Social Talent Management
Dear clients,
We are currently at the ASTD International Conference at the
Champagne Sports Resort in the Drakensberg and next week
you will find us at the Assessment Centre Study Group
Conference in Stellenbosch!
All this travelling keeps LEMASA on its toes and we are
constantly identifying newways to help you achieve your
objectives in developing, nurturing and assessing talent.
We are launching The Mentoring Game™ at the ASTD
conference and will exhibit it at the ACSG conference next
week. “Gamification” is one of the hottest trends on the
HR and training scene this year. Jeanne Meister predicts
that with more research, studies, and real-world examples
proving the power of incorporating game mechanics into non-
game activities like marketing, call center operations and
learning and development, a greater number of enterprise
processes will start to become “gamified.” Read more about
this In her blog at –
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeannemeister/2013/01/03/2013-the-year-of-so...
The mentoring game uses the principles of gaming to ensure
that the bonding between the mentor and mentee takes
place effectively.
In this edition of the LEMASA Chronicle we briefly
discuss the concept of social talent management , as well as
tell you more about a workshop that we recently designed to
help managers to coach and counsel in the workplace.
We trust that you had a good staryt to the year and that you have already experienced a few quick wins!
Warm regards
Sandra Schlebusch

Social Talent Management involves the use of social media as an integral part of the organisation’s Talent Management practices. Jaco du Plessis from BCore defines social media as all forms of electronic communication through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages and other content.
Some of the characteristics of the use of social media according to Josh Bersin are:
• Employees are all peers
• Information is transparent
• People have rich profiles
• People can upload and share many forms of rich content
• Comments, ratings, badges and leaderboards are common
• Different tools link with each other
Some writers call the massive increase in the use of social media a revolution and it is impacting on every aspect of the HR function. Some companies like SilkRoad have designed systems that use social media principles for talent management. Their system called Po int is a n employee-centric social talent management solution that connects employees to each other and their organisation by uniting the popular features of social networking with talent management. Point gives employees the forum they need to share expertise and be recognised by peers and leaders, allowing them to drive their own careers. Companies benefit by having a platform to reveal emerging trends. Experts on associated subject matter are able to better understand what and who is driving their business.
Some of the features of SilkRoad’s Point system illustrate clearly how social media is integrated into the whole concept of talent managemen t.
It, for example, has a feature called People and Connections
that increases employee engagement and facilitates knowledge sharing as people connect and share content, ask questions and seek feedback across the organisation. Another feature is Integrated Onboarding that connects new employees to their team and the organisation on day one, while guiding them through all required onboarding tasks. By seeking influential content employees quickly build the new employees knowledge base.
The use of social media in HR should, however, be carefully planned and executed. As Philippe Borremans, Chief Social Media Officer, Van Marcke Group of Companies said: “There’s no point jumping on the social media bandwagon if you don’t know which problems it will solve. There’s no use in saying ‘we should be using internal blogs’ when you don’t have an application for those blogs. If it doesn’t solve a problem there isn’t a use – and I think this is the issue that the business case is missing in a lot of organizations.”