Regardless of if you are in the UK or the US the labour market is tight.  There isn't enough talent to fill the roles that are vacant.

How do you get to the talent?

How do you get to the talent before the competition?

How do you retain the talent?

This article isn't about table football or giving away free jelly beans.

Have you thought about Social Human Resources (HR)?

This isn't about putting out job adverts on Twitter or buying LinkedIn ads .... this is advertising and not social.

Social Human Resources (HR) is about empowering your HR team to be "social".

First they get compelling personal brands so they stand out to your employees, your alumni and your future employees.

Next you empower them to grow their networks.  Most people have, Linkedin networks of x colleagues and recruiters.  This is where HR proactively grow their networks of interesting people.

Finally the HR team share insightful and educational content.  It's best if they create this themselves as this is the most authentic and it's authenticity that we want.  After all, this is about making your business look interesting and cool to work for.

Articles about work life balance, articles about charity days, articles about what you do on your holiday, articles about building teams.

With a network and the fact your people in HR (and hopefully across the rest of the business) your company will look cool and interesting to work.  This will be seen by your (new) network.

This will mean you will start to get people being referred to you for work, you will also get people applying to you direct and you will get people wanting to stay.

In sport there is the common strategy used by the US Swimming team, Team Sky in the Tour de France which is called the "incremental gains".  This is where you do lots of small things to win.

This is how high performance teams work today, using incremental gains.

Social HR will allow you business to get to the best talent before the competition and retain that talent.