The Social C-Suite By Dan Pontefract for CLO Magazine Among the 47,361 employees surveyed in 120 countries worldwide, Gallup – a research-based performance-management consulting company – pegs the percentage of employees who are engaged at 11 percent. In Canada employee engagement creeps up to 20 percent and in the United States it’s slightly better at 28 percent. BlessingWhite, a competitor to Gallup, indicates only 33 percent of North Americans and 30 percent of European-based employees are in fact engaged in their place of work. To be engaged – whether for Gallup, BlessingWhite or any other HR consulting firm – is for an employee to feel a part of the organization, like she wants to go the extra mile, is willing to stay and will recommend
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Over at HBR, resident blogger Alexandra Samuel — she with the fab wardrobe — kicked up a “shitstorm” (as she calls it) on January 16, 2013 with a post entitled “Dear Colleague, Put the Notebook Down“. The central plot in this missive was for people of today’s organizations to drop their reliance on pen and paper and to adopt an entirely digital transcribing practice. Whether through a tablet or laptop, Alexandra argues “you’d make better use of your time if you took your notes in digital form, ideally in an access-anywhere digital notebook like Evernote that makes retrieval a snap.” Who am I to argue with that? I haven’t worn a watch since 1982 when I was eleven and the last time I took a
Late last year I was at a dinner with a Board I won’t mention by name. There were roughly 50 people at the event. Tables were pre-assigned and I found myself sitting across from a chap in his mid-50′s whose professional job was an accountant. He worked at a rather large firm as a partner. And no, I won’t insert any accountant jokes at this time. About halfway through the meal, the conversation at the table of 10 shifted to social media. Other than Denise (my better half) no one really had any idea of my background or my natural propensity for all things social. Can you see where this is going? Somehow, the chatter gravitated to Facebook. Our accountant friend chimed in and said,
There are those who can’t avoid the temptation of beer, salt and sugary snacks at night and there are people like me who treat new learning and collaboration platforms infectiously. I wish I could turn my eyes away from these calorie-induced sites or applications, but I just can’t. Perhaps at the core I yearn to learn, but that’s another post for another day. Let me introduce you to my latest microbrewery friend, Learnist. Brought to you by the makers of Grockit – an online social learning test prep service for items such as GMAT, SAT, ACT and GRE – Learnist is an attempt to crowd-source knowledge, information and content into a manner that is a cross between Web 2.0 sites like Pinterest, YouTube, Wikipedia and