09.03

PEOPLE

PEOPLE

PEOPLE09.03

E-People

E-PeopleSue Weekes and Scott Beagrie

� Fast track route to mastering online people strategies

� Covers the key areas of online people strategies, including howWeb-based technology can streamline and automate traditionalHR tasks, transform HR into a more strategic function and help tobuild a more effective and motivated workforce

� Examples and lessons from some of the world’s most successfulbusinesses, including BP, Exult, Getty Images, IBM, ICL andOracle, and ideas from the smartest thinkers, including DavidUlrich, Peter Drucker, David Cannon, Christopher Boone and JohnSullivan

� Includes a glossary of key concepts and a comprehensiveresources guide

09.03

PEOPLE

E-PeopleSue Weekes and Scott Beagrie

� Fast track route to mastering online people strategies

� Covers the key areas of online people strategies, includinghow Web-based technology can streamline and automatetraditional HR tasks, transform HR into a more strategicfunction and help to build a more effective and motivatedworkforce

� Examples and lessons from some of the world’s mostsuccessful businesses, including BP, Exult, Getty Images,IBM, ICL and Oracle, and ideas from the smartest thinkers,including David Ulrich, Peter Drucker, David Cannon,Christopher Boone and John Sullivan

� Includes a glossary of key concepts and a comprehensiveresources guide

Copyright Capstone Publishing 2002

The right of Sue Weekes and Scott Beagrie to be identified as the authors of thiswork has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and PatentsAct 1988

First published 2002 byCapstone Publishing (a Wiley company)8 Newtec PlaceMagdalen RoadOxford OX4 1REUnited Kingdomhttp://www.capstoneideas.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in aretrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechan-ical, including uploading, downloading, printing, recording or otherwise, exceptas permitted under the fair dealing provisions of the Copyright, Designs andPatents Act 1988, or under the terms of a license issued by the CopyrightLicensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, W1P 9HE, UK, withoutthe permission in writing of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher should beaddressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Baffins Lane,Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 1UD, UK or e-mailed to permreq@wiley.co.ukor faxed to (+44) 1243 770571.

CIP catalogue records for this book are available from the British Libraryand the US Library of Congress

This title is also available in print as ISBN 1-84112-345-5

Substantial discounts on bulk quantities of ExpressExec books are availableto corporations, professional associations and other organizations. Pleasecontact Capstone for more details on +44 (0)1865 798 623 or (fax) +44(0)1865 240 941 or (e-mail) info@wiley-capstone.co.uk

ISBN 1-841123-463

Introduction to

ExpressExecExpressExec is 3 million words of the latest management thinkingcompiled into 10 modules. Each module contains 10 individual titlesforming a comprehensive resource of current business practice writtenby leading practitioners in their field. From brand management tobalanced scorecard, ExpressExec enables you to grasp the key conceptsbehind each subject and implement the theory immediately. Each ofthe 100 titles is available in print and electronic formats.

Through the ExpressExec.com Website you will discover that youcan access the complete resource in a number of ways:

» printed books or e-books;» e-content – PDF or XML (for licensed syndication) adding value to an

intranet or Internet site;» a corporate e-learning/knowledge management solution providing a

cost-effective platform for developing skills and sharing knowledgewithin an organization;

» bespoke delivery – tailored solutions to solve your need.

Why not visit www.expressexec.com and register for free key manage-ment briefings, a monthly newsletter and interactive skills checklists.Share your ideas about ExpressExec and your thoughts about businesstoday.

Please contact elound@wiley-capstone.co.uk for more information.

ContentsIntroduction to ExpressExec v

09.03.01 Why Online People Strategies are Important 109.03.02 The E-People Matrix 509.03.03 Evolution: The Human Resources Heritage 1109.03.04 Technology: Rip it Out and Start Again? 2109.03.05 Globalization – ‘‘. . . The Seamless Digital

Workplace’’ 3109.03.06 The State of the Art: The World of Work, but

Not as We Know it 4109.03.07 Case Studies 5509.03.08 Key Concepts and Thinkers 7109.03.09 References and Resources 8109.03.10 Ten Steps to Making it Work 91

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) 99

09.0

3.01

Why Online People

Strategies are ImportantThis first chapter introduces the premise that, with people now widelyconsidered to be the only differentiator in today’s competitive market-places, old-style human resources management cannot be relied uponto create and retain the necessary dynamic and agile workforces. Itexplains how managers must look to new, online people strategies todevelop and build the workforces for tomorrow.

2 E-PEOPLE

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

In the last 20 years, organizations have considered first capital and thentechnology as the main competitive differentiators. Throughout thisperiod, human resources (HR) departments have also been responsiblefor peddling two hoary cliches: ‘‘our people are our best asset’’ and‘‘empowerment.’’ These were little more than platitudes intended todisguise the fact that managing was primarily about numbers and notpeople.

In the last two years, the HR rhetoric has given way to reality andpeople are now widely considered as the only differentiator in a highlycompetitive marketplace. And it is how well they are managed thatis likely to determine a company’s future competitive advantage. Butorganizations need to wake up to the fact that, in order to release andfulfill the human potential, they must eradicate the excessive bureau-cracy and inappropriate processes that have for so long surrounded themanagement of people.

The recent dotcom boom has heralded the rise of a new generationof young workers, who are exerting a great deal of influence on thefuture shape of organizations. They are techno-savvy, want work tobe highly stimulating, but equally are more interested in achieving thecorrect balance of work and life than kow-towing to the wishes ofany manager. They want to work, but it has to be on their terms.US business strategist and change agent, Don Tapscott, sums up theirattitude as the network generation or N-gen mentality. ‘‘This generationis exceptionally curious, self-reliant, and contrarian,’’ he says. ‘‘It issmart, focused, able to adapt, high in self-esteem and has a globalorientation. It will create huge pressure for radical change in existingcompanies.’’

These societal changes, combined with a global skills shortage,means that highly talented individuals of any age are calling the shotsand employers need to market themselves to these people. At thesame time, because of intense competition and the downturn in theeconomy, it’s imperative that organizations improve efficiencies, opti-mize performance, and streamline their businesses.

The paradigm shift in the employer/employee relationship does notnaturally map on to the people management systems and infrastructuresthat were put in place decades ago. It is not enough simply to have a

WHY ONLINE PEOPLE STRATEGIES ARE IMPORTANT 3

go-faster version of the old HR model. To satisfy the demands of a smart,focused, flexible workforce, an organization needs to be similarly agilein its approach and its processes.

Ironically, the technology that was perceived as the differentiator inthe old employer model is now the facilitator and delivery mechanismfor the new one. E-people sets out to examine the online peoplestrategies that make a difference in finding, securing, stimulating, andretaining the talent that organizations so desperately seek.

09.0

3.02

The E-People Matrix» In simple terms, online people strategies are a mixture of Internet- and

intranet-enabled functions that can help to recruit and retain, train,manage, motivate, and improve the performance of the workforce.

» Self-service is one of the most significant developments to hit peoplemanagement; it empowers the workforce, cuts costs, and frees uptime for the HR manager to be strategic.

» B2E services expand e-HR to take in everything employees need todo their job better – this may include providing online access to shopat work.

» Employee portals should be seen as the hub of any online peoplestrategy. They can start small and build into a gateway for a host ofapplications.

» Beware the hype – remember how disappointing online job siteswere when they first appeared. The approach should always be‘‘How can I use that technology?,’’ not ‘‘What technology can I use?’’

6 E-PEOPLE

E-people doesn’t have the luxury of a single, all-encompassing defin-able term that transforms into a natty acronym to slip seamlesslyinto the management lexicon. What words could possibly sum upa swath of technologies and applications that range from Websitesdesigned to sniff out a dog walker for the busy executive to an all-singing, all-dancing, integrated-e-HR self-service system that empowersthe workforce and releases the HR department from its administrativedrudgery?

Several terms are bandied around which go some way towardsidentifying what is being talked about but, in simple terms, the onlinepeople strategies discussed in E-people can be explained as a suiteof Internet- and intranet-enabled functions that help to recruit andretain, train, manage, motivate, and raise the performance of theworkforce. The chances are that they will also allow managementto shave costs considerably. These processes comprise traditional,transactional HR functions, which can be performed online, plusa range of strategic Web-enabled tools that are genuinely capableof giving a company a competitive edge if implemented and usedproperly.

A deliberate decision has been taken by the authors not to use theterm e-HR (electronic-HR) as a catch-all. While e-HR is fairly central tothe plot, and will frequently crop up throughout this book, it doesn’talways carry with it the correct connotations to encompass the morestrategic people management technologies that are helping to align HRmore closely with a company’s core business.

‘‘e-HR means a lot of things,’’ says David Ulrich, associate professor ofbusiness administration at the University of Michigan Business Schooland named by Business Week as one of the world’s top executiveeducators. ‘‘I see it as a matrix with two columns: transaction – doingthe administrative things faster and better; enabling employees tobe self-sufficient and self-reliant; building employee portals etc.; andtransformation – becoming more strategic and building sustainablecompetitive advantage. My sense is that most of the e-HR work isin the transactional column, doing the administrative parts of HRsystems.’’

Melvin Brandman, head of e-HR at consultancy Watson Wyatt World-wide, believes that e-HR is a blend of both the ‘‘visionary and the

THE E-PEOPLE MATRIX 7

pragmatic’’ but he prefers to use the term B2E (business to employee),which at least goes some way to reflecting the changing relationshipbetween employer and employee. ‘‘It expands e-HR to cover every-thing from self-service tools to concierge services – basically everythingyou need to do your job better,’’ he explains, and even identifies theprovision for employees to shop on the Internet as part of a fleet ofonline services that will help to create a more motivated and effectiveworkforce.

PLOTTING THE COURSE FOR AN HR NIRVANA

Rather than getting hung up about names and labels, it makes far moresense to view the set of strategies as a matrix and in context with themain people management areas that are familiar to us (see Fig. 2.1).Listed in each of the areas are the available Internet- or intranet-enabled technologies. They are a mixture of the transactional and thetransformational, with some a mixture of the two. The transformationalones, such as network learning and knowledge management, are largelymade possible in an organization because of the existence of thetransactional ones, which have released HR from time-consuming,routine work to develop more strategic practices. The transactionalones are also crucial in converting HR from a cost center to a value-added service.

If companies implemented every aspect of the matrix and thetechnologies within it lived up to claims, they would be transported tosome kind of HR utopia: recruitment would be a matter of automaticallymatching applicants against core competencies and corporate fit andhiring within days; new recruits could take a virtual tour of the companyas part of their e-induction; no single piece of paper would have to begenerated in payroll ever again because payslips would be transmittedelectronically; staff would be trained as and when it was convenientfrom their own desktops; the mobile infrastructure would be such thatthe workforce could be placed in the four corners of the globe andcould still function as a virtual unit; awkward exit interviews could behandled via video conferencing – but, then again, nobody would everleave because every time they were offered another job, the onlineflexible benefits system would remind them that they were much betteroff where they were!

8 E-PEOPLE

Recruitment Training anddevelopmentTraining anddevelopment

Core HR Policies andproceduresPolicies andprocedures

PerformancemanagementPerformancemanagement

The enablers:

Corporate jobboards

External job sites

Applicant trackingand managementsystems

Online candidatescreening, testing(includingpsychometric),skills matchingand ranking

Task-specific skillsmatching

E-learningBlendedlearning

Network andcommunitylearning

Knowledgemanagementand bestpractice sharingsystems

Self-servicetools foremployeetransactions(joiner’s forms,circumstanceupdates)

On line flexiblebenefits system

Payroll systemsEmployeeportals

Employeeportal/corporateintranet forstoringInformation

E-mail fordisseminating info

Online induction

Internal incentive andreward systems

External incentive andreward sites

Online flexible benefitssystems

E-mail forcollaborative discussionon staff appraisal

Online benchmarkingagainst corecompetencies

Online 360 degreefeedback

Individual aim:

Reduce the cost andtime to hire;moreresponsiverecruiting; extendreach of candidatepool

Train staff moreeffectively andcultivate,maintainand retaincompanyknowledge

Reduceadministration soHR can bestrategic;empoweredemployees

Reduceadministration forHR to be morestrategic; improvecorporatecommunications andempower employees

Tailored recognition andrewarding;more effectiveand collaborativeperformance assessment

Overall aim:

To create a strategic HR function and an empowered,motivated workforce,performing at optimum efficiency

Fig. 2.1 Matrix sketch: Internet-intranet-enabled strategies.

SELF-SERVICE HR – THE DIRECT INPUT OF 2001

One of the most significant developments in the field of people manage-ment in the past few years has been the advent of self-service tools.Self-service is to HR what direct input was to the typesetting industry inthe early 1980s. The arrival of desktop publishing meant that typeset-ters were no longer needed to rekey original copy and generate linesof text (or ‘‘setting’’ to use the correct term) for the newspaper ormagazine designers to work with. The journalists, the originators of thewords, could input copy directly into a computer and electronicallyflow it through to the design desk. HR’s equivalent of the lines of settingis the pile of admin in their in-tray made up of ‘‘joiners and leavers’’forms, change of address forms, change of circumstance forms, holiday

THE E-PEOPLE MATRIX 9

forms, and so on, which can now, mostly, be keyed directly into thesystem by the employees themselves. Not only does it save HR a taskeach time, but it also saves the unnecessary but obligatory telephonecalls and communication that often accompany it: ‘‘Where do I find theleaver’s forms?’’ ‘‘Which one do I use?’’

Unlike the typesetters whose industry was virtually wiped out, HRprofessionals have an opportunity to reinvent themselves. Once thetypesetters’ core function was stripped away they had nothing left;strip HR of its transactional functions and it still has plenty of work leftand is released to be strategic.

Typically, self-service tools sit within an employee portal on anintranet or the Internet, accessible via PCs or kiosks on the shop floor.These are now in widespread use in many organizations although thedegree to which companies exploit their power and benefits variesenormously. As well as self-service tools for everything from adminto electing flexible benefits, portals can be home to a mass of otherinformation and resources such as staff handbooks, company news andinformation (results, new deals, mission statements), health and safetyinformation, local area knowledge and more. The fact that these can beaccessed online means that the HR department doesn’t have to worryabout distributing paper-based information any more (or fret aboutwhether or not there are enough printed copies of the handbook instock) and updates can simply be posted direct to the intranet. Theportal can even be used to inform people on thorny issues such asparking space allocation and hey, while you’re at it, why not post thecanteen’s dish of the day up as well?

Employee portals form the hub of any online people strategy andcan serve as a gateway to a range of services: e-learning and knowl-edge management systems, online induction, employee referral andalumni areas for recruitment, confidential chat and discussion roomsfor employees to communicate on projects they’re working on, as wellas a portfolio of links to external Websites that the workforce mightfind useful. But they’re not just home to employee-related services.Remember that all data empowers and any important customer infor-mation (such as profiles and survey results) should be posted there. Andthose who really want to ensure that the portal is the most frequentlyvisited company site can add to its appeal by adding general news,

10 E-PEOPLE

sport, share prices, and weather information from third party providers(look at Yahoo.com for ideas, since this is probably the best generalconsumer portal on the Internet).

The technology exists to make the matrix’s HR utopia a realityand, as this book seeks to demonstrate, many companies are on theway to implementing some, if not all, of these strategies. E-peoplealso intends to show that the route can be littered with stumblingblocks and, unfortunately, more often than not is paved with hyperather than gold. Take the early online job sites: they promised a cost-effective, streamlined, practically paperless way of recruiting. Insteadthey delivered multiple in-trays of untargeted, unmanageable responses.This largely came about because recruiters thought, ‘‘I’ll use that newjob site in my recruitment campaign,’’ rather than ‘‘How can that newjob site assist in my recruitment campaign?’’ The two phrases mightsound similar, but in reality they’re poles apart.

Blindly seizing on a new technology might provide a shot of instantgratification but little else and, as E-people will show, there’s rarely ashortcut to success, and the key to achieving success is in the visionand planning of such strategies.

KEY LEARNING POINTS» Online people strategies are a mixture of the transactional

and the transformational. The first deals with traditional HRfunctions such as payroll and benefits, while the second ismore concerned with developing the workforce and buildingcompetitive advantage. A gray area exists between the twobecause it’s the automation of the first that facilitates the second.

» The range of online people strategies is diverse, from a singleexternal Website, which helps to manage the workforce in someway, to an integrated e-HR system.

» Self-service and employee portals or corporate intranets formthe backbone of any online people strategy. And remember thatportals should be home to customer data too.

» Always remember that the approach should not be ‘‘What can Iuse that technology for?’’ but ‘‘How can I use that technology?’’

09.0

3.03

Evolution: The Human

Resources Heritage» HR was one of the first departments to automate their processes.» In some instances, this has led to legacy systems that are holding

back the development of online people strategies because they arenot robust enough for today’s tasks.

» HR, IT and finance must come together. HR must be proactive andconvince finance that it is a deliverer of business value, rather than acost center.

» We need standards to ensure hassle-free data exchange: the moveto establish external standards, such as the work of the HR-XMLConsortium should be supported.

» It makes sense to install the necessary technology to handle transac-tional functions first.

» Outsourcing is here to stay, but it’s not the end of the world, as itcan offer better job prospects for people lower down the HR ranks.

12 E-PEOPLE

TIMELINE

» 1960s: First payroll processing systems appear. In the same decadein the US, a knowledge and resource sharing network is beingdeveloped by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).

» 1970s: Emergence of what was called HR information systems.» 1980s: Departments start to develop their own systems as mini- and

micro-computers deliver functionality to the desktop.» 1980s: Cheaper software takes HR information systems to within

more companys’ reach. Meanwhile, the ARPANET network is joinedby other information-based networks and, as they all link up, theybegin to be referred to as ‘‘the Internet.’’

» 1989: Creation of the World Wide Web, basically a friendly interfacedesigned to help users navigate the Internet.

» 1996: ICL launches Cafe VIK, one of the first employee portals,which was originally launched to share knowledge.

» 1995: Online job boards begin to appear.» 1998: The term ‘‘e-business’’ begins to be heard and major tech-

nology vendors such as SAP and Peoplesoft start to migrate theirtechnologies to the Web. Terms such as ‘‘e-HR’’ and ‘‘Web-enabledHR’’ enter the vernacular.

» 1999: Outsourcing comes into its own; BP and Exult sign the biggestHR outsourcing deal ever.

» 2000: More and more B2E services emerge as the HR profes-sional is hit by a swath of Web-enabled and Web-based services.e-peopleserve, a major Web-based outsourcing company, is born outof BT and Accenture.

» 2001: Several huge outsourcing deals are announced (includingUnisys, Bank of America, and BAE Systems) and, in parallel with this,all major corporates embark on some form of e-HR.

It may be the butt of many pen-pushing and paper-shuffling jokes, butHR was one of the first company departments to automate its functionswith the first payroll processing systems appearing as early as the1960s. If this marked the climb out of the primordial sludge for HR(or personnel as it was then called), then today, on the evolutionaryscale, we are at the stage when we’re still waiting for the dinosaurs tocheck out.

EVOLUTION 13

Tracing the history of personnel management systems serves as auseful backdrop for where we are today but, more importantly, it goessome way to explaining some of the inherent problems of implementingonline people strategies, namely those of legacy computer systems, and,to a degree, legacy mindsets.

