Web 2.0 and HR

Martin Reddington, Mary Beth Kneafsey and I have recently produced a Research Insight document for the CIPD on Web 2.0 and HR as part of their 'Shaping the Future' agenda. This can be found at the CIPD's website, which we encourage members of the CIPD to visit and participate in the online discussion . Other people who are not members of the CIPD can contribute by joining our discussion forum/ resource space, which is also listed on the side bar. We are looking for feedback on the issues we raise in the document. These focus on the potential advantages (and some of the problems) of social media in helping organizations become more effective in recruiting, engaging staff, allowing greater individualisation of psychological contracts and encouraging collaboration to increase the organization's collective IQ.

The questions we would like readers to share their thoughts with us are:

1. Are these social media - for example, blogs, wikis, social networking sites, image sharing sites, virtual worlds, etc., - like to be 'disruptive innovations' for people management, and thus likely to help create sustainable high performance organizations? Or are they part of the technology hype?
2. Does the HR function need to be where the net or virtual generation communicate to reach them? Or is the net generation too general a term so as to be misleading?
3. Can these technologies be used to enhance employee voice/engagement and the extended IQ or the organizations, or are their better ways of achieving these ends?
4. To what extent is the HR community up to speed with these innovations, and do they need to be?
5. To what extent does Web 2.0/social networking represent a threat to HR's desire to control?

Please take some time out to record your thoughts on these questions, either on the CIPD website or this blog. On this topic, you might also want to visit James Richards blog, 'Work-related blogs and news', for an expert, evidence-based insight into one of the most important social media technologies. John Castledine's blog has an excellent introduction to Enterprise 2.0, while Jon Ingham's Human Capital Management and Ross Dawson's 'Living Networks' are also highly informative on Web and Enterprise 2.0