Simulating Multiple Panel Movements in an @AxureRP Prototype For iPad

This one is for the AxureRP prototyping geeks. If you want to simulate the dragging of multiple panels in AxureRP, there is a simple way to do that. The video below explains it.



The Axure Interaction logic is posted here.

How About Mobile Only HCM Apps For Managers And Employees

I had a chance to chat with an SAP HCM specialist this week. He shared an interesting insight with me. One of our customers is planning to build mobile and tablet apps for all employee and manager services and completely remove portal access for these audiences. That is very interesting. I am going to keep an eye on that project.

Allowance For Error

I have seen two interesting types of behaviors with my colleagues. One set of people anticipate that things might not always work as predicted; people may not show up on time for meetings, the projector may not always work, customers may cancel meetings at the last minute and so on. It is not that they always have a contingency plan. But they don't expect everything to work perfectly all the time.

There is a second set of colleagues who expect the world to function as expected. They expect people to always show up on time, their windows 7 machines to boot up under a minute, their GPS to show the right directions all the time and so on. These are not unreasonable expectations. But when such expectations are not met, this second set of colleagues get all upset and stressed out about it.

Who do you think is more productive at work? I have noticed that the ones who understand and accept that things don't always work the way they should are more productive and less stressed.

Companies That Are Open To Innovation

As part of my research for Career OnDemand I works with tens of companies. In the beginning, like many of my colleagues, I assumed that human resource teams from technology companies with a younger workforce might be early adopters of new people management concepts. Over the last two years I realized that I was wrong and my assumption is not always true. Utilities, chemical companies, oil companies, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics companies are equally open, if not more open, to innovation and risk taking. Ironically, human resource managers in technology companies with a younger demographic came across as more risk averse and skeptical about new ideas. I find this odd. I wonder why. Am I missing something?

Connecting Everyday Work With Performance Goals

Every people manager will agree that connecting day to day work with performance and development goals is very important. Almost every customer that spoke to in the past few years told me that they want their employees to know why they are going what they are doing. Connecting day-to-day work with goals is a hard thing to do. Just think about how many times last year you went to your company's goals management system to see if your daily work aligns with what your goals are. Even if you go there it is probably useless because, in most cases, your goals become obsolete the moment they are written down.

We are attempting to address this in Career OnDemand. Any employee will be able to send email messages and calendar appointments to Career OnDemand and later attach them to his or her goal in Career OnDemand. An employee can forward an email or appointment from any email system, even from a smart phone or a tablet. An employee can do this without having to install a plug-in or downloading an app.

The moment an email or appointment is attached to a goal, the employee's manager becomes aware of the work and the context of the work. This leads to a meaningful conversation the next time they meet and probably will lead to a discussion about the next steps or course corrections. If the daily work is not aligned with the goals in the systems, the manager can point that out to the employee. If the employee is doing meaningful work that is not aligned with the goals in the system, perhaps it is time to have another look at the goals and modify them.

If you were at the HR Technology Conference last month, you may have seen David Ludlow present these concepts and talk about them at great length.

We are working hard to simplify things and make complex concepts work with current technologies that people already use. Almost of of these ideas and suggestions came from customers who co-innovated with us. If you are interested in co-innovating with the Career OnDemand team, please reach out to @esdediego. We would love to show a preview of Career OnDemand months before general availability and listen to your thoughts.