Perfect Labor Storm 2.0

NLRB: Don't Go Overboard On Social Media Policy

Establishing a policy about the use of social media in the workplace, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ is a complicated but necessary task for any employer.

Many companies are using social media in the workplace to their advantage. Sites like LinkedIn are invaluable tools for recruitment, lead development, and sales. Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, and Google+ are powerful marketing tools. Yammer and Salesforce.com are building employee engagement.

But social media doesn’t come without its problems. While the rewards are great, the path is littered with landmines.

Employers need to be concerned about employees using social media in the workplace for personal and other non-productive reasons. Some employers consider social media to be a complete waste of time and resources, an invitation for confidentiality leaks, and a recipe for PR disaster. This reasoning has led to bans on social media in the workplace. These bans are intended to keep employees focused and decrease the improper use of a company's technology resources. But while bans may lessen employee abuse and wasted bandwidth, a social media blockade has its drawbacks. The effect on morale, especially in a young workforce is profound.  For employees working long hours, Facebook and Twitter are the only way for them to stay in touch with friends and relatives. Psychologists have shown that the ability to use social media in the workplace is a valuable stress reduction tool that can improve employee performance.

There are also costs associated with enforcing a ban on using social media in the workplace. Having managers peering over employees’ shoulders is inefficient and non-productive – a solution that might be more wasteful and costly than the employees’ use of social media itself. There are software programs designed to block access to social media sites and track employee behavior, but these need to be purchased, installed, and maintained. But these costs might be a drop in the bucket relative to the effect on employee morale and engagement. 

Nor are these safeguards foolproof. Many of these programs can be circumvented. And without confiscating every employee’s mobile devices, locking down social media is like locking the doors but leaving the windows open. Companies should focus on how employees can use social media for the good of the company, not build a bureaucracy around controlling it. Several recent court and labor board decisions may be forcing employers’ hands too.

In one case, an employee was fired for posting complaints about her employer and manager on Facebook. In considering the case, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that employers cannot ban workers from using social media in the workplace to discuss working conditions, wages, and hours with coworkers and others.

However, the National Labor Relations Board does not protect all employees who are disciplined or terminated for comments made online. The NLRB protects communications made when they concern group action by employees, action on behalf of another employee, or complaints to coworkers about the employer. As an example, a caregiver brought a complaint to the NLRB after she was fired for making online comments that demeaned and insulted the mentally ill patients she was supposed to be caring for. The NLRB ruled that this was not protected.

Employers also need to be concerned about managers using social media in the workplace when hiring. Looking at a candidates Facebook profile can reveal information about his or her sex, age, ethnicity, family situation, religion health, and politics. Even if a decision is not based on this information, knowing it can expose the employer to allegations of discrimination.

The myriad of issues surrounding the use of social media in the workplace mandate that responsible employers have a well thought-out policy that makes the most out of social media, without exposing the company to unnecessary risks.

8 Reasons Why Recruitment of Employees Needs to Change

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A Parent's Guide to Texting, Facebook, and Social Media

The Internet isn't just prevalent in our lives, it is our lives. According to a 2010 Pew Research Center survey, over 93% percent of teens ages 12 to 17 go online, 75% of them own a cell phone, 66% say they text, and  72% of teens have a social networking profile (eg. Facebook).

With the growing popularity of these social networking sites and mobile cell phones, the neighborhood playground now spans the globe.  Teens, as well as adults, now have access to and are exposed to more people than ever before.  Unfortunately the world has always known evil people to find new opportunity and the Internet is no exception.  The ubiquity and popularity of the Internet is just their fertile place to lurk and be mischievous if not downright hostile.

What follows are seventeen of the most shocking statistics I’ve read about a growing epidemic of online harassment and cyberbullying.  It’s a wake-up call for parents, teens, educators, politicians – just about everyone who uses the Internet or mobile phones. It is also a dramatic statement that the role of adults is to help our youth learn to use the Internet safely, not forbid its use. Because accessing the Internet is no longer a luxury or discretionary choice.  I’ll repeat my opening statement: The Internet…..is our lives.  (Keep reading too because at the end of this article, I have 2 important recommendations for parents on how to help their children use the Internet and mobile technologies safely.

