The meteoric rise of social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as social communications tools like Twitter, pose a series of new legal questions. Here's how panelists Denise Howell ["This Week in Law"], Alex Macgillivray [Twitter], Kerry Krzynowek [Deloitte] and Gabe Ramsey [Orrick] begin to answer them. Read the rest of this post on supernovahub.com.
Not surprisingly, employee morale and
commitment has worsened during the recession — and in response to
company actions to cope with the downturn. A recent survey finds that
high-performing employees have been substantially more affected than
the rank-and-file.Lin Grensing-Pophal
Human Resource Executive Online, October 2009
… the creative class: a fast-growing, highly educated, and well-paid
segment of the workforce on whose efforts corporate profits and
economic growth increasingly depend. Members of the creative class do a
wide variety of work in a wide variety of industries—from technology
to entertainment, journalism to finance, high-end manufacturing to the
arts. They do not consciously think of themselves as a class. Yet they
share a common ethos that values creativity, individuality, difference,
and merit.
Richard Florida
Washington Monthly, May 2002
Watson Wyatt and WorldatWork just released a survey that tracks, among other things, employee engagement, and Lin Grensing-Pophal explains how companies can do a better job of engagement in a recent article. But that may not be enough, going forward out of the recession. The survey's results inspire a look back to an issue economist Richard Florida raised several years ago: how the drivers of employee performance are changing.
Today, the combination of networking tools, with a power burst from social technology, and a recession that now appears to be the result of an infrastructure crashing under its own incongruities — foreseen by folks like Florida — is forcing companies to look not just at compensation methods but at how they categorize employee positions from the get-go. It's no longer the distinction between management and rank-and-file that makes sense in a service-dominated economy, if it ever did in a manufacturing dominated world, but the quality of performance along the scale of creativity and actual contribution. We're in the midst of another major industrial shift that is exciting at the same time it is mind boggling. And its impact will be felt not just inside corporations but around the cities and towns they populate.
… the economy is different now. It no longer revolves around simply
making and moving things. Instead, it depends on generating and
transporting ideas. The places that thrive today are those with the
highest velocity of ideas, the highest density of talented and creative
people, the highest rate of metabolism.Richard Florida
The Atlantic, March 2009
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Deloitte, under the leadership of John Hagel III and John Seely Brown, earlier this year released what I believe is a landmark study: The 2009 Shift Index. "Measuring the forces of long-term change," this work uncovers a new way to think about shifts in business and society and absorb them to maximum benefit for the organization. What's more, the study illuminates the pressing need for business leaders to alter the way people interact inside the organization as well as with stakeholders, and it outlines a better way to measure performance. Beyond product and service, the distinguishing characteristic of corporate output will be the way the knowledge of its people is put to use in products, services and daily interaction. [And the study answers the question, "what is the big deal with Twitter."]
Hagel, a speaker at the upcoming Supernova conference, was interviewed recently by Cathy Brooks on The Social Media Hour. He pointed to what is being born out in recent news coverage of this recession: many jobs won't be coming back and the complacent view that upturn is inevitable will marginalize even the most sound companies. The good news: the organizations that harness the flow of knowledge among employees and with stakeholders will thrive.
Those of us who already have concluded that this recession is actually a correction and the gateway to a truly magical intersection of society and business must take the data of The Shift Index and run with it. Armed with this information, we have before us the kind of opportunity that distinguishes one historical era from the next. A golden age? A gold standard? Knowledge is platinum for the people and organizations that welcome reality and appreciate the economic value of connecting in new ways to serve customers and society.
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