Early payroll systems were expected to handle more and more data,such as employee records and benefits information, and eventuallypayroll processing began to be separated off. During the 1970s thelarger companies began to put together HR information systems (HRIS)featuring compensation, benefits and pension functions, and the prolif-eration of mini-computers meant that the systems could be developeddepartmentally. The subsequent arrival of the micro-computer furtherempowered HR professionals by delivering the technology direct totheir desktops.

In the 1980s, more affordable software packages meant that smallercompanies could also have some form of HRIS and these began to beintegrated with other systems within the company, such as EnterpriseResource Planning (ERP) strategies.

By 1990, the Internet was still only known to a cloistered few (seeChapter 4) but company-wide networks were beginning to demonstratethe benefit and power of connectivity. So, when Tim Berners-Leecreated a user-friendly face for the Internet in 1989 what we now knowas the World Wide Web while working at the European Laboratory forParticle Physics in Switzerland, it was the technological equivalent of abig bang.

From the mid-1990s onwards the Internet, along with e-mail, wasbeing heralded as the most important invention since the telephone.With internal intranets also springing up, various company departmentsstarted to see their own uses for these powerful new tools and beganto incorporate them in their daily operations and lives. In the last fewyears of the twentieth century, if you didn’t have an e-mail address, youwere decidedly passe.

Visionaries in the HR sector began to see how Web-enabled andintranet-based HR functions could streamline processes and reducecosts. They picked up on the scent of self-service, which had thepotential to transform HR from a cost center to one that deliveredvalue-added services. Wouldn’t it make more sense for employees to

14 E-PEOPLE

update their own records when they had a change of circumstance,such as getting married or moving house? And wouldn’t it be moreefficient for an employee to find out on screen how many days holidaythey had left, rather than telephone HR to find out? Surely technologycould facilitate these simple transactions. And, of course, it could.

While it was fine for the visionaries to go out on the conferencecircuit and pontificate on the benefits of e-HR and how it could helpalign the function more closely with an organization’s business, a largenumber of those who sat listening in the audience second-guessed thatthey could be automated out of a job. In some of the new organizationalmodels being put forward, many traditional HR duties were alreadybeing devolved to line managers elsewhere in the company.

THE SPECTRE OF OUTSOURCING

But if HR staff feared the threat of technology, it was nothing comparedto the threat of the entire function being outsourced – which wascoming up fast on the horizon. Around the same time as the Internetrevolution was gathering pace, the concept of outsourcing was securinglots of column inches in the business magazines of the day. Until thispoint, HR outsourcing had been centered on functions such as payroll,pensions administration, outplacement and redeployment – naturalareas for outsourcing. Functions such as performance managementand appraisal, employee development and relations remained firmlyin-house. Yet the world was starting to see the rise of high-tech,global outsourcing giants whose metrics not even the leanest ormeanest HR departments could compete with. In December 1999,a momentous £375mn deal was struck between BP Amoco andCalifornia-based outsourcing provider Exult (see Chapter 7). It wouldsee Exult manage BP’s HR administration and transactions, includingbenefits, payroll, organizational development, performance manage-ment, training, employee development, recruiting, staffing, relocation,employee relations and employee record management. HR policy andstrategy would still be handled in-house by BP Amoco.

The BP Amoco and Exult deal formed the perfect working demon-stration of renowned HR educator David Ulrich’s theory for HR:‘‘If a new agenda for HR professionals is not defined, they willbe removed, outsourced and automated.’’ (From Harvard Business

EVOLUTION 15

School Publishing’s Website entitled ‘‘Human Resources Champions,The New Agenda For HR. A conversation with Dave Ulrich.’’ Seewww.hbsp.harvard.edu/products/press/trans/qa ulrich.html.)

The launch of e-peopleserve in 2000, which saw the coming togetherof telecommunications giant BT and worldwide management consul-tancy Accenture to form a fully Web-enabled HR outsourcing option, wasanother significant landmark. When a company employs e-peopleserve,the outsourcer recruits the majority of the client’s HR staff to handlethe work. ‘‘We are currently at a step between evolution and revolu-tion in how companies approach HR,’’ says e-peopleserve interim CEOPaul Russell. ‘‘Traditionally HR was seen as the last thing that could betransaction-based because of its touchy-feely nature. But traditional HR istoo expensive to justify in these days of efficiency.’’ Of course, he wouldsay that, wouldn’t he, but it’s borne out by the fact that HR has becomeone of the fastest-growing outsourced commodities in the UK.

Around the same time as the rise of outsourcing, the world’s majorsystems developers, such as SAP and Peoplesoft, were aligning theirproducts to the Internet to feature Web-enabled HR functions. Else-where, the IBMs and Oracles of this world were coming up withtheir own HR solutions and were installing them in the best referencesites possible – using them in-house. This was the dawn of e-businessand companies such as these, which were espousing and selling theInternet as the delivery platform for their own systems, were astuteenough to know that they had to show faith in the medium. Oracle CEOand chairman Lawrence Ellison proclaimed that you couldn’t claim tobe a major player in the field of e-business if you didn’t run your ownbusiness on the Internet. The company duly followed this by puttingevery aspect of its business on the Web, and claimed to save a cool$1bn on what they would have spent in the process, $7mn of whichwas saved in HR alone (see Chapter 7).

Oracle’s major rival, IBM, meanwhile, had spent the last years ofthe decade getting its HR house in order and, like its competitor,stated it was part of a natural shift towards becoming an e-business. In1998 it introduced a European service center, based in Portsmouth inthe UK, that is now regarded as a world benchmark, handling 95,000employees spread across 18 EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa)countries. Its broad aim was to separate operational and transactional

16 E-PEOPLE

HR activities from strategic, more value-added business support bychannelling through the center all HR queries from round the world.In effect, this served as a catalyst for HR process transformation andMartin James, manager of the European HR service center at IBM EMEA,believes the company is ‘‘80% of the way there now.’’

The implementation of self-service tools, accessed through a Webportal such as AskHR in IBM’s case, or myHR in the case of BP Amoco,is at the heart of all e-HR systems and strategies.

Yet the wind of change whistling through HR departments wasn’tjust about integrated e-HR systems from the likes of the big companiesmentioned above. A veritable sandstorm of technologies, applicationsand developments, large and small, were lashing the beleaguered HRmanager: job sites sprang up claiming to slash recruitment times andcosts; skills matching software arrived purporting to sort the wheatfrom the chaff at the click of a mouse; intranets were offering thepotential to bring a company’s combined knowledge and resourcestogether in one place, accessible by the entire workforce; e-learningprograms promised to cure all training ills; and application serviceproviders (ASPs) reckoned they could give you the biggest, best onlineflexible benefits system and more besides. And so it went on.

In addition, service companies everywhere saw how they couldextend their market reach by offering a Web-based service, and aclutch of sites targeting the HR professional sprang up ranging fromEnviego.com, which offers a concierge lifestyle management servicefor executives, to Directmoving.com, which helps relocate them.Meanwhile, Oneclickhr.com claimed to ‘‘offer everything you needto manage your employees – online’’ and there was huge activity in theincentive and reward market, with a number of sites appearing that letemployers or employees go online and select an appropriate reward.

Securing a coherent handle on it all wasn’t (and indeed still isn’t) easyand many of the new technologies failed to live up to expectation, oftenbecause their integration into existing workflows hadn’t been properlythought through. Recruitment Websites were a good example of this. Ifever there was a ‘‘killer app’’ (to use a nerdish phrase, meaning basicallyan application that will kick anything else into oblivion) among themyriad of HR-related applications and technologies, it was probablyonline recruitment.

EVOLUTION 17

The theory of a job site being able to reduce the cost per hire bythousands of dollars, and time to hire reduced from weeks to hours,is sound in principle since Website overheads are low compared tothose of conventional media, and response is instantaneous. However,recruiters soon discovered that the resume databases being used wereoften out-of-date and infrequently checked and updated, sites failedto sift out inappropriate candidates as effectively as was claimed, andgaps in security systems meant that it wasn’t entirely unknown foran applicant’s resume to end up in their current boss’s in-tray. Yes,they guaranteed a response but this often caused more, not less, workfor the recruiter, who, because of an inability to manage the resumesdigitally, ended up printing off a stack of applications and distributingthem in the internal post.

Although the job boards have cleaned up their act considerably, theystill stand accused of delivering quantity of applicants over quality insome instances. Fortunately, we are now seeing the advent of end-to-end online recruiting companies which effectively manage every stageof the online recruitment process (see Chapter 6) and look like helpinge-recruitment live up to its potential.

As with online recruitment, e-learning was similarly over-hyped.Computer-based training had been around for years but e-learningpromised a lower cost, more reactive solution that didn’t need aclassroom. Training logistics would be eased considerably and it circum-vented the perennial problem of staff never having enough time toattend courses. The reality, however, was that technical issues suchas bandwidth had yet to be ironed out and, more importantly, coursedevelopers often paid scant regard to pedagogical concerns. Manycourses were just HTML (Hyper Text Mark-Up Language – the codinglanguage used on the Web) translations of existing courses. A great dealof discussion, trial and error, and loss of confidence followed whichhas resulted in blended learning – a mixture of classroom-based andonline – becoming the preferred option for both trainers and learners.

UNWELCOME HAND-ME-DOWNS

The fact that HR was one of the first departments to automate someof its functions shows in some companies – and that’s meant in a badway, from the fact that many legacy systems in use aren’t up to the

18 E-PEOPLE

job today. ‘‘HR IT systems are uniquely vulnerable. HR was among thefirst business units to automate. Systems today are often aggregationsof antiquated hardware, multiple types and versions of software, andadd-ons and improvisations made to both,’’ says John Cooper, managingdirector of the Concours Group Europe, a worldwide consultancy. Thecomments are based on the findings of an in-depth report and study byConcours entitled ‘‘HR Imperatives for the Internet Age,’’ carried outin 2001.

This situation is exacerbated because the range of technologicalpossibilities at HR’s disposal may all have entirely different technicaldemands. The Concours Group’s report reveals a potentially dangerouscocktail of technologies, applications and standards in use in manycorporations of all sizes and it states that HR departments often remaintied into systems because they are dictated to more by the vendor’sproducts rather than by what the company actually needs. It isn’thelped that an increasing number of vendor companies are appearingwho offer new systems and services. The key to cracking it, believesCooper, is for HR to team up with both IT and finance and be proactive.‘‘HR and IT have sometimes given each other short shrift. The growingstrategic importance of HR systems demands close partnership,’’ hesaid on the launch of the report. ‘‘Simultaneously, finance must bepersuaded of HR as a deliverer of business value, not simply as a cost tobe minimized. There has perhaps never been a more challenging timefor providing HR services, or a time when HR was more crucial to theoverall effectiveness of the enterprise.’’

EXTERNAL FORCES AT WORK

As well as internal incompatibilities and non-conformities, those invol-ved with people management systems also have to contend withthe external disordered state of standards and technologies that dataexchange brings. Most sectors face this at some stage in their evolutionand what’s important is working together to properly address issues atboth a local, company and a global, industry level.

Publishing, for instance, will be forever indebted to Adobe Systemsfor creating its PostScript and Acrobat software technologies, whichprovided much-needed and enduring standards for printed output anddocument exchange. Prior to PostScript, the mishmash of proprietary

EVOLUTION 19

formats being used not only led to confusion but threatened to chokethe whole desktop publishing (DTP) movement. PostScript was intro-duced, it delivered, reached critical mass, and DTP went on to fulfillits potential. A few years later the company pulled off a similar featwith its portable document software Acrobat, which enables anyoneto view a document as it was created, irrespective of the applicationused to create it. Acrobat went on to become one of the technologiesunderpinning the operation of the Web.

The HR-XML Consortium (see Chapter 4) should go some way todoing a PostScript and Acrobat for the HR industry in trying to establisha set of standards that permits total freedom of data exchange inareas such as online recruitment. It has created the Staffing ExchangeProtocol (SEP), which offers a standard method for posting job advertsto job boards or other Web-based recruitment methods, and those tohave signed up to the consortium so far include Cisco, IBM, Oracle,Monster, Peoplesoft, Personic, and Stepstone.

WHERE WE ARE NOW

Research carried out by Business Intelligence, a UK company special-izing in emerging global business trends and practices, for its report‘‘e-HR, Transforming the Function,’’ showed that the trend has beento replace 60% or so of typical HR transactional functions with somekind of electronic means in order to facilitate more ‘‘business-oriented,consultancy type support’’ for the workforce. In the 91 organizationssurveyed, 76% said they had redesigned or brought in new HR tech-nologies and systems in the last 12 months and out of those who hadn’t,90% said they planned to do so over the coming year. The four maindriving forces for this were improved HR function as far as productivityand performance were concerned, more effective HR service delivery,the ability to engage in more strategic HR services, and the fact thatthere is now a greater availability of technologies, software and systems.Surprisingly, only 56% cited cost control and savings as a driver.

In the Concours Group’s report, ‘‘HR Imperatives for the InternetAge,’’ a survey of 27 North American and European companiesconfirmed that automated functions like payroll are top of the listof current priorities, with more visionary strategies such as compe-tency and knowledge management near the bottom. Certain pragmatic

20 E-PEOPLE

functions such as work-time reporting, resume screening and trainingrank somewhere in the middle, says the report.

No-one could deny that the road to online HR can be a rocky one andfull-scale implementation of integrated Web-enabled HR systems cantake up to five years before everything is properly bedded in. However,this has to happen if HR is to reinvent itself and, based on recent figuresand reports, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the wholesalemove of the department from being an expensive, slow process unit toa more agile, responsive and strategic one is well on the way.

KEY LEARNING POINTS» Outsourcing is a big threat to in-house HR but the two can exist

together.» There are a lot of technologies out there claiming to offer a

bigger, brighter something – check them out before committingto use them.

» HR has a long heritage of technology but beware the dangerouscocktail of legacy systems in some companies.

» HR and IT, assisted by finance, must work together on the rightinfrastructure for the company and must not be dictated to byvendors.

» Freedom of data exchange relies on certain standards beingput in place – co-operate at company and industry level to helpachieve this for the good of everybody.

» Driving forces for e-HR are cited as increased productivityand performance, more effective service delivery, the ability toengage in more strategic services, and the greater availability ofsystems.

09.0

3.04

Technology: Rip it Out

and Start Again?» It’s not an option but a business imperative that HR aligns itself with

IT. It can no longer abdicate responsibility for technical matters.» It isn’t a case of ‘‘if’’ but ‘‘when’’ HR systems will migrate to the

Web.» Assess the Web readiness of the current HR IT infrastructure.» As well as the big HR systems, don’t forget there is an increasing range

of personal technologies that are useful facilitators and enablers ofan overall online people strategy.

» Learn the language of IT – and we’ve put together a glossary to helpyou (see Chapter 4).

22 E-PEOPLE

In the past, there has been a tendency for HR to abdicate responsibilityfor IT matters and the repeated message in E-people is that this canno longer be the case. It is not simply in the interest of bettercommunication and friendliness at work that IT and HR come together,it’s a business imperative.

The most important IT issue facing HR managers at the momentis whether their systems are up to the job as far as handling Web-enabled HR functions are concerned. While it may not be a case of‘‘rip it out and start again’’ every time, Chapter 3 identified that HRdepartments often face the problem of bolted together and improvisedlegacy systems when implementing new processes. A report by theConcours Group, ‘‘HR Imperatives for the Internet Age,’’ is adamantthat all companies are heading for the Web as far as their HR systems areconcerned – whether they’re ready for it or not. The report states: ‘‘Likethe migration from mainframe to client server, it is no longer a questionof whether to move to Internet-based delivery of HR information, it isa question of how soon?’’

The current HR/IT landscape comprises a mixture of those withintegrated systems, with SAP and Peoplesoft, predictably, being themajor players, and those with in-house systems (sometimes combinedwith outsourced facilities) that have probably grown organically ratherthan strategically. The major vendors have been aligning their productswith the Web since the late 1990s, which means that sooner or laterthey are likely to stop supporting non Web-based systems, so thequicker HR departments assess the Web readiness of theirs, the better.The Concours Group in its report suggests the following as a checklist:

» What are your core systems vendor’s plans and timetables for Web-enabling their offerings?

» Does this timetable match your business needs for Web-based capa-bility?

» Will current maintenance and service agreements with vendorsfacilitate or impede migration to Web-based systems?

» What are the Web-based capabilities of your outsourcing partners?» Are your underlying data structures and information systems robust

enough to make the transition to object-oriented technology andWeb-based delivery?

TECHNOLOGY 23

» Do you have sufficient infrastructure of servers and bandwidth tosupport Web-based delivery of HR systems?

» When was your core HR system implemented, and how manyupgrades has that system been subjected to?

» How well does your vision and strategy for Web-enablement matchthat of the IT organization and the corporation at large?

» How ready is your workforce to access HR services via the Web? Doindividual desktops have Internet access? Or will you need to deployspecial workstations or kiosks for access to HR systems?

» Are you moving toward Web-enablement as aggressively as majorcompetitors in major job markets?

» Do your existing Web pages and online forms send the message thatyou are an up-to-date organization?

Clearly, many of these must be answered in tandem with IT and indiscussions it’s important to re-emphasize and reiterate the short-,medium- and long-term applications for the system. Phase one maybe to introduce the self-service tools, but further down the line thesystem will need to act as a portal to an e-learning system, which mayintroduce bandwidth issues.

PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY

Obviously, this core system is the ‘‘big thing’’ to get right but thereis also a host of more personal technology – from laptops to the latestmobile phones – that can play a part in the overall people strategy andwill be increasingly important with the rise of the mobile workforce.Most of this technology doesn’t need explaining but it is wise to keepabreast of developments so no opportunities are missed. Laptops, forinstance, are still seen as a luxury by some companies. However, the factthat they have closed the performance gap on the desktop computer(plus displays are bigger and their hard disk capacities are adequate)means that they form a viable alternative to a standard PC for someemployees. Webcams may be best known for reality television at themoment but, when broadband communications become widespread,they’ll become a valuable video-conferencing tool.

A number of companies, including Nokia and ICL, are already trialingnew practices with mobile technology. Nokia has recently introduced

24 E-PEOPLE

self-service HR for 7500 of its employees through mobile phones (seeChapter 6) and ICL is piloting a voice-activated Personal Virtual Assistantscheme (among other things – see Chapter 7). Additionally, initiativessuch as the Internet Service Provider (ISP) Freeserve’s policy of givingevery ‘‘Freeserver’’ a portable digital assistant (PDA) with preloadeddiary and contact information are also destined for more widespreadadoption in the future on the grounds of good common sense.

Other emerging technologies may be harder to relate to the work-place initially but should be watched, such as Bluetooth, the short-rangewireless technology that, among other things, will let devices commu-nicate with each other without any cable.

While people managers can’t be expected to be as interested intechnological developments as IT managers, a watchful eye on thegadget scene should ensure a finger is kept somewhere near the pulse.At the very least, have regular discussions with your new best friendsin IT about up and coming technologies and applications.

TERMS AND JARGON DEMYSTIFIED

Application Service Provider (ASP) – A company that provides anorganization with a service, which could be anything from an e-learning program to a flexible benefits system, which runs across theInternet. It typically charges a monthly fee for this service. The ASPmaintains and upgrades the system.

Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) – One of a wave ofhigh-speed, broadband communication lines. ADSL speeds up accessto the Internet, operating at 500Kbps, around 10 times faster thanan average modem.

Asynchronous learning – The opposite of synchronous learning,this is a method of e-learning which takes place over elapsed – ratherthan real – time. A learner can go online at a time that suits them,download course material and complete it in their own time viadiscussions with a tutor or a group across e-mail, voice mail orthreaded discussions.

Bandwidth – The maximum amount of data that can be transmittedover a connection in a fixed amount of time: the higher thebandwidth, the faster the operation being performed over the

TECHNOLOGY 25

Internet. Downloading video, for instance, demands a wide band-width because it is made up of large amounts of data.

Blended learning – A mixture of online learning, virtual classroomlearning and live traditional classroom-based training, used in anycombination to support the learner. Blended learning is emerging asthe preferred option.

Bluetooth – A short-range wireless technology that allows devices tohook up remotely to the Internet and also interact with each other.Bizarrely named after a Danish king, the technology could ultimatelyallow the microwave to be switched on with the same hand-heldremote-control device that controls the video.

Broadband communications – The new generation of high-speedconnections to the Internet, such as ADSL (Asymmetric DigitalSubscriber Line), and cable modems.

Browser – A piece of software that acts as the window on the Web, thetwo most popular browsers being Internet Explorer and NetscapeNavigator. Most modern Web browsers can display graphics as wellas text, and multimedia information, such as sound and video.

Dial-up connection – A network connection that is established bydialing a telephone number, typically via a modem.

Extranet – A restricted network of computers, usually within theconfines of an organization or group of organizations. It can be usedto train employees based in different offices via e-learning and canalso connect customers, suppliers and dealers, permitting the supplychain to be better educated.

Firewall – Software that scrutinizes information being passed in andout of a network to determine whether it complies with companypolicy. If it doesn’t, the firewall will block its entry onto the network.Filtering software can be loaded onto a firewall to limit or controlaccess to the Internet.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) – An Internet protocol that forms auniversal standard for transferring files from one computer to anotheracross the network.

Graphical User Interface (GUI) – The ‘‘interface’’ between thecomputer and the user, that uses icons and graphics to display amock desktop. The GUI was pioneered by Apple with its Macintoshcomputer.

26 E-PEOPLE

Human Resources Extensible Mark-Up Language (HR-XML) – Aprogramming language specifically created for the HR sector andbased on the infinitely customizable programming language, XTML.It is helping to put universal protocols in place to eliminate tech-nical barriers to online data exchange. Behind it is the HR-XMLConsortium, an independent, nonprofit-making body which wantsto promote the free flow and exchange of data across the Web.Among its first standards is the Staffing Exchange Protocol (SEP) forWeb-based recruiting (see Chapter 3).

Hyperlinks – Links placed within Web pages, which allow you tojump from one Web page to another.

Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML) – The coding language of theWorld Wide Web. HTML basically comprises lines of text markedup using tags enclosed by angled brackets. The tags state how theHTML page should be formatted and displayed.

Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) – Another high-speeddigital telephone service that increases the speed at which you con-nect to the Internet. ISDN transfers data at 128 kilobits per second,faster than analog modems but slower than the newer ADSL.

Intranet – A private network, made up of interlinked local areanetworks (LANs), contained within a company. Its purpose isto share company information and resources among employees.Intranets increasingly form the hub of corporate communicationsin an organization and are often used as a gateway to B2E andself-service tools.

Internet Service Provider (ISP) – A company which connects auser to the Internet – the user effectively piggybacks onto the ISP’sconnection every time he wants to go on the Internet.

Java – A programming language for the Internet, which is used tocreate online applications or little applets (mini applications orprograms) for use within Web pages.

JavaScript – A programming language used for adding increased func-tionality and interactivity to a Web page. It is Javascript that is oftenworking behind the scenes when, say, a date changes on a Web pageor a graphic changes as you roll your mouse over it.

Learning Management System (LMS) – A software-based system thatadministers and tracks online and classroom-based learning. At its

TECHNOLOGY 27

most simple, an LMS registers learners, tracks their progress and alsoprovides reports for management. LMSs are usually required to helpmanage bigger e-learning programs.

Newsgroup – An online community that shares a common interest.There are tens of thousands of newsgroups on the Internet, coveringevery subject imaginable.

Mailing lists – E-mailing lists that users sign up to in order to receiveregular information on a certain subject; usually free of charge.

Portable Digital Assistant (PDA) – A hand-held device that acts as adigital personal organizer. Early PDAs were little more than digitaldiaries but increased functionality means they now allow users tosurf the Net and send e-mail.

Plug-in – A piece of software required in order to run a particular fileor Web page. For instance, music files that can be downloaded fromthe Web often need a plug-in called Real Player before they can belistened to. QuickTime is the video and animation equivalent. Usersare generally told if a page demands a plug-in before they can accessit properly, and are automatically taken to a Website where plug-inscan be downloaded.

Protocol – Sets of rules used by the two extremes of a connection.To ensure successful transmission, the rules or protocols have to bemet at both ends.

Proxy server – This acts as a mediator between the Internet andthe organization’s external access to it. When a user is config-ured to work through a proxy server, her request to access aWeb page first goes to the proxy server instead of directly to thesite. The proxy server makes the request and delivers the page tothe user.

Remote access server – Allows users to remotely access informationon a company network or intranet. An employee can connect fromanywhere in the world as long as they receive security validation.

Server – A powerful computer which stores and shares informationfor a number of PCs, which are typically networked. A server usuallylies at the heart of a LAN (Local Area Network).

Streaming media – This allows a user to play audio or watch videoonline in a steady stream, without first having to wait for all thedata to be downloaded. It usually demands a special plug-in, and the

28 E-PEOPLE

speed with which it is seen or heard is determined by the availablebandwidth.

Synchronous learning – The opposite of asynchronous learning,this method of learning occurs in real time. Typically it mightcomprise live online interaction and learning between tutor andattendee, which takes place in a virtual classroom.

Universal Resource Locator (URL) – A long-winded name for a Webaddress.

Virtual classroom – A set of synchronous tools that facilitate liveonline presentation and training. The tools include video and voiceconferencing, chat and discussion boards.

Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) – A wireless technology thatenables users to connect to the Internet remotely from a mobilephone or some other device.

Webchat – Live chat which takes place over the Web. Some CEOs nowuse Webchats or Webcasts as a method of corporate communication.

WHO MADE THE INTERNET?

There are some very clever and hard-working people to thank forall the wonderful opportunities that e-business has brought us. Backin the 1960s, a group of scientists and engineers at the AdvancedResearch Projects Agency (ARPA) within the Pentagon beavered awayon a network that was to help them share knowledge. (ARPA had beenset up by President Dwight Eisenhower during the period followingthe launch of the Soviet Sputnik satellite.) A network called ARPANETwas created, which enabled them to share resources across a numberof sites and which was to lay the foundation for what we know todayas the Internet. Along the way, the ARPANET network also spawnede-mail.

During the 1980s, other networks were born and they were allable to communicate with each other through TCP/IP (Transmission-Control Protocols/Internet Protocol) protocols. The Internet’s namederives from this protocol.

The Internet remained known only to the chosen few until Englishphysicist Tim Berners-Lee, while working at CERN, the EuropeanLaboratory for Particle Physics in Switzerland, developed a protocolwhich became known as the World Wide Web in 1989. In short,

TECHNOLOGY 29

this put a user-friendly interface on the Internet, making it infinitelyaccessible, and at last providing a way of navigating through the massof information it held.

The media quickly grasped the importance of this interface and inturn broadcast it. Journalists and publishers were able to relate to theWeb’s potential since they were already working in an almost entirelydigital environment. From 1995 articles started to appear in the presswhich placed the invention of the Internet on a par with that of thetelephone, and by the end of the decade the world had a new wonder.

KEY LEARNING POINTS» HR must roll up its sleeves and get stuck in with IT when it

comes to developing future infrastructures and strategies.» The major system vendors are, sooner rather than later, likely to

stop supporting pre-Web systems since migration to the Web isinevitable.

» Have weekly or at least regular meetings with the IT departmentto discuss recent developments.

» Remember the smaller technologies as well as the big ones – theycan be just as effective.

09.0

3.05

Globalization –

‘‘. . . The Seamless

Digital Workplace’’» The Internet is giving rise to a single global economy and a seamless

digital workplace.» The ‘‘one-size fits all’’ approach of multinationals in the past will

not work this time round – countries must take a ‘‘think global, actlocal’’ approach. The key will be an internationalization of businesspractices.

» People, not goods, are already the differentiator, but finding the rightpeople is the biggest challenge to global companies today.

» Online recruitment, employee portals, and e-learning are all vitalto a global company’s survival but thought must go into theirimplementation.

» Organizations and individuals will claim to be global in outlook butparochialism still exists and must be banished if globalization is toflourish. As it is, it will always be impeded by economic inequalities.

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‘‘As the business world globalizes and the Internet grows, wewill start to see a seamless digital workplace. Long before politicalharmony and long before GATT [General Agreement on Tariffs andTrade] talks can reach agreement on the tariff and trade of atoms,bits will be borderless, stored and manipulated with absolutelyno respect to geopolitical boundaries. In fact time zones willprobably play a bigger role in our digital future than trade zones. Ican imagine some software projects that literally move around theworld from east to west on a 24-hour cycle, from person to personor from group to group, one working as the other sleeps.’’

Being Digital, p. 228

This was the vision described by Nicholas Negroponte, a world expertin digital technologies and director of the Media Laboratory of theMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in his book, Being Digital.When it was published in 1995, society at large was only starting tofind out about the Internet and, although networks were facilitatingactivities such as knowledge sharing, the prophecy sounded, to manyat least, light years away. Today, Negroponte, who’s been described as‘‘the man that invents the future,’’ is proving to be pretty close to themark.

Whether you view globalization, the unifying of local and nationaleconomies and societies into a single political, economic and culturalmass, as having arrived or not, no-one can deny that the world is in anunprecedented state of frenzied international activity. Although historyhas shown that global markets do not always map out as predicted(ten years ago, evidence suggested that the twenty-first century wouldbelong to Japanese and the south-east Asian tiger economies, in additionto a collection of dominant global brands), the free global markets arecloser than ever.

Indicators that point to this include the number of workers across theworld who have foreign employers continuing to rise: US corporationsemploy more than 60 million overseas workers; over half of MatsushitaElectric’s employees are located outside the host country, and the sameis true of the Dutch giant Philips, while many Persian Gulf countriesemploy more foreign-born workers than their native populations. Ina microcosm of this, England with its heightened sense of national

GLOBALIZATION 33

pride and heritage has, in recent times, called in a Swede to manageits national football team, a Frenchman, who was formerly in chargeof a company responsible for ticketing and car parks at EuroDisney, tosave its ill-fated Millennium Dome, and an ex-governor of New York tooverhaul London Underground.

The Internet has played a part in shrinking the world for the benefitof trade; while its task is by no means over, other factors are involved. InA Future Perfect: the Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalization,John Micklethwait and Adrian Woodridge cite the ready availability ofcapital across borders and a degree of standardization in management asthe other two main driving forces for the recent surge of activity. ‘‘Theinternationalization of business practices has had its own momentumand is also accelerating,’’ they state in their book (page 29).

When it comes to business practices, it is already evident that the‘‘one size fits all’’ model of international expansion adopted by theprevious generation of US multinationals is increasingly inappropriate,and the successful global players this time round will be those whocan adapt their practices and adopt the oft-repeated maxim, ‘‘Thinkglobal, act local.’’ Unilever’s global HR chief, Andre van Heemstra saidin a recent interview: ‘‘We like to refer to ourselves as a multi-localinternational. It’s part of our value system to behave in Rome as theRomans – to show a deep respect for local culture.’’

The correct mindset is a start, but organizations have to overcomehuge practical difficulties when managing global workforces. Considerthe manager who has to get a workforce of over 20,000 to work togethertowards a common goal, while at the same time fostering respect forone another as well as encouraging them to share ideas quickly andopenly. He must also ensure that the correct global managementstrategy, policies, procedures, and legal frameworks for each countryare in place. A survey carried out by the Bourton Group of 300 seniormanagers places much of this burden at HR’s door, and warns thatcompanies which are still using outdated HR policies will fall at the firsthurdle in the highly competitive global marketplace. On the launchof the report, Bourton’s managing partner James Bentley commented,‘‘There is intense competition for good people and they are not goingto stay with organizations which stick to rigid hierarchies and usemoribund HR policies.’’

34 E-PEOPLE

The Internet has helped the world to achieve a level of paritywhereby most goods and services can be bought from wherever aperson or business is in the world. Senior executives acknowledge thatthe quality of the workforce is the factor most likely to ensure sustain-able success, but securing good people can prove to be difficult, andhiring and retaining the right people across multiple regions is the mainchallenge facing most international businesses today. In a PersonnelToday interview last year, Vance Kearney, head of HR at Oracle EMEA,sent a warning shot across the bows of those companies that fail todevelop their people resource: ‘‘Eventually access to technology willbecome universal: all products and tools will become commodities. Sowhat’s the differentiator? It has to be the quality of the people.’’

COSMOPOLITAN RECRUITING

Recruitment on a global scale was simplified with the advent of the firstonline job boards. It is entirely possible for an individual in Timbuktuto have their resume sitting in a Silicon Valley recruiter’s inbox withinminutes, courtesy of a job site based in London. Whether that candidateis suitable or not is another story, but technology has overcome many ofthe physical barriers of worldwide recruiting. At any one time, Monsterhas nearly 70,000 jobs and over 1.25 million resumes on its Europeandatabase; among its global clients are Pepsi, Federal Express, BT and theBBC. Experience dictates that knowledge of local recruitment customsand laws will benefit the recruiter and the setting up of local operationsby online recruiting companies, as Monster has done, is commendedin the industry’s first worldwide e-recruitment forecast and analysisby IDC. ‘‘It’s important for an e-recruitment service to be local and Ithink that those service providers which are setting up local operationsare adopting a good strategy. You can’t, for instance, treat Europe asthe same unit,’’ says Christopher Boone, senior analyst for e-recruitingresearch at IDC.

In order to attract the best talent, organizations should also fullyexploit their own corporate job boards and sites for global recruitment.Martin James, manager of the European HR service center at IBMEMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), believes that it is ‘‘businesscritical’’ that they do this, and adds that many companies seem to forgethow appealing overseas jobs are to some people. Among those at the

GLOBALIZATION 35

vanguard of what is achievable is Seattle-based visual content companyGetty Images. Its gettylife.com portal allows candidates to experiencean online mini-induction course to the company and also encouragesprospective candidates to leave an e-mail address if they’re interestedin a career with Getty Images, but can’t see a job that appeals to themin the current crop (see Chapter 7).

At the very least, companies should ensure their home page hasa prominent link to a recruitment area. Poorly designed home pagesfrequently ‘‘bury’’ the all-important careers button. In a study byUS-based Cambria Consulting called ‘‘Winning the War for Talent:Effective e-Recruiting Strategies,’’ only 20% of the 140 sites surveyedwere estimated to be easy to use and would encourage more returnvisits. Cisco Systems’s and Hewlett Packard’s sites were ranked amongthe best. Both have job finder search mechanisms that let users searchby region and job type.

THE CORPORATE JAM

Similarly, no self-respecting global player can exist on the world stagewithout an employee portal. While these have been in use in somemajor companies for the past five years, it’s only now that they arebeing exploited to the full for their power to unite global workforces.In June 2001, the corporate world witnessed its own equivalent of LiveAid when over 50,000 IBM employees took part in what is claimed tobe the biggest-ever employee brainstorming session. Those who tookpart may not have had the worldwide pull of stadium band U2 oreven drummer Phil Collins for that matter, nor did the initiative setout to save the Third World but, in its own way, it was a significantlandmark.

World Jam, as it was dubbed, took place on the company’s corporateintranet and revolved around 10 moderated discussion forums, designedto extract instantly usable ideas from staff on best practices regardingIBM customers and operations. It ran for 72 hours and in that time6000 comments and replies were posted by staff – not a bad threedays’ worth of ideas, and more fruitful (and cheaper) than the typicalcorporate shindig at a country house hotel.

The intranet is the principal communication vehicle of IBM, saysJames: ‘‘There’s no question about its importance. We use it for

36 E-PEOPLE

employee survey results, news of latest successes, quarterly results –everything.’’

Such portals help engender feelings of community spirit and a senseof belonging but there does need to be a corporate commitment tocompany-wide communication from the most senior level if technologyis to deliver tangible benefits. Even though a workforce is international,the basic principles of motivation remain the same. Employees stillneed to believe in their product, feel that they belong, and be properlyrecognized and rewarded in return for their commitment. Essentialonline strategies to help reinforce this include regular addresses fromthe CEO in the form of e-mail bulletins. Some companies webcast theirCEO delivering the quarterly results, which can also be downloadedfrom a home page.

Too many Western multinational organizations claim that Englishis the universal language of management, but some are ensuring thattheir portals include their global workforce by translating sectionsof Websites into the host country’s language. Oracle is developingmultilingual global HR systems which permit staff access to self-serviceHR applications in their own language, and IBM EMEA’s Ask HR self-service portal, which services 90,000 employees across 18 countries,is translated into more than 12 languages, including modern Hebrew,the four Nordic tongues and Turkish. James admits that not everythingon the portal is multilingual because it is labour-intensive. ‘‘We try tobe pragmatic rather than all things to all people. The system aims to bean effective HR tool so obviously all the ‘How to’ tools are translated,’’he explains.

Organizations can also maximize their employees’ development byusing e-learning technologies, which not only allow an organizationto deliver training to a global audience but ensure that it is done toa consistent set of worldwide standards. CEOs often react warmly tomention of an e-learning program because it is a cheaper alternativeto classroom-based training. As reported in Chapter 6 of this book, thedrop-out rate is higher than in conventional learning for a number ofreasons, such as poor quality course content and a lack of motivationto do the training. Hence, blended learning, a mixture of e-learning andclassroom-based learning, is currently a preferred option. However,far more exciting for global companies is network learning, where

GLOBALIZATION 37

individuals collaborate across networks (see Chapter 6). Not onlydoes this facilitate knowledge transfer but it can also promote realinnovation, and it also utilizes the strengths of the Web, i.e. fusingminds which are separated by miles.

Language barriers and cultural diversification can, of course, impedethe tutoring of a global audience. The Western world may feel confidentthat English will remain the language of business for years to come butnon-English speakers are the fastest growing segment of the Internetpopulation. And anyway, language is only half the problem when itcomes to making sure an e-learning program is acceptable for a globalaudience. True localization of course material also involves changingthe people who appear in it, altering gestures that don’t translateculturally, as well as re-shooting any accompanying film to includenationals of that country. Having a central narrator who spends a lot oftime crossing his legs could alienate the entire Saudi Arabian sales team,for instance, since the gesture is considered offensive in their country,as is showing the sole of a foot (the ‘‘lowest’’ part of the body). Culturalfaux pas like these can mean that a training program loses credibilityfrom the opening credits.

