Heading from Engagement to Passion in Future Work Performance #e20s #socbiz

I'll liveblog large parts of the Enterprise 2.0 Summit. I'll try to publish my notes as soon as the talk is over.

First talks at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit are by Jon Mell and Dan Pontefract about 'Heading from Engagement to Passion in Future Work Performance'.

Flat army
First, Dan Pontefract about 'Flat army'. Pontefract starts with some stories about his experience in corporate life. Why do organizations feel like jails? Research (Gallup a.o.) shows employee engagement is horrible in most large organizations? In the US research shows this leads to huge losses in productivity. Disengagement is a huge issue in organizations.
How do we avoid disengagement in organizations? Most people want to find purpose at work. At Telus, the company Dan works for with 40.000 employees, they use several different models to encourage engagement in leadership, collaborative tools, etc.
Telus had engagement issues. Half of the employees were not engagement. They decided to address this in 3 areas: learning, leadership and collaborative technology. They integrated it into the way they work and evaluate it. Engagement scores improved year over year.
Dan shares some of the things they did with collaborative tools: share insights and thought leadership via Telus, gamification to help build better teams and wiki's for learning.

Wondering about the flat army
After Dan's talk I'm left wondering how much country culture and the size of the organization influences employee (dis)engagement. I worked for a large corporate for 10 years. I did see disengagement, but I never felt disengaged. So, is disengagement also a personal trait, something you personally decide to be or not to be?

Smarter Workforce
Then, Jon Mell about 'Smarter Workforce'. His talk with focus on the HR function. IBM does yearly studies on this. An interesting quote from the last study is: "Companies will evolve through globalization ant IT adoption, but always - at the center - are people. People are the foundation." (IBM Survey) HR is evolving into something strategic, less administration, more human capital management.
Key trends in the 'world of work':
  1. the rise or social in the workplace
  2. the rise of big data and analytics
  3. the rise of cloud and mobile technology
  4. the rise of the independent worker
New HR think:
  • people leave that I would rather stay
  • people stay that I would rather leave
  • people come to work to work and don't give their best
  • etc.
Jon is focusing on replacing guesswork in talent management in social with precision. Really trying to measure what social does for the company (from a HR perspective). E.g. increasing quality of hire with simulations and by have potentials join a community before they join the company.

Wondering about the Smarter Workforce
I really like the fact that IBM is looking at the data and metrics behind social in HR processes. Much more of this should be done. On the other hand, a balance has to be struck so we don't fall back into the pitfall of trying to measure everything. Wondering what the right balance is. Any thoughts?

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