasking”, since they are quite capable of uploading a YouTube video while chatting on a mobile phone and tweeting at the same time.
Young people in Generation Y upload and share their experiences on Facebook and almost all would like to work for Google. This is due, among other things, to the fact that companies like Google and Facebook were founded by people in their twenties who shaped their Talent Attraction and Retention strategies by adapting them to Generation Y.
The majority of the Baby Boomers, however, have a certain hesitation, and are unwilling to launch themselves on social networks, sharing their professional lives with the world.
The biggest problem in the world is not getting people to accept new ideas, but persuading them to forget the old ones.
John Maynard Keynes
It is important to bear in mind the fact that at the present moment it is the Baby Boomers who occupy the managerial positions, along with some members of Generation X. They have always cultivated their own social networks from close proximity, based on face-to-face personal relationships or the telephone, and they have adapted to the use of email, but some Baby Boomers are unwilling to adapt to the use of social networks for selecting talent.
It’s easier to shatter an atom than a prejudice.
Albert Einstein
However, it is not possible to generalise here, because some Baby Boomers have joined social networks and are using them with great success, since they are taking advantage of synergies: the advantages offered by new technologies together with their professional careers and reputation make a perfect match for new business opportunities.
For Generation Y, all social communication takes place on the net, although they don’t see it as the greatest tool ever invented by man, simply because it has always been there for them.
They are quite capable of building up large communities on social networks without knowing anybody personally.
Generation Z
The members of Generation Z were born between 1991 and 2010. All their lives they have had internet access, mobile phones, MP3 players and the iPod. These are the youngsters in the modern world aged between 16 and 19, and they are also known as “digital natives”.
Generation Z are super-social networkers, maturing faster than any previous generation.
They are the most entrepreneurial generation because 72% of Gen Z wants to start their own business; and they look for instant gratification.
Organisations that would like to be sustainable and last over time will have to deal with a diverse human capital. Diversity has a direct impact on creativity, innovation, efficiency and sustainability in a global and changing world, and will provide the talent which will be indispensable in the years to come.
According to the Global Webindex report (2015), some statistics of Generation Z (teens) are:
• 68% of teens are accessing the internet via mobiles, with 23% doing the same via tablets.
• 65% of teens say they spend more than an hour on the mobile internet each day.
• Facebook is still the leading app for teens (48%), although Snapchat is the fastest growing.
• Around three quarters of teens say that they spend time gaming each day – with nearly 30% playing for an hour or more.
At a global level, teens account for 6.49% of the internet population, which corresponds to an audience size of 102.89 million.
The countries with the highest proportions of online teens are South Korea and Mexico (10%). At the other end of the spectrum, teens ages 16-19 make up fewer than 4% of the online population in Canada, Singapore, Russia and Spain.
In terms of audience size, however, the importance of China is clear; it has some 33.38 million online teens. Following behind are the U.S. and India, markets that contain 12.97 and 10.24 million respectively.
Generations Y and Z, and a proportion of Generation X, are the people who most value and make most use of social networks in the context in which they live, and they have grown up with the new technologies.
What should organisations offer to attract and retain Generation Y members?
Demographic data shows that in the next few years there will be a talent shortfall and that Generation Y will predominate in organisations.
Fifty percent of the world’s population are under 30 years of age. In other words, they belong to Generation Y and Z, and 96% of Generation Y uses social networks.
The top 10 characteristics Generation Y candidates look for in organizations:
1. Innovation, modernity and comfort in the working environment and opportunities to boost social relationships.
2. Opportunities for training and development. New challenges. Multidisciplinary work, because they are young and prefer to do a variety of jobs at the same time (multitasking).
3. Collaboration with work teams, projects and joint decision-making.
4. A leadership style, which guides, participates and inspires.
5. Open communication: approachable/accessible supervisors who show a genuine interest in their professional growth.
6. Continuous feedback and output reviews.
7. A salary policy based on objectives achieved.
8. Constant access to corporate information: internet, employee portal, blogs, etc.
9. Job flexibility (cyber-commuting, flexitime, etc).
10. Organisation reputation/image or employer branding.
According to a study by Robert Half International entitled What Motivates the Workers of the New Millennium: How to Attract and Retain Generation Y Employees, Generation Y values opportunities to develop and the company’s reputation/brand recognition more than their job title.
The application of traditional schemes in the workplace tends to be a complete disaster for Generation Y, leading to a high turnover rate and problems in attracting and recruiting talent. Millennials also have a stronger preference for using social learning and mobile technology for improving leadership skills than other generations, and they tend to learn from others more frequently.
Managers should understand that the different perspectives of this new generation are an opportunity to find competitive advantages.
To be effective, you must pass by the right place at the
correct time, in the appropriate numbers. This is the art
of effective action in harmony with the milieu.
Sun Tzu
Many people think that talent is a matter of luck,
but few realise that luck is a matter of talent.
Jacinto Benavente
Here are some examples of human resources policies designed to attract talent, adapted to the new Generation Y:
• Cisco: use of employee referrals leads to some of the best hires for Cisco. When you refer someone, you help the company expand and diversify our network of high-potential talent. And you could earn a monetary award.
