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Harold Jarche has a great blog and shares a lot of his thinking on old HR and old learning and what social learning could bring to organizations. Recently he had a post titled 'Work is learning and learning it the work' that got me thinking. He basically opposed against pulling learning and work out of each other, as it seems to be in many companies. This is shown by the fact that most companies have someone responsible for learning (HR manager or Learning & Development manager) and formal (online) training. Learning should be the work. Maybe it's even stronger: Learning is the work. Harold challenges us to actively observe how people are learning to do their job right now. But why is this so hard for companies? I've written about Peter Senge's book before. Hardly any companies I know can truly be called a learning organization. And Senge's book has been out for more than 20 years now... As Harold proposes, a simple step could be to "provide t...

This breakout (track 3) at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit is about 'Mastering the social work mindset'. Breakout speakers are Anthony Poncier and Ellen Trude . Anthony kicks off with a sort presentation about HR and Enterprise 2.0. (Last year there was only one participant from the HR department at this Summit. This year there are many more.) HR should be on the wagon because people are the core of organizations. McKinsey recently stressed that the role of HR in E2.0 is essential. Why? Because of the inter-generational cultures (millenials, etc.), new job descriptions (like the community manager), talent management, impact on visibility and mobility (career development, L&D), etc. It's important to look at and change the tradition HR processes for E2.0 success. Ellen doesn't like the word training relating to social media and enterprise 2.0. Training is too much a one-way lecture. At Ellen's company they developed a social learning environment. The courses a...

Are millennial really that different? Do they play, learn, communicate, work and create differently than their parents? Are they smarter or dumber? More or less social? And if so, what should we know about them? More importantly, what should management and companies know about them, because they are the future. Lots has been written about the so called millennials or Generation Y. I've been following the news and research on them. When Don Tapscott wrote a book about being 'grown up digital ' I thought I'd read it. At that time I was becoming more skeptical about the stories about Gen Y. In daily practice I was seeing older colleagues quickly picking up new ways of working, while young colleagues were very reluctant to use new media. Technically I'm not a millennial. I don't belong to the 'Net Generation'. The generation that has been "bathed in bits". According to Tapscott someone's part of the Net Generation when you're born bet...

I've always been intrigued by the concept of learning. It's one of the reason I like blogging so much and social media in general. It's a great way to learn! Every now and then I bump into a great post or interview about this topic. Just recently I read a great interview with John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas about their new book 'A New Culture of Learning' ( part 1 and part 2 ). I was planning to read the book. After reading this interview I'm going to push it up on my to-read list. Thanks Henry Jenkins for sharing this interview with us. I'll share some interesting statements from the interview with you here: One of the key arguments we are making is that the role of educators needs to shift away from being expert in a particular area of knowledge, to becoming expert in the ability to create and shape new learning environments. Our argument brings to the fore the old aphorism "imagination is more important than knowledge." In a networked worl...

I thought I'd wait a bit before posting this... As you know I changed jobs not too long ago. During the last year I applied for several jobs and was asked to apply for jobs. One of those jobs was interesting for the fact that they had a 2.0 approach to recruiting. This company is trying to reach out to potential new employees in new ways. They also want to be more open about themselves by using social media. Their recruiting website clearly showed their (HR) employees were on Twitter, they used Youtube to tell more about working for their company, etc. I was impressed by it. And I also thought: hey, it looks like this company really understands 'the new way of recruiting/working' . So, I applied for the job. I could upload my resume and other info to their site. Things went downhill from there... Of course I got the automatic email saying they would get back to me within two weeks. After 3,5 weeks I thought I'd ask them how things were going. It took another week fo...

Zappos is a bit far away from a Dutchman. We don't have it here, yet. But of course you hear a lot about them. Zappos is praised for its culture, very engaged workforce, use of social media in business, great profit, etc. Recently I wrote a post about 'Organizing on Passion'. Frederik Vieten , a student doing research at Océ, pointed me to Tony Hsieh's new book, Delivering Happiness . I hadn't heard of it yet, so that was a great pointer. I'm going to order and read it. But I also browsed the site and found a recent talk by Hsieh at Google . Man, I watched it this talk this evening. And it's absolutely great. If you have an hour, just sit down, watch it and be inspired. What a great company and what a great leader Tony is. Here's the video: I really liked the way the importance of company culture is stressed and how it can be crafted. I also love the way they select new employees based on questions linked to their core values . One of the most ...

