Thank you to those of you who commented on my previous post on this topic. Continuing this theme with one last look back to some of the lasting impacts of the 2008-2009 recession on the HR function, I offer three additional perspectives:

4) We became more process-oriented.

With the reduction in funds for new capital investments, organizations started looking closer at what they already had in place and how they could improve on it. While the vast majority of companies have systems in place for core HR, Benefits, and Payroll, most started looking at what additional processes could be automated or self-service-enabled in order to gain efficiencies and effectiveness, but mostly to reduce costs. Moving from transaction-oriented, organizations today are becoming process-oriented, meaning they are taking a holistic view of business activity and integrating processes across functions, such as pay-for-performance, development and succession planning, and staffing and workforce planning. While we still have ways to go, there is a definite movement toward process-oriented HR.

5) We became more talent-focused.

Talent Management has been the fastest growing area in the HR space for the last several years. Organizations are finally executing on what they have long maintained, that people are the most important asset. Gartner’s Jim Holincheck at IHRIM’s Global Forum in Chicago this past year reported that Talent Management grew ~7% through Q2 of 2009 while core HRMS revenues grew just ~4.5%. Clearly the HRMS market has matured while talent management is still in its infancy, but there is a definitive movement toward a more talent-focused HR approach and there will be no turning back. With a talent-focused approach, HR moves another step closer to becoming that elusive HR business partner.

6) We became more business-centric.

The successful HR professional today, post-recession, is a hybrid developed out of varied experiences who realizes the need to be business-centric, metrics-minded, systems-savvy. While many HR professionals may be stuck in an administrative quagmire, unable to focus on more strategic issues due to a lack of tools and strategies to eliminate and automate much of the administrative backbone of HR, there are few who don’t realize the importance of business knowledge and financial acumen to be a successful strategic partner to the business. Business-centric means understanding the role that HR strategies and services play in driving business growth — sales, revenues, and profits.

Other ideas?  What do you think has changed forever for HR as a result of the last two tumultuous years? I’d love to hear from you!

What does “Multi-Locality” mean for the manager of a team in the modern, multi-local environment? According to Josh Bersin “driving a performance-oriented culture demands a focus on new compensation models, improved forms of collaboration, and the development of clear goals-based performance management processes.” How does this apply to the multi-local talentforce?

First, we need to build personal accountability not only for individual performance, but also for effectiveness in collaborating across a diverse, multi-local environment, working seamlessly in a multi-functional, multi-organizational, multi-generational, and multi-cultural workplace. We must “inspect what we expect” by leveraging Web-based tools, such as wikis, Web meetings, CRM (customer relationship management) software, instant messaging, and social software to stay connected with the global, digital and virtual workforce.

Second, we need to develop management agility, broadening our management practices and developing more multi-faceted and situational leadership skills. Traditional practices such as MBWA – management by wandering around – are still valid and effective in the on-premise environment; yet modern practices, let’s call it MBSA – “management by surfing around” – the ability to lead using modern, Internet-enabled technologies – become paramount in the off-premise world.

Third, we must foster social responsibility, where each individual works toward the organization’s goals to the best of his or her abilities, while respecting and valuing the contribution of others. In the multi-local environment, diversity is no longer a program managed by the HR department; rather diverse work groups embracing differences in gender, age, culture, nationality, personality, and religious, political, and sexual preference are the norm in the evolving global village.

Finally, we must develop pay-for-performance strategies in which compensation is tied not only to individual performance but also to effective collaboration in the multi-local environment. Team-based pay structures and compensation for contributions to group knowledgebases help to direct and motivate individuals in sharing and disseminating knowledge across the global organization.

Mastery of modern organizational models and management practices is a critical success factor for effectiveness in leading the modern, multi-local talentforce. Management agility, personal accountability, social responsibility, and pay-for-performance are key themes that leaders must embrace to be successful in working with the multi-locality aspects of today’s organizations. Whether you are a corporate executive, regional manager, outsourcer, expatriate, or inexorable road warrior, there are a plethora of tools and options now available to improve communication and foster collaboration in supporting work anyplace, anytime, anyhow, helping individuals find greater work/life balance in the modern global, digital, remote, and evermore virtual world in which we now live.

Communication is the focal point for all successful interaction within and across organizations. As communication tools and technologies have evolved over the decades, the nature and expectations of the workforce have changed. The figure below shows a collection of sites, services, methods, and technologies mapped along the axes of Location and Collaboration.

