Posts from Steve Boese's HR Technology blog for the week of August 21-27, 2011. Posts on change management, employment branding, recruiting, and more. See more at www.steveboese.squarespace.com.

1. 28 August 2011
Today’s Tabbloid
PERSONAL NEWS FOR steveboese@gmail.com
STEVE BOESE’S HR TECHNOLOGY Electric Vehicles Are So Fun To Drive, You Won’t Want To Go Back‘, that
reported on the results of a study that provided test EVs to 450 drivers in
Regenerative braking - maybe the United States. After becoming accustomed to the unique and
different traits of EVs (like ‘regenerative braking‘, the way some EVs
change isn’t always so hard can harness and re-purpose the heat energy from the vehicle’s brakes),
AUG 26, 2011 07:10A.M. almost all the driver’s had managed to put aside their resistance to EVs.
From the Fast Company article:
But by the end of the trial, the drivers, a mix of high-
performance junkies, environmental enthusiasts,
and technology pioneers, were hooked: 100% of the
survey respondents agreed “electric vehicles are
suitable for daily use,” and two-thirds were more
interested in buying an electric car. Only 9% said
they were less interested. “Most households,” even
those with several other cars, reported the study,
“preferred to drive the Mini E,” admiring its clean,
fun, and efficient attributes.
So once the drivers had the opportunity to actually use the EVs and see
first hand how the new technology could not only be more cost and
energy efficient, but also improve the driving experience, then at least
according to this study, almost all of them were hooked.
A few months back I had a piece over on Fistful of Talent called ‘Range
and Change Anxiety: Electric Cars are More Like Your Company Than
Some simple takeaways for organiational leaders and change projects?
You Think , that tried to make a connection between range anxiety, one
of the primary psychological barriers that drivers have toward more
Don’t discount people’s imaginary barriers to change, but the best way to
widespread adoption of Electric Vehicles, (EVs), and change efforts that
combat them might be to allow more full participation in early phases of
so often prove tremendously difficult in organizations. The take - that
change programs, whether it is in planning, early testing, or simply
leaders and systems implementors need to take into account both real
forming communication plans. The best way for someone to truly
barriers to change, (cost, technical complexity), and perceived or even
believe that their fears are unfounded is to put them to the test, in a
imaginary barriers (range anxiety, the fear that the driver will be
hands-on manner if possible.
stranded somewhere even though almost all trips are far too short to
actually drain the EV battery).
And finally, if you are ‘selling’ your change based on some attribute or
feature that your community does not care about, or is not directly
The less than ground breaking conclusion - that change is really hard,
applicable to making their live’s better, the old what’s in it for me
and we make it harder by creating issues, problems, barriers, reasons to
gimmick, then you’d better hope as in the case of the EV tests, the
say no that sometimes exceed the often practical barriers that most
community finds some other benefits you didn’t even think were
projects also face. Seems kind of depressing, no? I mean if change efforts
important.
inside organizations are going to be stymied by any amount of imagined
barriers then why bother? Focus on making small, incremental, and low-
I’ll close wikth the last line from the study write-up:
cost, low-risk changes to systems, processes, technologies and at least
you’ll have a reasonable chance for success. Then when it comes to have
“The general public thinks that electric cars are all
that annual performance review with the boss you’ll at least be able to
golf carts: slow and boring,” she said. “It’s not until
point to something tangible.
they drive one, they hear one, that they open their
minds that these cars be fun to drive.”
Well maybe not all is lost. As a kind of follow-up to the Electric Vehicle
adoption story this week Fast Company ran a piece called ‘It Turns Out
Substiute ‘electric cars’ for whatever change project you are stuggling
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2. Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR steveboese@gmail.com 28 August 2011
with and see what happens. But whether or not the Employer Brand actually exists is still not a given
across the HR profession. Yesterday, Brent Rasmussen writing on
Have a great weekend! TLNT.com shared some of the results of a recent Careerbuilder survey
that indicated nearly half of HR managers questioned reported they did
not have an employment brand. So despite some evidence to the
STEVE BOESE’S HR TECHNOLOGY contrary - that same Careerbuilder survey also indicated that job seekers
strongly take into account elements of ‘brand’ in their decision processes,
The Employer Brand, New and the idea of organizations possessing a distinct employment brand from
whatever face they paint on themselves on the consumer side still has
Improved (if it exists at all) not seemed to achieve widespread or mainstream acceptance in the halls
AUG 25, 2011 06:15A.M. of HR.
Tonight on the show we will talk with Jake Dunlap from Glassdoor about
the concepts of employer brand, whether or not it really does exist, (FYI -
the Cubs last won the World Series in 1908), and more importantly
whether debating about its existence is kind of a silly exercise anyway,
and that sites like Glassdoor and a few little social networks you may
have heard of called Facebook and Twitter can ‘prove’ the point of the
employer brand advocates and end the debate in about five minutes.
We will also discuss how smart organizations are using all available
resources, both ones they can control, and ones they can only guide, to
try and portray their unique value proposition to effectively compete for
talent, both on the open market, and inside the enterprise.
Employer branding is a great and interesting topic, I hope you can join
the conversation tonight.
Tonight on the HR Happy Hour Show, (8PM ET, if you don’t know what You can listen to the live stream of the show starting at 8PM ET tonight
time that equates to where you live, then you have bigger issues than here, or by calling in on 646-378-1086. You can also follow the
catching a recruiting podcast to worry about), we will welcome Jake backchannel conversation on Twitter on hashtag #HRHappyHour.