While there can be no doubt that in one sense we are hurtlingtowards a unified global economy, in another the world has to dealwith a number of physical and mental barriers before we arrive atNegroponte’s totally seamless vision. For every potential million-dollarsoftware project that flits through the world’s time zones twice overin a day from the likes of Microsoft, there is another wood carvingbeing finished in Ecuador that will earn its creator the equivalent ofa few cents. True globalization can only occur when the majorityof the world’s economies are in robust and rude health and, sadly,this is some way off. Equally, many individuals and organizations arestill too parochial in their outlook. It is estimated that fewer than25% of Websites allow a degree of language choice or customiza-tion, which is hardly a solid foundation for a global economy. Alsomeasuring high on the ‘‘think global, act local’’ scale is the reac-tion to Swatch’s attempt to launch a single global timeframe calledInternet Time in 1998. The concept (and clever marketing ploy),which divided the day into Internet beats, was met with total incom-prehension by most people, who think it is far more acceptable

38 E-PEOPLE

to wind their watches forward and back when they pass into newtime zones.

Technology can’t instil economic parity overnight and presents nocure for parochialism, but it can, at least, be used to implement robustpeople infrastructures, which will have a good chance of developingunited and motivated global workforces for tomorrow.

BEST PRACTICE: KPMG: ‘‘E-SKILLS NEEDED IN 73COUNTRIES, PLEASE – AND CAN WE HAVE THOSEBY LUNCHTIME?’’

In 2000, worldwide consultancy KPMG needed to equip its workforcewith the skills required for the new e-business economy. Clients weredemanding e-business solutions and to deliver these new skills andknowledge the company had to transform its own position in themarketplace. Principal consultant at KPMG, Grant Ritchie, says that thepace of technological change meant that they were dealing in ‘‘dogyears’’ (seven years compressed into one) timeframes, so the pressurewas on.

Training was a potential logistical nightmare: the company wantedto train 22,000 staff spread across 73 countries. For the initial project,around 8000 people in the US office had to be trained in the space of6 weeks, with the rest of the global workforce within the year. Thetraining program was to run alongside the newly introduced EnterpriseResource Planning program.

The logistics and timeframes involved meant that conventionalclassroom-based training was out of the question. The consultancyalso had doubts about synchronous classroom learning, believing it tobe instructor-focused, not learner-focused, and leader-paced, not self-paced. E-learning was a natural solution and KPMG secured the servicesof US company Digital Think, which was able to deliver content, thetechnology, and support services.

Digital Think implemented its application server-based (ASP-based)system, which allowed KPMG staff to access courses through a learningportal from their own desktops. The system demands no specialhardware or software and is accessed via a standard Web browser likeInternet Explorer or Netscape Navigator. The learning portal also actsas a learning management system, tracking a learner’s progress.

GLOBALIZATION 39

The course was branded ‘‘Internet 101’’ and covered a range ofe-skills, from basics including an explanation of what the Internet isright up to e-commerce fundamentals. ‘‘Employees found the contentengaging and enjoyed the interactivity,’’ says Ritchie.

Nonetheless, KPMG hit a common problem for anyone implementingan e-learning program: motivating some of its staff to do the courses.So, although it experienced few technical problems, the company hadto work hard on internal communication, education and promotion ofthe project. ‘‘You should never underestimate the change managementaspect of something like this,’’ warns Ritchie.

KPMG has 25,000 people signed up for its online courses andit is working across 73 countries, with 98% of students certified ascompetent. Next, it is setting up learning accounts for employers toaccess 400 specialist learning programs.

KEY LEARNING POINTS» The seamless digital workplace predicted by Nicholas Negro-

ponte in 1995 will soon be here.» Business needs to be adaptable and adopt the ‘‘think global, act

local’’ maxim.» As economic parity spreads, the only differentiator between

organizations will be the people, and the global talent market isa hugely competitive one.

» No global company can exist without an employee portal orcorporate intranet to help unite the workforce.

» E-learning must be properly localized, paying heed to culturaldiversification as well as language barriers.

09.0

3.06

The State of the Art: The

World of Work, but Not

as We Know it» HR no longer has an excuse not to be strategic – the technology is

in place to free it from its administrative drudgery and it must alsolearn the language of business.

» Employers must help employees make sense of work – it’s no longerabout paying people more to keep them happy.

» Employee portals can hold the key to making work a better place tobe.

» The same technology that allows play at work lets us work at home.Employees must accept that IT works both ways.

» Great thinkers – and therefore knowledge workers – cannot clockon and off in conventional working hours.

» In 20 years’ time, the majority of us will be freelance and projectworkers, and recruitment will be a case of matching required skillswith those who can offer them.

42 E-PEOPLE

» End-to-end online recruiters who help at every stage of the recruit-ment process are on the rise and look like helping e-recruitment tofulfill its potential.

» Network learning is more than e-learning – it also lets companiesadvance ideas and can be the facilitator for real innovation.

» E-mail is turning intelligent people into response junkies who respondto and empty their inbox rather than think about what they shouldreally be doing at work.

» Knowing when not to use technology is as important as knowingwhen and how to use it.

» Used properly, technology can make for richer human interaction.

THE STATE OF THE ART 43

According to Internet time, it is @229, and Kim Becker, people strategistat global IT corporation TechnoImperative, goes to the inbox on hervideophone to download the applications for the position of worldwidesales director. Like most global players, the company has long beenworking on Internet time for business (a single global timeframeintroduced by Swiss watch company Swatch 20 years before at theturn of the century). The three digital resumes she has received aremapped onto her core competencies and corporate fit model for aninitial pre-screen, and result in two 97% matches. She fires off an e-mailto both for a preliminary first interview, which will be conductedvirtually, using video conferencing. She also generates an automaticbut personalized rejection letter to the third, who had only scored a70% fit.

Next, she logs on to the corporate employee portal, Matrix (namedafter an old film which used cutting edge special effects when firstreleased), to check how many people have elected their flexiblebenefits for the year 2021–22. So far, gym membership is provingmore popular than private healthcare, reflective of the workforce’saverage age of 23, more interested in the shape of their bodies thanany long-term care of them. Kim has a three-year-old daughter and thecompany’s flexible working policy means that she works at home threedays a week and, as long as she completes her tasks for the day by@562 (2.30 p.m. normal time), she can spend the rest of the time withher child. The last job on her list is to train herself in the latest voicerecognition software. So she goes to her password-protected personaldevelopment folder on the Matrix and downloads the appropriatetraining module. . .

History has given enough repeated warnings over the years of thefolly of attempting to depict the future, but the above scenario hasenough elements of today’s reality in it not to be viewed as a work ofpure fantasy. And implementing many of the online strategies detailedin Chapter 1 will put companies on the road to this high-tech peoplemanagement nirvana. This chapter sets out not only to demonstratethat the above isn’t science-fiction but also to examine the latestthinking and research findings in key areas such as online recruitment,e-learning, knowledge management and self-service, and employeeportals.

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ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

HR departments are the rightful custodians of people strategies andthe move to Web-enabled HR, outsourcing centralized and sharedservices, which eliminates a large part of their traditional workload,finally frees them to assume this mantle. It is time, as renowned HReducator Professor David Ulrich says, for the profession to reinventitself and align the function with the company’s core business. JaneKing, editorial director of globalHR, said in an interview with theseauthors that the profession no longer has an excuse not to be strategic.

‘‘For more than a decade we’ve been hearing about how HR needsto get out of the ghetto, transform the function and get strategic toadd real value to the business. The move to Web-enabled HR andself-service tools means they have a real opportunity to elevate thefunction and set a new agenda for people management strategies.’’

The HR department needs to be proactive to seize the moment since ithas already seen some of its functions dispersed elsewhere. Recruitmentand aspects of performance management have already devolved to linemanagers and, in many organizations, HR has lost control of knowledgemanagement and workflow systems to IT too, largely as result of itsown abdication of technical matters. It is fair to say that line managersshould be involved in recruitment but Thomas Otter, strategy director atsystems integrator Pecaso and one who’s frequently been sandwichedbetween HR and IT, says that losing workflow to the techies was anorganizational mistake. ‘‘I see IT people trying to design jobs and jobstructures and they make all the same mistakes that HR made andlearned from back in the 1960s. What’s more, it shouldn’t be IT that isdetermining workflow in a company.’’

There is no doubt that HR departments of the future will be drasti-cally scaled-back versions of what they are today but the scope of theprofession will be greater. The much vaunted new breed of HR profes-sionals will have to fit a distinct profile: they will be visionary and knowwhere HR will be in the future; they will be capable of taking an overallview of the organization, understand interdepartmental workings andpolitical allegiances, and be accomplished negotiators able to managethe matrix of using suppliers and systems. Above all, they will need

THE STATE OF THE ART 45

to be able to talk the language of business and steer HR from beinga cost center in the eyes of the boardroom to a value-added service,contributing to the organization’s bottom line every step of the way.They will need to do all this while retaining that most old-fashioned,yet maligned, of HR virtues, the personal face.

The description of this high-performing individual closely fits theprofile of the ‘‘heroic’’ HR professional, characterized by the Inter-national Association for Human Resource Information Management(IHRIM) at a conference held in San Diego in June 2001, where leadingthinkers like Dr John Sullivan, professor of HR at San Francisco StateUniversity, began ‘‘to define a roadmap that takes HR into a strategicrole within a new, fluid business environment.’’

Ulrich further develops the profile. He believes that HR profes-sionals should start behaving more like organizational consultants, ableto perform transformational as well as transactional work: ‘‘Transfor-mation work is being done where HR professionals are diagnosticiansand organization consultants to the business – this isn’t, as yet, that faralong.’’ Asked how they should deal with the eclectic mix of remote,portfolio- and project workers they are likely to have to manage, headds: ‘‘The contract employees of the future will be free agents whocome into a firm with a clear set of expectations. Internal HR folks willneed to become much better at managing contracts, expectations, andsocialization of new employees.’’

A DIFFERENT KIND OF EMPLOYEE ALTOGETHER

If a total reinvention of the profession wasn’t enough, tomorrow’speople managers are going to have to be far more imaginative thanpreviously. David Cannon, a research fellow in organizational behaviorat the London Business School, has noticed a significant change inmindset of students over the past few years.

‘‘They’re bright students and are getting paid OK by their compa-nies but many of them just can’t make sense of work any more.Work used to be about world domination, but it isn’t any more;it used to be about beating the opposition but now everyone’smerging. They’re also thinking: ‘We used to sell water and now

46 E-PEOPLE

we’re selling TV as well, and we used to have a CEO that wasaround for years, but now they’re gone after three.’’’

In the light of such an unsettling backdrop, the man who spent 15years writing about and working with Generation X in Canada believesthat companies have got to help give individuals a greater sense of theworld. ‘‘Organizations need to help them feel that what they’re doingis meaningful and that it makes sense again,’’ he says.

If Cannon’s depiction of the workforce’s mental state is true, thenbusinesses, already trying to adapt to changes in the balance of powerbetween employer and employee, face a fresh set of challenges. More-over, it is a condition that can’t necessarily be treated by conventionalrewards and incentives (although these may help) since it cuts fardeeper. His sentiments are echoed by Peter Senge, director of theCenter for Organizational Learning at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology, who said at the Hay International conference in Florencein May 2001 that work has to have meaning for people and ‘‘you can’tcompensate for that with money.’’

Central to Cannon’s remedy is to make work more intellectuallyrewarding as well as more entertaining. One of his suggestions isto create an employee portal that will, among other things, enableemployees to challenge their rivals in another corporate at computergames. ‘‘Instead of employers just worrying about capturing customers,they must worry about capturing employees as well,’’ says Cannon.

Devices like this blur the boundaries between work, home, andsocial life and can be a shortcut to making the office more agreeableto employees. When the current generation of computer game playersenter the world of work – and this isn’t the lightweights who owned aPlayStation from the age of eight, but the Pokemon/Digimon generationwhose thumbs were twiddling at Nintendos and Gameboy Advancesby the time they were three – it will be a prerequisite that work is ashigh-tech as home – and as much fun.

IT services company Wipro is attempting to bond its 9500 employeeswho are spread across the world through its Channel W Internet portal,described as the new e-home for ‘‘Wiproites.’’ Wiproites, average age26, are typically talented, fun-loving individuals who spend most oftheir time in front of a computer. Channel W is home to all the features

THE STATE OF THE ART 47

expected in an employee portal, but it is also designed and promoted inthe company as a single window through which employees can interactwith each other, be kept up to date with events both inside and outsideof the company, as well as organizing their social calendar. Goods canbe bought and sold on the site and it features chat, message boards, andaffinity groups and polls. ‘‘Channel W is a product of employee input.We had an existing intranet that essentially was used for informationpublishing and applications transactions but the employees need more.Something that they could relate to and something that was fun,’’ saysTamal Das Gupta, chief technology officer of Wipro.

It also serves as a corporate communication tool with reference arti-cles, resources, and white papers. As a knowledge-intensive company,Wipro is acutely aware that it can’t afford not to share the volumesof information it amasses. ‘‘Managing our intellectual capital efficientlyhas become one of the most critical factors that will help create busi-ness value and provide competitive advantage for Wipro,’’ says VivekPaul, vice chairman. Other more serious uses include the forming ofknowledge groups, with specialist interest groups on Bluetooth andJava already formed.

Wipro derives yet more value from the portal by using it as a galleryto show off the creativity of its workforce and technology throughChannel W. And some customers have been so impressed that theywant one just like it. (In August 2001, Wipro announced that it hassigned one unnamed customer with more to follow.)

More traditionally minded employers may contend that Wipro’sinitiative only encourages employees to waste time at work, serving onlyas a fast-track to reduced productivity and increased telephone bills.But Richard Reeves, director of consulting at the UK-based IndustrialSociety, which is currently undertaking a major investigation, callediSociety, into the interrelationship between work, life, and informationtechnologies, believes that employers should be more laid-back aboutthis because the same technology that lets them play at work enablesthem to work from home. Employers should ‘‘give up the chase,’’he says. ‘‘IT cuts both ways; there’s a challenge for employers andemployees to use it to help create a more fluid way of working.Employers can’t expect knowledge workers to clock on at nine a.m.and off at five p.m. – great thinkers can’t clock on and off.’’

48 E-PEOPLE

Reeves’ attitude may find favor in enlightened knowledge-basedprofessions, but it is unlikely to be tolerated in call centers wherethe number of waiting callers is permanently lit up on an elec-tronic board with the time spent on each enquiry closely monitored.The findings of a survey carried out on the European workforceby Websense, a Web management software developer, revealed that41% of employees admitted using the Internet for personal surfing atwork for more than three hours a week. The Web@WorkSurvey2001(carried out for Websense by Taylor Nelson Sofres) surveyed 800companies in the UK, Italy, France, and Germany and found thatnon-work surfing can cause hostility between co-workers – 31% ofrespondents would consider reporting a surf-happy colleague to theboss, or voice disapproval themselves. Undoubtedly, the Internetallows people to skip work invisibly: personal e-mails have becomethe new personal phone call, only in cyberspace no-one can hearyou chat. Employers wishing to limit personal surfing time withoutappearing too dogmatic can turn to Internet filtering software forhelp. This can be set to allow access to some sites but not others,so, typically, employers could ban all porn sites from the work-force. Some software is even sophisticated enough to permit perkssuch as an hour’s shopping at WalMart.com. 71% of respondentsin the survey said it was acceptable to have Internet use managedat work.

A degree of trust between employer and employee is essential ifmanagement is to feel relaxed about the mobile working revolution.Companies must find a way of making sure that employees perma-nently on the road (or in the air) are connected to the company,emotionally and culturally, as well as physically and practically. Thelatter is in the laps of the developers but the former is down tothe employer. Providing employees with access to a community Webportal irrespective of where they are is a means to this end, and thisis already happening at companies such as Nokia and ICL (see casestudy in Chapter 7). Nokia is piloting a project which allows 7500managers around the world to access staff reports, enabling themto authorize job transfers, promotions, and pay reviews remotely viaWAP technology. Nokia’s fleet of managers often end up working onprojects in completely different countries from their staff. ‘‘The system

THE STATE OF THE ART 49

allows a fast response, regardless of time zones, which is importantin this new global way of working,’’ says Nokia’s global HR director,Lynn Rutter.

ICL, meanwhile, is mindful that 35% of its workforce is going to bemobile by 2002, and has invested heavily in ways to ensure they feelconnected (see case study in Chapter 7).

While it is easy to get carried away by the potential of the mobileInternet, in many ways it is nothing more than a delivery mechanismin search of applications. Testimony is the apathy with which peoplegreeted WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) because, after all thehype, it delivered a less than fulfilling user experience. There was noshortage of Websites offering WAP content, but mobile phone screenswere too small to peruse anything other than the smallest pieces oftext. It was also cumbersome to key in Web URLs (so users tended tolimit surfing to within their service provider portals).

Third-generation (3G) mobile phones promise multimedia content,including video, and will deliver localized content courtesy of built-inglobal positioning (GPS) software; it is easy to see how a global roadwarrior finding himself in a strange location could make best use of thistechnology. But what’s needed according to PricewaterhouseCoopers’‘‘Technology Forecast: 2001–2003’’ are new ‘‘killer apps,’’ which thereport states will be significantly different to anything else on theWeb today. These will also be unique to the mobile Internet. ‘‘We areentering an age of personal wireless communications when more thana billion people will be within seconds of each other, no matter wherethey are, by means of a device they carry on their body, in their pocket,or in their purse,’’ says Bill Cross, a management consultant at PwCand a Canadian authority on the findings in the report. The next bigquestion left to be answered, he says, is how these devices will interactwith each other and the Internet.

Whatever the answer to the above question, the potential power ofa mobile Internet is awesome. As it is, the desktop version isn’t doinga bad job of creating a single world market in goods and services. Tocater for it, we are becoming a global society of mobile workers, remoteworkers, portfolio workers, project workers, and e-lancers. Even if itdoesn’t feel like it on a gray Monday morning, the Internet is changingthe face of work as we know it.

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True, there will always be some professions that demand workersto be behind a counter, or in the office, but technology is unshack-ling the worker from the desktop as never before and employersneed to know how they can use technology to manage this situationand use it to their advantage. The same technologies being used atwork are frequently found in the home and, as these lines becomeblurred, enlightened employers will place emphasis on meeting objec-tives and getting the job done rather than expecting every employeeto be at his desk between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. everyday.

Karen Morris, formerly HR director of Internet service providerGlobix, and now head of HR at outsourcing telebusiness agencyTelecom Express, believes that by 2020, we will all be self-employedand be able to take our skills wherever they’re needed. In an article onthe future of work in Personnel Today, the UK’s weekly magazine forsenior HR executives, she states:

‘‘I would argue that we are all self-employed now, we just don’trealize it. I’m self-employed, I just happen to sell 100% of mytime to Globix. In 20 years from now we won’t be doing that.Work will be broken down into specific tasks and allocated as aset of specific measurable objectives. We will only do those taskswhich are our specific strengths and that work will be able to bedone any time, any place in the world, as long as the objectivesare met.’’

The impact this will have on recruitment and selection is radical. ‘‘Wewon’t discriminate on the grounds of sex, race, age, or even personality;we will know that a person has the skills to meet our measurableobjectives,’’ Morris goes on to say. ‘‘But it won’t be recruitment aswe understand it now, with the traditional interview – someone willswitch on their PC, tap in the skills required to a computer databaseand a few minutes later we will be told that so many people have thematching skills to do the work.’’

