HROTodayGlobal

Globo Technicalities Trend 5: Global local. HR technology vendors are making the move to provide workable site localisation of their offerings. "HCM solutions have typically been developed for use within a single country," says Malcolm Fox, director of product marketing for Epicor. "However, this is not how the global economy works, and even at the smaller end of the company size there is often a multinational presence. Developers of single-country HRIS solutions typically do not have the presence or resources to be able to introduce the required local support—which is much more than language translations, currencies and different address/social security number formats." The dispersion of operations across myriad locations, in growth and mature markets alike, calls for HR technology that can accommodate every location's requirements seamlessly. "Internationalisation is one of our big initiatives over the next 12 months, and it's really three components," says Brin McCagg, co-founder of OneWire Inc. "The first is making sure that the terminology, licenses and look and feel are familiar to the recruiter. The second component is in terms of the language, and it's not that big of a deal; it really just requires translation services, which are almost commoditised, at this point. The third part is a performance issue, and OneWire will increasingly have redundancies in terms of servers in international locations." "The concept of global HR is a very, very large thing for any supplier of an HR solution to try to get its arms around, in part because of the regulations that are country-, state-, and even province-specific," says Jones. "So companies today are trying to go global, to have standardisation without centralisation, and to have localisation without process idiosyncrasies in each country. And this is not a trivial thing to pull off. They want the base processes to be consistent, fair and equitable, noting all the cultures and rules that have an impact." Trend 6: Taking social media to the next level. Twenty-nine percent of organisations expect to be using social media applications within three years CedarCrestone reports. That's a year-over-year increase of 91 percent. As CedarCrestone advises, it's important to institute a programmatic use of social media: the systematic integration of social media technology into HR processes and the technology behind HR systems. An alternate name for these kinds of social media tools is collaborative applications. CedarCrestone reports they "support the organisation both internally and externally to recruit and brand, to enable collaboration on processes and projects, and to extend service delivery." "We see an increased focus on employment brand," says McMillan. "Specifically, we see companies paying increased attention to the candidate experience created by their recruiting process. Companies know now that moments of dysfunction can end up all over social media." Use of social media at the programmatic level is nascent, but increasing. The percentage of organisations using social media in this way grew from 13 percent in 2009 to 21 percent in 2010 notes CedarCrestone. The type of social media that's employed programmatically appears to run the gamut: wikis (18 percent), secure instant message (18 percent), internal blogs (17 percent), Facebook (17 percent), LinkedIn (16 percent), Twitter (13 percent), and external blogs (9 percent). Trend 7: Keeping connected with mobile technology. In 2010, the number of mobile workers exceeded 1 billion worldwide, and by 2015, that number will have grown by more than 10 percent, reveals the new report from VDC Research and the ADP Research Institute (ADPRI). U.S. growth in mobile workers will be strong, too, with IDC forecasting that their numbers will equal 75.5 percent of the U.S. workforce by 2013, or 119.7 million workers. As the number of mobile workers skyrockets, helping off-site staff retain a meaningful connection with the organisation will become more critical. While the vision for mobile HR technology is to forge this kind of deeper connection, most mobile HR applications presently focus on workforce management and administration, with a movement toward unification of all functions in one application. ADP recently unveiled just this kind of solution, ADP Mobile Solutions, which provides an organisation's mobile staff access to virtual payroll information, retirement savings, time and attendance, and the corporate intranet, all via the iOS, Android, or RIM smartphone platform. "We're seeing movement in mobile toward the ability to access an HR application, talent management application, even comp SUMMER 2011 | www.hroglobal.com [39] Connecting & Empowering Y our W orkforce Mobile HR Solutions:

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