Dunlap, VP at Glassdoor.com to tackle the always interesting and
occasionally controversial topic of Employer (or Employment) Brand.
Glassdoor is the leading destination for employee and candidate STEVE BOESE’S HR TECHNOLOGY
authored company reviews, salary information, interview experience,
and a whole lot of ‘What’s it really like to work here’ Need better information for
testimonials.Cubs legend - Mordecai ‘Three Finger’ Brown
business decisions? It might not
Controversial in the sense that Bigfoot, unicorns, or a Chicago Cubs
World Series title are controversial - some folks are adamant and be a technology problem
passionate that these things exist, attempt to point to (at times) AUG 23, 2011 08:41A.M.
circumstantial evidence to prove they are right, and eventually end up
resorting to the ‘nyah, nyah, nyah‘ line of argument to cement home Recently the MIT Sloan Management Review in partnership with the
their intellectual triumph. IBM Institute for Business Value released some preliminary results from
a project called ‘The New Intelligent Enterprise‘. The MIT and IBM
Like unicorns, we want to believe the Employer Brand exists as more researchers conducted an inquiry into how organizations are using
than just a concept, but rather an almost tangible, manageable, and analytics for competitive business advantage. The study was comprised
potentially leverageable (I know, I hate that word too), component in our of a survey of more than 4,000 executives, managers and analysts from
Human Resources and recruiting strategic toolkit. The idea that the way around the world and across a wide range of industries.
the organization presents and helps shape their brand message - the
collection of what the organization values, represents, promises, and Understanding how peers and competitors are leveraging analytics and
rewards its employees, (and by extension its candidates), can help that new tools and technologies to increase competitiveness and make better
organization achieve superior results in recruiting, retention, and business decisions has long been a concern of leaders across the
employee performance is certainly quite compelling. organization, certainly in process-heavy aspects of the business like
supply chain management, but increasingly in the Human Capital
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3. Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR steveboese@gmail.com 28 August 2011
Management space as well. And while there are lots of tools and
solutions that are on the market that can help organizations in these
efforts to better capture and assess analytical data, some of the MIT/IBM
study results suggest focusing on the technology alone may be a mistake.
While the full report and analysis of the research findings are still to be
released, several of the study’s raw data points were shared by the
researchers, and I think the most interesting results were the first and
last chart from the piece on Sloan Review site:
Figure 1 - Access to Data Needs Improvement
Source - MIT/IBM
This chart is a little busy, but essentially says that when considering the
deployment of better analytics solutions in the enterprise, the survey
respondents felt organizational and company culture issues were
perceived to be twice as hard to resolve as technology issues. Or perhaps
said differently, finding and purchasing a technology solution might only
‘solve’ about a third of the overall problem.
Perhaps not ground-breaking findings, but worth remembering no
matter what workplace technology solutions we try to apply to help solve
business problems. We can recognize we have a problem, buy a solution
Source - MIT/IBM
to address the problem, but until and only when the organization is
committed to making the kinds of important changes that these projects
Nice. Most of your key players, the ones you are counting on to make the
often require, we will not realize the full potential of the technologies and
right decisions, and make them quickly, and often under pressure
more importantly, of our people.
probably don’t have easy access to all the information they need. and
almost 20% claim limited or no access to the data they need to success.
Ouch. But you know that right? And that’s why you are trolling the web,
STEVE BOESE’S HR TECHNOLOGY
attending webinars, talking to consultants, and hitting the trade shows to
find a software solution to address this problem. Sounds simple, get the
right tools in, get them in the hands of the right people, and bam! -
Hate your Job? Maybe being a
problem solved.
little foolish is the best advice to
Except it might not be that easy.
take
AUG 22, 2011 04:28P.M.
Figure 2 - Technology is not the problem
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4. Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR steveboese@gmail.com 28 August 2011
I was simply going to ‘retweet’ this piece from Matt Stillman on the
consistently outstanding Stillman Says blog, but I want to link to it from
here in hopes maybe a few more folks might take a few minutes and
check it out.
Matt recently talked with a lawyer, one who expressed disenchantment
with her chosen field, and the conversation and eventual advice Matt
offered to the unhappy lawyer is in equal parts fascinating and fantastic.
Go check out the entire piece here, but if you can’t spare the five or ten
minutes it will take you to read the story, I will share the money line
here:
Having the itchy feeling of dissatisfaction with the
current state of affairs is standard. But to truly have
an open door to following your bliss there is a
requisite level of fearlessness that must be taken on.
The fearlessness to disappoint or to be foolish are
two of many that can be featured.
If you read the piece you will see that Matt doesn’t advise the lawyer to
simply quit her good and probably high-paying job to crazily chase some
wild dream, but rather to simply think about the situation in a slightly
new and creative way, and that by taking a small, non-dangerous, but
still positive step in the exploration of something new and exciting, the
lawyer could start to see what might actually be possible.
I think that is super advice, we tend to not want to believe something
could be real or even possible when it seems so big, or represents such a
massive shift or change in what we think of as safe or normal that we can
simply get intimidated or frightened into inactivity. Permitting ourselves
to make the first step in a new direction is possibly the hardest part. Matt
offered the lawyer a way to make the scary step seem very safe.
Nice one Mr. Stillman.
Postscript - Matt was a recent guest on the HR Happy Hour Show, and
it was absolutely one of our most interesting shows of 2011. You can
listen to the replay of that show here.
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