The jet lag is still having an effect on my cognitive abilities.  It's five am on Wednesday morning, two and a half days after my Sunday return from London.  I traveled there a week prior for the third annual TRU London unconference where I presented on topics of Twitter Sourcing and Location-Based Recruiting.

TRU London is always a special experience for me.  Hosted in one of my favorite cities, and by one of my favorite people, Bill Boorman, I get to take in the sites and culture as well as network with the best and brightest of Europe's recruiting and HR Technology community (and many of my North American friends too!).

This year the conference was held in the East End of London in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Osborn Street and Brick Lane, where the hotel is located, are lined with curry houses, student hangouts, and eclectic shops.  The nearby tube station, Aldgate Easte, is around the corner in Whitechapel, home to the famous hunting grounds of Jack the Ripper.

The area is near Norton Folgate, where Bill spent much of his youth (hence the name of his blog).  Bill is systematically showing us more interesting parts of London with each conference.  It was so cool.

The week was filled with so many wonderful experiences.  I learned a great deal and will not attempt to sum it all up here.  So far I think the mindshare of the event has been best  documented by Jobsite's Marketing Director, Felix Wetzel, in his Future Series article, Born of TRU.

You can see more of the amazing ideas and articles stemming from TRU London by scanning the twitter hashtag #trulondon.  And Martin Cousins has an aggregated blog list going here.

Here are my top 10 scary good moments, in no particular order:

10) Seeing old friends and meeting so many new friends from Europe and North America (including meeting Kevin Wheeler for the first time IRL).

9) Celebrating James Mayes birthday TRULondon style

8) Plotting world domination with Glenn Cathey, Michael Long, and Jacco Valkenburg

7) Wondering through London with Sarah White China Gorman Laurie Ruettimann Michael Long Maren Hogan Shane McCusker and Meghan Biro.

6) Debating the viability of Location-Based mobile recruiting (and just about everything else) with John Sumser.

5) River Thames dinner on the wrong boat with Arie Ball.  We literally missed the right boat.

4) Charity event location mix-up at the Houses of Parliament resulting in Geoff Webb being detained by Metropolitan Police.

3) Bill Boorman - enough said.

2) Exploring Brick Lake and Whitechapel in the footsteps of Jack the Ripper.

1) Traveling to "Pompey" with Etienne Besson, Bill Boorman, Glen Cathey, Arie Ball, and Rhiannon Hughes to support Portsmouth FC from the partners box hosted by Jobsite.  Special thanks to Felix Wetzel and Keith Potts.

Check out some of the great TRULondon photos from Heather Bussing.  Or join me on Facebook to see the pics I have posted there.

I'll be glad to reconnect with some of my friends from TRULondon on March 11th at SouthBySW, where I am hosting the first ever TalentetNet Live Austin conference.  Register now for the only recruiting and HR related content in Austin during SX Interactive. 

As I write this post, I am sitting in the fabulous DFW Terminal D awaiting a delayed flight that will take me to London for a week to speak at the TRU London Conference. I love London. And I love the fact that I can check-in at DFW Terminal D, Gate 25, on Foursquare and find a close-by drink special being offered by one of the multiple watering holes in this vast international hub.

I wonder briefly if I could become the mayor of Gate 25, or of that watering hole. Gate 25 looks promising. But it's possible that an employee of the watering hole has the mayorship there all locked up.

The employee as mayor issue is a common complaint about Foursquare.  Businesses that are embracing Foursquare as a marketing tool offer customers (especially those who check in enough times to become mayor) special incentives and discounts.  But what do you do when the guy working the register checks in there every day, robbing regular customers of the chance to take advantage of the mayor rewards?

Well, it turns out there is an easy fix. If you own or manage a business, you can "claim" that business on Foursquare.com and then have the ability to designate certain users as employees or managers. Doing this automatically takes those employees out of competition for mayorship of your venue as well as other customer-only rewards. The process of claiming a venue is supposedly fairly straight forward if your venue has a phone number listed and you can answer it. But I have yet to get that feature to work. Instead I requested a verification be sent to my business address. We'll see if that works.

Here is the information directly from Foursquare's support page:

Foursquare Support/Foursquare FAQ/Foursquare for Business

Are employees eligible for rewards or mayorships?

Jake Furst
posted this on Aug-18 2010 12:11

No!!

We encourage managers to identify employees within Foursquare which will prevent them from unlocking rewards at locations or the ability to become the mayor. Managers can assign employees to each location by adding them as employees.

This process ensures that your employees are properly listed, and prevent them from becoming the mayor or participating in offers that are running on Foursquare but only at the venue they are listed as an employee of.

I am of the opinion though that you don't want to discourage employees from checking in. Quite the opposite. It is a good idea to run separate reward programs for employees to encourage check-ins when they come to work. Incentivising (is that really a word?) them in this way encourages them to check in with a positive tone vs. a negative one (Ugh, work again!). If they know you are paying attention and monitoring the brand, chances are they will say more positive things in their check-in updates.

Whether your business is a retail store or a corporate office, positive employee check-ins help build a strong employer brand. And if you are walking the walk by actually engaging your employees, in a positive way, on Foursquare and other social media, they will actually feel more connected to the company and will enjoy coming to work more than those who are not similarly engaged or, worse yet, told that they can't use social media at all.  Moreover, employees who use location based services to check in at work have an additional opportunity to connect more with their co-workers.

Smart job candidates are starting to check out location based services for comments from employees. Would I want to work somewhere where the employees write posts about hating their job when they check in at work every day? Of course not. But if those employees appear to be engaged in a friendly contest, or other incentive program at work, that is connected to Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook Places, or Whrrl, suddenly that company looks a bit more interesting as a prospective employer.

Take it one step further, and name your venue XYZ Company, A Great Place to Work. This is simple psychology. You can also encourage your employees to identify something interesting they are working on that day when they check in. Make it a contest and reward the best story of the day.  The possibilities are many. 

Customers also like doing business with companies who treat their employees well, and have a good employer brand.  So now you have three benefits from encouraging employees to use location based services to check in at work. 

1)  Employees are more connected and engaged with the company and each other. 

2)  You build a strong employer brand that attracts talent.

3) Customers notice this and want to do more business with you.

What do you think?  Does this idea have any long-term potential to change the way we use social media to engage our workforce, encourage good will, and attract more job candidates and customers?  What are some other ideas to engage employees with location based services?  Let me know what you think.

Related:

How to Post a Job Opening on Foursquare

Restaurants Innovating with Social Graphs

How To Increase Positive Reviews and Buzz