• eBay: has a meditation room for workers.
• Google: allows its employees to devote a certain period of time within their working day to projects that are not associated with the day-to-day job, and also allows them to bring pets to the workplace. It has a laundry and a relaxation room where staff can play videogames, etc. These advantages and the Google culture are transmitted to its own employees via social networks to attract talent.
• Henkel: to attract young graduates in the marketing field, it has designed Henkel Challenge, a marketing competition in which different teams of students design increasingly innovative products to meet the needs of consumers up to the year 2050.The winning team is rewarded with a study trip and the three best teams win an interview with Henkel’s CEO and chance of an internship or even a permanent job in the organisation.
• Procter & Gamble: has set up a mentoring programme for Generation Y. Procter & Gamble has employed seniors to act as mentors for the new employees, and they in turn act as mentors for the veterans. They have managed to invert their mentoring programmes, which is a great innovation.
• Bombardier Aerospace: invited more than 33,000 employees to see the first flight of their C-Series Jet. They set up more than 45 different viewing stations in 10 countries. It was an outstanding moment. They also launched a referral program to find the best talent through their own team.
Recent surveys revealed that both Gen Y and Gen Z expect organizations to be socially responsible and to make a positive contribution to their communities.
According to Nielsen’s 2014 study, Millennials are 57% more likely to interact with companies they regard as authentic and transparent. Job seekers want to work in an organization that feels real, genuine and communicative.
According to social listening tool Glassdoor, 84% of job seekers would change jobs for a company with a better reputation; conversely, 69% wouldn’t take a job with a company with a bad reputation, even if they were unemployed.
The cost of not adapting to the new Generation Y will be very high: finding yourself lacking in talent in the upcoming years.
There is only one road leading to success: adapt to the new generations by making use of social networks to attract and recruit them.
Continuing with Generation Y, they ask for constant feedback and support from managers and mentors. This is an opportunity to build a talent pool in the organizations, but what are the main differences between Coaching and Mentoring?
According to the Harvard Business School, there are key differences between Coaching and Mentoring:
|
Coaching |
Mentoring |
|
|
Key Goals |
• Correct inappropiate behaviour. • Improve performance. • Impart new skills. |
• Support and guide personal growth of protégé. |
|
Initiative for Mentoring |
• Coach directed. |
• Protégé in charge of learning. |
|
Volunteerism |
• Employee’s support is essential if coaching is to be effective; but not mandatory. |
• Both mentor and protégé participate as volunteers. |
|
Focus |
• Learning opportunities. • Immediate problems. |
• Long term personal career development. |
|
Roles |
• Coach to provide continuous feedback. |
• Mentor to provide continuous listening. • Mentor to make suggestions and connections. |
|
Duration |
• Usually short term. • Can be “as needed”. |
• Long term. |
|
Relationship |
• Coach is employee’s direct supervisor. |
• Mentor is seldom protégé’s direct supervisor. |
Source: Harvard Business School.
If you were not already involved in this company,
would you decide to join it now?
We shall have to redefine the concept of the employer organisation and its management in such a way that they both satisfy the legal owners (as shareholders) and the owners of the human capital which endows the company with its power to generate
wealth (in other words, the workers).
Peter Drucker
Trust is a key element in the creation of a company reputation,
and as a direct result, of its value to the shareholders.
Robert Eckert (CEO, Mattel)
Employer branding, or in-house branding, is the process of creating identity and image management in its role as a provider of employment, and is not only based on the company’s hiring strategies, but also includes a holistic focus.
The relationship between the company’s values, systems, policies and forms of behaviour to achieve its corporate objectives by means of its human capital must be all factored in and managed. Companies are complex and open systems: this means that one-off actions are not enough.
Employer branding must be in step with what the company transmits to the employees, customers, shareholders and general public.
Companies must make a sincere effort to encourage the employees to adopt its mission and its values. When a company succeeds in this, it must then implement measures to maintain it. For example, when a company takes part in workplace environment studies, such as Great Place to Work, and scores well, it is a powerful recommendation for that business. You must be very wary and avoid participating in surveys of this kind if you know the results will be negative, because poor results will damage the image of the company as an employer.
An organization known in the market as a “best company” gains valuable external recognition. Beyond mere publicity, being top ranked is an important guidepost for investors, customers, and prospective candidates.
The leaders of an organisation should know what their corporate values are and communicate them to all levels of the organisation. Good leaders will find it easy to make the right decisions when they know which of the company’s values and theirs are represented.
Businesses are going through a difficult time at the moment, but those who take care of their greatest asset, their human capital, will succeed and prevail in the end.
Managers who put the interests of their teams over those of individuals will encourage the commitment of their teams, and as a result productivity will increase.
Teams need transparency, and organisations must communicate, communicate and keep on communicating. From this standpoint, social networks are helping to create transparent environments.
The employees of an organisation at a time of uncertainty want only to know that someone in the company is thinking about them. All the workers will get better results if their efforts are genuinely appreciated. Fortunately, the world is changing again. We are reinventing values which we should never have lost or forgotten.