In the lower half of the graphic are the traditional, tangible methods of communication, such as company directories, manuals, newsletters, meetings, conferences, as well as the company picnic, hallway discussions, and informal chatter around the water cooler. The collaboration and communication technologies shown in the top half of the figure have grown out of the digital age: in the upper left are those referred to as Web 1.0 and in the upper right are what have collectively been called Web 2.0.

The term Web 1.0 is a “retronym” – a term developed after the creation of the term Web 2.0 in order to refer to the previous state of the Web. Web 1.0 can be generally characterized by the development of static websites with read-only material, widespread computer illiteracy, and slow Internet connections. Some examples of websites that have evolved from the Web 1.0 era are Yahoo! and Amazon.

According to Wikipedia, “Web 2.0 describes the changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aim to enhance creativity, communications, secure information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the web. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web culture communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, video sharing sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies.” The main difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 is that of programmer-generated content versus user-generated content, hence Web 2.0 places a heavy focus on ease-of-use so that users can easily contribute content on a real-time basis.

Web 2.0 technologies cover a broad spectrum of websites, services, methods, and tools such as the following:

Online Marketplace – where buyers and sellers collaborate over offers and purchases, such as pioneer eBay, and later Amazon, Craigslist, Angieslist, and now all major retailers.

Mass Communication Tools – where workers communicate freely in a subscription-based or ad hoc approach, such as RSS feeds, readers, blogs, podcasts, videocasts, YouTube, Flickr.

Instant Messaging – tools that facilitate remote collaboration over the Web through real-time messaging, such as trailblazer ICQ and now Yahoo, AIM, MSN, Google Talk, and Skype.

Social Software – where users network and communicate with others of similar interests, such as MySpace, Facebook, Linked-In, Plaxo, Orkut, Xing, Ning, SelectMinds, and many others.

Collaborative Documentation or wikis – where people contribute knowledge to build a common database, such as pioneer Wikipedia, and others such as Answers, Google Docs, Jive, SocialText, Confluence, and Basecamp.

Web Meetings – screen sharing, audio, and video via the Web allowing users to conduct virtual meetings and collaboration sessions, with such products as WebEx, GoToMeeting, and Dimdim.

VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) – a method for transmitting voice over the Web enabling real-time conversations, such as Skype, Vonage, and MagicJack.

Web Development Software – collaborative Web 2.0 programming languages and tools that improve the user experience, such as Ruby on Rails, Drupal, Ajax, Flash, Dreamweaver, etc.

Tags and Social Bookmarking – a framework for storing, organizing, searching, and managing websites via metadata and making information publically available to others, such as Delicious and Google Bookmarks.

Smart phones – Web-enabled, multi-function cellular telephones, incorporating telephony, calendaring, Web surfing, music/video, and gaming, such as the iPhone, Blackberry and Palm Treo.

Status Updates – tools that that facilitate staying touch with friends and colleagues, such as SMS (Short Message Service) commonly known as text messaging, as well as microblogging tools like Dodgeball and Twitter.

Crowdsourcing or Community-based Design – taking an activity generally performed inhouse and outsourcing it to a large group of undefined people to enhance work and innovation, such as vendors using potential customers to help design new products.

Virtual Reality Software – software that simulates another world that can be used to create more effective, life-like training scenarios, such as Second Life and World of Warcraft.

Effective leadership of the modern, multi-local workforce requires agility and mastery of skills along many dimensions, from informal chats to networking approaches to formal meetings and written documentation. The figure below summaries key communication strategies common for each of the four groups of workers making up today’s talentforce: local, remote, digital, and virtual.

As work has spread to multi-localities, the nature of and methods for collaboration and team work have also changed. Collaboration in the traditional, single office setting is vastly different from collaboration across a modern, global, multi-local organization. Work performed on-premise at Corporate and Regional Headquarters locations is largely of a tangible, physical nature in contrast to work done off-premise in Satellite Offices and Offshore Centers which requires more intangible and virtual cooperation. The figure below shows how work across the continua of Location and Collaboration can be grouped into four broad categories.

Local – On-premise and Tangible – Collaboration in the local setting is personal and visible. Meetings take place face-to-face, and teamwork (or the lack thereof) is real and apparent. Individuals bond easily in tight-knit groups, sharing a common history and company culture. Much communication takes place in face-to-face meetings and conferences, as well as in hallways, lunch rooms, and around the water cooler.

