If you’ve been following the Cornerstone blog in the last few months, you’ve probably noticed our attention has been focused on a few key themes we see playing out today in the new world of work. This new way of work is multi-generational, multi-geographical, multi-cultural, and location-agnostic and device-independent. People have different expectations of how, where and what they use to get their jobs done.
The rise of social, mobile and the cloud now means that, for many employees, their physical/mobile/virtual/Web workspaces have become inexorably intertwined. Many of us now work with colleagues around the globe, some of whom we only rarely see face-to-face.
These are just a few of the questions organizations are working through today:
- Is your organization prepared for a world of work in which Millennials will form 50% of the global workforce (by 2020)? [1]
- Are your employees armed with the right tools to communicate and collaborate in an increasingly global, multi-cultural workplace?
- Is your organization prepared for a world of work in which over 60% of employees use a personal device for work? [2]
- Is your organization prepared for a world of work in which 60% of employees think they have the right to work remotely with a flexible schedule, and 70% of employees think being in an office regularly is unnecessary?[3]
To help clients face the new world of work and to tackle these types of questions, Cornerstone is launching new (1) social collaboration, (2) social performance feedback and recognition and (3) mobile capabilities.
It’s time to reimagine work.
To truly maximize workforce performance and improve employee engagement, organizations need to move beyond outdated intranets and rigid content management systems. It’s time to reimagine the way employees collaborate.
Cornerstone Connect is the social application that directly connects employees and teams to the right knowledge, ideas and resources they need to work smarter. And isn’t that the point?
As the central resource for employees, Cornerstone Connect unifies communication and collaboration across the organization into one streamlined flow of work by integrating a robust social layer within the Cornerstone suite. Seamlessly blended with learning, performance and recruiting activities, Connect enables a level of productivity in the Cornerstone system never before possible.
Key features that spur your employees and teams to ever-greater productivity:
- Universal Profile. Serving as the center-of-the-employee universe, Universal Profile is each employee’s go-to spot for connecting with colleagues, completing tasks and engaging in social feedback. The Universal Profile draws in information from across the talent management suite – recruiting, learning, performance, social activity and more.
- Collaboration Tools. Easily collaborate with colleagues, executives and partners on projects and tasks.
- Activity Streams. Employees can see updates across people, places, projects and content in your organization, at a glance. Connect’s activity streams provide a personalized view of tasks and actions, as well as Learning, Performance and Recruiting activities.
- Project and Team Management. Employees have access to everything needed for productive teamwork in one seamless application. Anyone can instantly gather all the people, information and tools they need to accomplish tasks, projects and goals. Keep each other informed with real-time status updates and smart activity streams.
- Social Performance and Feedback. Provide each employee with instant feedback and social badges for their contributions. The best way to enforce a culture of continuous coaching and alignment that improves performance.
We think our approach is unique and accounts for the ways that people actually work today. From the employee’s perspective, putting everything you need to know to do your job in one, always-available place is just working smarter.
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Current sentiment seems to support the notion that the old-fashioned end-of-year performance review (much dreaded, seldom effective) is not the best way to evaluate and reward real employee contribution to your business. It’s time for organizations to reimagine performance as an ongoing, collaborative process that provides real-time feedback, context for what work means, connections to meaningful development activities and more transparency.
This makes sense: recent research shows 80% of Millennials not only think they deserve to be recognized more for their work, they also want regular feedback from their boss. [4]
The upcoming Cornerstone release makes social performance feedback and recognition/badging an integral part of the talent management and social collaboration process. This is different than other social badging products that stand alone and don’t tie into the broader world talent management processes.
Key features include:
- Social Badges. Social badges can be given to fellow collaborators when they’ve influenced or completed any task or project. The badge is awarded to an employee in the specific task and is available to see on the activity stream. Employees can collect the badges and feedback they’ve received and apply it towards their annual performance reviews.
- Feedback. Similar to Facebook comments, employees can provide dynamic feedback on specific tasks, projects, documents, and goal achievement. The feedback can accompany a social badge.
- Goal & Task Accomplishment. When goals & tasks are completed; the employee can see his or her running record/history of completed tasks.
The new Cornerstone social feedback and badging tools will allow organizations to drive effective employee recognition, encourage a coaching culture, and improve team alignment.
As the workforce becomes increasingly mobile, global and hyper-connected, there is an emerging expectation for real-time connectivity and instant access to learning and people.
Give your employees, managers, and executives the mobile access to your organization on their devices, and they’ll be able to work smarter-anytime, anywhere. That’s what Cornerstone Mobile is all about, the power of productivity and real-time connectivity. Bring together essential HR functions with the power of mobile with recruiting, learning, performance management and social productivity.
Key features that connect your multi-generational workforce and drive team productivity:
- Mobile Learning. Provides access to learning activities, courses and content, from any mobile device. In other words, allows learning to happen regardless of setting and device.
- Social Collaboration. Keeps everyone connected with managers, colleagues, and teams wherever an employee is.
- People Finder/My Team. Employees can search for subject-matter experts and colleagues. Competencies, profiles and tags tell users who knows what. We think of it as working smarter.
- Task Management. Directly from a mobile device, employees can set the right priorities, rearrange their priorities and access activities from recruiting, learning, performance and succession.
- Mobile Observation Checklist. Employees receive onsite, on-the-job feedback in the field for training or certification. Critical for employees in certain healthcare, education, retail and manufacturing settings (to name just a few).
Cornerstone Mobile is here to serve as an essential tool for your employees, managers and executives to utilize on a daily basis. The application supports all iOS and Android devices, including smartphones and tablets.
As long as people have gathered together in groups, it’s been challenging to make sure everyone has the right information at the right time. With these new Cornerstone products, our clients will be able to ensure that social collaboration and mobile productivity are central building blocks in their overall talent management strategies.
[1] PWC, "Millennials at work: Reshaping the workplace" (2012)
[2] Gartner, "Bring your own device: the facts and the future" (April 2013)
[3] Cisco, "Connected World Technology Report" (2011)
[4] (MTV "No Collar Worker" Survey, November 2011)
