After a four-week delay, I finally received my 32GB 3G iPad2 this past Monday! As I am an HR tech nerd, the first thing I asked myself was, "how can I make this applicable for my everyday HR duties?" Unfortunately, there are not too many HR specific apps right now; and let"s face it, HR probably isn"t the most profitable niche for app developers. However, there are a few - but plenty of general tools that make this worthwhile for any HR professional.
Manage Social Media Accounts
Since all of you took the advice from my last blog post and began creating your own interactive talent communities using social media, these apps / features make managing that a bit easier:
Tweetdeck - Great for managing multiple twitter accounts, keeping active searches for trends, industry hash tags, sourcing keywords, etc. Free - must have.
Facebook / Linkedin - I was initially bothered by the fact that I couldn"t find any iPad specific apps for these, but once I gave it a shot by simply logging in via Safari, I was pleasantly surprised. It really did not take away much from the experience at all. Later that afternoon I walked over to a hiring manager and literally handed him several candidate profiles using the LinkedIn Recruiter tool.
Youtube - Manage your account, watch videos, record videos with either the front-facing or rear-facing cameras, and upload content. Granted, you make look goofy doing so with an iPad, but in theory you could swing by a team area and make an impromptu video displaying the company culture to give that transparent & authentic inside look into the organization.
General Business Application
Quickoffice Mobile Suite - With the limitations of some of the main Apple business suite apps (Pages, Numbers, Keynote), this is by far a superior solution in my opinion. You can open and save files in a variety of formats (including saving files in excel format - unlike Numbers), as well as connect directly to your online storage accounts, including: Dropbox, Google Docs, Mobile Me and others. Plenty of functionality within the applications themselves, I couldn"t ask for anything more really. At $16.99, I feel it is worth the money if you plan on using a tool like this.
Reading Materials / Resources
There are plenty of eBook readers and digital bookstores available on the iPad: iBooks, Google Books, and Kindle, to name a few. You can definitely build an HR resource library that you can access anytime and from nearly anywhere.
Without getting into too many specifics, there are a plethora of free reference applications available on most any topic. I personally downloaded at least three different law dictionaries / guides for quick references if a certain term comes up that I may not be familiar with (of course not a substitute for actual legal advice).
Digital Magazines
Aside from eBooks, digital magazines seem to be immensely popular on the iPad. They are also available for many subjects, including HR. You can find apps with digital copies for HR magazines including:
HR Magazine
HR Executive
People Management
One big perk is that you don"t necessarily need to be a paid subscriber in order to see some of the magazines" past or even current issues.
HR Specific Applications
Yes, I was able to find a few, sadly nothing I consider to be super groundbreaking in comparison to the rest of the functionality of the iPad, but they are worth mentioning all the same.
Employee Tracker - Offers both a free and premium version. This app allows you to keep track of any incidents involving specific employee behaviors, and accounting for what the employer response was. In the premium version there are a few additional sorting options, a larger number of employees it can store in its database, and it can export information in CSV format. Another similar paid app is Direct Report: Employee Feedback Tracker.
My MBA: Human Resources; HR at Your Fingertips; Dictionary of HR Management Terms; Human Resources Terminology - These are all paid apps, but appear to be basic primers/glossaries for a variety of fundamental HR issues. The most comprehensive of these resources appears to be My MBA, which costs $12.99.
TWGlobal50 - This is probably one of the better HR specific apps available. Towers Watson offers a free app featuring an interactive map with Human Capital data for 57 countries. Some of the data includes: budgeted pay increases for 2011, employee engagement levels, talent mobility, and benefit costs.
SHRM 2011 - If you are attending the Annual SHRM conference in Las Vegas in June, this free app is a must have. It has a detailed breakdown of each session, a directory of speakers, an option for you to plot your agenda within the app based on the sessions you wish to attend, as well as providing information about the vendors in attendance and where they are located.
Access to Web Based Services
In addition to all of these great tools, you can still access your organization"s web based HR services using Safari. I have been able to work in our ATS (Taleo Recruit) just fine and with full functionality, access our self-service HR portal through Paychex, as well as access the payroll back-end to potentially process if needed. In that particular instance, I needed to download the free Citrix Receiver app, and then I was able to access that portion of Paychex just fine.
If you consider yourself a "g-recruiter," you can view your iGoogle page without any difficulties. Google has a disclaimer at the top of the page stating that some functionalities may not be available on a tablet, but I personally have not run into any as of yet.
Note Taking / Digital Form Completion
I saved the most exciting app for last. When I ordered the iPad, one of my goals was to be able to essentially eliminate the need for my paper legal pad, and do what I can to go as paperless as possible. For $4.99, Note Taker HD can make that happen.
While about 99% of folks are fine with using the finger as the main way to navigate the iOS and interact in the apps, I decided to obtain a stylus. After a good amount of research, I went with the BoxWave, for $15. It is a little smaller than a normal pen, lightweight but not fragile, and has a soft rubber-like tip - so it won"t scratch up your screen.
Once you start up the app, you can create a blank page or annotate a PDF. If you create a blank page, you will see a normal lined notebook page which you can write on with your stylus. You actually have the option in the settings to choose different types of lines. To maximize the amount of space to write on, you can use the convenient zoom window. It takes a small amount of time to get used to, but it"s certainly rewarding. As for the accuracy of the writing with a stylus, remarkable. It is 99% dead on, as if I was writing on paper with a pen. Very little delay in seeing the text, if any when writing. I have brought my iPad in for a few meetings this past week to test this functionality on the ground - no complaints. When you are done taking notes, go ahead and save your file as a PDF, and email it to yourself or another destination. I for one can email it to my Evernote account, and from my desktop - transfer it to wherever it needs to go.
For the annotating a PDF option, you basically import PDF files/forms, and write over them. For example, you have a job application for all candidates to complete. How progressive would your company appear to be if you handed them a tablet, and asked them to fill it out digitally? There are plenty of potential uses with this feature. Saving the annotated PDFs works the same as above, exports as a PDF and email it to your destination of choice.
Final Thoughts
Needless to say, I have really enjoyed working with my iPad over the past week, and I am still finding new features and apps to enhance the experience. While this isn"t a "must have" item, it certainly is a useful one. I am anxious to see how this new advent of tablet computing begins to integrate into everyday work life on a larger scale.
iPad? More Like HRpad
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