Remote – Off-premise and Tangible – Collaboration in the remote setting is also personal, but disconnected and therefore much less visible. Telephones (land and cellular) and conference calls facilitate communication and collaboration tying remote locations and offsite workers to corporate and regional offices.

Digital – On-premise and Intangible – Digital collaboration grew out of the computer era, leveraging the Internet, LAN/WAN technologies, and electronic media such as intranets, email and PowerPoint. Communication in the digital era has shifted to the Internet with email, websites, online newsletters, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, and so on. Virtual –

Off-premise and Intangible – Virtual collaboration takes the digital age one step further by removing the constraints on time and allowing individuals to work not only anywhere, but anytime – separate time zones but connected via tools and software such as wikis, blogs, social networking software, and more.

My next post will explore in more detail the communication and collaboration tools and technologies that have evolved over the last decade to support and connect the global, disparate, multi-local workforce.

The broadest dimension of the multi-local workforce is whether work is performed on-premise (or onsite) versus off-premise (or offsite). Traditionally, work was performed on-premise, within the four walls of the organization and under the direct supervision of a watchful manager. With the growth of the Internet and the advent of the modern, digital age, it is now possible for people and teams to work effectively off-premise, and hence the amount of offsite work has been increasing steadily year after year. From offsite processing and offshore service centers to application service provider (ASP) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) business models, work and location are becoming increasingly disassociated. It is now commonplace for managers to be located in different offices – even different continents – from their teams and for team members to be dispersed across distant geographies and multiple time zones.

The figure below depicts the cross-section of two continua: one continuum of Location from on-premise to off-premise and the second continuum of Collaboration from tangible to intangible. Tangible is defined as “discernible by the touch; real or concrete; possible to understand or realize.” Intangible is something that is “incapable of being perceived by the senses, of being realized or defined; incorporeal.” In the modern Internet age, intangible work comprises the increasing number of activities that are done online, real-time, dispersed, and disconnected across space and time.

In the lower left quadrant, there are Corporate and Regional Headquarters, where people work in groups and teams, physically onsite and generally through face-to-face collaboration. Moving toward the off-premise dimension are the company’s Satellite offices and Offshore Centers, including third-party outsourcers. Finally, the most remote and most detached workers in the organization are the Road Warriors – those individuals who constantly shuffle from site to site. They can be the glue that ties diverse groups across the organization together or they can be isolated, disconnected from the main happenings in the company.

Corporate Headquarters – Individuals located at Corporate Headquarters work in tightly knit groups, generally co-located in the same building (and hence the same time zone), using the same support infrastructure and tools (e.g., telephone systems, desktop computers, LAN/intranet) and sharing a common company culture (e.g., team outings, lunch presentations, company picnics).

Regional Headquarters – Depending on the size of the organization, individuals at Regional Offices work much like those at Corporate Headquarters, co-located in the same building, using the same infrastructure and tools. Effective collaboration between Corporate and the Regions is influenced by the geographical distances and cultural differences and by the standards and commonality (or lack thereof) in the products, processes, methods, infrastructure, and tools.

Satellite Offices – Often located in remote locations and generally separated from Corporate and Regional Headquarters by multiple time zones, large geographical distances, and differing tools and infrastructure, collaboration between individuals located in Satellite Offices and those in other parts of the organization can be challenging. Beyond technological and infrastructure issues, company (and/or national) culture and organizational barriers influence effective collaboration across such vast location differences.

Offshore Centers – Offshore operations and third-party outsourcers present yet another step along the on-premise/off-premise locality continuum, putting even greater demands on intangible collaboration. In additional to geographical and time zone differences, different organizational models, culture, missions, goals, and success metrics can be a challenge to effective cross-organizational collaboration between such disparate entities.

Road Warriors – Individuals working from airports and hotel rooms and other remote workers operating from home or single offices represent the most distant group of off-premise workers. Road Warriors deal in the most intangible of all environments, working most of their time in the virtual world, needing to assimilate quickly to the culture and collaboration methods of the different sites they visit. Because they work primarily as individual contributors or as “visitors” within an existing team, this group presents its own unique set of challenges for uniting the workforce and building connectedness, cohesiveness, communication, and collaboration.