It is no easy task predicting how things will fare in the next few years, but we shall find no difficulty in guessing what will happen to those companies which have let themselves slip: they will witness a flight of talent from their organisations.
Now is the best time to act, because by then it will be too late.
When the sun comes out again and employees are leaving those businesses which failed to realise their importance in times of uncertainty, they will pay much more dearly than they would have if the measures they took had been strategic and not obsessed with the short term.
According to the “Employer branding” survey conducted by Jobvite:
• 32% of companies admit they don’t have a clear employment brand strategy, but they’re “working on it”.
• 35% of companies do have a clear strategy; they still think it needs further development to be truly effective.
Here’s a look at seven of the top employment brand “sins” companies commit today:
|
Mistakes |
Solutions |
|
1. You tend to “embellish” things. |
• Start with what you know. • Tell a consistent story. • Communicate on platforms where people feel most “at home”. |
|
2. You're short-sighted. |
• Keep a big-picture perspective based on clear standards. • Be flexible. • Metrics are key. |
|
3. You sweat the small stuff. |
• Reframe the question. • Think visually. • Show high-impact details with emotional resonance. |
|
4. You target qualifications instead of people. |
• Know the culture fit requirements for your company. • Go where the people are. • Start culture discussions. |
|
5. You mistake clichés for core values. |
• Dig deep for the specifics of your company's beliefs. • Do frequent check-ins. |
|
6. You fail on social media. |
• Being involved on social media isn't a “one and done” activity. • Give people a fun way to interact with your brand. • Get automated. |
|
7. You don't follow through. |
• Be sure you have a killer career site. • Reinforce brand messages throughout the recruiting and hiring process. • Don't stop communicating your brand once employees are hired. |
Source: http://www.jobvite.com
According to the LinkedIn survey “Global Recruiting Trends”:
• 56% of global talent leaders say employer brand is a top priority for their company.
• 4 years is the average length of time an employee stays at one company, according to LinkedIn data.
The war for talent is biting and, as Accenture’s latest survey of CEOs shows, 60% of them are lying awake at night worrying about the need to attract and retain the best people.
We are going to get the future we have created for ourselves and built. What else did we expect?
It’s no use saying ‘We’re doing everything we can’;
you must do what is necessary.
Winston S. Churchill.
To create a successful Employer Value Proposition (EVP), companies must consider the following:
1. The present: potential and current employee’s values and their perceptions of their organization.
2. The future: values that the organisation is trying to portray, including corporate CEO messages.
Social networks are turning into a trend and a great opportunity for the strategy involved with the creation of the brand, or employer branding.
Social networks applied to employer branding will help attract talent to the organisations. In order to succeed, the new creation of brand 2.0 will need:
• Human cooperation.
• Agility.
• The ability to constantly reinvent itself (it may well be that what worked in the past is no longer working in the present).
Recruiting becoming more like marketing could change the recruiting industry in the next years. We can build from Human Resources Areas a strong Employer Branding Plan by attending to some metrics that we use for Marketing Plans:
|
Marketing |
Recruiting |
|
Segment |
Determine the types of people that fit your jobs. |
|
Target |
Prioritize and pursue high priority candidates. |
|
Position |
Create a narrative and message that amplifies your company's talent brand. |
|
Product |
The job and work environment. |
|
Price |
Employee salary and benefits. |
|
Promotion |
Outbound: Job postings, public relations. Inbound: Build relationships with talent communities, social, digital, and content marketing. |
|
Place of distribution |
Job boards, social and professional networks, email. |
Employees who identify with their company and are committed to it will act as its ambassadors on the social networks and will be able to boost the company’s corporate reputation as an employment provider.
Sixty percent of employees would like help from employers to share relevant content.
In light of the above, it is advisable for human resources professionals publishing job offers to redirect them to their corporate website where candidates can see in detail the company’s services/products, its values and employer benefits.
They should also show in their “Jobs” or “Work with us” section the social networks in which the company has a presence, so that the potential candidate can access the latest updates on employment opportunities. Companies must use existing social networks to attract and retain talent.
We empower our employees to be Brand evangelists through
our comprehensive social media training program.
We help build our external brand by giving employees
the tools and guidelines they need to communicate
on behalf of the company. It’s a lot of work,
but the payoff is huge.
Brent Amundson, Dell
Our inclusive culture promotes a creative, innovative,
and collaborative environment that helps fuel
our globalization strategy.
John Chambers, Chairman and CEO Cisco
Here is an example of 2.0 employer branding aimed at attracting talent:
• Heineken: has come up with an interesting way to find the right talent for its job offer. Heineken needed to hire an intern for its Event & Sponsorship Marketing team to prepare for the Champions League final. Heineken received a staggering 1,734 applications for this position. Called “The Candidate”, the video shows different interview clips of potential candidates. The video was uploaded on YouTube and millions of people watched it.
Heineken’s recruitment campaign was very successful not only in the recruitment process but also in branding. Many advertising experts said that this was a very brilliant campaign, which promoted the fame of Heineken brand around the world.
