Perry Timms writes on social HR and asks the questions we should all we asking about the workplace. He has over 20 years experience in business change including project management, organisational development, talent strategy and L&D. He is well-known on the blogger and event circuit and is regularly asked to chair conferences, roundtables and webinars, both in the UK and around Europe. Perry is a CIPD adviser on social media and engagement.

In a departure from my normal posts which are thematic around the world of social HR I wanted to use my valuable column space to take you to the other side of the world. New Zealand to be precise.

Of course with digital technology, the other side of the world is actually not that far away any more.

And with social technologies we can converse with people just as easily as if we saw them everyday across the desk; at the bus stop or at the coffee house.

My world was made much smaller when – after getting used to twitter and seeing what folks across the world were talking about regarding HR, change, leadership and technology when I came across a hashtag and a Twitter conversation for an hour each Thursday morning. 

It was called #nzlead. It was run by two Kiwi HR practitioners – Amanda Sterling and Tash Pieterse. It was a themed conversation online around a preview blog post; 4 questions and use of the hashtag to denote the nature of the conversation plus a follow up blog post.

"It literally blew my mind."

There were people on the other side of the world, 12 hours in front of me, riffing on all the subjects that were important to me and my fellow practitioners.

I joined in. I got to chatting to the people on there and the organisers Tash and Amanda. I joined in every week. I loved it. It was a totally buzzy way to start my day on a Thursday.

I eventually managed to meet my first NZLeader – the quite brilliant Richard Westney – on his trip to the UK in February 2013.

My picture on my Google+ biog is taken when I was having a coffee with him and I recall that amazing real life connection vividly. I then got talking to Amanda and Tash and in the space of 2 years, invited them to the UK to spend a few weeks working with me and meeting folks.

It was amazing that these people I only knew through twitter chats were just like their online selves and we got on like we’d known for years.

Social had shrunk the distance between us to literally nothing.

Amanda went on to write a brilliant book – The Humane Workplace – and I had the honour of writing the foreword for it. Amanda, Richard, and others also contributed to the two books of blogs David d’Souza curated called Humane Resourced and This Time It’s Personnel. Amazon best sellers.

And on 25th February 2016, Amanda won at the HRINZ (HR Institute of New Zealand) awards for innovation in HR for her work with NZLead. A truly massive recognition of a few folks farting around on twitter which has become a globally uniting source of inspiration, insight and interconnectedness.

It’s this I wanted to zoom on in this Social HR feature.

"Farting around on Twitter"

It’s NOT JUST farting around on Twitter.  It’s people connecting, sharing their thoughts, challenging each other, stimulating thought and creating a movement.

Has NZLead actually shaped up HR in New Zealand or anywhere?

Maybe, maybe not. What I think it has done is galvanised a spirited bunch of HR practitioners who now help each other out, test theories and make a difference.

Social media has – quite literally – shrunk the world and made people closer to the source of new thinking, problem solving and influencing things.

One of NZLead’s greatest achievements is HR policies in 140 characters or less.  What a brilliant way to cut the guff we normally find in these outmoded, misguided and often pointless documents.

What could social media do for you if it can shrink the world?

• The distance between your out-of-touch C-Suite and your people?
• Your team leaders and their team members?
• Your customers and you?
• Your myths and the truth?
• Your engagement index of questionable value and everyday conversations and comments that truly tell you whether people are engaged or otherwise?

What NZLead ALSO is, is an indicator of how communities of interest give up time, shun normal economic value and practice what they preach in connected sharing.

NZLead and social media-based communities have also shrunk the differences between knowing and not. Spirited conversations sharing insight, examples and challenging convention has been the operating mode of NZLead ever since I first (accidentally) found it and continues to this day.

Amanda has chosen to leave NZLead for a while – well not leave it but not run it.  So the community – of which I am a part of despite being on the other side of the world – has taken it over. And so it remains. So social media has also shrunk the inevitable death of things that wither because the leader moves on.

Jon Husband – the ahead-of-his time creator of the concept of the Wirearchy (that networks are and will replace formal structures – specifically the hierarchy) was on to something that interconnected people form the basis of power, work, learning and more. 

So it is that things like NZLead may – to some – be simply echo chambers of people chatting to people and never moving the dial.

But NZLead is proof that social media connects, shapes and inspires people to think, believe and do.  It makes the gap between unsure and certain shrink and certainly shrinks the world to human-sized proportions.

Congratulations to everyone associated with NZLead – an inspiration to us all in shrinking the distance between alone and all one.