This is a 5 minute read and is aimed at HR professionals and the C-Suite.

The digital landscape has changed our analog world forever, and whilst most of the push for digital has been focused on a combination of technologies that look to cut cost, or improve business process and sales efficiencies we feel it's totally overlooked the human element.

Free to access, free to use Social Media has/is been the biggest driver of the adoption of changes in social behaviour around the world, it impacts companies from the inside, and also from the outside as today's consumer or prospect is more empowered than anytime in history. 

During the second half of 2019 we (the global team) at DLA Ignite are turning our attention to the role of 'Human Resources', it's something we've been working on for many years, especially because of HR's pivotal role in business transformation. 

This isn't about adding new HR tools, it isn't about new training software, it isn't about being able to post vacancies on social media, it's about recognising that any real business transformation project is delivered by those people who are directly charged with that transformation, what skill sets they currently have, or will need to assist and drive that transformation.


DLA Ignite will be delivering accredited skill based training, key processes, and skill sets required to achieve it.

We're going to provide an industry recognised and certified qualification (think NVQ or CIM) process that will allow those same people to become industry accredited with a number of transferable skills that will last them for life, regardless of the sector they currently work in.

The scary bit is that with these new found skills and processes they might even take your business way ahead of you're competitor, and don't forget they can also take those skills to your competitor if you're too much of a Dinosaur to adapt.

With 3.5 Billion people already using social media platforms around the world the industry has already started to mature out of its early days, businesses are now finding out how to unlock the immense opportunities across the entire enterprise by a better understanding of what social media can do within that transformation framework, and move away from the intrusive 'advertise and promote' mentality that's turning customers off in their millions.

LinkedIn has been a business platform that grew out connecting training and recruitment professionals into something much more. Today there are over 615 Million people registered on LinkedIn worldwide, and each month over 50% of them are seen as being active.

Today if I'm thinking about joining your company i'll check you, your colleagues, company, and other social reference points to determine if you and you're company is someone I want to be associated with - the worm has truly turned as they say.

The days of HR being a purely internalised piece of the transformation jigsaw is well and truly over, today's employee's, customers and prospects are far more technically competent and socially savvy than ever before, and it's your companies reputation they now all have greater influence on than ever before.

I read a piece of research(link below) that suggest 99% of executives believe that their employees have a major impact on the company’s success and that employee engagement is instrumental in that success.

In fact, executives rank employee engagement as a priority at 8.3 on a scale of 10.  At the same time however, data from my research suggests that while executives value employee engagement, they aren’t doing a great job of actually engaging employees. On average, employees rated their own engagement at an abysmal 5.5 out of 10.

Is this the practical reality for companies who are either in direct need to transform due to outdated business practices, or is it time companies who are looking to transform before they are disrupted by an as yet unknown competitor to explore what's really impacting the business of tomorrow?.

I wrote a few blogs on here some months ago that shared the disconnect between major British Retailer (Marks and Spencer) and its employees. Head Office was convinced (the same as the 99% above) that employee engagement is key to any successful transformation delivery. 

I won't regurgitate the the details of the blog but in summary I got quite a few discreet message from a number of those disgruntled employees who insisted that the lack of communication and employee engagement between them and 'head office' was a significant reason for the ongoing woes of the company.

In September 2019 we meet for our global conference, we have teams of people all around the globe who tell us that HR is crying out for help, we hope to become a significant part of the change process that lifts the HR function to the forefront of all business transformation strategies.

We are also looking for HR professionals and companies who would be keen to join us during the 'Beta' stages of this initiative.

If this is something you feel you would like to explore more about, please contact the author of this blog for a confidential no obligation conversation.