Jon Ingham trawls the net to provide his round-up of the great and the good of the HR blogs out there right now.

Welcome to the first of what will be a regular, twice-monthly series of updates on HR issues recently discussed within the social media, i.e., on blogs, podcasts, microblogs (Twitter) etc.

The idea is that this update will provide you with some of the best ideas, news and reviews from ‘the HR blogosphere’ meaning that you don’t need to trawl the net yourself. I do this anyway, so it’s no problem for me, and sharing is what social media is all about.

Posts on social media itself

As you might expect, there’s always a degree of introspection in social media (blog posts about blogging etc). I’ve recently posted on my Strategic HCM blog about my own interest in social media, and why I think it’s worth the investment I put into it. Other recent posts on social media include:

• Dan Schawbel’s discussion about HR, social media and personal branding with one HR practitioner blogger, Steph K at HP, on her Personal Branding blog




• The Evil HR Lady’s post considering the potential effects of blogging on your career




• Steve Boese’s discussion on whether employees will use internal social networks on his HR Technology blog




• Jason Corsello (the Human Capitalist)’s review of how Sodexho is using social media




• Joel Cheesman (of Cheezhead)’s post on the Industry Standard considering why other HR departments find incorporating social media so hard, with a particular focus on recruitment at Electronic Arts




• Jim Holincheck’s post on his Gartner blog looking at the particular issue of linking social media with talent management

Focusing specifically on Facebook, Michael Specht asks whether Facebook is good or bad?, and Andy Headworth at Sirona Says discusses the use of Facebook for recruitment. There have also been a few good posts on tweating (microblogging using Twitter), including Ira Wolfe’s post at Perfect Labor Storm 2.0: to tweet or not to tweet?. To help answer the question, you might want to take a look at these posts on Psychology Today asking whether you’d be a twit for experiencing the dark side of social media.

Rewards for failure

The recession continues to provide a focus for many HR blogs. See in particular, Taleo’s Talent Management Solutions blog where Alice Snell warns that the war for talent is falling down the workplace agenda. And for advice on HR’s specific responses to this increasingly difficult environment, I’d suggest taking a look at Bob Sutton’s Work Matters blog and his discussions on options for making redundancies associated with this month’s Harvard Business Review case study, The Layoff.

Conversations on the bonuses and other rewards being paid out at some of the semi-nationalised banks continues to ripple through the blogosphere, many focused on the size of Fred Goodwin’s pension. Rick at Flip Chart Fairy Tales argues that Goodwin will end up keeping his pension (however, see these two posts on Harriet Harman and possible legislation from two legal blogs (or ‘blawgs’) highlighted by @oldshep and @xperthr).

In terms of the more general reward issues involved in this debate, Paul Herbert of Incentive Intelligence writing at the Employee Factor suggests that we need to take a more detailed look at executive reward, and Ann Bares at Compensation Force recommends balancing reward portfolio for both today and tomorrow. At Know HR, Frank Roche has been taking a look at pay transparency, also emphasising the importance of performance management. Kris Dunn (the HR Capitalist) and Ann Bares at Compensation Force also provide their own views on pay transparency.

In my next update, I will seek to pick out a couple of different themes from different blogs, obviously depending on what some of the main discussions between now and then seem to be about.

In the meantime, you can find posts from another 24 HR blogs grouped all together at the most recent Carnival of HR. This is a regular collection of recent posts that circulates around the HR blogs. This edition is being held at Kris Dunn’s HR Capitalist and is a bit different from most carnivals in that it celebrates US basketball’s ‘March Madness’ by pitting a total of 32 HR blogs against each other in head-to-head match ups. You can best understand what it’s all about by taking a look yourself!

Jon is executive consultant at Strategic Dynamics. He specialises in helping HR teams to become more strategic and to increase their impact, including through the use of social media. He has two blogs (Strategic HCM and Competitive Society), and a podcast show (Talking HR). You can also follow him on Twitter @joningham