One of the classic story archetypes is the wise counselor who stands behind the hero, providing guidance and encouragement while smoothing the way until the hero can complete his/her mission. Whether it’s Zeus helping Perseus, Gandalf helping Frodo, Merlin helping Arthur or Obi Wan Kenobi helping Luke Skywalker, there is little doubt about the importance of that behind-the-scenes figure.
In the business world, the behind-the-scenes figure is HR. Think about it. No other department is so intimately involved with every other employee, from the first interview to the exit interview. HR recruits talent, on-boards new employees, manages salaries, negotiates benefits for the rest of the organization, creates and manages training programs and handles hundreds of other tasks and details, all so everyone else can do their jobs better.
Fulfilling that role, however, has become more challenging as technology has increased both the pool of available workers and the speed with which answers to critical questions are expected. That’s where virtual environments can help HR deliver more value. They solve issues related to proximity by creating a place where prospective and/or current employees can meet, view presentations and communicate despite differences in distance and time zones. And they meet the expectations of quick delivery of information by allowing HR to create a place where answers to a wide variety of questions are available immediately by entering the virtual environment and opening the right door.
Some of this is already standard practice. HR has been leveraging virtual environments for benefits information and automatic payment for a few years. But the profession has only scratched the surface of what virtual environments can do. It is with these lesser-used capabilities that the potential to contribute can really be unleashed.
“The HR virtual environment is a ‘game changer,” says James Gilliam of CareerBuilder.com. “It allows organizations to deliver that ‘wow’ factor while connecting to global audiences 24/7/365.”
Take recruiting, for example. Since the advent of ubiquitous high-speed Internet connectivity, networking and later cloud computing, organizations have been far more inclined to seek out talent where it lives rather than restrict the search to those who can commute to an office. While that is a positive in one sense, it also means your organization is competing against every other organization with similar capabilities and telecommuting policies for that talent.
Further complicating matters is that, according to CareerBuilder.com, more job candidates are using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks to check out companies before they apply for jobs. They are forming brand impressions before they ever speak to a recruiter.
By using virtual environment technology to create a virtual job fair, HR professionals can help elevate that brand impression while vetting candidates more efficiently. Rather than setting up physical job fairs in multiple cities – a process that could take weeks to complete and cost many thousands of dollars – HR can meet “live” with interested candidates from all over the country (or the world), either in a single day or over several days (depending on the scope). More people at a lower cost? What’s not to like?
Here’s where it gets interesting, though. With a physical job fair, when it’s over it’s over. But a virtual job fair can remain open as long as the organization chooses; while there may not be live representatives manning the "booths,” visitors can still collect information and ask questions that can be answered later, greatly extending the value of the investment.
The other key difference is the technology makes it easy to gather detailed information on attendees behavior. For example HR professionals can learn what was interesting to candidates, what was popularand then make adjusts, so they can do an even better job with the next event.
Virtual environments are also great for conveying important information with a personal touch, i.e. putting the “human” back in Human Resources. Picture introducing a new benefits package with several options and other potential complications. Sending a detailed email and inviting employees to write if they have questions, while often done, is hardly ideal. You’re never sure which is worse – the barrage of the same question that usually follows, or the unasked questions that will cause bigger problems down the road.
Holding a live “town hall” meeting with the Chief HR Officer or other HR management certainly offers the human touch. But that can be expensive, even if it’s just in one location. It also presumes all employees can take a couple of hours out of their day to go to the meeting place, which is rarely the case.
A virtual environment, however, gives you the ability to have everyone join you online in a setting that feels more like a live setting but costs far less. It makes it easier for more people to attend since they can participate from their desks. The anonymity of being online will encourage more people to ask the tough questions they might not in an actual live setting, and the entire session can be recorded and made available on-demand for those who couldn’t attend during the actual session. Yet unlike a standard video, the recording can be stored in one or multiple rooms in the virtual environment created specifically for all benefits-related information.
Training and education is another area where virtual environments elevate the content above the norm. By creating a virtual learning environments with easy access to content, subject matter experts, and other students, some real and some just for atmosphere, you can take employees out of their normal work environment and place them in a setting that is more education-friendly, and more convenient than a physical classroom.
That scenario was borne out not long ago by a University of California-Berkeley professor who had a class that met Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. On Mondays and Wednesdays, attendance in the lecture-style class averaged around 100 students. On Fridays, with the weekend looming (or perhaps already having started for some), attendance would drop to 20 students.
As an experiment, he created a virtual environment and offered the Friday class online. Attendance immediately shot back up to the levels on the other days. As a bonus, the number of questions asked during the class also increased, from an average of four to five up to 40 to 50 questions per session – once again demonstrating that people feel more comfortable asking questions when they can remain anonymous, or at least are not face-to-face with their peers.
HR enjoys a unique status within the organization, interfacing closely and regularly with everyone from temps to the CEO and the Board. Like Gandalf, Obi Wan and the others, that role is essential to the short- and long-term success of the enterprise.
Virtual environments can help make that job easier, ensuring that HR’s voice (and the voices it supports) are heard clearly, efficiently and cost-effectively. Because they don’t just inform – they engage.
By Eric Vidal -- Director of Product Marketing for the Event Services Business Segment at InterCall, the world’s largest conferencing and collaboration services provider. He can be reached at ericv@unisfair.com.