Employer branding and corporate reputation have always been an important factor for businesses, but they have gained more traction with the crisis, and this is fortunately clearly reflected in company turnover.
As businesses tend to become more service-orientated, employer branding grows in importance. In a labour market as competitive as today’s, employer branding, or the perceptions of employees and potential candidates, which amounts to the same thing, is as important as the way the brand is seen by a customer or potential customer (external branding), when it comes to those businesses’ ability to continue to operate competitively. We should never forget that the employees of an organisation are the front-line product consultants for the brand, particularly for companies in the service sector.
Some companies are already hiring talent who specialise in this area, a new field of specialisation in the area of human resources.
The young, Generation Y, are changing the rules of the game from the bottom up, but the general management of the organisation must provide the mechanisms necessary for this inevitable organisational transformation to be exploited with maximum benefits for both company and employees.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: in 2016, 50% of the population will be composed of Millennials (born after 1980) who were raised playing video games and surfing the internet to get information.
A recent survey indicated that Gen Y employees expect their jobs to be social and fun, with clear goals to succeed, and to provide personal satisfaction. They want regular feedback on their work. Gen Y is redefining the modern workplace.
Gamification creates new methods to reach out to the specific requirements of Gen Y employees.
The real difficulty lies not in developing new ideas
but in escaping from the old ones.
John Maynard Keynes
I am always doing that which I cannot do,
in order that I may learn how to do it.
Pablo Picasso
Business Games can be an excellent HR tool to be used to attract talent. Some companies have been able to make the most of the opportunities offered by the internet to attract the youngest candidates; while others are ignoring this selection instrument.
Advantages of Business Games and Virtual Campus 2.0. for the company:
1. Promote the image of the company as an employer (employer branding).
2. Increase and improve the data base curriculum.
3. Increase the effectiveness of the publication of vacancies.
4. Filter the most suitable candidates to participate in the face-to-face recruitment process.
5. Valuable insights and information for staffing executives, revealing candidates who may have the job skills that traditional credentialing or sourcing often miss.
Vanessa Soames, Head of Graduate, Recruitment and Recruitment Marketing at KPMG says: “Using gamification in our recruitment marketing and attraction strategy is part of our commitment to attracting great candidates in a new and exciting way. And with the dedication we’ve seen from applicants/gamers so far, it’s obvious we have some brilliant candidates and that the bar has been set high.”
Michael Schrage, a research fellow at MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business, and author of the boo “Serious Play” (HBR Press) says:
“Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are famous for their love of and prowess in bridge. Harvard has used high-stakes poker as a real-world game theory laboratory for strategic thinking. For sheer bonhomie and bonding, golf remains a global opportunity for American, Asian, and European executives to mix business with pleasure. Depending on the industry, a sharp MBA who’s a scratch golfer may well have a leg up in a job interview or sales meeting.
“Demonstrable talent and success at games that mix competitive fire with social skills make a desirable human capital combination. There’s a perceived correlation between real competence in serious games and business effectiveness.”
Gartner identified four principal means of driving engagement, using gamification:
1. Accelerated feedback cycles: In the real world, feedback loops are slow (e.g., annual performance appraisals) with long periods between milestones. Gamification increases the velocity of feedback loops to maintain engagement.
2. Clear goals and rules of play: In the real world, where goals are fuzzy and rules selectively applied, gamification provides clear goals and well-defined rules of play to ensure players feel empowered to achieve goals.
3. A compelling narrative: While real-world activities are rarely compelling, gamification builds a narrative that engages players to participate and achieve the goals of the activity.
4. Tasks that are challenging but achievable: While there is no shortage of challenges in the real world, they tend to be large and long-term. Gamification provides many short-term, achievable goals to maintain engagement.
Some examples of Business Games in Human Capital areas:
• BBVA: This entity bank has a virtual campus that presents the following features that adapt to new generations of talent:
• Available 24/7: it is a permanent campus, which is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
• Accessible and transparent: it is an open virtual campus, where you can navigate without prior registration. No geographical limitations.
• Glocal: a unique recruitment portal for all units and provides details of both the group and each of their societies.
• Interactive: a portal that allows the candidate to maintain communication directly with the departments of recruitment, which may answer their questions through an online forum and / or Downloadable channel which each unit can turn on its stand.
• Interconnected: linked to social networks using the viral effect and enabling candidates to share content networks like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.
• L’Oréal: L’Oreal has a business game for their international recruitment strategy called Brandstorm by L’Oréal. This is a revolutionary interactive virtual platform that adapts to Generation Y, allowing students worldwide to assess and explore their career choices.
• PWC: PWC has released Quest, a virtual platform where contestants, from the Spanish speaking world, in teams of four, have had to do an exercise of introspection and soak up the PwC spirit.