Employers won’t have to wait until 2020 for this to be a reality.These skills-matching technologies are with us already, according tothe first worldwide e-recruiting forecast and analysis carried out by

THE STATE OF THE ART 51

IDC. ‘‘Companies can post the skills they need for projects and thesecan be matched with skills profiles of candidates, thereby automaticallyfiltering the candidate pool prior to the assessment stage,’’ says Christo-pher Boone, senior analyst for e-recruiting research at IDC. ‘‘Matchingtools can be used to identify current hot skills or those which are inshort supply.’’

The IDC findings forecast that the worldwide e-recruiting marketwill rise from $1.6bn in 2000 to $13.4bn by 2005, with North Americaleading the market and Asia Pacific the fastest-growing. It is likely tojoin a suite of other technologies in the recruiter’s armoury to fightwhat management consultancy McKinsey & Co described as the ‘‘Warfor Talent’’ in its 1998 study (see entry in Chapter 8). Another trendis the rise of end-to-end online recruitment service companies, whichwill help e-recruitment fulfill its potential.

Previously, Internet recruitment hasn’t always been integrated ormanaged well, with random use of job boards by recruiters deliveringquantity rather than quality. End-to-end recruiters solve this and otherassociated problems, such as the inability to track and manage applica-tions as well as satisfactorily screen out inappropriate applicants earlyon. Boone explains:

‘‘The end-to-end companies help organizations through every stageof the e-recruitment process. They help prepare the job descrip-tion, they’ll post the advertisement to whichever channels theclient wants (corporate job site and intranet, external job site andeven traditional media), help collect the resumes, assess the candi-dates according to the client’s criteria and carry out behavioralassessments based on corporate fit, facilitate interview scheduling,initiate background checks, generate and offer letters, and thentransfer data into an existing HRMS [human resources managementsystem] upon hire.’’

Customers instruct the service company on precisely which testingthey’d like built into the system and finally rank the top 10 candidates sothe recruiter is delivered a tightly matched shortlist of people with theright qualifications and corporate fit. Boone believes the process canbe further honed and that currently psychometric testing and similarmethods aren’t being used as fully as they could be.

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‘‘According to the research, skills assessment was the lowest interms of services adopted by users, however, this is one pieceof the puzzle where there is lots of room for growth. Employerscan create profiles of key performers and map these againstcandidates to find the best fit. Ultimately, all a recruiter shouldhave to do is post a job and wait for the shortlist to arrive onhis computer desktop. This is the situation end-to-end e-recruitingservice providers are striving to reach.’’

WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

With the transactional systems implemented and an overall frameworkof people management strategies in place, managers can turn theirattention to how technology can be leveraged to continually developthe organization and the workforce. This means more than initiatinge-learning programs and knowledge management systems – althoughthey are part of it – it means exploiting the networking opportunitiesfor learning that the Internet and company intranets permit.

One of the problems with e-learning, which experiences a higherdrop-out rate than conventional learning programs, is that users have tobe sufficiently motivated to go online, unsupervised, to do it. Althoughlearners can communicate on the subject with others via chat roomsand message boards, it can feel like a one-way learning process. Askanyone who has implemented an e-learning program, and they will saythat the difficult part is not getting it to work technically but marketingit internally to make sure employees access it and have a compellingreason to do so. Notable success stories, however, are Unisys’ virtualuniversity where a blend of online, classroom and self-study has beenresponsible for training over 12,000 employees.

Network learning, where communities of people link up and collab-orate, is a development one stage on from e-learning. The best exampleof it in action is in the work of the programmers who collaboratedacross networks and came up with the Linux computer operatingsystem. Network learning has its own momentum and the livelier,brighter, and more stimulated the minds, the greater the potentialfor innovation, as spelt out in the article ‘‘Learning to Innovate’’ byJoe Cothrel of Participate.com, Karina Funk of Cap Gemini, Ernst &Young’s Center for Business Innovation, and Crystal Schaffer of Cap

THE STATE OF THE ART 53

Gemini, Ernst & Young’s l’Universite. ‘‘What makes networked learningcompelling to the modern business, however, is not merely its methods,tools, approaches, or technologies, but the output it is designed togenerate. At its heart, networked learning is not merely an exercise inknowledge transfer, it is also a process for innovating and advancingideas within an organization.’’ Skeptics might like to chew over whata network learning group comprising Einstein, Descartes, and Proustmight have come up with.

There are pockets of network learning existing on a wide scaleon the Internet, and newsgroups, of which the Web has hundreds ofthousands, are one form of it, as they link a group of people, boundby a particular subject; to this can be added a proliferation of moreinformal network coaching facilities. The HR universe is fortunate inthat almost every Web-based HR resource provides a community areawhere managers can go to for advice, problem sharing, and exchangeof ideas. Employees will find their own favorite community corners ofthe Internet, whether this is an alumni area of their old college (some ofwhich offer powerful global networking opportunities) or the Websiteof their preferred business magazine (Fast Company has one of the bestexamples of these). However, the onus is on the company to put thenecessary in-house infrastructure in place so that communities focusedon core business can flourish.

Doubtless a futuristic people strategist who opened this chapterwould have a clutch of self-managed online learning communities onthe go at any one time. And the workplace stimulus would be such thatthe virtual suggestion box on the TechnoImperative employee portalwould be permanently overloaded with new business ideas.

Or would it? What if the upshot of all this technology and automationwas that employees were instilled with corporate apathy rather thanstimulated to achieve great things? David Cannon is already filled witha sense of disquiet. ‘‘I see very bright students who have been turnedinto response junkies by e-mail,’’ he explains. ‘‘They open their inboxesand respond to whatever is in them instead of thinking what real workthey should do today.’’

The answer, he believes, lies in knowing when not to use technologyas much as knowing when to use it, and uses human relationships as anexample. ‘‘If you use all the technological tools we have, such as e-mail

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and answerphones to prepare for the interaction and find out whateach needs to know, human interaction is a much richer experience.’’

Applying this on a corporate level will see human resources harnesstechnology to be organizationally more effective and also to enhancethe human touch – ironically, the very thing that people fear technologyis eroding.

KEY LEARNING POINTS» HR must become more strategic. Tomorrow’s HR professional

will be a mixture of the pragmatist and the visionary – as wellas being a skilled negotiator. He or she will act more like adiagnostician and organizational consultant than a traditionalHR person.

» In these days of mergers and strategic alliances, some employeeshave trouble making sense of work any more. Hence employersmust make work more intellectually rewarding and entertaining.

» Blurring the lines between the home and the office can be a wayto endear the workforce to work. Employee portals can helpachieve this and should be exploited.

» The same technology that lets us play at work lets us work athome and employers must recognize that this works both ways.

» The power of the mobile Internet will be awesome, but it needsthe killer apps to realize its potential.

» Increasingly, more of us will become project workers andrecruitment will become more task-specific in some sectors.

» Network learning can lead to real innovation in a company –employers should implement the structures for it and allow it togather its own momentum.

» If used properly, technology can help enhance the human touchaspects of interaction and make for richer, more productiveone-to-one conversations or meetings.

09.0

3.07

Case StudiesA number of case studies of organizations are included in this chapter.They include companies which have maximized the benefit of corpo-rate intranets, online recruitment methods and online flexible benefitssystems. The chapter also features a profile of a major corporate whichhas outsourced its HR function.

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CASE STUDY 1: ORACLE: COMPENSATION ANDBENEFITS – MAKING A STRATEGIC DIFFERENCE

In 2000 the Oracle Corporation’s CEO and chairman, Lawrence Ellison,the man who in 1996 said the Internet, not the PC, would be the deliveryplatform of the future, declared that his organization would become atrue e-business and place all of its business functions online. It did, andclaimed that it saved $1bn by doing so, which was pretty impressiveeven by Ellison’s standards. Around $7mn of these savings were due tothe implementation of an HR management system (HRMS) which usedOracle’s own technology and incorporated self-service HR tools.

Oracle, whose headquarters are in California, is the world’s leadingsupplier of information management software, and the world’s secondlargest independent software company. It has annual revenues of morethan $10.9bn, and sells its suite of Internet-enabled e-business softwareand tools in more than 145 countries worldwide.

The company employs 43,000 people across the globe, with 21,000of those based in the US. In 2000, it was hiring over 200 employeesper week in the US alone. Although its overall employee populationwas set to grow by more than 10% in that year, its HR staff growth waszero thanks to the deployment of self-service systems. It describes B2E(business to employee) services as a business imperative.

Using the Oracle HRMS, it is consolidating over 70 disparate HRsystems around the world into one global system. One of the aims it isworking towards is to deliver 100% Internet-based self-service tools to allmanagers and employees, to automate nearly every routine transactionvia self-service and workflow automation, as well as change the profileof the HR staff away from administration towards design, management,and consulting. ‘‘Clearly, in the e-business era, HR representatives’and managers’ roles must be transformed,’’ stated Oracle’s senior vicepresident of human resources Joyce Westerdahl in the company’s WhitePaper on e-business technologies. ‘‘Our HR professionals now havemore capacity to engage in strategic initiatives focused on recruitment,training and retention.’’

The area of compensation and benefits, once the HR equivalent of adusty old back room, has become key to any recruitment and retentionstrategy. This is largely thanks to technology breathing new life intothe area. Certainly you can’t argue with the figures: self-service has

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enabled Oracle to reduce staff ratios from 1 HR person to 800 staff toalmost 1 to 3000. You don’t need to be a mathematician to work outthat this allows Oracle to employ 3000 more employees before it hasto hire another benefits representative. It also claims to be saving over$200,000 each year by eradicating phone-based enrolment in favor ofself-service.

Web-enabled compensation and benefits strategies are not just aboutsaving money, however. Reward and recognition is becoming part ofthe culture at major corporations because they know that, if they lockemployees in for money, then they also risk losing them for money.Oracle is no exception and its UK office, which employs around 4000people, is currently pioneering the use of the Oracle Advanced Benefitssystem, which it claims is one of the most sophisticated online flexiblebenefits systems available. The system automates the administrationof compensation and benefits, and provides a Web-enabled interfaceto allow employees to choose to have some benefits and not others.It detects critical events and changes in an employee’s life (such asmarriage and promotion) from the Oracle HR system and then changesthe employee’s eligibility for benefits and allowances and their electableoptions appropriately.

‘‘Flexible benefits offer a way of unlocking the value of the contractand recognizing the different needs and wishes of employees at differentstages of their employment and allowing them to change their benefitsas their circumstances change,’’ says Richard Lowther, head of HR forthe UK and South Africa. ‘‘Employees view their benefits through theOracle self-service site on our intranet. It calculates the cost and taximplications of their choices in real time.’’

Individuals can elect their benefits once a year, but if they expe-rience a significant life change (birth, marriage, death, divorce), theycan revise their options. Benefits include private medical insuranceand health screening for employees and their families, holidays, lifeassurance for employees and their partners, permanent health insur-ance, dental insurance, critical illness cover, PC leasing, companycar, childcare vouchers, additional pension contributions, and cash.Employee satisfaction surveys and other feedback mechanisms showthat it is a popular scheme with employees and is a valued part of theiroverall package.

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So has it genuinely helped to recruit and retain employees? ‘‘Wehave known individuals who have joined us because of the flexiblebenefits package when they have had several other offers availableto them,’’ reports Lowther. ‘‘There have been some indications thatstaff turnover has reduced since the introduction of flexible benefits;however, attributing cause and effect is extremely difficult.’’

Oracle could not deliver and manage the benefits program it has atan acceptable cost without the systems to support it. ‘‘Often flexiblebenefits systems are managed by external administrators. Using theOracle system, the management of the program is done in-house withthe support of our [benefits] suppliers and no increase in headcount,’’explains Lowther. ‘‘If we had outsourced flexible benefits administra-tion, the cost for our size of organization would probably be in excessof £250,000 per annum.’’

Oracle plans to offer increased flexibility via the system (employeesare already offered up to 43 days holiday per year) and is currentlylooking at adding pensions information in conjunction with its admin-istrators (it currently outsources pensions). ‘‘We also want to work onmore analytics to help line managers and compensation managers assesshow benefits are best utilized; to add more self-service line managertools to administer compensation, and links to value-added informationproviders to provide advisory content to employees,’’ says Lowther.

Oracle so far seems to have succeeded in using technology tostreamline and reduce costs, as well as actually automating its waytowards a more personalized system as far as employees are concerned.The self-service tools reinforce employee ownership of their data andbenefits package and, as a knock-on effect, their careers. One of itsaims, it says, is to manage the employment relationship on an individualbasis, and this is now happening. Undoubtedly, it has set a fine examplefor others to follow, but then again it ought to. After all, ‘‘it has thetechnology.’’

KEY INSIGHTS» A reduction in HR costs through automation and self-service

saved Oracle $7mn. It contributed significantly to Oracle’soverall saving of $1bn when it turned itself into an e-business.

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» Flexible benefits systems offer a healthier alternative to lockingstaff in with money.

» Self-service benefits tools have enabled Oracle to reduce HR/em-ployee ratios from 1:800 to 1:3000.

» The tools are seen as a business imperative by Oracle, andreinforce an employee’s ownership of their own data.

Timeline» 1999: E-business initiative launched.» 2000: CEO Lawrence Ellison announces that Oracle will become a

true e-business and will run all business processes on the Internet,saving $1bn in the process.

» 2001: Oracle Advanced Flexible benefits system launched in UKoffice.

CASE STUDY 2: GETTY IMAGES DRIVINGRECRUITMENT

Getty Images’ life history is a tale of organic growth and mass acqui-sition. The visual content provider (in the old days they were calledpicture libraries) was founded by Mark Getty (grandson of John Paul)and Jonathan Klein in 1995. Over time, it acquired 28 companies inNorth America, Asia Pacific, Latin America and EMEA and currentlyemploys 2500 people across 22 countries. With its headquarters inSeattle, it has an annual turnover of $484mn.

Although not a huge global company in terms of employee numbers,its rapid growth program has given HR a number of significant chal-lenges, not least of which was to create a single company culture andphilosophy within a period of 12 months. This culture also needed to bereflected in its recruitment and retention strategy, as part of its goal tobecome an employer of choice and attract the best talent in the world.Less than two years on, it can claim to be a unified global business andhas halved its voluntary employee turnover with an estimated annualsaving of $2mn.

Getty’s approach provides a useful blueprint for anyone faced withthe task of implementing an online recruitment strategy. At the heartof it is the gettylife.com portal, which is the key to creating a perceived

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employer brand and imparting the same consistent employer of choicemessage to potential candidates. Significantly, use of the portal alsoreduced the need to use recruitment agencies, press advertisements,or other recruitment Websites to get that message across, resultingin a $1000 reduction in cost per hire. ‘‘[Also as a result] recruit-ment advertising driving candidate traffic to gettylife.com is morevisual and representative of our product offering, as we can concen-trate on amazing imagery rather than lengthy text,’’ says recruitmentmanager Clare Galvin. A recent press ad featured one of Getty’s spec-tacular snowscapes, with a skier in the foreground, with the legend‘‘Work@Getty – Dream jobs in an amazing company. Discover more atgettylife.com.’’

For the recruitment team, the gettylife.com portal provides theperfect universe to implement its policies and strategies. One of theseis to advertise all vacancies in-house first. Because everyone in thecompany has access to global job opportunities via the portal, this hasled to a higher proportion of internal hires. It also sends out a posi-tive message about internal career progression – at home and abroad.Another of its functions is to provide those outside the company withan insight into what it is like to work at Getty and what opportunitiesare being offered. In addition to getting a taste of what the companyis all about, prospective applicants can view a job specification online,along with Getty’s six core values, which are heavily promoted all overthe site. It’s part of the company’s drive to build a ‘‘talent community,’’allowing it to contact people who have expressed interest in workingfor Getty as and when the right opportunity arises.

‘‘It is much more precise and candidate-centric than others [jobsites] which are really just CV dumping sites,’’ says Ralph Tribe, vicepresident of HR, Getty Images. ‘‘We won’t ask people to leave their CVunless there is a specific job they are applying for. We will ask peopleto leave their e-mail address though, if they are interested in hearingmore about opportunities at Getty Images.’’

Tough trading conditions within the advertising and design marketsis currently putting pressure on Getty Images’ revenue and, with a totalban on using recruitment agencies, interest has redoubled in the talentcommunity. ‘‘This has forced us to get much more intentional aboutdeveloping and managing our own pool of candidates. Fortunately we

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are finding that attracting good people is getting easier as the jobmarket cools,’’ says Tribe.

Getty Images also operates a Global Employee Referral Programwhich encourages employees to drive their personal contacts togettylife.com in order to sell Getty as an employer of choice. Thishas brought a recruitment success rate of one in four (prior to itsintroduction the conversion in the EMEA region was 1 in 10); again thishas significantly impacted on cost per hire. The referral program is alsoincentivized and the amount is calculated on the basis of the cost perhire in the local market, with the referrer getting 50% of the averagecost per hire. In the next 12 months, Getty Images hopes to raise itssuccess rate to two in five.

But it is not enough simply to recruit successfully; Getty needed tofollow through by improving its retention rates of both existing andfuture employees. As part of the integration of the 28 companies, theworkforce had to be reduced by 20%, which wasn’t the best motiva-tional backdrop possible when a company is trying to focus on retentionstrategies, especially since corporate communication had been frag-mented. However, through tirelessly communicating the message thatGetty Images is an ‘‘amazing’’ company with one vision, one leader-ship, and one philosophy, it managed to turn the situation around.A quarterly global newsletter called ‘‘Focus’’ was introduced, supple-mented by a fortnightly update, and messages from the CEO on newstaff announcements and other company-wide issues are circulatedglobally via e-mail. Additionally, any external press releases are alsosent simultaneously to all employees via e-mail.

Voluntary turnover at the end of the integration exercise was 15%.In the last six months Getty Images has introduced three programscentered on internal communications, training, and reward, whichhave specifically contributed to the halving of voluntary employeeturnover to 8%. There are no plans to reduce it further, as Tribeexplains: ‘‘We want a certain degree of churn just to keep a reasonableflow of new blood into the company, particularly given that total globalheadcount will stay static or possibly reduce a little further.’’

Different methods of, and inconsistent standards in, performancemanagement were addressed with the introduction of a global perfor-mance management system based on company values, clear objectives,

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and tasks. This system ensures that everyone is being assessed inthe same way and that there is clarity over roles – a major HRchallenge of the integration into a single global company. This,coupled with the introduction of a standard bonus for all staff globally(linked to both company performance and their individual objectivesas set in the performance management system) has, according toTribe, ‘‘dramatically enhanced the focus on meeting clearly articulatedperformance standards. I would say that a clear focus on measur-able performance is now part and parcel of the Getty culture,’’he says.

To further support career progression, a global employee develop-ment program called Getty University is available online and it plans toplace all sales training online later this year (which accounts for 50%of the entire workforce as well as 50% of total training activity). Muchof this training will be to gear employees up for the next big phase ofGetty Images’ evolution, the launch of an e-commerce portal, which isplanned for October 2001.

KEY INSIGHTS» Integrate 28 separate businesses around the world into one

single business in the unprecedented time-scale of 12 months.» Reduce voluntary turnover from 15% to 8%, with an estimated

saving to the business of $2mn annually.» Reduce the need for conventional media recruitment advertising

due to gettylife.com portal (resulting in $1000 reduction in costper hire).

