Social Collaboration in HR Technology: Major Products & Players

In a constantly rotating list of “Next Big Things”, HR social collaboration is regularly touted as the phenomenon that will have (or is having) the most impact on the 21st century workplace. Certainly, with any business trend or practice that involves or depends on people, HR really ought to be in the vanguard. Which brings us to HR technology, because social collaboration is all about the tech. So, what does the HR social collaboration vendor/product landscape look like? Well, we can’t list them all and it’s just begging for trouble to even attempt a top five, but here for your contemplation is a selection of the products out there right now. Who knows, maybe one of them will be just right for you.

Podio

Podio from Citrix provides cloud space for your people to ‘gather’, communicate, exchange ideas, arrange meetings. With hundreds of apps to facilitate any kind of collaboration from running project teams, to recruitment, training and full-scale event management, Podio is becoming a favorite tool for many organisations. In addition to all the usual chat, status, ‘like’ and comment options so familiar from social media, Podio stores these exchanges in a way that links them to the project or work area being discussed, making it a structured system of record. Furthermore, Podio underpins a CRM system too allowing you to bring the two together, extending the collaboration to external stakeholders too.

Jive

As with Podio, Jive goes further than HR social collaboration, encompassing customer collaboration too. Designed from scratch with social collaboration in mind, Jive is purpose-built in every sense of the word. As well as the inevitable app store and an increasing interest in gamification, on the day to day HR front, it also includes a set of fully customizable templates.

SAP Jam

SAP Jam brings social collaboration tools to business process management, sales and services, and, of course, human resources. Whether it’s onboarding new employees by immersing them in the knowledge and colleague networks they need, or goal-setting in a social performance management environment, or providing access to informal and ad hoc learning opportunities to complement more traditional training, SAP Jam offers a chance to better connect your workforce.

SilkRoad

SilkRoad’s Life Suite seeks to improve your employee engagement by offering social connections and principles with a selection of applications. Point enables internal networking and collaboration and easy learning opportunities. Heartbeat provides self-service access to HR data and processes. Wingspan is a social performance management system. With GreenLight for knowledge and content management, OpenHire for recruitment and applicant tracking, ad RedCarpet for onboarding SilkRoad brings social collaboration into all stages of the employee life cycle.

Of course, with these and other HR social collaboration tools available on the market, it’s always worth remembering the fundamental truth that any tool is only as good as the person using it. The human element is as essential as the software to your productivity-boosting social collaboration strategy.