Joe Gerstandt | keynote speaker, freedom fighter, freak-flag flier

I am in New Orleans for the SHRM Diversity and Inclusion Conference this week, and it has been great.  It has been a few years since I have participated in this conference and I am really happy to be here and enjoyed the opportunity to present a session on the link between diversity and innovation this morning.  I have caught up with some old friends, I have made some new friends, and I have participated in some great conversations.

I have one really big concern.

Social. Media.

SHRM is doing a good job of integrating the use of social media to promote and cover the conference, the SHRM social media guy is on the job, Paul Smith is tweeting from sessions and blogging about the conference, there was a tweetup last night, etc.  My concern is not about the conference itself, but about our body of work.

We are not talking about how to integrate social media into our work.  We are not talking about social media at all.

It is not on the agenda.

This is my concern.

I do not think by any means that HR is on the cutting edge when it comes to understanding and integrating social media, but you would be hard pressed to find an HR conference without social media on the agenda.   HR as a whole is talking about, thinking about and arguing about social media on a local level, state and regional level and on a national level.

Social media is on the agenda at the SHRM Strategy Conference.  Social media was on the agenda at the OH SHRM Conference last month.   Social media is on the agendas of the HR Southwest conference and the MN SHRM Conference that are both going on right now.

HR has a lot of work to do when it comes to really understanding and utilizing social media…but HR understands that it is now a part of the conversation…so it shows up on the agenda.

But it is not on the agenda here.  It is not on our agenda as D&I practitioners.  That concerns me.

I am not going to put the blame on SHRM, I think that SHRM members, conference attendees and speakers all play an important role in setting the agenda.  I think that the larger problem is that there are very few people talking about the intersection between social media and diversity and inclusion work.  One person that comes to mind is Jessica Carter.  I have also done a little speaking and writing about this set of issues in the past, but I am now committed to doing more. This is, I believe, a critical issue for this work.

If you are doing any kind of work in the 21st century that involves human beings, you have got to understand diversity and inclusion, and you have got to understand social media.

Diversity is a relational thing and at its core, diversity and inclusion work is about relationships and the social spaces that we create.  So is social media.  The most frustrating thing to me about D&I practitioners overlooking or ignoring social media is that we are talking about a set of tools that are almost custom designed for our craft.

We have got to get in front of this opportunity.

We can use social media to build relationships and bridges.

We can use social media to share context.

We can use social media to tell our story.

We can use social media to invite new voices into the conversation.

We can use social media to ask questions.

We can use social media to support and challenge each other.

We can use social media to share power and information.

We can use social media to take our workplaces back.

Use is obviously the keyword here…we have to use it, we have to be talking about how to use it and we have to take it seriously.

Be good to each other.