» Global Employee Referral Program has brought a recruitmentsuccess rate of one in four.

Timeline

» July 1999: Creation of Getty Images as a single global business.» September 2000: First ever global, multilingual online employee

feedback survey.» January 2001: Launch of one of the world’s first global recruitment

portals, called gettylife.com.

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» October 2001: Implementation of three major Web-based applica-tions: Oracle Financials; service center intranet (a global sales orderpurchase system); and gettyimages.com – a full commerce portal.

CASE STUDY 3: ICL: ANATOMY OF A COMPANYINTRANET

ICL, the IT solutions company owned by the Japanese Fujitsu Group, isof the ‘‘if you’re an e-business, act like one’’ school of thought. Such amindset is driving the company to bring all of its Web-enabled projectsand processes into an ongoing worldwide program called e-ICL andan integrated, Web-enabled e-HR system is a vital component of thisprogram.

ICL, which employs over 19,000 people in 40 countries around theworld and has an annual turnover of over £2bn (for the year endingMarch 2001), was one of the first organizations to create a company-wide intranet in 1996. Based at its London headquarters, it was theresult of a knowledge-sharing initiative throughout the company. Fromthe start it was branded as Cafe VIK, which stands for ‘‘Valuing ICLKnowledge’’, and, in keeping with the view that new services toemployees have to be marketed almost like a fast-moving consumergood (FMCG), its launch in 1996 saw the company giving away mousemats and coasters sporting the Cafe VIK logo.

‘‘It’s helping HR to play a leading role in developing strategy andmanaging people. After that, the next phase will be to use it as amanagement tool,’’ says Deirdre Murphy, group employment managerat ICL in the UK, who has been closely involved in its development.‘‘We are reviewing the options to provide managers with direct accessto management information relating to their team members.’’

Inside Cafe VIKCafe VIK is a set of portals which enable employees to access a rangeof information and services. It can be personalized with the My CafeVIK tool.

Self-service toolsEmployees can view their current employment terms and benefitsonline, update personal details directly on the HR database via the Cafe

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VIK interface, and can order equipment that they need for their jobs,such as IT kit and mobile phones, via an online authorization process.Cafe VIK also incorporates a flexible benefits system, which allowsemployees to make choices on their benefits package and view itsvalue at any time. ‘‘We used to distribute a printed benefits statementonce annually but now employees can view it any time they like,’’ saysMurphy – and this means 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The range of benefits can be tailored to suit individual lifestyles orcircumstances and they can be exchanged and traded online. Employeescan trade up to three days holiday for their cash value, for instance.The benefits are elected annually and staff are given a four to five weekwindow to decide on them. ‘‘We have a lot of long-term employeeswho may be on 30 days holiday and find they can’t use it all so they tendto trade down. Overall, people are happy with their benefits package;it’s the new recruits who like to be given the choice,’’ commentsMurphy.

Additionally, employees can choose from a range of discountedbenefits (such as travel insurance and health club membership), andcompany-provided schemes such as life assurance and dental cover.‘‘We even do a pet insurance,’’ says Murphy. ‘‘For all of these services,we use our buying power to get good rates to pass on to employeesand they can access details about all of them on Cafe VIK.’’

Learning gatewayThis provides a single portal to all available learning and develop-ment opportunities. Learning programs are supplied by the e-learningprovider KnowledgePool. The portal features a database of informa-tion for over 5000 learning options including online, CD-ROM, andclassroom-based courses, books, and videos. A community home pagehas links to a range of additional material such as management devel-opment information and online libraries.

Homeworking communityICL believes that by 2002, 35% of its employees will be mobile workersand its growing band of remote workers can access the intranet toensure that they can operate effectively from home or wherever theyare via the Extended Connected Office, which will give them accessto mobile phone networks or fixed lines, e-mail facilities, the Internet,

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and the Cafe VIK intranet. It’s available on laptops, PDAs (PersonalDigital Assistants) or WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) phones andis currently being trialed by over 50 ICL employees in the UK as part ofVodafone’s General Packet Radio Services (GPRS) business trials.

E-inductionNew joiners can access a short walk-through on general informationabout ICL, its values, employment policies, and key information aboutbeing an ICL employee.

Knowledge managementCafe VIK began as a knowledge-sharing initiative and this has becomepart of the culture at ICL. Currently there are over 20,400 documentspublished on it. The 15 Professional Communities are skills groups runon the Website and based on a common set of competencies brokendown into detailed technical skills. Career maps for each ProfessionalCommunity lead to role profiles and self-assessment forms which canbe accessed through the Learning Gateway portal.

The Knowledge Communities cover 330 different subjects wherepeople can share knowledge. Any member of the workforce can starta new community although the Cafe VIK administrators have to verifythat it is an appropriate subject for a community. ‘‘If you’re working ona bid with a group of people, for instance, you can set up a confidentialcommunity for that. The communities are unit- and division-controlled[by employees], which is easy for us to manage, although obviouslyadministrators check that the content is suitable for publication,’’explains Murphy.

Like the Professional Communities, there is the facility for onlinediscussion groups and chat rooms and there are mechanisms forfeedback. The Microsoft Windows XP Community might not soundthe most scintillating of places to hang out in cyberspace, but it ispopular, and indeed necessary, because it provides updates on thelatest Microsoft technology and beta-released projects, encouraginguser feedback.

While it is easy to assess the return on investment of automatingtransactional HR functions, quantifying the value of an intranet such asCafe VIK is more difficult. ‘‘We measure the effects on employees viafeedback; this feedback has been very positive particularly in relation

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to the simplicity and ease of use of the system,’’ says Murphy. ‘‘Ourattrition rate is 14% less than the industry average.’’

Murphy adds that people like to use the system because it is simplerthan the service it replaced. ‘‘My advice to companies thinking ofdeveloping an e-HR initiative is to make sure it is people-led, nottechnology driven. That way you’ll develop a cost-effective program,not a whiz-bang system that no one uses.’’

Many of ICL’s current online people strategies are in the area ofmobile computing and communications. As well as the ExtendedConnected Office program, it is also kitting out some employees withvoice-activated, mobile phone-based Personal Virtual Assistants.

The increasingly mobile workforce means that in the UK over thenext four years, ICL is banking on reducing property costs by nearly20%, saving millions of pounds (it has 300 properties around the world,80 of which are in the UK). ‘‘While technology is giving us the meansto increase desk utilization, it has also caused us to totally rethinkour building requirements,’’ commented Richard Reed, director ofcorporate infrastructure at ICL, in a press statement. ‘‘We are movingprogressively towards a model where a single building will be able tocater for twice the number of employees that it used to several yearsago. Last December we opened a building in Staines, which has 320desks but supports 600 people. We see this building as a model for thefuture.’’

But, he adds, to be successful as a company with a high percentageof mobile workers, you have to have a reliable Internet connectionnetwork. ‘‘People need to be confident in their ability to simply dropby an office and plug their laptop into the network and get what theywant. You also need a good intranet site to aid communication andengender a feeling of belonging.’’

Cafe VIK, it seems, is one Internet cafe that won’t be lackingcustomers.

KEY INSIGHTS» Cafe VIK stands for ‘‘Valuing ICL Knowledge’’ and it has

embedded knowledge-sharing in the culture of the companysince its launch in 1996.

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» The branded intranet is accessed by 90% of the global workforce.» It is difficult to measure the employee’s perceived value of Cafe

VIK, but ICL’s attrition rate is 14% below the industry average.» ICL reckons that 35% of its workforce will be mobile workers

by 2002.» An increase in mobile workforce means a rethinking of corpo-

rate property strategy and the opportunity to reduce costsdramatically in this area.

Timeline

» 1996: Cafe VIK company intranet launched as a knowledge-sharinginitiative.

» 1998: Cross-functional groups set up to discuss how the companycould get more staff involved with the intranet.

» 2000: Cafe VIK relaunched and expanded to offer self-service HRtools.

» 2001: Trialing voice-activated Personal Virtual Assistants and itsExtended Connected Office, which allows access to the intranet,Internet, and e-mail from WAP phones.

» 2002: ICL expects 35% of its employees to be mobile workers.

CASE STUDY 4: BP/EXULT – THE OUTSOURCEDOPTION

In December 1999, BP signed a massive £375mn deal to contract out allof its HR administration and transactional processes, signaling a new erafor people management strategies in the process. As one of the world’slargest companies, BP had established a reputation for aggressivelyoutsourcing its non-core activities, but this agreement made the entirehuman resources profession sit up and take note. Since the operationwent live in the summer of 2000, the oil giant has slashed its annualspend on HR support from $350mn to $250mn. And the company thatmade it possible is the California-based Exult, a provider of Web-basedservices to manage HR operations for large corporations.

The deal was remarkable, for it was the first time that an organizationof this size had attempted to outsource its entire HR function to one

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provider. Previous record-size outsourcing deals had involved breakingup the function with a number of providers handling specific partssuch as payroll, and compensation and benefits. Leading managementconsultancies were also highly skeptical at the time that one companycould handle the breadth of services while delivering a better andmore efficient service than an in-house HR department. Yet not onlyhad this little-known start-up (Exult launched in 1998) convinced BPthat it could meet these twin demands – potentially transforming theoutsourcing landscape in the process – but it had aspirations of securingsimilar deals with all of the Fortune 500 companies.

The two organizations set up the Atlas Program to propel the project,expected to take three years for full global implementation, forward.Central to this was the creation of myHR.net, a personalized Web-basedportal through which every employee could access information andself-service tools. These included the areas of compensation and bene-fits, performance management, training, organizational development,expatriate administration, domestic relocation and employee data, andrecords management.

The initiative was introduced for several reasons: aside from reducingthe unit cost of HR administrative and transactional services, newcapacity would be created for delivery of HR services to everyemployee, allowing BP’s own HR function to focus at a more strategiclevel of people management and enabling the closer alignment ofcompany strategy and organizational capability.

Although it is evident that the two organizations hail from totallydifferent ends of the commercial spectrum, the deal was nonethelessa ‘‘meeting of two minds’’ according to Exult’s UK director of clientdelivery, Howard Nelson. Quoted on HR Website personneltoday.com,he says: ‘‘It came from the recognition at BP that if HR was to providea higher level of business support, it needed to do something abouttransaction costs. At the same time Exult had identified a significantmarket opportunity in that area [involving] rigorous process design.’’Exult insists that it is a technology ‘‘enabler’’ rather than a technologycompany per se. ‘‘We’re not looking at the bleeding edge,’’ saysNelson. Yet Exult’s ability to offer a personalized Web-based portalwas obviously a vital aspect of the deal strategically. ‘‘The key thingis that the value proposition was not just a cost-based one. It was

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also about an enhanced service delivery,’’ Nelson explains. ‘‘We areopening up the processes within BP to enable a greater transparencyof data.’’

The service is clearly functional and practical for employees – de-monstrated by the fact that myHR.net is now the company’s secondmost visited Internet site after the BP home page, receiving morethan 12,000 unique hits a week. myHR.net allows personal records tobe kept up to date and viewed online with details such as pay andgrade, with employees able to make interactive decisions about theirpensions. Other ‘‘cool tools’’ on the myHR site are myFuture – a careerservice that matches employees to new work or training opportuni-ties, and an Expat tool that provides pay and conditions informationfor employees considering foreign placements. In one example cited,the company wanted to send someone to Azerbaijan and it tookthe HR team 15 days to figure out what the relocation packageshould be. Now any employee can find out that information instan-taneously. A more recent development is myAgent, a tool aimed atmanagers that profiles the competencies required for new job vacan-cies and targets those managers with the matching skills anywhere inthe world.

Nearly two years into the project, the UK roll-out is complete and hasbeen handed over to the operations team, with the US stage scheduledfor completion at the end of 2001. More than 150 different payrollsystems and over 40 employee appraisal systems had to be standardizedand Exult has been praised for the way staff were prepared for the newarrangement – myHR.net was co-designed and tested by HR managersfrom multiple business units, and a major change management andcommunication program was introduced, delivering workshops whichensure that all staff are aware of the transformation taking place withinthe company.

So far, the system hasn’t met too many major obstacles and Ian Fyfe,UK leader of the joint Atlas program is both sanguine and preparedfor them. ‘‘Most things we’re coming up against don’t surprise us,’’ hesays. But his belief in the ‘‘rightness’’ of the deal – and the importanceof achieving standardized HR processes across the globe – propels himforward. ‘‘As far as I’m concerned, people are prepared to push thisbecause it makes things work – it takes HR to the next level.’’

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KEY INSIGHTS» Biggest HR outsourcing deal to date.» $100mn saved in first year – annual spend on HR support cut

from $350mn to $250mn.» myHR.net portal receives 12,000 unique hits per week.» HR staff to employee ratio fell from 1 person dealing with 60

employees to 1 person dealing with 150 employees.

Timeline

» December 1999: BP Amoco signs £375mn deal with California-basedExult Inc.

» July 2000: BP goes live with employee portal myHR.net.» September 2000: stage two of Atlas project rolled out.» July 2001: Atlas project complete in UK.» 2002: New Website planned worth $10mn.

09.0

3.08

Key Concepts and

ThinkersThis chapter is about key concepts and thinkers in the field of humanresources and the Internet. It includes human resources managementspecialists and their theories on the world of work and workplaceissues, as well as the people who have helped to shape the Internet,and concepts relating to it.

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Berners-Lee, Tim – While working at CERN, the European Laboratoryfor Particle Physics in Switzerland in 1989, Berners-Lee developedthe graphical user interface for the Internet, now known as theWorld Wide Web. Berners-Lee graduated from Oxford University in1976 where he built his first computer with a soldering iron, anM6800 processor and an old television. He worked on designingthe Web, refining it after feedback from users until 1993. In 1994he joined the Laboratory of Computer Science at the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology (MIT) and he is now also director of theWorld Wide Web Consortium, which co-ordinates Web developmentworldwide.

Business-to-employer (B2E) services – After B2B and B2C comesB2E. B2E services are indicative of the changing relationship betweenemployer and employee. Services can range from self-service toolsand flexible benefits through to provision for online shopping atwork. By marketing a range of services to existing and potentialemployees, organizations can position themselves as an employer ofchoice in the War for Talent.

Castells, Manuel – Professor of sociology at the University of Californiaand author of the three-volume The Information Age: Economy,Society and Culture. Hailed as the intellectual prophet of the twenty-first century, Castells witnessed the phenomenal growth of SiliconValley, which inspired the pathfinding trilogy of which the centraltenet is that the Internet is not simply a technology but is the‘‘central technological medium’’ of the Information Age. He likensthe Internet to the electrical engine in the industrial era and predictsthat the network and social structure it creates will become the‘‘fundamental’’ basis of all our lives. But he fears that, if the networkis not managed properly to educate and integrate society, whicheventually feeds back into productivity, it will only serve to widensocial inequality.

Customer relationship management (CRM) – A sophisticated formof marketing that allows businesses to target and build client basesby treating each customer as an individual and creating accurateprofiles to deliver exactly what they want. The Internet offers massivepotential for organizations to personalize online experiences through

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CRM tools such as sales force automation, helpdesk software, e-mailorganizers and even viral marketing.

Data mining – A process of interpreting data and converting itinto business information that can be used to boost a company’sproductivity and profitability. The term is inextricably linked todata warehouses (and warehousing), which are vast overarchingdatabases fed into from networked outlets. The information storedcan then be ‘‘mined’’ for specific information to base decisions on.Retail companies were early pioneers, spending vast sums in orderto build up profiles of customers’ behavioral patterns and prefer-ences to deliver better customer service, which in turn, guaranteescustomer loyalty over longer periods. Data warehousing is also signif-icant as it could be considered the first extensive ‘‘knowledge tool’’to assist knowledge workers.

Drucker, Peter F. – The inventor of modern management and fre-quently dubbed the management thinker’s management thinker,Drucker has proved himself remarkably prescient at predicting work-place trends. Now over 90 years old, his far-seeing and persuasivebook, Management Challenges in the 21st Century, published twoyears ago, signaled the new era of management with its argumentthat knowledge workers must be considered as capital assets, notas costs.

E-cruisers – A high-tech version of the traditional corporate head-hunter. These technology specialists, sometimes referred to as ‘‘Webspiders,’’ essentially ‘‘mine’’ the Internet to search for passive candi-dates – people not actively seeking jobs, but who have the perfectmatch of skills to fill a vacancy.

E-HR – Electronic Human Resources is a widely interpreted term whichcan mean anything from the electronic automation of a singleHR function, such as payroll, right up to a fully integrated HRsystem covering everything from administration and transactionalsystems to self-service tools and advanced flexible benefits facilities.The enabling technologies for e-HR are usually based around theInternet and intranet with support from databases and telephonytechnologies. The principal aim of e-HR is to streamline processesto give faster delivery of HR functions, reduce costs, and free HR

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professionals from administrative burdens so they can perform amore strategic role.

E-lancer – An individual who uses the Internet as a principal toolfor work and communication, such as a remote worker or home-worker. Freelancers working from home who rely on the Internetto send and receive work can call themselves e-lancers, as canemployees who spend most of their time on the road and whotypically dial-up a network to stay in touch with the office. Theterm has spawned a number of Websites such as www.elance.com,which is an online marketplace for e-lancers to pitch for work,and www.elancentric.com, which offers an online community fore-lancers.

E-learning – A method of learning or training that employs the use ofthe Internet or an intranet. E-learning is sometimes broken down intoasynchronous and synchronous learning. The former takes place overelapsed rather than real time and, typically, learners can go onlineat any time convenient to them to download course material, whichthey can then complete in their own time. They can discuss thingswith a tutor or the group via e-mail. Synchronous learning takes placeonline in real time so there is live interaction between a learner andhis tutor. Because of the hype built up around e-learning, and itsfailure to live up to expectations, blended learning, which combinese-learning with traditional classroom-based methods, is becomingincreasingly popular.

Employee value proposition – Companies are facing an increasingshortage of talented workers in a tight labor market. To thrive in thisenvironment, companies need to have a compelling argument as towhy an individual should choose to work for them as opposed to arival, and this is where the employee value proposition comes in. AsTammy Watson, total rewards leader for Europe at HR consultancyfirm Towers Perrin points out: ‘‘The business as usual approach justwon’t cut it any more. The new economy business model emphasizesa killer value proposition and strong brand awareness as a means ofproducing results.’’

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) – The bringing together ofdifferent functions and departments including IT, HR, finance, plan-ning, and manufacturing on to a single computer system to assist the

KEY CONCEPTS AND THINKERS 75

needs of the organization. As ERP has grown in popularity, softwareapplications have sprung up to help business managers implementERP programs.

Generation X – Born somewhere between 1965 and 1981, GenerationXers can typically be defined as independent-minded, techno-savvy,clued-up individuals who have a completely different set of valuesfrom their parents. They also seek to maintain a healthy balancebetween their personal and corporate lives and require to bemanaged in a completely different way. As a result, several ‘‘how to’’manuals have hit the potentially lucrative business book market, oneof the best known of which is Bruce Tulgan’s Managing GenerationX: How to Bring out the Best in Young Talent. But indicative of thepace of change, experts are already into the post-Gen X phase andare talking about Gen Y, Generation Next, Millennials and N-gen.

