Learning Leaders

This week the winners of the Bersin & Associates 2012 Learning Leaders(TM) Program, now in its sixth year, were announced. The report makes interesting reading, detailing how the winners improved their businesses with innovative, efficient and effective approaches to employee learning and talent management.

Kim Lamoureux, Senior Director of Research Practices and Principal Analyst said "Learning teams increasingly measure how training and development contribute to the top and bottom lines of their organization. Social networking for the first time played a role in almost every entry, enabling learning and talent leaders to leverage the expertise of their people to find new talent and train current employees without creating formal programs."

I will being summarising its contents in my next few blogs but, if you can't wait, you can download the complimentary 108-page report from http://marketing.bersin.com/2012LearningLeaders.html

The latest acquistion in the talent management software market

There’s a lot of movement in the talent management software industry. Today’s announcement that Oracle has agreed to buy Taleo is just one in a long line of acquistions in the past 6 months. SAP acquiring SuccessFactors plus Salesforce acquiring Rypple. Who will be next in line?

New HR cloud based solutions are coming onto the market at a rapid pace and most are taking into account of the growing popularity of social, collaborative platforms. It’s also interesting that technology which was originally aimed at the consumer, like apps and social networks, are now moving into the enterprise market.

However, it needs to be remembered the HRM needs are diverse and often unique to each organisation. Finding the right solution isn’t an easy task for any organisation, there still isn’t a product available which is flexible and customisable enough to fit ‘all’.

Will Rypple make a Splash?

Rypple is a web-based social performance management tool which provides a more collaborative and social approach to performance management.  The system allows for continuous conversation between employee, manager and other team members.  The software employs various game mechanics, like badges, which can be custom-built to reflect a company’s own values.  At the same time it provides a platform to create ‘social’ goals for teams and managers. Goals can be shared and employees can join up their goals and invite others to contribute.  Other team members can comment, rate and provide feedback on an individual’s performance. Employees are encouraged not to sit back and wait for feedback; social performance tools encourage you to check and see how you’re doing.

Founded in 2008, Rypple have raised $13 million in funding and can boast Facebook as one of their clients but will it catch on? Rypple’s social performance platform certainly provides a way for teams to communicate effectively and targets can be easily monitored on a daily basis.  It’s great for rewarding a job well done but it doesn’t take away the need for private one to one meetings to give constructive criticism.  Making your performance management process agile is all about making it continuous and constant and social performance tools do that. However, they don’t take over the need for an annual review. 

The concept is good and Rypple have certainly made a splash in the HCM world by recently being acquired by Sales Force. Furthermore, they’ve recently launched a new android app for mobile use. l’ll be writing more about social performance management tools next month.