I know I’m dating myself, but I still get a little faint when I think of the scene in Dirty Dancing where Patrick Swayze comes into the room, finds Baby and says “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.” Although often overshadowed and overlooked, she was integral in executing the talent show, where she brought together the entertainment staff and the resort guests.
I can’t help but think that HR is often placed in the same role as Baby. Human Resources, the ambiguous partner to marketing and communications, has always been a point of some confusion, as companies struggle to discover the best ways in which to utilize such a vague, although invaluable, function. I came across a post by compareHRIS.com which illustrates the need for HR to take action in not only conceiving but in actually implementing strategy, and offers a fantastic guide to help HR professionals in doing so.
I am not good at math. Never have been.
The job of the recruiting department today has become somewhat of a business generalist role. They are measured in terms of typical recruiting metrics, but they really have to be astute in every facet of the business. Marketing is one of those skill sets that a progressive recruiting department must add to their list of skill sets. You’re no longer just recruiting for the marketing department, but you are literally doing marketing for your company in order to attract and retain top talent.
Human Resource executives are seeing that many exciting shifts are happening today in the way employees are valued and managed within their organizations. This is in large part due to the revolution of social technologies and its impact on traditional Human Resource programs. With the rise of social media and its impact on the corporate workplace, we’ve seen significant strides in how social technologies have changed traditional HR functions such as recruiting and talent development, and it’s only natural that our eyes turn to other key Human Resource programs as well. 
As we have adopted social media into our organizations, we’ve seen many instances where it has become necessary to discipline employees because of their behavior on social networking sites due to the negative light that behavior has shed on a company. It goes without saying that because of these behaviors, companies have scrambled to draft social media policies to minimize these occurrences and to manage employee performance overall. In many circumstances, actions and policies are put into place to protect the employee as much as the company.