Human capital – A politically correct and, leading workplace commen-tators would contend, more appropriate and accurate term foremployees. It is intended to dispel the negative connotations ofhuman resources, which implies that people are simply a productto assist in the industrial process. Human capital encapsulates thenotion that people are an asset and also have a direct correlation tothe profits and success of a business. It also points to the intangibleasset of intellectual property.

Interim managers – Interim managers are independent senior exec-utives, contracted for set periods of time to carry out specificassignments or to bolster management resources, often at shortnotice. In the US this is called head-renting. Situations could includeassisting in company start-ups or turnarounds, or even standing infor long-term sickness absence. They don’t get bound up in internalorganizational politics and when their task is complete they leavewithout any severance payment. Interim managers are included herebecause their self-employed status and the impermanent nature oftheir work means that they have much in common with the projectworkers, e-lancers and nomadic workers who are set to dominatethe future of work.

Knowledge management – The term ‘‘knowledge management’’ canbroadly be applied to any activity or enterprise that promotes thecapture and sharing of expertise in an organization. It rests on the

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principle that in the Information Age a company’s capital assetsare the skills and know-how of its employees rather than buildings,plant, and machinery.

Knowledge worker – In the new economy, a company’s productivityis as likely to come straight out of an employee’s head as to come froma machine, thus placing a premium on knowledge and informationas well as making it a measure of economic wealth. Knowledgework is intrinsically linked with the ideas of intellectual capital andknowledge management and in some organizations can be frequentlyinterchanged. The term was first used by Peter Drucker in his 1969book, The Age of Discontinuity.

Madden, James – Not only did Madden, chairman, CEO, and presi-dent of Exult, see the potential for technologically-based HR servicesa good deal earlier than most in the industry, but his audaciousambition of supplying outsourced HR services to the Fortune 500companies secured him the backing of the world’s largest IT venturecapitalists, General Atlantic Partners. Exult has followed up itsgroundbreaking seven-year deal to supply BP with the bulk of its HRservices with another slew of contracts including a $1bn deal withthe Bank of America and a $300mn contract with Unisys.

Negroponte, Nicholas – The digital guru and world expert on multi-media was once referred to as the ‘‘man who invents the future.’’Negroponte is co-founder and director of the Media Laboratoryof the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where healso studied as an undergraduate and pioneered computer-aideddesign. His 1995 book, Being Digital (see reference section), whichexplores the endless possibilities of digital technology, has beentranslated into 40 languages. He was a founder of the seminalWired magazine; his columns for the publication can be read athttp://nicholas.www.media.mit.edu/people/nicholas/Wired/.

Outsourcing – The transferring of a specific business function frominside the organization to an external provider. The rationale forthis is that there is no point in an organization carrying out a broadrange of tasks if someone else can do it more efficiently, which freesup managerial time to focus on core business. Potential savings areavailable–especially if the task involves rapidly changing technologywhich needs updating regularly, such as payroll.

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Psychological contract – The notion that, in return for loyalty to acompany for work done well, an employee will enjoy the securityof relative long-term employment. Unlike a contract of employment,nothing is written down so it can alter over time, through a varietyof circumstances such as a new manager or even societal changes.A study published in July 2001 by Henley Management College,‘‘Exploring the New Psychological Contract,’’ found that the tradi-tional psychological contract is ‘‘widely undermined’’ and called fora new approach to contracts, since quantitative measures such asincreased salary or bonuses could easily be matched. Instead it foundthat organizational commitment was largely due to emotional attach-ment, an expectation of self-fulfilment, a sense of achievement, andenjoyment.

Scase, Richard – Professor of organizational behavior at the Universityof Kent, Canterbury, UK, and author of the highly influential BritainTowards 2010: the Changing Business Environment. Scase, whospends his working days identifying new work patterns, contendsthat technology and cultural changes will see the demise of traditionalhierarchical corporations which do not trust their staff. Insteadsuccess will come from a workforce of highly skilled empoweredteams.

Self-service tools – A set of online tools that allow employees tocarry out functions that would previously have been undertakenby an HR department. Typically, this relates to changing personaldata held on an HR database (such as a change in marital status) ortrading flexible benefits online. The tools may be used for viewingpersonal information, such as the current value of a pension fund,or to read up on terms and conditions. Some self-service systemsextend to letting employees order equipment online via an in-builtauthorization process and a link to e-procurement systems. Whateverthe tool, the concept of self-service reinforces the employee’s feelingof empowerment and ownership of their own data and value.

Senge, Peter – Director of the Center for Organizational Learningat the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Senge made famousthe concept of the ‘‘learning organization’’ which used ‘‘systemsthinking’’ in his revered and best-selling book, The Fifth Discipline,which was first published in 1990. More recently, Senge, named by

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the Financial Times and Harvard Business Review as one of theworld’s top management gurus, has espoused the view that workhas to have a meaning for people. ‘‘A lot of people believe that thepurpose of the enterprise is to maximize the return of the investedcapital. It is a formula for mediocrity,’’ he says. ‘‘I have never beenaround a company with a financially superior performance thatbelieves that. Invariably they have different core beliefs–they believethat they are there to make the world a better place.’’

Sullivan, Dr John – Professor of Human Resources at San FranciscoState University and one of the most well-known HR theorists on theUS circuit, whose blunt, tell-it-like-it-is reputation precedes him. LikeProfessor David Ulrich (see below), he believes HR needs to find anew role for itself or face obsolescence. He believes that 75% of thecurrent workload in HR could be taken care of by IT systems andthe remainder could be outsourced. He envisages a strategic futurefor HR, encapsulated in the idea of ‘‘heroic HR.’’

Tapscott, Don – Author of several books on the Internet genera-tion and chairman of e-business think tank Digital 4Sight, Tapscottreckons the future of business can be summed up in one word – colla-boration. He believes that collaborative business models, based onthe way the Internet redefines boundaries and allows people towork together in non-traditional ways, are eliminating hierarchicallystructured old economy corporations and will become the principalcorporate form. Prime examples of the genre, which he calls busi-ness webs, or b-webs, are Nortel, Cisco and Dell. This also calls fora new form of HR management, which he calls IHR–management ofthe ‘‘Internet-worked human resource.’’

Time sovereignty – Work/life balance has increased awareness aboutthe length of working hours but a report from The Industrial Society,‘‘Time Out – the Case for Time Sovereignty’’ (published in July 2001)contends that the number of hours worked is only half the story. Itfound that the more input workers have over their working time, themore ‘‘sovereign’’ they are, the less stressed they are and the moreable they are to balance home and work. Judith Doyle, co-authorof the report, says: ‘‘Time sovereignty recognizes that for manyworkers the divide between work and life is not always clear-cut.Modern lives are less easily cut up into chunks of work here and

KEY CONCEPTS AND THINKERS 79

life there. Employers need to start judging by task rather than time.Control over workers’ time decreases motivation and increases therisk to profitability and productivity. Ultimately the time sovereignsare more likely to be the star performers when it comes to bottomline contribution.’’

Tulgan, Bruce – Founder of Rainmaker Thinking Inc, a consultancyspecializing in research and new management practices, Tulganhit pay dirt with his first book Managing Generation X, whichexamined what made the generation of younger workers tick andexplored how their beliefs were revolutionizing the workplace.His latest book, Winning the Talent Wars, dispenses advice onattracting, retaining, and motivating talented young workers.

Ulrich, Professor David – Business Week named Ulrich, associateprofessor of business administration at the University of MichiganBusiness School, as one of the world’s top 10 global executiveeducators in 1993. And there must be something in his wisdomsince half the Fortune 200 companies have used him as a consultant.Still a huge draw on the conference circuit on both sides of theAtlantic, Ulrich believes that HR professionals will be ‘‘removed,outsourced, and automated’’ if they don’t reinvent themselves asbusiness partners and leaders of change and innovation.

Virtual private networks (VPNs) – Originally conceived as a securetechnology for organizations to share information with businesspartners and their clients over the Internet, it is increasingly findingfavor as a low-cost means of offering remote online working condi-tions. Typically, employees working from home can dial into theirorganization’s networks through their own Internet service provider.

The War for Talent – A phrase conjured up by management consul-tancy McKinsey & Co Incorporated following an extensive 1997study of almost 7000 US managers. ‘‘The War for Talent’’ is themost ‘‘important issue facing business today,’’ the need to attractand retain good people, and it’s likely to be the defining character-istic of recruitment for the next 20 years. ‘‘Companies are about tobe engaged in a war for senior executive talent that will remain adefining characteristic of their competitive landscape for decadesto come,’’ the consultancy concluded. At the time, three-quartersof those surveyed said their companies had ‘‘insufficient talent

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sometimes’’ or were ‘‘chronically talent-short across the board.’’ Inan update to the study last year it was found that 89% of thosesurveyed thought it was more difficult to attract talented peoplenow than three years ago and 90% thought it was more difficult toretain them. Only 7% of the survey’s respondents strongly agreedthat their companies had enough talented managers to pursue all themost promising business opportunities.

Wilkinson, Helen – A major intellectual force in the UK when itcomes to workplace issues and on how technology is changing theway we work. She founded elancentric.com (see e-lance), an onlinecommunity site for the world’s growing band of e-lancers (mobileor homeworkers who rely on the Internet as a tool for business andcommunication). Wilkinson is using the site to build a knowledgebank dedicated to the ‘‘elancentric’’ lifestyle, to help inform andeducate business. She is also the author of the report ‘‘The DotBombshell: Women, Technology and the New Economy,’’ whichlooks at the role of women in the Internet business age.

09.0

3.09

References and

ResourcesThis chapter provides an overview of books, reports, press and onlinearticles, and specific Websites that the reader can use to build a broadunderstanding of the field.

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BOOKS

Crainer, S. (2000) A Freethinker’s A–Z of the New World of Business.Capstone Business Catalog, Oxford – An encyclopaedic guide to thepeople, concepts, and innovations that are shaping business andworking lives today.

Davidow, W.H. and Malone, M.S. (1993) The Virtual Corporation –Lessons from the World’s Most Advanced Companies (Structuringand Revitalizing the Corporation for the Twenty-first Century).HarperCollins, London – Explains how ‘‘virtual corporations’’ havejoined forces to deliver instantaneous customized services.

Donkin, R. (2001) Blood, Sweat and Tears, the Evolution of Work.Texere, London – A history of work from prehistoric times to thepresent day with analyses of the individuals, assumptions, theories,developments, and practices which have changed it.

Hafner, K. and Lyon, M. (1998) Where Wizards Stay Up Late – theOrigins of the Internet. Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, New York –The story of how the Internet was created by pioneers at theAdvanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) at the Pentagon.

Handy, C. (2001) The Elephant and the Flea. Looking Backwardsto the Future. Hutchinson/Random House, London – The authorexamines, using his own experience and theories, everything fromthe future of capitalism to work, management, and society.

Kelly, K. (1999) New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategiesfor a Connected World. Fourth Estate, London – How the biggestchange in the networked economy has been the communicationbetween computers.

Kenichi, O. (2001) The Invisible Continent: 4 Strategic Imperativesof the New Economy. Nicholas Brealey Publishing, London – Showshow consumers increasingly hold sway over companies and nationsand discusses the disappearance of traditional boundaries betweenthe two.

Micklethwait, J. and Woodridge, A. (2001) A Future Perfect: the Chal-lenge and Hidden Promise of Globalisation. Arrow, London – Astirring defence of globalization which seeks to resolve questionsabout the future. Also introduces the concept of Cosmocrats, ameritocratic global ruling class.

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Negroponte, N. (1995) Being Digital. Coronet Books, London – Themultimedia guru’s guide to the information superhighway exploresthe impact of digital technology on the world, covering everythingfrom wrist-mounted TVs to refrigerators that let you know when yourun out of milk.

Nordstrom, K.A. and Ridderstralle, J. (2000) Funky Business. TalentMakes Capital Dance. Ft.com, London – Argues that the corporateworld can no longer do ‘‘business as usual’’ and needs to be a moreinteresting place where people can be risk-taking entrepreneurs,which leads to competitive advantage.

Reeves, R. (2001) Happy Mondays, Putting the Pleasure Back intoWork. Momentum, London – Challenges the anti-work rhetoric,argues that stress is a myth, demolishes arguments for work/lifebalance and shows how to become a time sovereign, i.e. someonewho is in control of their time.

Reich, R. (2001) The Future of Success – Work & Life in the NewEconomy. William Heinemann, London – An examination of thechanging work environment and the chances of achieving work/lifebalance in the demanding modern world.

Sloman, M. (2001) The E-learning Evolution – from propositions toaction. Chartered Institute of Personnel Directors (CIPD), London –Sloman, a leading training manager and advisor to the CIPD, callsfor those involved in organizational learning and development tohelp shape the models for tomorrow, as he traces the rise of e-learning.

Tapscott, D., Ticoll, D. and Lowy, A. (2000) Digital Capital: Harnessingthe Power of Business Webs. Nicholas Brealey Publishing, London –How B2B and B2C relationships, made possible by the Internet, allowfirms to flourish as online business communities. Tapscott sets out todiscover what it takes to succeed in this domain and how to createInternet-enabled customer value propositions.

REPORTS

Ashton, C. (2001) e-HR: Transforming the HR Function. BusinessIntelligence – In-depth report on how companies are making theshift to e-HR. Features a survey of 91 organizations and case

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studies including Cisco, IBM, Oracle, BP, BT, and Nokia. Seewww.businessintelligence.co.uk

Concours Group (2001) HR Imperatives for the Internet Age – A thor-ough examination of the state of HR in the Internet age. It highlightsthe role HR plays as the first and best line of defence and exposes thevulnerability of legacy HR systems. See www.concoursgroup.com.

Wilkinson, H. (2001) The Dot Bombshell: women, e-quality andthe new economy. Futures Department at the Industrial Society,London – The report finds that, despite the success of some womene-entrepreneurs, some of the old inequalities exist.

PricewaterhouseCoopers Technology Forecast 2001–2003 – The com-pany’s annually published guide, which this year concentrates onhow new applications will drive the success of the mobile Internet.See www.pwcglobal.com/tech-forecast.

The Economist Intelligence Unit and HR consultancy Towers Perrin(2001) Business, People and Rewards, Surviving and Thrivingin the New Economy (available from www.eiu.com, reference1KAGXA) – Explores people practices and reward structures withinthe context of this business transformation, and examines how thealignment of these elements can enhance business performance.

Arthur Andersen (2001) Dot.com report 2001 – A survey into thefactors affecting motivation in dotcoms.

The Third Nextra eEurope Report. A Guide to Trends and Opportuni-ties for Small to Medium Sized European Businesses Operating in theNew Economy (2001) – The latest report from the business commu-nication service provider highlights how European managers wantaccess to new technologies for remote and flexi-working solutionbut say their companies cannot rise to the challenge.

Reeves, R. and Doyle, J. (July 2002) Time Out – the Case for TimeSovereignty. The Industrial Society, London – A study which findsthat control over working time is as important as the number ofhours worked.

Doyle, J. and Nathan, M. (May 2001) Wherever Next? Work in a MobileWorld. The Industrial Society, London – Report on the growing armyof ‘‘hypermobile’’ workers finds that they are willing to travel moreso long as they end the day at home rather than spend long periodsaway from home.

REFERENCES AND RESOURCES 85

Managing a Virtual World, Key Trends 2000/2001. Pricewaterhouse-Coopers – A survey of 82 leading organizations employing over24,500 international employees to find out how the communicationsrevolution is impacting on global business.

Trades Union Congress (August 2001) Future of Work, Telework – theNew Industrial Revolution? (Home and Work in the 21st Century) – Astudy into teleworking: its impact, the trends, and how homeworkingin the UK compares with that in Europe and the US.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (August 2001) Focusing on Fundamentals –Dotcoms Mean Business – A study which highlights that dotcombosses are placing new burdens on HR professionals to recruit staffwith established management experience. Can be downloaded fromwww.pwcglobal.com/ebusinessinsights.

Towers Perrin (November 2000) Employers Step Up Web-based HRActivities Monitor Issue 230 – Annual survey of 100 major employersshows that employers continue to move aggressively to harness thepower of the Web for transactional and information purposes.

Towers Perrin (August 2001) HR Web Transactions Continue to Riseat Work and at Home – The HR consultancy’s fourth annual servicecenter survey shows a dramatic jump in the number of companiesoffering employees online access.

Mercer, W.M. (2001) European Trends in HR Outsourcing. Cran-field School of Management and HR consultancy – Available fromphilip.vernon@uk.wmmercer.com.

Cambria Consulting (2000) Winning the War for Talent: effectiveeRecruiting strategies, Boston – Looks at best practices in the areaof online recruitment and includes a revealing survey on US corporatejob sites.

ARTICLES AND PUBLICATIONS

Axelrod, E.L., Handfield-Jones, H. and Welsh, T.A. (2001) ‘‘The War forTalent, part two.’’ McKinsey Quarterly, March – Update of the 1997study.

Benson, R. (2001) ‘‘Sorted for E and Biz. What does Generation Ewant from the Internet?’’ Business 2.0, January – Investigates howGeneration E’s techno-intuition is reshaping technology.

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Chambers, L., Foulon, M., Handfield-Jones, H., Hankin, S. and Michaels,E. (1998) ‘‘The War for Talent.’’ McKinsey Quarterly 3 – A majorstudy into the worsening shortage of people needed to run divisions,manage functions, and head companies.

Cothrel, J., Funk, K. and Schaffer, C. (2001) ‘‘Learning to Innovate.’’Cap Gemini, Ernst & Young – Looks at the importance of networklearning in business.

Deagon, B. (2000) ‘‘Start up Exult Taps the Web to manage HumanResources.’’ Investor’s Business Daily, November 29 – Q&A withchief of Exult, James Madden, on Web-based HR outsourcing.

Fisher, L.M. (2001) ‘‘From Vertical to Virtual: How Nortel’s SupplierAlliances Extend the Enterprise.’’ Strategy + Business, first quarter2001 – To grow a new fiber optics business at Internet speed, theCanadian giant gave up manufacturing and turned its vendors intostrategic partners.

Guyon, J. (2000) ‘‘The World is Your Office.’’ Fortune, June 12 – Writ-ten as part of a special report on e-Europe, this is an investigationinto the way that cell phones will change the way we work.

Hall, L. (2001) ‘‘Protecting Your Vital Assets.’’ Globalhr July/August –Looks at the actions a global corporation can take to keep itsemployees from setting up in competition or defecting to rivalcompanies.

Harvey, M. (2001) ‘‘Taking it Outside.’’ Employer’s Law magazine,July-August – A review of the reasons behind the current growth inhuman resources outsourcing. Examines the key issues HR directorsshould consider before embarking on an outsourcing strategy.

Horn, C. (2001) ‘‘It’s What You Know That Counts.’’ Personnel Today,May 30 – Highlights HR’s failure to take the lead in knowledge manage-ment, and profiles four HR professionals who have taken control.

Judge, P.C. (2000) ‘‘It’s Lonely on the Edge.’’ Fast Company, US,September – Report from a quarterly gathering of 60 executivesresponsible for moving their companies into the Internet economy,where they discuss challenges and frustrations.

