HR in the 21st Century – Jon Husband and Rob Paterson

Two of my Fast Forward colleagues have been posting a number of excellent posts on the role of HR within enterprise 2.0. I think that this is one of the missed opportunities and neglected areas in the enterprise 2.0 area. So I want to bring this work to your attention in case you have missed it.  I have commented on a few of them so include that here. First, here are some of the posts by Jon Husband:

Work Design Issues for HR in the Enterprise 2.0 Context

HR and E2.0 – The Beginnings of a Competency-Model Foundation

HR Series – Performance Management in an Enterprise 2.0 Context: (my comment: I believe the transparency built into the E20 tools will change performance by their nature and by human nature. People do a better job when they know that others can see what they are doing. In the XM Radio case I reported on in 07, the company had its first on time on budget project after using a project management tool with E20 transparency. So Jon you are right, the new work environment and tool sets requires some creative thinking on performance management. I think this is on of the unrealized opportunities in E20. A small part of the solution is tools that provide clear monitoring and analysis. A much bigger part is new policies that recognize that we are in the 21st century. The FCC has recently recognized this and is changing how they assign bandwidth. Companies and their HR organizations need to make these changes. The winners will do it.

A framework for social learning in the enterprise:  (part of my comment) This is a great summary of where learning should be today with the Web and E20.  As noted in The Social Factor, simply having knowledge is no longer power but knowledge sharing is now power. The position you outline is also where learning should have been in the latter part of the 20th century. I always found that collaborative learning was most effective for acquiring skills and knowledge but also enabled the organizational learning to continue.  The Web now makes this approach more possible and essential for survival.

Here are some of the posts by Rob Paterson:

HR Series – The Core Problem – The Job! Rob starts with this interesting observation: the “Job” as we know it is a 19th century idea. In America very few people as a percentage of the population had job before 1905. Then the whole purpose of a Job was to DESKILL people and this continues in many parts of our lives.

HR Series – The Core Business Process – Not serving the customer but gaming the budget

HR – The Company of the Future – Automattic

HR – The Math of Healthy Community

HR – The Math of Healthy Community 2 – Sales/Influence/Power 2.0

 

Comments

[Mike Ricard]

Great to have a summary to the HR series of posts. This series of topics on HR and Enterprise 2.0 is laden with valuable insights and ideas. I reckon the series will have a long-term influence on the discussion of co-opting HR within Enterprise 2.0 implementations.

Having commented on Jon's work in the past, I was hoping for just this kind of summary to this series. Thanks Bill.