This virtual environment is divided into three phases. In the first (Know yourself) participants take a test to know more about themselves as possible candidates in a leading company like PwC. The second phase (about us) is the resolution of 13 enigmas that requires diving into all the information that PwC has on its website. The last phase (case study) is to create a branding campaign to sell the firm in the university community. The six best works will be the finalists who will participate in one workday, this time face to face. This environment is accompanied by other actions 2.0 that allow an improvement in the flow of communication between all participants: a group on Facebook, messaging on the platform of the game, tweets, etc.
• U.K.’s Department for Work and Pensions: They created an innovation game called Idea Street to decentralize innovation and generate ideas from its 120,000 people across the organization. Idea Street is a social collaboration platform with the addition of game mechanics, including points, leader boards and a “buzz index”. Within the first 18 months, Idea Street had approximately 4,500 users and had generated 1,400 ideas, 63 of which went on to be implemented.
• Department of Tourism of the Australian state of Queensland: If we put the words “the best job in the world” into Google, thousands of hits will be flagged from an excellent 2.0 marketing campaign by the Department of Tourism of the Australian state of Queensland. The aim was to promote Hamilton Island, the Great Barrier Reef and the tropical beaches of Queensland by making sure that the communications media of the entire world would publish the news.
The strategy was to organise a world-wide competition, offering a single job which they called “the best job in the world”: the candidate chosen would simply be a tourist on a paradise island for six months on a salary of 90,000 euros. The only requirements to apply for this new job offer were an ability to swim and dive, a willingness to meet new people, to take photos and videos of your travels and to talk about your experiences on the internet. The winner was a certain Ben Southall, 34 years of age, who was chosen from 35,000 candidates from around the world. This is a nice example of aligning the marketing area with the human resources area making excellent use of 2.0 tools.
• Department of Tourism of Flanders region: In 2010 they were looking for an Erasmus correspondent for 1,000 euros per month. University students who were planning to take an Erasmus-arrangement course in the year 2011 could do so free of charge in Flanders if they were selected. In return for 1,000 euros a month, the student had to write a blog with text, images, photographs and audio recordings of the Flanders region.
Companies that want to attract and select talent must reinvent and adapt to new technologies and social networks. They should increase their efforts to attract and develop talent because future employees will be multidisciplinary, diverse, creative and involved people. This requires, more and more, polyvalent candidates capable of facing challenges in different departments and countries. In this environment, the candidate may be anywhere in the world. We must be able to reach them and social networks are an option, because this living and dynamic environment is forcing us to permanently change with it.
The evolution of recruitment methods
Until the mid ‘nineties the major recruitment systems worldwide were paper-based: newspapers, universities, CVs received by companies directly mailed by candidates, temporary employment agencies, consultancies and employment agencies, etc. More recently, with the arrival of the internet, employment websites began to appear. Some of them were general in nature, in other words, offering all kinds of work, while others were vertical and specialised.
With the arrival of Web 2.0 and social networks, the employment websites have seen their business dwindle. This clearly reveals that the classical employment sites are no longer as valued as they were formerly.
Even so, the employment websites are still the market leaders, although they are battling to increase their market share, and in order to achieve this they are changing into a professional social network. Some examples of these changes in employment websites are the following:
http://www.efinancialcareers.com
http://www.globalhumancapitalgroup.com
http://www.healthcarejobsite.com
The situation now is that companies are using social networks to recruit talent and the fact that the employment websites’ control of the sector is threatened has caused them to change and adapt to social networks.
At a global level, the professional social network with the greatest number of users is LinkedIn, although Xing and Viadeo are also popular. The professional social networks offer companies a selection of the best qualified employees, and are ideal for seeking highly specialised, highly trained professional profiles, while the employment website labour exchanges offer a service which is more quantitatively and generically focussed. In the face of this new reality, companies and candidates will have to design different strategies for themselves to find talent and employment respectively.
In today’s 24/7 communication environment, the keys for HR success are based in a dynamically networked world.
Reinvention does not consist of changing what already exists, but of creating what does not. Some organisations reinvent themselves in their supply and demand planning and in the way they attract talent. They are creating a future youth pool focused on Generations Y and Z, which will take its place in their organisations in the future.
A talent hub is a location that contains a critical mass of talent with the skills and expertise required by employers in a specific company, industry, or collection of industries. The creation of a talent hub may be driven by “demand” or “supply” (for example, higher education or oversupply of labour due to industry diversification).
For example, in order for Walmart to successfully expand into Brazil, one of the fastest-growing economies in the developing world, it has had to collaborate with government and academia to develop talent with the critical retail skills it needs.
Saudi Aramco, for instance, has had to actively develop the engineering and technical talent it needs to effectively manage the country’s vast oil reserves.
This is a HR vision that embraces the talent innovations of today and makes a proactive commitment to developing tomorrow’s workforce.
The economic global trends are shaping the Human Capital world:
– Talent globalization
– Market volatility
– Changing employee expectations
– Technology landscape
The evolution of HR activities
According to the Harvard Business Review, HR activities closely track the labour market:
• Early 1990s: The HR function (known as “Industrial and labour realtions”) was born. After steel and oil had transformed U.S. business in the 19th century, it became clear that workforce management needed its own discipline
• 1920s: In a thriving economy, good workers were hard to come by and even harder to keep. HR induced supervisors to treat people well.
