Some 200 passionate HR people made their trek to Austin for the first Transform HR conference sponsored by TLNT.com.

Ron Thomas, Principal Consultant, Strategy Focused HR, kicked off the introduction of the conference talking about how attendees are all transformers.  He noted that HR needs to be people focused, scalable,  repeatable and analytical

Jim Knight, Senior Director of Training for Hard Rock, and the morning's keynote focused on how to build a team of "rock stars" for your organization.    He focused on 10 types:
1.  Develop a crystal clear, brand-specific recruiting strategy
2.  Ensure leaders are singing off the same song sheets - Hard Rock uses a three interview process for every staff-level potential hire in the hopes of gaining interrater reliability
3.  Be the chocolate - create employment differentiation - Have to avoid lipsynchers to differentiate one's workforce from everyone else
4.  Serve the brand koolaid through compelling storytelling.  Look at onboarding.  It matters who and how onboarding occurs.  General managers can reduce turnover by 15%. Don't just give onboarding responsibilities to just any employee.  That story matters.
5.   Communicate in the language that employees dream.  Staff materials with photos/graphics, less text, white space, bullet points, consistent font, and humor (where appropriate) key.  Job aides are awesome.  Videos are extremely helpful. Using PollEverywhere.com to gain instantaneous responses with small groups (n < 30)
6.  Create an army of giants around you - It starts with performance appraisal.  Simple performance form with a performance grid creates consistency in assessing performance.  Appraisals should be done more than once a year.  Managers have to give the "Why" behind the "What."
7.  Incent employees like they're rock royalty and treat them like volunteers.  Public, daily recognition of positive performance helps develop morale and repeat positive performance.  Lots of interesting perks you could offer (Hard Rock has Rolex Watch for 10 years of service; GM of the year gets a Harley-Davidson).  Employees expectations today - they want both money and work/life balance, and are only loyal to those that inspire.
8.  People quit individuals - love the ones your with - Employees have an "emotional bank account" - the more deposits the better the interest and health of the account.  Peer recognition is critical.
9.  Let love rule - support an employee volunteer philanthropy group.  Philanthropy helps employees become valuable community partners.  It galvanizes employees and gives employees an emotional connection to the brand.
10.  People only repeat what they like.  Positive experiences are critical.

Coming up next is Libby Sartain on the new consumer of work.

If you are not in attendance, you may follow the conference on Twitter at #TransformHR or it is streaming live at http://transform.tlnt.com/2012/live/