1. About half of all teenagers have experienced some form of online harassment and 10 to 20 percent experience it regularly (Cyberbullying Research Center).
2. Over 25 percent of adolescents and teens have been bullied repeatedly through their cell phones or the Internet (i-SAFE).
3. Over half of bullying and cyberbully attacks go unreported to parents, educators, or authorities.
4. On a daily average, 160,000 children miss school because they fear they will be bullied if they attend classes.
5. Every 7 minutes, a child is bullied on a school playground, with over 85 percent of those instances occurring without any intervention.
6. 100,000 children carry guns to school in 2009 as a result of being bullied.
7. As a result of being bullied, 19,000 children are attempting suicide over the course of one year.
8. Once every half hour a child commits suicide as a direct result of being bullied (online and offline).
9. At the end of 2010, over 30 children had taken their own lives after being cyberbullied.
10. 64 percent of all teens say they do things online they don’t want their parents to know about (Lenhart, Made, and Rainie, 2006).
11. 71 percent of teens receive message online from strangers (National Center for Minind and Exploited Children).
12. 51 percent of teens have been asked for personal information online (MCAfee, Inc.).
13. 42 percent of youths ages 10 to 17 have seen porn in the past year.Two-thirds of these exposures are unwanted (University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center).
14. 26 percent of teens have been harassed by their cell phones either by voice or text (Pew Research: Lenhart, 2010).
15. Size doesn’t matter – cyberbullies don’t have to be “tough” or big.
16. 72 percent of parents say they can see their child’s full profile on social networking sites.
17. Most victims have not set up privacy and security settings.

What can a parent do? 

First, take the time to learn what Facebook is. Even if you don't have to time yourself to use it, you need to understand it. Whether it's Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or any other social networking site, these sites are part of mainstream communication today.

Next, take some time and set up privacy and security settings. I can count on one hand out of the thousands of people I’ve met in workshops, seminars, and classrooms who have even glanced at the privacy settings in Facebook, the most popular of all the social networking sites.  Admittedly Facebook might be doing some squirrely things with our data but to their credit they do offer the most robust and sophisticated system of privacy settings of any social site.  Unfortunately their mission is for all people to be more social so the personal default settings are often a lot less restricted than most people might realize.  To help both adults and teens protect their privacy when using Facebook, I’ve prepared a step-by-step guide on how to “Network Safely When Using Facebook.”  It’s available now for only $5 by clicking here.

Third, it’s important that parents prepare not only their teens, but themselves as well, to combat this serious topic. The Parent’s Guide to Texting, Facebook and Social Media: Understanding the Benefits and Dangers of Parenting in a Digital World by Shawn Edgington guides parents and teens to developing an open communication on the dangers of the internet and bullying. It’s important that both parents and teens recognize symptoms and causes of bullying and are able to report it to an adult. Learn more about The Parent’s Guide to Texting, Facebook and Social Media and order Shawn’s book.

Press Release: Cyberbullying Prevention Expert Reveals What Parents Should Know

As cyberbullying has become more frequent and increasingly vicious, the importance of educating parents about how to protect their kids is of paramount importance, says social media expert Ira S Wolfe. This epidemic of online bullying is what got Wolfe, managing partner/founder of Social Media Architects of Delmarva, involved with National Cyber Safety Awareness Day on May 17.

After listening to a recent radio interview about the threat and consequences of cyberbullying, Wolfe picked up the phone and called the radio guest, Shawn Edgington, America's leading cyberbullying prevention expert.  The timing was perfect because Wolfe was about to give a presentation to local high school students and their parents about the threats and risks of cyberbullying.  Edgington shared with him her just released book, The Parent's Guide to Texting, Facebook and Social Media: Understanding the Benefits and Dangers of Parenting in a Digital World.  “I immediately became immersed in the book, Wolfe said. “I rarely sit down and read a book but Shawn's research and statistics were startling.”