• 1930s: During the Great Depression, supervisors favoured the “drive” system of management (threatening and sometimes hitting) and saw HR as a hindrance. Workers put up with almost anything to stay employed. Talent development was practically non-existent.
• 1950s: After World War II, one third of the executives died in office with no one to replace them. To fill that void, HR created a host of revolutionary hiring and development programs.
• 1970s: As the economy slowed, labour was once again plentiful. Business leaders started undoing all those post war programs designed to attract and develop talent.
• 1980s: The U.S. went into a deep recession, and workers clung to their jobs. Rather than invest in HR, companies pushed hiring and development tasks onto line managers, who had neither the time nor the training to do them properly.
• 1990s: During the dot-com boom, companies competed fiercely for “employer of choice” status to meet their soaring talent needs. So HR enjoyed a brief heyday, focusing primarily on hiring and retention
• 2001: When the doc-com bubble burst and the economy tanked, business leaders felt little urgency to attract talent. Productivity rose, wages stayed flat, and HR lost the influence it had enjoyed during the boom.
• 2016: With the effects of the Great Recession of 2008 still lingering, most people with jobs aren´t jumping ship yet, so executives feel no urgent need for HR programs. HR must make a case for them.
According to the Global Leadership forecast (2015) by The Conference Board CEO Challenge:
Today, HR professionals are categorized into one of these three roles:
1. Reactor: Ensuring compliance with policies/practices; providing tools/systems when asked.
2. Partner: Openly exchanging information about current issues; collaboratively working toward mutual goals.
3. Anticipator: Using data to predict talent gaps; providing insights linking talent to business goals.
HR’s role needs to continue to evolve. For at least two decades, the challenge for HR was to move from being administrators or reactors to being business partners. It’s now time to raise the bar for HR, to take on a new role we call “anticipator”. Anticipators are always looking for what might come next. They work with the business to predict future talent gaps, and then strive to close the gap. They are able to proactively advise leaders on the probability of their strategies based on available talent and its quality.
While anticipators and partners generally are likely to use similar leadership practices, anticipators do six things differently than partners or reactors.
Anticipators:
• Put a stronger focus on programs that foster employee creativity and innovation.
• Are more likely to position leadership development as an integrated journey rather than an independent series of events.
• Are more likely to institute negative consequences for managers who fail to develop their leaders.
• Help ensure that a higher percentage of leaders are promoted from within.
• Help leaders be more ready to meet the CEO challenge of human capital.
• Are much more likely to use advanced workforce analytics, particularly those that involve forecasting future talent needs.
The new role of HR professional 3.0
To define the role of a qualified professional to manage people, 3.0 competence should consider the following dimensions:
• Promotes and leads organizational change.
• Collaborates and works as a team with a more commercial vision develops high integrity and honesty, develops communication skills.
• Skills to deal with new technologies and Web 2.0.
• Capacity for constant learning.
• Promotes innovation and creativity in a proactive way.
• Develops his own personal brand on Web 2.0.
• Builds relationships.
• Ability to manage diversity.
We live in a world of constant change, which we must adapt to in order to survive in it.
1.2. Development of the internet and new technologies
Studies have shown that social relationships are one of the best indicators for predicting human happiness throughout the world. There is a clear correlation between social relationships
and happiness.
Eduard Punset (The Soul is in the Brain)
Evolution of communications media: Too much information?
It was only 20 years ago that we were writing letters on typewriters, but with the birth of the internet and the “www” (World Wide Web) we began to send them by electronic mail, even adding files which contained photographs. Nowadays we might upload those photos to Facebook, share them on Instagram, Flickr or Pinterest.
In 2010, the following item was published on the website www.elpais.com, which makes us realise how much technology has changed in recent times and how it is affecting our lives:
“Belgian Olivier Vandewalle, who threw a bottle into the sea 33 years ago with a message inside received a reply 33 years later on a popular social network. At the time he was spending his holidays sailing off the English coast when he tore a page from an exercise book and decided to recount his adventure. Thirty-three years later, Lorraine Yates from England found a bottle with a message inside which was still legible in Swanage, on the south coast of England. Lorraine did not hesitate, and with the only information she had, the name and place of origin of the writer of the message, she decided to have a look on Facebook. When the Belgian read Lorraine’s addition to his profile he remembered that message he had sent when he was just a teenager.”
The way in which we relate to others has changed. We communicate with each other in different ways. The new technologies have meant that it is no longer necessary to be physically present in order to maintain and support personal relationships.
Since the internet has become established as a means of communication and in addition to this Web 2.0 is a growing phenomenon, we now have in our reach much more information than we are capable of processing.
Men cannot live if they lack forms of mutual cooperation.
Eric Fromm
Evolution of Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and IoT.
The world wide web was created in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau.
In the early days of the internet, the Web was purely one-way, in other words the information was strictly informative and allowed for no direct interaction with and between the users. Nowadays it has become two-way and allows for interactions of all kinds of content in real time.
