The Top HR Products of 2011 Award winners were recognized at the 14th Annual HR Technology® Conference & Exposition held in Las Vegas in October. Judged by editors of Human Resource Executive® magazine, the top products were selected based on their innovation, user‐friendliness and value to the HR profession.

The Global Human Resources Outsourcing (GHRO) team isn’t recommending any one product over another…we’re just sharing.  The Top winning products are:

1. RAVE, by BI Worldwide, is a mobile and web‐based platform designed to facilitate communications, engagement, recognition, promotion, incentives, learning and brand management. Built for mobile devices first and Web second, it is geared to serve and reach audiences on the go. It also has the capability to share recognitions and announcements with personal Facebook, Twitter and email accounts. Features include customizable mobile learning programs, a secure and private social networking environment for connecting across an organization, promotions and incentive tools to help product and brand managers drive their messages to the front lines, and alerts and push messages designed to put corporate information into the hands of employees.
2. Manager Ready, by Development Dimensions International (DDI), is DDI’s electronic version of its “day‐in‐the‐life” assessment experience that it has been offering at its facility in Bridgeville, Pa., for years. Long in the planning, the interactive and simulated three‐and‐a‐half‐hour experience now gives online participants the same opportunities to respond to realistic job challenges – although only through open‐ended emails as opposed to the live assessment’s additional role‐playing and telephone activities.  Like the “in‐person experience,” Manager Ready lets participants come face‐to‐face with real business problems in the form of videotaped messages and steadily streaming emails from supervisors, subordinates, colleagues and customers – all of them needing to be prioritized and acted upon.  DDI assessors follow up with reports, ratings and development plans for both the participant and his or her manager.
3. EASy Virtual Customer Simulation, by Employment Technology Corp., uses high‐end graphics and a storyline to immerse applicants into a variety of venues within a hypothetical town, where they meet a cast of characters who help them navigate through the simulation.  To complete it, applicants must visit the different venues and provide outstanding service to a variety of customers – who have varying degrees of unpleasantness – while mini‐games carry the applicant from one venue to another. The assessment also measures applicants’ abilities in three competencies: friendliness, conscientiousness and problem‐solving abilities.
4. HireVue Enterprise, by HireVue, enables employers to create a holistic environment for conducting and managing the interview process. Companies can use the platform to deploy video interviews, interview guides, scientifically validated questions, collaborative evaluation and comparison tools, and more. From phone screens to video interviews, all types of workplace interactions can be captured and used to make more informed decisions. The product’s authoring tool includes templates and frameworks that enable content to be organized and pushed out to the entire enterprise.
5. Keas Health Challenge, by Keas, is designed to get employees to take their well‐being more seriously through quizzes, challenges and the promise of a cash prize. The product encourages players (employees) to engage in three simple, manageable health actions (such as getting eight hours of sleep each night for a week) and team up with other players into groups of six in order to amass the most points in a given companywide challenge. Players also can see a live news feed of updates from teammates and others in the organization from their own profile page, as well as comment and share advice on health challenges.

Look for Part II of this post with the rest of the list next week.