There’s a trend these days in HR, Marketing, Customer Service, leadership and certainly other areas within organizations. It is the use of social media. Like it or hate it, it is infiltrating business at all levels. It makes me wonder, which came first, the desire to share more freely or the tools of social media? Oh, but that is not the purpose of this post.
I was reading Fistful of Talent’s overview of HR Tech 2010, a conference for HR professionals. Josh Letourneau wrote:
Let’s stop looking backward by measuring the efficiency of transactions and start living in the moment, focusing instead on interactions.
Interactions are partially about the “social media exchanges”. Interactions are also about a flat corporate structure. Letourneau wrote:
Today’s leading edge organizations also realize that the OrgChart is nothing more than a hierarchical grid of (ideal) reporting relationships, with the real value truly being created by the series of relationships and informal interactions that aren’t evident in beautiful boxes and lines.
Leadership best practices, motivation in the work place, being a Linchpin, all of these theories point in the same direction. The old fashioned way of doing business ain’t working so well any longer. We are living in a new world with new ways of getting things done.
- Corporate structure may not be helping the company get things done.
- Cash rewards don’t really engage employees
- Recruiting the best talent might be better off as a distributed process
- Each worker can use their true gifts if they try.
These are just some of the points. GenX and GenY may somehow be behind this with their passion for all things technology. Boomers generally don’t want to accept it.
This on the heels of John Jantsch from Duct Tape Marketing’s post on 5 Trends that Will Shape Business in 2011. He writes:
This year we will simply stop talking about social media as though it were some new, sexy, foreign cousin of marketing. It’s just a fact of marketing life and will get integrated into strategy and tactics alike in ways that produce ROI.
So what might these changes mean for job seekers? If you are looking for the kind of work environment you had for 20+ years, I am pretty sure it is going to be difficult to find, at least in the smaller companies. Be resilient! For GenX and GenY, be true to your values. Find the right fit. It is out there and the numbers are growing.
I hope this got you thinking about the future, where you want to be, and what you want to be doing.
Hannah Morgan speaks and writes about job search and career strategies. She founded CareerSherpa.net to educate professionals on how to maneuver through today’s job search process. Hannah was nominated as a LinkedIn Top Voice in Job Search and Careers and is a regular contributor to US News & World Report. She has been quoted by media outlets, including Forbes, USA Today, Money Magazine, Huffington Post, as well as many other publications. She is also author of The Infographic Resume and co-author of Social Networking for Business Success.