Web 1.0
Web 1.0 began in the 1960s in the most basic form in existence, with text-only browsers. The next step, in the nineties, saw the appearance of HTML, which made website pages more attractive to the eye, and the first visual browsers made their appearance, such as Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc. Web 1.0 is read-only.
The user cannot interact with the content of the page (no comments, responses, etc.).
Web 2.0
The term is closely associated with Tim O’Reilly, because of the O’Reilly Media conference on Web 2.0 in 2004.
Web 2.0 is the representation of the development of traditional applications to Web applications focused on the end user and which generate collaboration. Web 2.0 is also known as the “social Web” or “people Web”. The main maxim of Web 2.0 for companies is to devote time to people.
It represents a new era of collaboration since it permits its users to interact with other users or to exchange website content, in contrast with non-interactive sites (Web 1.0), where users were restricted to passively viewing the information being supplied to them.
We have passed from a static Web (Web 1.0) to a Web where two-way action, accessibility and collaboration are the outstanding elements (Web 2.0).
Web 2.0 is transforming the processes of selection. It presupposes a reduction in cycles, lower recruitment costs and the possibility of reaching a larger audience thanks to freedom of publication and distribution.
We have moved on from “whom I know” to “how I reached this candidate”, to the development of a strategy whereby human resources professionals and candidates in search of a new job can approach the universe of the internet.
In other words, we are in a new participatory and collaborative environment, one in which talent can be discovered in a flexible and direct way.
The 10 main characteristics of Web 2.0 with regard to attracting and selecting talent are as follows:
• Interactivity.
• Openness.
• Transparency.
• Collaborative learning.
• Multidirectional.
• Communication.
• Sharing.
• Reputation/trust.
• Fun.
• Freedom of publication and distribution.
These networks are growing at an exponential rate, producing a cultural change which is so dizzying that it has revolutionised the use of the internet and job seeking.
Advantages:
• They make it possible to establish relationships between people who share the same interests, as well as the permanent updating of contacts.
• A presence on a social network is an excellent personal branding tool since these kinds of networks see themselves as a showcase for talent.
• With regard to the employment environment, they are an excellent pathway for the active search of candidates or jobs.
Disadvantages:
• The invasion of privacy is the big problem caused by social networks. And for some countries, network membership is seen as a threat to national security. The result is that staff working in security-related jobs in these countries is not allowed to use them.
• Exposure on the internet and the digital trail creates a digital identity which, if not taken care of, can damage the personal brand or employer brand.
• Social network membership has on occasions become an addiction.
The origin of the social networks on the internet dates from 1995, when Randy Conrads created the website http://www.classmates.com. His plan was that users of this social network would be able to restore or maintain contact with old school or college friends.
However, once Facebook was created it became consolidated as the fastest growing social network.
The popularity of these platforms has grown exponentially and large companies and internet multinationals have launched new projects based on social networks.
Web 3.0
Web 3.0 is associated with a new stage that is designed to give meaning to the web. Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, also calls it Web 3.0. or the Semantic Web.
The increase in interactivity and mobility are two factors that appear to have been decisive in this new stage of the Web. Basically, the idea refers to a Web capable of interpreting and interconnecting a greater quantity of data, which will make an important step forward in the field of knowledge possible.
Designed correctly, the Semantic Web could support the development of human knowledge in its totality.
Web 3.0 has also been used to describe the developmental path taken by the internet, which leads to artificial intelligence. Content Management Systems (CMSs) and search engines are working hard to make the web more semantic.
An example of Web 3.0: Companies like IBM and Google are incorporating new technologies which will make it possible to predict which songs will be hits using university music Webs as an information base.
The Internet of Things
Even as we continue to define what Web 3.0 means, we are simultaneously moving beyond it, and toward the Internet of Things. The Internet of Things (IoT) will likely be the next era, as it takes the notion of an ever-present internet to a new level. Smart devices in the Internet of Things not only use the internet, but speak to each other via machine-to-machine communication (M2M) to accomplish tasks without the need for human input.
The theory of the six degrees of separation
There is nothing like relationships. In the entire universe, everything is related to everything else. Nothing exists in an isolated form. We cannot think of ourselves as individuals
capable of creating ourselves without the help of others.
Margaret Wheatley
All social networks are based on the theory of the six degrees of separation. According to this theory, every single individual can be connected to every other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances containing no more than five people (making a total of six connections).
The theory was originally put forward in 1929 by the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in a short novel entitled “Chains”. The concept is based on the idea that the number of acquaintances grows exponentially with the number of links in the chain, and only a small number of connections are needed for the group of acquaintances to become the entire human population.
There is no stopping the growing need to be connected, to have a social life, to use technology and connectivity in support of it, and to use a range of devices for that purpose.
And the fact is that the way in which we communicate, the tools we use and the relationships we establish help us to define our digital identity, supporting our personal promotion via ever increased activity on the internet.
Marketing expert Seth Godin refers to today’s economy as the “connection economy”, in which value is created by the connections we make. We can say the employers now need to develop an ecosystem where job seekers and the public engage with their brand, learn about it and get the right information at the right time. This is the key to attracting and retraining the best talent.