It's been a while ago since I read the great Shift Index 2009 report . I've been wanting to blog about it, but haven't had time yet. It's loaded with interesting insights. One big question I had is: This report is focused on the USA; how does this compare to Europe or Asia? One thing from the report that stuck with me, was the importance of 'creative talent' and getting them to engage in 'creative problem solving, often by connecting with peers inside and outside the firm' (p. 11). On page 70 the report goes on to talk about 'worker passion'. The findings are pretty saddening. Lots of workers are not passionate about their work and self-employed workers are much more passionate than the firm-employed. The larger the size of the firm the less passionate workers get... I went back to the Shift Index after reading a couple of things: Steve Denning's post about the H in HR , which also points to the Shift Index and the importance of eng...

Thomas Friedman in The World is Flat and Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams in Wikinomics have predicted that the way companies will recruit people will be fundamentally different in the future. In the past the model was easy: Get the best and brightest people to work for you. Of course these new employees would move close to your company and work inside the firewall as much as possible. Of course we've seen some movement in this area. Outsourcing of jobs to India or China. Tele-commuting, working-more-from-home, etc. At first I thought it looked like Google has taken this a step further . But this is fake (Twitter spam...). But the idea is great and got me thinking. In short the site said: Everyone with a computer and a broadband connection can work for us right from their homes. (And aren't we already, but clicking on links!? ;-)) Seriously, this could be interesting and big in my opinion. This 'offer' is 'only' focused on the US and Canada. But what if...

Breakout session at Intranet 2009 on ' AEGON Net and self service' by Paulien van der Lee (Online Communications Manager). Gives overview of the development of their intranet (focus Aegon The Netherlands) and what they're doing on employee self service using intranet. AegonNet consists of 3 parts: eHRM manager, eHRM employee and eHRM worker. Introduced first self service modules some time ago: vacation planning. Plan your vacation removing the role of HR. Did intranet redesign by learning from old one. Brought the amount of page types back to a minimum. Now they have more self service modules. For employees: Vacation planning, My education (no education outside this module!), HR cycle (manager-employee talks, appraisal, etc. Employee benefits choice system, My facility services (meeting reservation system, etc) For managers: View your department Salary change procedure Central account administration (role administration) C...

Just wanted to point you to this interesting study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers on "Managing tomorrow's people. The Future of work to 2020" . This report is set up along three lines, based on 3 future scenario's. The 3 scenario' are: "Small is beautiful", "Companies care" and "Corporate is king". I find the scenario's very realistic. I found "Small is beautiful" most interesting, because it relates to the Wikinomics principles . I'm curious what your take is on this report. Which scenario will become reality? Please let met know!

Nice post on 'the new resume' or 'do we still need a resume?' by Debra Murphey on Social Media Today Most companies still request a resume. This post states old resume's make you "ordinary". So, what isn't ordinary? Everyone, whether you are an independent professional, business owner, or entreprenuer, should have the following in your social media portfolio: Complete profiles on LinkedIn , Facebook , Twitter and other social networks relevant to your expertise. A blog written with authenticity and expertise. An about page on your blog that gives the reader a sense about who you are. Comments on other blogs within your expertise that are thoughtful, professional and add value to the blog. Put presentations you’ve given up on SlideShare and link to them from your About page. If you have a recording of the presentation, you can sync the audio with the slides. I was wondering if companies are already doing this. Does any...

Recently I was asked to give a presentation on 'social media' and recruitment. So, I was wondering if you could help me. What would your answer be to the following questions? How could you use social media (social networking, wiki's, blogs, etc.) to recruit new personnel? What should a modern job site look like? Do you have examples of companies already applying this? Is there a difference between 'old' and 'new' recruitment? If so, please explain what you find that difference to be? I’m looking forward to read your answer(s)!