Outside of recruiting, Human Resources has not had much of a chance to invest in social media for communication, let alone be creative. If you are itching to kick your communications into the 21st century, I am seeing signs of change, at least by those who can afford to invest in change. I thought you'd want to take notice.
Mobile apps are becoming widely available among benefit providers. Since I am using my smartphone for just about everything, and have it with me everywhere, why not pull it out of my pocket to show my Member ID? It beats fiddling around in my wallet (if I can find my wallet in my purse). And if my daughter falls on the soccer field, better to pull up the neighborhood location of an Urgent Care Clinic that I know will be in-network (while I am trying to help her into the car) than worry my way to the emergency waiting room.
Practical solutions like these do not have age-preferences the way other social media like Twitter or Facebook do. You don't have to be 28 to enjoy feeling the confidence of having critical medical insurance support anywhere, at any time.
Which is all preface to what I want to report is happening in the compensation part of the world -- last week Mercer announced an app to enable employees to, "explore career paths with their current employer." Called "Career View," it appears to be competency driven. "In addition to providing employees with essential information to make sound decisions about their career progression, it can feature short video clips of colleagues discussing their jobs with an invitation to contact them should the role be of interest to other employees as they map their career paths."
What's all the hubbub about? I created a competency-driven career path framework like Mercer is using for Vanguard once upon a time. It was very satisfying to do because it was a way of showing employees that they had transferable abilities that could bridge them into new career areas. But this essentially three dimensional process (I can grow my current skills, I can move up in my own specialty area, I can use my abilities to bridge into another career area) had to be explained on paper at that time. Today, using an app, the navigation and interactivity is not only available to me, the eager rock star, but I can personalize it and keep it in my back pocket to pull out when I'm hanging at Starbucks.
Don't kid yourself, you will probably not be jumping into the app development world any time soon, as they take time, money and real skill to do well. But there are customizable options becoming available right now that could make you a real hero with your employees. Mercer happens to be the first out of the pack in the career development world, but that just means there will be lots more options, including some version of comp, very soon. Think incentives or sales compensation, for instance.
Good communication in 2015 is designed to solve problems (fast), be interactive and provide value so the user continually comes back for the solution. Convenience is addictive -- and it would be to Human Resources benefit to become a bit addictive, don't you think?
Summer reading or influence building? Get yourself a copy of Everything You Do (in Compensation) Is Communication @ www.everythingiscommunication.com, the convenient website where you can grab our popular eBook. Margaret O'Hanlon, CCP collaborated with Ann Bares and Dan Walter to create this DIY guide to compensation leadership. Margaret is founder and Principal of re:Think Consulting. She brings deep expertise in compensation, career development and communications to the dialog at the Café. Before founding re:Think Consulting, Margaret was a Principal at Towers Watson.
In case you're curious, I just ran into this data from Pew.
56% of Americans own a smartphone
In some parts of the country, the employee percentage would be much, much higher, I'm betting -- but why not check?
Posted by: Margaret O'Hanlon | 07/15/2015 at 02:36 PM