Employers-brand | Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad

With I-Prize Cisco Hammer It into Crowdsourcing for Innovation

July 5, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

A little time ago I wrote about Cisco’s Human Network. One of the point I raised was to know is Cisco was about to only play a facilitator’s game or try to exploit its network’s fruits when relevant. The answer was obvious, but now it gets materialized and is called I-Prize.

It’s nothing less that a context in which people submit business ideas and concepts. Contestants will be able to refine their ideas relying on Human Network.

What can they expect ?

Being hired by cisco to run the business they invented with a $250 000 signing bonus. Not that bad. Cisco is investing $10M in this program, which proves the profitability of externalized, distributed innovation, that’s to say crowdsourcing.

It’s been a while I don’t watch American Idol’s french clones anymore. But in this case the finalist’s presentation maybe worth.

I also see another point : CISCO shows it’s an open minded, agile and innovative company. Very important to seduce Gen Yers.. A great work on employer’s brand.

cisco, crowdsourcing, human network, Innovation, innovation collaborative, innovation participative, innovation-distribuée, marque-employeur

Filed Under: Innovation Tagged With: cisco, collaborative innovation, crowdsourcing, distributed innovation, employers-brand, i-prize, Innovation, participative innovation

Fired because of her blog: a french “premiere”

July 27, 2006 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Just when the big question was “is it good for companies to blog?”, “are employees’ blogs a good or a bad thing?” the french blogosphere woke up with a big headhache when we learned that the nice “petite anglaise” got fired beacause of things she wrote on her blog aboute her employer.

“Petite Anglaise” is an english secretary who works for an english company in Paris. Her blog wasn’t a “professional blog” put an intimate and personal one. And the only (few) post where she talked about her job where without mentionning anything about her identity or the companie’s name. She blogged about one or two things she experienced at work not to talk about her job but considering job as a part of her life.

The line was crossed the day a picture of her was published so people could identify her as the secretary of…I don’t think one client would ever have identified her, but her manager did.

I’m not sure this will bring anything on the debate about corporate and employee’s blogs. Just because she was only making fun of the way his senior speaks or about what he wears…so the matter is more personal than professional. Nothing about the company itself, nothing about competence, nothing about work…if she hadn’t been fired nobody would have known what she was talking about. Now everybody knows the name of the company.

So we’re note talking about pro and cons an employee’s blog but about a mistake on an intimate blog. That makes quite a difference and I hope this case won’t give arguments to the “anti-blog”.

Last thing is that we don’t know the internal context: perharps this “blog case” is the official reason put forward and that there are other things about her and her word we still don’t know.

As a conclusion I find the sanction too big for a single post where she made a little fun about a unknown man in an unidentified company, talking only about clothes, accent and old school behaviors. But what is sure is that it’s not unlawful not to have the sense of humor and self-derision. Because the point is a guy recognized himself in the post. It has nothing to do with the company image…until she published her photo. Big consequences for a small mistake.

But not much to learn about corporate and employee’s blogs.

Filed Under: Management & HR, Misc. Tagged With: blogs, corporate-image, employees-blogs, employers-brand, personnal-blogs, petite-anglaise

Let’s talk about employers…even if they don’t join the discussion

July 16, 2006 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

I don’t know if foreign people have ever heard about Tchooze. Tchooze was a french site where people can talk about companies who hired them, saying what whas goog, what was wrong, giving advice to those who wanted to apply for jobs in these companies.

The fact was companies didn’t like to see their inner face displayed at the face of the world and Tchooze was shut down a few days after being bought by mediasystem who had “big clients” that where concerned by bad opinions expressed by their former employees.

The “my opinion on my employer” syndrom is now striking back. The “web 2.0″ collaborative spirit, based on experience and information sharing scored the firts point, with people talking on their blogs. Some companies where afraid of that, others took this opportunity to talk differently and manage their “employer image”, taking benefit of the discussions on the web, creating their own blog, thinking that it’s interesting to learn what people think of you instead of ignoring it and acting as if nothing was happening.

I learned this week that Jobster was going to play a big part in this play by organizing such discussions based on their member’s experiences. The stake is great: managing the company’s image, learning from public opinion, show the real face of the company instead of the “official corporate side”. A great opportunity to improve HR strategy too.

What was innovating whith Tchooze is now becoming a strong trend and Jobster is the first major player in the HR industry who clearly gets involved in it.

The stake is clear for companies: they don’t master the game anymore so they have to deal with it, play with the new rules et work hard on their employer image if they want to avoid troubles. Neglecting this situation will cut them from what is the new reality of HR and corporate communication.

Talking about that…we (my collegues at Moovement and I) made a manifesto dedicated to companies who want to consider blogs as an HR communication tool in this new context. There’s a french and an english (yes!we’ve done it) version available here. If you’re not comfortable enough with french to read the whole page,you can download the english document directly here.