Talent Management 2.0: How HR can use Web 2.0 to attract and retain Talent

Attracting and retaining talent are two major challenges for HR these days.

If you think about it, talent managment really starts from recruiting through on-boarding; and carries on until the employee is comfortable with the culture, is made to feel at home in the organization, and is equipped with the tools to be productive.

Talent attraction
Some thoughts around how HR can use Web 2.0 concepts and tools to attract talent:

1. Use employee-generated videos to describe a day in their life or what the company really means to them. These videos are able to establish a more "real" connection with potential recruits.

2. Create company's external-facing social networking platform where candidates can ask questions or chat live with recruiters about the company and recruiters can share experiences more than formal facts about the company. They can also meet other candidates. E.g. companies use Facebook as a social networking platform for potential recruits.

3. Create a virtual / rich 3D experience for employees to learn more about the company using cool self service features, have walk in interviews or interactive info sessions, get a virtual feel of the culture, and overall learn more about the company through rich media interfaces. E.g. companies can use SecondLife to provide such a rich and close to real experience.

4. Conduct video conferences or virtual interviews, and accept multimedia/video resumes.


Talent Retention
The real work for HR really begins once the offer is accepted. Promises made during the interviews need to be fulfiled. Many times a company hires a person for a specific role but what really keeps that person in his chair is not merely the role he was hired for. For large companies, it is difficult for HR to provide every employee the attention they deserve. Therefore HR needs to consider providing 'self-service' tools and methods to retain employees.

To retain an employee it is important to provide him the right tools to be productive, and that includes providing the ability to quickly establish the social connections that he needs to be successful in job. We all know that work is really done through informal networks and with the tacit or unstructured type of work these days, structured tools and systems that exist in organizations today do not help.

Some thoughts around how HR can use Web 2.0 concepts and tools:

Once the offer is accepted, HR provides the new employee with a URL to access the intranet for the following:

1. Provide the ability to create his/her own profile on a social networking platform on the intranet.

2. Start with searching employees in the company who may be a friend, classmate, or worked with him before. This can be done using web services that read directly from the employee's personal address books in Yahoo, Gmail, MSN, etc. and finding employees from the company's address book and social networking portal - similar to the Friend Finder feature in Facebook.

3. Also by feeding his interests into the portal so that he can quick find others with similar interests.

4. Provide the ability to search and join online groups. Suggest online groups based on his interests, such as volunteer / social service groups - an important criteria to select an employer these days.

5. Allow personal blogs, wikis, and ability to tag employee-generated content.

Social networking can specifically turn new hires into star performers, and should also be considered for faster onboarding. Such web-based onboarding, also known as 'relational onboarding', is a shift from adminstrative onboarding.

These methods can particularly be useful in tough times, i.e. when resolving issues at work. They can particularly prevent employees from leaving the company when they are not satisfied with their current roles by letting them search and apply for internal job postings.

Wondering whether these methods really add any business value. Watch slide 4 at this link! And click here for on-going research on HR and Web 2.0.

Would love to hear your thoughts on talent management using Web 2.0 and next generation internet trends.