Kent, S., McLuhan, R., Overell, S., O’Reilly, S. and Thomas, A. (1999)‘‘The 10 Big Ideas.’’ Personnel Today, October 26 – A special reporton the 10 of the latest management concepts. Topics covered rangefrom knowledge management to outsourcing and work/life balance.

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LaBarre, P. (2001) ‘‘The Cutting Edge of Creativity.’’ Fast Company,March – Report from the Innovative Thinking Conference.

Lewis, J. (2000) ‘‘Global offensive.’’ Personnel Today, October 24 – Anexamination of the key people issues of globalization and of howhuman resource chiefs should respond.

Lewis, J. (2001) ‘‘Out Is Back In.’’ Personnel Today, April 18 – A guideto the new skills and competencies that human resource managersneed to acquire as the function is outsourced.

Lewis, J. (2001) ‘‘The Seven Essentials.’’ Personnel Today, February29 – A guide to the new skills and qualities needed by the new breedof HR professional.

Rodgers, K. (2001) ‘‘Hero or History.’’ Personnel Today, July 17 – Re-port from International Association for Human Resource InformationManagement conferences, where leading business gurus Tom Petersand John Sullivan discussed ‘‘heroic HR.’’

Rowe, H. (2000) ‘‘The Way that Careers and Organizations WillDevelop.’’ Personnel Today, July 25 – Driven by the need to slowdown the high turnover of skilled staff, organizations will need todevelop new career tracks which offer different types of reward andstatus, rather than simply hierarchical promotion. Companies whichwait until they are forced to do this will lose out.

Rowe, H. (2001) ‘‘HR Loses Direction on its Way Up.’’ OccupationalHealth magazine, January – Identifies the skills lacking in the HRprofession preventing it from securing its place in the boardroom.

Smith, D. (2001) ‘‘UK Where Next?’’ Business 2.0, March – Looks atthe implications of the Internet in a shrinking world.

Tapscott, D. (2001) ‘‘Rethinking Strategy in a Networked World (orWhy Michael Porter is Wrong about the Internet).’’ Strategy +Business, Issue 24 – Tapscott contends that the Harvard strategy guruMichael Porter is wrong when he says partnerships erode competitiveadvantage. Instead, he argues, they are central to business success.

Tetzli, R. (1996) ‘‘Getting Your Company’s Internet Strategy Right in thePast Two Years, Corporate America Has Fallen for the Net.’’ Fortune,March 18 – A Q&A with Mary Cronin, a professor at Boston College’sCarroll School of Management, who writes, teaches, and consults onhow companies can make the Internet and its technologies part oftheir strategy.

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Townley, G. (2001) ‘‘Local Appeal.’’ Global hr, April – The type of payand benefits expected in the developed world may hold no attractionfor local employees in emerging markets. Offers advice on how toattract the best local talent.

Vandevelde, H. (2001) ‘‘Global Speculation.’’ Training, March –Contends that the more competitive you make your employees,the greater their incentive is to stick around for more.

ONLINE RESOURCES

Chartered Institute of Personnel Directors CIPD (www.cipd.co.uk) –The official body representing human resources professionals in theUK. Membership is required to access most of the material on the site.

E-reward (www.e-reward.co.uk) – Website dedicated to the rewardand incentive sector with news, features, expert advice, forums, andlinks. It also puts out a useful regular newsletter by e-mail.

Federation of European Employers (FedEE) (www.fedee.com) – Euro-pean HR-related data resource with free access areas (a subscription ispayable for full access). Extensive coverage of European employmentscene.

Flexibility (www.flexibility.co.uk) – Print publication and Websitededicated to new flexible ways of working. It gives access to reports,studies, and surveys on related topics.

HR Zone (www.hrzone.co.uk) – Lively US-based online HR resource,featuring articles, a good set of links, and the chance to sign upto a newsletter which comes out twice a month as well as whensomething exciting comes along.

IDC (www.idc.com) – Online presence of the leading reports andanalysis organization. Its press release section provides a good insightinto the range of reports available.

Incomes Data Services (www.incomesdata.co.uk) – Some useful freeinformation, although payment is required for full versions of all thereports. The Statistics Zone contains useful facts and figures.

Industrial Society (www.indsoc.co.uk) – UK-based, non-profit-makingcampaigning body which aims to improve working life. It is involvedin a long-term project called iSociety that aims to assess and reportback on the state of information and communications technology insociety.

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Industry Standard (www.thestandard.com) – US magazine and Websitecarrying general e-business news but which also gives good coverageto workplace issues in the new economy. The Website has a specialcareers and jobs section at www.thestandard.com/careers.

International Association for Human Resource Management (IHRIM)(www.ihrim.org) – Good resource for information on systems, cur-rent issues, and trends – the association’s aim is to help membersachieve strategic objectives through the integration of technologyand HR management.

Online HR (www.onlinehr.co.uk) – Useful resource which takes a prac-tical, everyday approach rather than a theoretical one. It has HRdocumentation that can be downloaded for a small charge, and areference checker.

Personnel Today (www.personneltoday.com) – Leading UK weeklyhuman resources magazine, which carries regular e-business newsand issues affecting online people strategies.

Society for Human Resource Management (www.shrm.org) – GlobalHRM body which carries news, features, online polls, vacancies, andlinks.

The Register (www.theregister.co.uk) – ‘‘Biting the Hand that FeedsIT’’ is the motto of this incisive e-zine covering the world of IT. Goodfor keeping abreast of new technology and is free to access.

Training Pages (www.trainingpages.co.uk) – Database of over 10,000courses.

Workplace Forum (www.workplaceforum.com) – Learning andresearch network which aims to disseminate advice on best practicesin the workplace. It holds online discussions and seminars, andcommissions papers and reports.

ONLINE ARTICLES

Eckhert, G. (2001) ‘‘The New HR Paradigm: Part 1 – Some Causes.’’Available from http://startribune.hr.com/hrcom/index.cfm – Howinformation technology and growth of the Internet are affectingorganizations and employees and driving a new HR paradigm.

European Business Forum (www.europeanbusinessforum.com) –‘‘How Can Companies Weave a Web of Talent?’’ – An analysis of

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the talent debate, three years on from McKinsey & Co’s ‘‘War forTalent’’ study.

Kearney, V. (2000) ‘‘The ‘Net’ Effect on Human Resources.’’ EuropeanBusiness Forum – Contends that the future is about how companiescan use Web technology to help boost their ‘‘employee’’ brand. Seewww.iag.ucl.ac.be/international/europeanbusinessforum.htm andwww.iag.ucl.ac.be/international/europeanbusinessforum.htm

‘‘Six forces’’. PriceWaterhouseCoopers.com (www.pwcglobal.com)See www.pwcglobal.com/lu/eng/ins-sol/spec-int/6forces.html – Ex-ploration of six phenomena affecting business: industry convergence;e-business; knowledge economy; corporate reputation; competitionfor best people; the new Europe.

09.0

3.10

Ten Steps to Making it

Work» HR departments must broaden their organizational associations

– they must make a friend of IT and line managers, and mustlearn the language of business in order to secure support from thehigher echelons for their online people strategies.

» Old ways of doing things do not necessarily map onto new tech-nologies. Think laterally to come up with ways of maximizing thebenefits of a new medium.

» E-mail and corporate employee portals are the most powerful commu-nications tool organizations have ever had, so make the most ofthem.

» Allow for people and processes change, and for technologicalchange – it’s not always easy to predict either, but provision inthe budget for both makes good sense.

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1. BECOME AN HR CHANGE AGENT

Once an e-HR system is implemented, not only will it fundamentallyalter a company’s work patterns and functions, but the self-servicefacilities offered by such a system will also transform the dynamics of theworking relationship between human resources and employees, as wellas its traditional role of communicator and link in the corporate chainbetween senior executives and the shop floor. In addition to steeringand communicating these internal shifts, HR, in its new business-focused role, will be expected to deliver an enhanced service to itscustomers – the workforce.

To do this effectively, senior HR professionals will have to becomechange agents, able to spot strategic opportunities, be capable ofaligning their decisions with the achievement of business goals anddemonstrate a direct correlation between any action taken and itsimpact on the bottom line.

As the function moves away from its transactional heritage, HR needsto develop its organizational consultancy, as well as new advisoryskills, to ensure that employees can derive maximum benefit fromthe self-service systems. They will also need to be intuitive, adaptablediagnosticians who are receptive to new ideas and able to pass onknowledge swiftly.

2. TREAT YOUR SERVICE LIKE A CONSUMER GOOD

In keeping with the concept of B2E, a new online service requiresselling to the workforce so that it has perceived value from the outset.Ideally, it should be branded and marketed as if it were a FMCG (FastMoving Consumer Good) that would normally be paid for. By launchingit officially (get the champagne out!) it will immediately gain a profilewithin the company and will be far more likely to be used.

When ICL launched its Cafe VIK intranet system, it distributed a rangeof promotional products including mouse mats and coasters sportingthe Cafe VIK logo. It also hosted briefing sessions and provided onlinedemonstrations. Nokia similarly branded its intranet from the start,calling it the Jazz Cafe, while Unisys’ set of self-service tools includesthe online Career Fitness Center which deploys a fitness theme likePersonal Trainer (an employee’s career portfolio), Job Gym (career

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trends, job profiles and networking opportunities) and Skills Shaper(skills development).

It is essential that management provide the momentum, motivation,and impetus for employees to use these new self-service systems ore-learning programmes. Research commissioned by training providerVideo Arts reveals that, among those who had experimented withe-learning, the biggest hurdle to using it again was motivating peopleto go online and use the system. If the brand is sufficiently strong andthe service has a high perceived value, it will prove harder to ignore.

3. IT AND HR MUST GET INTO BED TOGETHER

HR and IT are not natural bedfellows, but then IT never makes a habitof sharing with anyone. It is critical that HR takes a lead and formsa lasting alliance with IT if it is to ensure the HR/IT infrastructure isrobust enough to cope with future demands as well as overcoming anytechnological hangovers associated with legacy systems from previousdecades (see Chapters 3 and 4).

There has been a tendency for HR to abdicate responsibility foranything IT-related, but this is no longer an option. HR needs to ensurethat its technological path runs parallel with that of the company’s, andthat any suppliers are also on the same path.

The Concours Group’s report, ‘‘HR Imperatives for the Internet Age,’’also spells out the importance of systems having unbreakable security.‘‘We have not yet seen a multi-million dollar lawsuit based on lapses insecurity for sensitive or private information stored electronically in HRsystems, but it’s perhaps only a matter of time before we do,’’ states thereport. It continues: ‘‘Working in concert with IT, [HR and its] vendorsmust make sure HR systems stay absolutely bullet-proof. ‘Essentiallysecure’ is another way of saying ‘vulnerable.’ Test not only your systems(e.g., against hacking) but also your information security policies andprocedures. Include security procedures and privacy guidelines in allnew systems training.’’

4. SHORT-TERM AIMS ARE AS IMPORTANT ASLONG-TERM ONES

Having a long-term vision for an online people strategy is vital, but makesure there are short-term gains too. It will be easier to secure buy-in

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both at board level and from the workforce if they see results early on,especially since the timeframe for the full-scale implementation of ane-HR system can be up to five years and more.

This doesn’t necessarily mean a swift return on investment in thefirst six months or a year, but instead visible workforce and businessbenefits. In Business Intelligence’s ‘‘e-HR, Transforming the Function’’report, Melvin Brandman, Watson Wyatt’s head of e-HR says that theoverall e-HR vision should be to ‘‘think big, start small and scale-up.. . . It makes perfect sense to pick the low-hanging fruit first which willencourage stronger buy-in from others when they see early results. Inthese circumstances, HR will be able to also provoke beneficial change.’’Remember, too, that starting at a manageable level also permits feed-back at a manageable level and lets your system learn as it grows.

Technology shouldn’t be brought in as an attempt at a quickfix; neither should problematic areas, with no apparent solution, beneglected. Several of the applications discussed in this book work asstand-alone products or services; the only consideration is to ensurethe technology implemented is scaleable and robust enough to dealwith the next phase of development (this is where a good relationshipwith IT comes in handy).

5. ENGAGE BRAND CHAMPIONS THROUGHOUT THERANKS

Buy-in at all levels is required, so enlist the support of one or moreinfluential personnel at different levels within the company who willchampion the new system. A peer group endorsement is the bestrecommendation available: if an employee is raving about the fact thatshe can upgrade her skill level in a particular area via some just-in-timee-learning at her terminal over lunch-time, it is likely to be noted byfellow colleagues. Line managers have a reputation for resisting someaspects of e-HR, especially if they think a new system is adding to theirworkload. A champion at line manager level will help weaken any suchresistance. Making sure they understand the system and what it can dofor them is vital.

Of course, it is useful to have friends in high places and convincingthe finance director of the business value of self-service will make it

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easier to sway the rest of the board. So get that ‘‘talk the language ofbusiness’’ phrase book out and start reading.

6. THE ONLY CONSTANT IS THAT THINGS WILLCHANGE

Raw computing power doubles every 18 months and this places pres-sure on vendors to develop and bring new hardware and software evermore quickly to the marketplace in order to remain competitive. Havingcommitted to a major investment (and bearing in mind implementationtime) it is unlikely that a corporate could keep pace with every newrelease which comes to market. But it will help considerably if changehas been budgeted for and if the system is sufficiently scaleable andflexible to cope (as discussed in Step 3).

Obvious and quantifiable things to allow for are upgrades, mainte-nance, support, and training. It’s also wise to keep some of the kittyaside for innovation.

7. USE TECHNOLOGY TO MAXIMIZE CORPORATECOMMUNICATIONS

In some companies the phrase ‘‘Nobody tells us anything’’ is repeatedso often that it has become the corporate mantra. Employees read aboutdepartmental changes and other planned developments in the tradepress, and the first they learn of the impending closure of their factory iswhen television crews pitch up outside the gates. Yet such occurrencescan be banished forever if corporate intranets or employee portals – themost powerful corporate communication tool business has ever had atits disposal – are used to the full. So use them!

Employees have a tremendous desire for information about what isgoing on at their company both at corporate and shop floor level: fromthe latest share price for their company SAYE (Save As You Earn) shareoption scheme to who’s just been promoted to charge hand. It’s evenbeen known at one publishing company for grammatical discussionson the use of ‘‘interested’’ and ‘‘disinterested’’ to make for compellingcontent on the corporate intranet message boards.

IBM’s corporate intranet is the vehicle for corporate communication,says Martin James, manager of the European HR service center at IBM

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EMEA. Anything of company-wide interest is posted on it, ranging fromnew business contracts to staff survey feedback and its quarterly results.Getty Images uses its gettylife.com portal as an employees’ windowon their corporate world (as well as an external one for prospectiverecruits to look in). Wipro Technologies’ Channel W portal not onlycontains serious knowledge-based content, but also offers a facility foremployees to organize their social lives as well as buy and sell goods(see Chapter 7).

8. ALIGN HR WITH BUSINESS

HR must learn to speak the language of business. This will shift thedepartment – and the company’s perception of it – from a cost centerto a value-added service. HR should be able to demonstrate how anyonline people management strategy will impact on the bottom line. Thetime when HR initiatives went unmeasured is past. Any such initiativeshould also be aligned with an organization’s goals. For instance, if acompany embarks on a change management program, HR has to havea central role, facilitating and supporting it.

In addition, HR should be able to deliver a cost assessment of peopleand resources in any department within the organization. Demon-strating that HR is attuned to the business will change any negativeperception and in turn will ensure its involvement and integrationwith company-wide business and initiatives. In short, the differencebetween traditional ‘‘managed’’ HR and strategic HR is the ability totransform people-related data into accessible information that can beused by any department in the company to make an assessment or adecision.

9. TAKE CHARGE OF COMPANY KNOWLEDGE

IT hijacked knowledge management from HR, largely because of thelatter’s lack of interest in technology and systems. Yet in a world wherethe working population is increasingly fluid, the job of managing thesharing and retention of knowledge in an organization must return tothose in charge of people strategies.

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Knowledge management is the process by which an organizationgathers, co-ordinates, evaluates, and shares its collective corporateknowledge, but it cannot be achieved simply by getting the ITdepartment to install a high specification intranet; HR needs to leadthe way by developing a culture and system that can support theknowledge development and management process.

Linda Holbeche, director of research at Roffey Park ManagementInstitute, says: ‘‘It is an ideal opportunity for HR to make a strategicdifference to a company if it gets the human dynamics right, suchas a culture of trust, in order to make it work.’’ She adds: ‘‘HR isnotoriously absent from the scene because it often doesn’t understandthe information needs of people doing the job.’’

There are several ways for HR to get more involved, notably, byconfronting issues that prevent sharing of knowledge. This couldinclude getting people to work across teams and training them in gener-ating ideas. Rewards and incentives may also need to be introduced toencourage employees to share knowledge.

10. REINVENT YOURSELF AND YOUR PROCESSES

If it works for Madonna, the Queen of Pop, then it should work forHR. One reason why technological innovation fails first time round isthat people try to map old working practices or ways of doing thingsonto them. Early e-learning programs failed because developers usedold pedagogical theories and tried to map them onto a new mediuminstead of looking at how such a new teaching tool should be used.Indeed, predicting how others will use new technologies is as importantas knowing how you’re going to use them yourself. When e-mailaddresses first appeared at the bottom of recruitment advertisements,as well as postal addresses and telephone numbers, it opened thefloodgates for a raft of indiscriminate ‘‘I can do that’’ job-seekers.One company contemplated never publishing its e-mail address inrecruitment advertisements ever again after the same applicant appliedfor every single vacancy in the space of one week. There will always bea degree of trial and error when new technologies come along, but it’simportant to reinvent, refigure and re-evaluate any traditional approach.

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KEY LEARNING POINTS» HR must become change agents, able to spot strategic opportu-

nities as they arise, and, linked to this, it must also align closelywith the company’s core business.

» HR must befriend IT to ensure that the IT infrastructure is rightfor the company.

» Don’t try to map old ways of working and processes onto thenew system – reinvent the old ways to maximize the benefits ofthe new medium.

» Have a long-term vision but make sure there are plenty of short-and medium-term goals and gains built in.

» Take charge of company knowledge and win back knowledgemanagement systems from IT – in an increasingly knowledge-based economy, this is vital.

» Budget for change and innovation – you can bank on both.» Exploit technology as a corporate communications tool. The

corporate intranet is the most powerful internal communica-tions tool there has ever been – so use it.

Frequently Asked

Questions (FAQs)

Q1: What are e-HR and self-service HR?

A: See Chapter 2.

Q2: Do online people strategies require all-new tech-nology?

A: See Chapters 3 and 4.

Q3: What is outsourcing and who’s doing it?

A: See Chapters 3 and 7.

Q4: What is an employee portal, and how can its usebe maximized?

A: See Chapters 2, 6, and 7.

Q5: What kind of organizational change will online HRbring, and what is the profile of the HR professionalof tomorrow?A: See Chapter 7.

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Q6: Do flexible benefits systems really make a differ-ence?A: See Chapter 7.

Q7: How can online recruitment be made to be moreeffective?A: See Chapters 3 and 6.

Q8: How can technology help to build and motivate aglobal workforce?A: See Chapter 5.

Q9: What is network learning?

A: See Chapter 6.

Q10: Why do we need standards like those beingdeveloped by the HR-XML consortium?

A: See Chapters 3 and 4.