You’ve probably heard the term Web 2.0 tossed around like a good salad at a fine restaurant.  It’s one of those buzzwords whose drone seems ever present in the background of web based technology talks today. 

What Web 2.0 is can be hard to define or maybe isn’t widely agreed upon and is generally based on your own biases.  In my opinion and in short Web 2.0 is generally comprised of any combination of three things:

1.       Functionality and features (particular within the user interface) equivalent to those you can get with a desktop application.

2.       A social twist on a formerly strictly technological domain (like search).

3.       Transformation of what was essentially tactically oriented automation of previously manual task into strategic analysis and action based on data from those tasks.

Being a web developer who works in the HR space I’ve started wondering what HR 2.0 should be.  Should I be developing a virtual HR world along the lines of Second Life where your avatar walks into a cyber-faux HR department that looks like a Caribbean resort in order to request time off or to complete an expense report?  Should I be working on a social alternative to the usual HR functions that uses a wiki-like mob Inteligencia to perform daily HR tasks?  Probably not.

What I should be working on is a way to take the tasks of time and attendance, learning management, session management, performance management, etc that we’ve automated and elevating them to be tactical and strategic.  An HR 2.0 application should be a proactive piece of software that doesn’t just help streamline day-to-day task; instead, an HR 2.0 application should point your organization in the right direction by helping determine strategic success factors.

Let’s take succession management (the subject of my last post) as an example.  The application might tell you what gaps you have now, might help you use our learning management module to plan to fill those gaps, might give you a roster of who is where and how long have they been there, but as an HR 2.0 application it should also tell you (maybe without your asking) that Bob Smith is the best choice for that new VP of Whatever slot that just opened up.  It should tell you that if you train Mary Jane Doe on topic X she’ll make the best replacement for John Somebody who has 29 years of service in and is ready to retire.

In short, a HR 2.0 app should be an active virtual employee within your company bringing solutions to you without the need of your asking it for the data to make that decision yourself.  Two dot oh means that it is time for software to move beyond automation of mundane tasks into the space of strategic planning.  Two dot oh software doesn’t just work hard; it work’s smart, too.