I recently came upon a quite long but highly interesting article from the Harvard Business Review (HBR) on Empowerment. It talked about how empowered employees have created significant innovations in ways to serve their customers better. Most innovations have been facilitated by the use of technology that is readily available, easy to use, and for the most part, free – social media sites and online communities, cloud computing, online video, etc. Or the innovations are included in existing services that people already have, such as camera phones and mobile access everywhere. Using these same technologies, consumers are empowered as well: the article describes situations where consumers have had bad customer experiences and have shared with, in some cases, thousands of their Twitter followers.
So how is this relevant in the staffing and recruiting world? I believe just as relevant as it is on the consumer examples the article talks about. The fact is, empowered individuals come up with technological solutions they have access to. Any organization that empowers their employees to innovate, that provides access to the tools they need, will spur innovation from any area of a company – the administrative support staff, clerical staff, etc.
Empowerment also works for job seekers. In this competitive environment the only way to stand out is to be innovative. A former colleague in a consulting organization was telling me about his frustrations with a recent hiring process he is running. Within a week of posting the job, they had received over 100 resumes. A cursory scan of the resumes did not reveal any potential candidates. Those that did stand out happened to include interesting departures from the typical cover letter-resume combination, such as video resumes. There are a couple of services out there that let people record a video resume, create a link for it, and then include the link as part of their response. A more simple approach could even be to record a simple introduction with the webcam software, save it as a video file, and attach it as a document when submitting a resume. Some recruiters are actively encouraging this practice from their candidates.
An additional fact that the HBR article points out is that most companies aren’t set up to harness technological innovation that comes from outside technologies. It takes management commitment to make these changes. It often means a change or adjustment in the culture of an organization, no matter the size.
Is your organization ready to embrace empowerment? Are you?
The referenced article can be found at http://ht.ly/21Rf2
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