HR Technology Profile - Group Assignment: Rajith & Eric

Radio Show #3: Kent Plunkett, Founder & CEO, Salary.com



Salary.com integrates data and technology to provide on-demand compensation and talent management web tools for HR professionals, business executives and applicants. Salary.com offerings include on-demand software services such as: Professional Edition for Small Business – a market pricing tool for companies with 200 employees or less, CompAnalyst™ - a market pricing, survey management and pay analytics suite, TalentManager™ - a compensation planning and performance management application, Salary Wizard® - free Salary data for applicants, and Personal Salary Reports.

HR Technology Profile

Best of Breed – YES best of breed tech vendor with the most configurable software for consumers, enterprises and small businesses. Salary data and functionality with talent management software and on-demand compensation data and software.

Niche vs. Suite - Suit vendor: On-demand talent management software, on-demand compensation data, and salary content and research services.

Delivery Model – Software as a Service: browser based.

Very Important Concepts - Help level the playing field between applicant and employers in salary negotiations by giving ordinary people access to the same salary survey data available to HR or an employer. Other concepts of interest: Pay for performance concepts, talent/performance management, balanced score cards, and smart goals.

Kent Plunkett founded Salary.com also, talks about how HR is pushing talent/performance management and sees it going main stream in the next couple of years.

Six Steps to Company-Wide Adoption

http://michaeli.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/12/six-steps-to-companywide-adoption.html

This blog talks how social software is moving from an individual technology like a wiki to a more integrated technology platform that supports enterprise solutions. The core of this blog shows us how we can integrate social software in our company by...
• Encourage a broad range of use - Encourage the use of different technology solution and get feedback.
• Recruit energetic individuals to adopt, use, and promote technology.
• Launch the tools with hands-on experiences - training and active learning.
• Route repeated activities through social software - use something like Twitter to supplement email communication.
• Integrate with existing systems of record - data has a home, try to avoid duplication.
• Leverage public communities - gain best practices from others.

Bill Kutik Podcast - Radio Show #15: Naomi Lee Bloom

http://www.knowledgeinfusion.com/coe/docs/DOC-4600

In this podcast Bill Kutik a technology columnist for Human Resource Executive magazine interviews Naomi Lee Bloom, the Managing Partner of Bloom & Wallace, a HR information consulting company that evaluate HR software and HRM delivery systems. This podcast talked about the different criteria, methods and best practices she uses to evaluate HRM products. Something’s that stood out for me were:

• Mind set - investigate the functionality and architecture of the product by asking what does the software do and how it does it to determines the future and ability of the product.
• Demos - Demo against business/real world scenarios to see if there is a fit in your organization.
• The Vendors Management team - history and experience of people behind the product.
• The Vendors Corporate Culture - are they attracting the best talent and keeping them.
• Adoption Trends- although in the past organizations have customized HRM heavily the trend is moving towards using standardized vendor best practices with less customization.
• Technology - it’s there but is HR willing to Step up.

I would say if I were to take away anything from this class, and we have talked about and learned some very cool things, this would be it. Knowing what to look for in a HR tech system is key and this podcast talks about them. Also, it directly helps with the design, develop, and deploy part of project management we talked about a week ago.

HR's struggle with Web 2.0

http://thestandard.com/news/2008/02/15/hrs-struggle-web-2-0?

So very true, I believe it goes back to the strategic partner issue. I know in my company HR is viewed more as backroom ops function that a strategic partner and because of that things are always put on the back burner. For example, our HR department has been trying to get a HR portal created to help with recruiting, benefits and training for about a year and a half now and each time things get rolling another project comes along and this is put on hold.

There is a definite disconnect with HR using web 2.0 technology in many companies today. When I visited the EA web site about a year ago, it was a basic site to upload a resume. When I visited their career site today it’s totally different, and they have adopted web 2.0 elements like video, pics, and employee profiles. It’s like you are in a video game...almost.

The Machine is Us/ing Us Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g

Awesome video. I think we saw this the first day of class. It definitely shows how Web 2.0 technology is linking people thought blogs, wiki's, and RSS. Also, forces us to rethink copyright, privacy and web governance.

Social Technographics Data

http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/2008/10/new-2008-social.html

I probably went from a being a spectator to a becoming creator when this class stated. Is was interesting to see that more and more people are adopting social technology web applications but not really becoming creators of web content. I expected this number to be way up. The improvement in web technology for example, has made things like setting up a web page so easy so I predict that number will change.

2003 Trends Article

http://www.workforce.com/section/09/feature/23/45/53/

Quick read article, that always a good thing. I happen to agree that HR is making a transform from traditional back room human resources activities to a more value added strategic-partner role. Universal health care is going to be a reality in a couple of months hopefully with the new administration like what he said about mergers and acquisitions and that the main reason they fail is that no one studies the compatibility of the two cultures. In this economy however, mergers and acquisitions are a way to survive. We have seen this in regards to the banks, and I am sure we will see more mergers with US auto and retail. Accounting for people skills and talent is growing and this relate to the podcast we listened to a couple of weeks back, where companies take an inventory of people skills and abilities and value them to gain a competitive advantage despite a skills shortage. Finally, privacy is a major issue, and my belief is that a company has the right to monitor its employees in a work/business setting. I believe that labor unions will be done within the next 8-10 years. Let’s look at the current situation with the US auto makers. This week they were in front of congress begging for a bailout plan of their own. Why? Mainly because of mismanagement and a lousy union agreement, that adds about $3200 to every car these auto companies make. With global competition and the cost cutting more companies are always in I believe that this is a cost can that be eliminated. Furthermore, I believe that outsourcing will decline because of the improvements in living in other countries and the expansion of telework, freelance contractors, and improved productivity in the US market.