The brand is everything and the perceptions people
have of the brand are 90% of the brand.
Paul Kedrosky (CNBC Television)
A person’s digital identity, or NETREP (Net Reputation) is the reputation which a physical person or company has on the internet.
When a human resources professional puts the name of a possible candidate into a search engine such as Google, the best thing is that this name will then appear on a dedicated website, showing that the individual is in contact with other outstanding personalities in the sector. This is one of the virtues of possessing that professional digital identity.
At the present time our digital personality is an aspect of our identity, a complementary part of our lives. Not possessing a digital identity, that is, not appearing on social networks, is beginning to be seen as being unknown, as lacking transparency as far as candidates are concerned.
The trend is to reveal yourself on the internet as you are in your everyday life, and from the professional point of view this is essential, since this is the only way to generate trust and find work, do business with a potential client, be contacted by a headhunter, and so on.
From the point of view of the business, having checked on your brand reputation on Google, you should then design a strategy to improve it, to discover who you are, where you are and what is the behaviour of the people who talk about your reputation and brand on the internet.
Glassdoor http://www.glassdoor.com is a website which shows the salary statistics of thousands of companies, mainly in the U.S., together with the most common questions asked of candidates by human resources professionals. It includes statistics drawn from the information supplied by the users themselves, who flesh out this website with opinions, evaluations, etc.
According to Charles Fombrun, president of Reputation Institute, the study assessed the dimension whereby a company builds its reputation: the quality of the products or services it offers, innovation, leadership, working environment, integrity, financial results.
Companies should have a community manager who will monitor the opinions of the company expressed in social networks and act appropriately. As we have stated before, employer branding must be established and maintained.
Below we have listed some of the 2.0 tools that are useful for monitoring information and corporate or personal reputations on social media:
Addictomatic, Alltop, BackTweets, Blogsearch, Board Reader, Booshaka, Delicious, IceRocket, GoogleAlerts, Google News, Google Trends, GoogleVideos, ItsTrending, Keotag, Syomos, SocialMention, Technorati, Trendistic, Tweetag, TweetReach, Twellow, Twitter Search, WhosTalkin, and Yahoo! News.
The Pareto Principle and Mind maps
The Pareto Principle says that 20% of an action produces 80% of the effects, while the remaining 80% is responsible for only 20% of the effects.
One of the best-known practical applications of this principle is to be found in the analysis of sales or commercial actions. Companies that carry out a turnover analysis regarding customer numbers observe that approximately 80% of turnover depends on 20% of the customers. The exact 80-20 relationship is, of course, almost never observed, but the ratio between sales and customer numbers is usually in that region. Using this information it is possible to decide which customers are strategic (and must be looked after) and which have less impact on the profit and loss statement. In the case of Twitter users, for example, statistics confirm that it complies with the Pareto Principle: 20% of Twitter users generate 80% of the total tweets. In general, thanks to the Pareto Principle, it is possible to analyse a situation and make strategic decisions working with real data (for example, by making use of the networks which best suit our personal/corporate goals).
To improve the way we organise our time, and to optimise the new tasks which we must deal with in both our professional and personal lives, we can make use of what are known as “Mind maps”, the procedure defined as mind mapping.
“Mind maps” are a semantic representational diagram used to represent ideas and definitions related to a central concept or project.
Their main feature is that they are very graphic and visual, thanks to their structure in the form of a network. The flood of ideas we may have are thus organised around a central concept and are reflected in a document which we can revise from time to time to add notes, use colours to emphasise priorities, activities, jobs to be done, and so on. In this context we can mention a free-of-charge 2.0 too that will help us design “Mind maps”: XMind. Also worthy of note are the following: Mind Genius Business, MindManager, Mindmeister or Mindview Business.
The Johari Window is a model invented by two U.S. psychologists, Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham, in which they define the information about the self that a person is aware of in the mind. Johari is just a word invented by the creators of this theory that is made up of the first letters of their names.
The Johari Window model is based on the supposition that an individual can increase his knowledge of himself by means of interpersonal communication with those around him, maintaining the two-way flow of information (a characteristic of Web 2.0 communication).
A study of different professional profiles can reveal different levels of openness of the Johari Window. A marketing professional, for example, will reveal a higher level of openness of his upper window than other profiles.
What we have here is a model that attempts to explain the flow of information from two viewpoints:
– “Self”, feedback: how and to what extent we know ourselves (how much is accepted from others).
– “Others”, the exposition: how and to what extent we expose ourselves to others (how we are revealed to others).
The four panels in this window:
• I Open panel: what I know about myself and also what the rest of the world knows about me.
• II Hidden panel: what I know about myself but which I do not share with others or that increasingly undervalued phenomenon, which is privacy.
• III Blind panel: what everybody else sees in us and which we are unaware of (the impression we have on others).
• IV Unknown panel: what neither we, nor the others, are aware of (the unconscious).
From this point of view, social networks and new 2.0 technologies tend to reduce zone II, because they support communication.
We should take care to bear this model in mind when interacting with social networks so as not to commit communication errors.