My Wish For Talent Management and HR in 2012: Think Big, But Be Clear

Anything can be a metaphor about the world of work.

Take my elder B, the bath time scientist and two different-sized cups: my daughter Beatrice filled a big cup from a small cup with bath water. As each little cup spilled into the bigger cup, air bubbles formed in the flow and surfaced quickly.

I asked her, “Beatrice, what kind of bubbles are those?”

She answered, “Big cup bubbles.”

Of course. Why would it be anything else?

My wish for big cup bubbles for 2012

And that’s my wish for 2012, for those of us creating, leading, developing, recruiting and hiring — to be big cup bubbles; to think big but be clear.

According to a recent Businessweek article titled It’s Always Sunny in Silicon Valley, “Some in Silicon Valley are alarmed by what they see as the reluctance of the technology establishment to take on big problems.”

When creating your HR-business products and services for the world of work, try not to be so insular and focus only on what people like you and maybe what a small group of analysts and influencers think. Think about “big” but incremental and adaptable innovation for the why of work changing rapidly and what will capture the greatest mind share, market share and user adoption. Think about your customer return, then your own, because that’s the big cup bubble flow.

Same thing for your employment brand — ensure that it’s real. You can talk up a big fancy new world workplace culture you’ve created, and that’s great, but ensure that it’s real and that what we see in your recruitment marketing is real. Don’t just say you’re addressing the applicant experience, actually address it. Because in this case, your customer return is your own.

Anything can be a metaphor about work

According to Dr. John Sullivan’s latest ERE article, Recruiting’s Dirty Little Secrets — What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You, he writes, “If you consider omitting information that could directly help the applicant successfully understand the process or land a job to be a lie, then there are quite a few areas where corporations are omitting the complete truth.” And that’s not doing you, your company, your brand or your future any favors.

I also recommend that you start pushing your company for empowered employment from the inside out. Tell them you want your teams to have more responsibility managing their internal career profiles (you’ve already got the external online profile covered with your recruiting efforts) and then let them be aware of other opportunities throughout your organization as well as the recommended paths on how to get there – not to mention the other colleagues and mentors who can help get them there.

Anything can be a metaphor about the world of work, especially when you have children who will be a part of it someday, who will hopefully build and work together in a better world where profits and philanthropy flow together into glass after glass after glass.

Let’s start with big cup bubbles in 2012, the best bubbly of them all.

You can find more from Kevin Grossman on his Marcom HRsay blog.