Mark Smith's Analyst Perspectives

The use of social collaboration to support human capital management is increasing as the need to engage talent becomes a higher priority in organizations. In particular, those that have a growing population of workers from the millennial generation see social media as a primary means of communication. Social collaboration is growing in acceptance – 58 percent of organizations now permit it, according to our benchmark research on social collaboration and human capital management (HCM). For many organizations, this opens up communication with employees that goes well beyond electronic mail. Promotions and other recognitions of achievement are critical factors in retaining talent components of employee engagement strategies. Employee recognition has been a focus for Globoforce for more than a decade. The company provides software for what it calls strategic recognition, which is now available via software as a service and cloud computing, making it easy for non-IT employees to deploy. Globoforce has a unique recognition social graph and provides metrics that can be used to determine management’s engagement level with its workforce. Enhancements to the software last year made it easy to deploy employee recognition feeds and to congratulate others with a single click. For mobile users the company released a native application for Apple’s iPhone, but it’s only available for customers at this point, with no demonstration version to enhance its visibility for others who might be interested. This year, Globoforce integrated social recognition with performance management through the introduction of talent maps, which use employee performance data to ensure that employee recognition is based on actual reviews. With these unique advancements in HCM Globoforce can complement existing deployments of talent management applications. Establishing justification for social recognition might not be easy, but our benchmark in social collaboration found that the most important workforce metrics are employee satisfaction and retention rates – factors that should be components of a business case for investment. If your organization does not have metrics in place and perform root-cause analysis on methods for improving them, it is time to create them. You will also see how Globoforce is using workforce analytics and metrics as part of their offering to help deepen your competency as it relates to social recognition. Retaining and improving the potential of existing talent is a better path than losing experienced employees and spending time and money to hire and train them, which you must do if you fail to engage and retain your talent. Globoforce’s challenge is to gain further recognition of its brand and product within human resources departments, and in lines of business that understand the importance of employee recognition. Providing a free trial would help – this is now a standard practice for social collaboration technology providers to demonstrate usability, and it is the most important evaluation criteria in social collaboration and HCM for 77 percent of organizations in our research. Seeing and trying is believing; Globoforce has developed some engaging capabilities, but it could do a lot better job of attracting potential buyers before engaging in a sales conversation, including on mobile technology such as tablets, where management and executives often evaluate new applications. My analysis shows that Globoforce spends significant energy to gain recognition from IT analysts, but it should focus instead on illustrating its value through demonstrations to the business audience including areas like customer services, sales and field service. Globoforce advances social collaboration for HCM by helping organizations address recognition of achievements as part of their performance management processes. The company also can help them design appropriate processes that will work within their organizational culture, and provides the software to implement them. If you are serious about employee engagement and recognizing your talent, see how Globoforce uses social collaboration to advance the satisfaction of a workforce. Regards, Mark Smith CEO & Chief Research Officer

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