Come on in and play

Commenting on a recent post on web 2.0 for recruitment on my HCM Blog, one reader noted that HR's use of the available technology tends to be quite poor.

I think that's largely true.

The CIPD's web 2.0 in HR report notes that:

"More than 30% of the population (UK) have read a blog, 10% have created one and nearly 7% subscribe to an RSS feed."

Now I'll accept these results although they do surprise me, but I absolutely know that they don't apply to HR (in the UK at least).  Social media came up quite a few times at last year's CIPD conference (I think this led in part to the new report) and very, very few people there had read a blog.  I think I was the only person in the room who had a Second Life avatar when one of the speakers asked about this.

So if you're an HR professional who is reading this post, I think you're well ahead of the curve.

This leads me on to a further criticism of the CIPD report (remember my disclosure - I bid for this piece of work and didn't get it so I suppose there my be some axe grinding going on here).  The report states:

"Broadly speaking there are two routes for organisations to travel.  The first is to develop a policy on using Web 2.0; the second is to develop Enterprise 2.0 applications inside an organisation's firewalls and those of partner organisations."

Firstly, I don't agree that the difference between web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0 is about whether the tools are open publicly available tools (like Facebook) or closed corporate tools (like Jive, Select Minds etc).  The difference relates to the tool (web 2.0) and the use of the tool in an organisation (enterprise 2.0).

But more importantly, I think there's a third option which the CIPD has missed (I did tell them!).  And that's to get personal experience of the tools yourself - whether for business or personal use.

As an HR practitioner, you can read the CIPD's "illustrations of some well know Web 2.0 inputs and transfer technologies" (?!) and be none the wiser.  Listen to, subscribe to, and ideally produce a couple of podcasts and you're in a much better position to understand the benefits web 2.0 could provide to HR and to your organisation.

What was really needed was a guide and support to help HR play with this technology.  Time to jump into the sandpit anyone?