One bollock at a time – Part 1
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“HR need to get hung up on the telephone”
“The strategic imperative of placing an advert in the newspaper. It’s black and white for HR”
“SMS SOS as HR fail to grasp the joy of text”
No I haven’t lost the plot. Well ok, maybe a little bit, but my point is….you wouldn’t expect to read any of these would you? But add Linked in, Facebook, Twitter to the headlines and you would be replicating fairly much every HR website and journal out there as well as far too many blogs. Don’t get me wrong, I think social media and social networking technology are hugely important developments. But they are societal developments, they are evolution, not an entity that has occurred and is passing, but a stage in the ever forming, ever-changing communications framework of this place we call earth. Back in the day it was Yahoo chatrooms then MSN, Friends Reunited where there for a moment, then Facebook, MySpace, Twitter…..
I struggle to find many other professions that would take them half as earnestly as the HR profession. Because they would just get on and use them. Us? We like to talk about them, to cogitate and ruminate and then beat ourselves up for not being ahead of the game. Well guess what? Stop talking about it and start doing it. These things are not new, these things are not avant-garde or the next big thing. Most are coming up to being a decade old and yet you read the posts and the tweets from the HR community and you’d think they were happening now. This is HR bollock number one. That social media is the next big thing. It ain’t.
Only HR could create a fad and then blame itself for not taking account of it.
My Hell is Other People 
I know its still yearly in ’10, but I’m prepared to put “Only HR could create a fad and then blame itself for not taking account of it.” on my top ten quote list for the year. That sentence certainly speaks volumes of truth about our profession.
Oh my gosh you speak my mind! I’ve been thinking about doing a blog about this but I think you’ve said it the best.. While I agree on the benefits of social media, I am quite frankly fed up with all the talk about social media being the next big thing. All these conference, seminars, dedicated to just social media..ahh, stop it already!
@Puf – Thanks for the copmpliment. I shall aim to surpass it in 2010.
@Thuy – You should still write about it. There can never be enough people challenging fadism.
Well said! My worry has been in conversations with a still significant number of HR professionals who, upon hearing the word “facebook” or “twitter”, recoil as if I’ve just said the word “bollock” and then politely add that they don’t do social networking in their organisation…
@robmoss – thanks for the comment and good to so a bona fide Personnel Today employee here! I guess your comment highlights just how many poor HR people and teams there are out there….although I’m not sure attending a conference on web 2.0 would help them…..a shot gun might be more use…..?