Wolfe immediately agreed to help promote National Cyber Safety Awareness Day which coincided with a book drive for The Megan Meier Foundation.  On that day (May 17), donations of 1,000 copies of Edgington's book are being sought to help the foundation's founder,Tina Meier,educate parents about how to prevent cyberbullying. Meier created the foundation after her 13-year-old daughter committed suicide because she had been cyberbullied on a social network by a neighbor. This tragedy has been the impetus for Meier's drive to warn parents of the hazards kids face growing up in a digitally connected world.

Wolfe hopes to have more opportunities to speak with parents about how to use social media safely.  “I’ve been helping hundreds of business people who attend workshops and classes at local Chambers of Commerce and Wor-Wic Community College understand how to use social media effectively and safely. Most of the participants are also parents and grandparents which makes what I teach in class touch them personally too. Helping children navigate online safely is also a great way to give back to the community."

Book donations are 100% tax deductible and any individual or organization that donates a case of  books or more will be thanked in Edgington's next printing of her book.  Books can be purchased  at:  https://secure4.planetlink.com/shawn_edgington.

About Ira S Wolfe: Ira Wolfe is the managing partner/founder of Social Media Architects of Delmarva (www.socialmediaarchitectsofdelmarva.com).  Wolfe has been described as a “Gen Y operating in a Baby Boomer body,” a name aptly given to him after writing his book, “Geeks, Geezers, and Googlization.”  Wolfe is also president of Success Performance Solutions (www.super-solutions.com),  a pre-employment and leadership consulting firm as well as the author of several books including “The Perfect Labor Storm 2.0” and “Understanding Business Values and Motivators.” He has also been recognized by several human resources organizations as one of the most influential bloggers and is a sought after speaker at many CEO, business, and human resources association meetings.

To help both adults and teens protect their privacy when using Facebook, order a step-by-step guide on how to “Network Safely When Using Facebook.”  It’s available now for only $5 by clicking here.

About Shawn Edgington: Shawn Edgington is America's leading textpert and cyberbullying prevention expert, and the author of the newly released The Parent's Guide to Texting, Facebook and Social Media and Read Between the Lines: A Humorous Guide to Texting with Simplicity and Style. She is also the founder of The Cyber Safety Academy. Her mission is to raise public awareness about textual harassment, online predators, sexting, and cyberbullying prevention. Edgington has been featured in the upcoming documentary Submit:The Reality of Cyberbullying, and by Fox Business, Imus in the Morning, ABC-7's View from the Bay in San Francisco,KRON4News in SanFrancisco, CNN Radio, the San Francisco Chronicle, The San Diego Union-Tribune, CBS Radio, ESPN Radio, NPR, andThe Leslie Marshall Showamong others.

Stop, Look, & Listen...Before You Write That Social Media Policy

If you have no idea what Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn is, how can you expect to write a social media policy that will properly embrace ...or limit its use?  Before you can write a social media policy, stop, look, and listen - take a tour around the social "mediasphere." What you don't know about social media can hurt you. 

To write a good policy that protects the company but doesn't suffocate, stakeholders need to spend time exploring each site. Management, IT, and Human Resources (HR) must invest time to understand that social media is much more than just Facebook. 

Social media is not just a bunch of  idle chatter and noise.  Social media is a new mode of communication, just as the telephone was just 100 years ago. The technology includes applications and software such as blogging, video, podcasts, wikis, and even review sites such as Amazon and Yelp. If a site allows a visitor to share their experience and leave comments, it falls under the sweeping umbrella called social media...and customers and job candidates are spending a lot of time using social media to make buying and career decisions. 

Writing a policy that can be enforced without stifling productivity and morale requires that you understand it, as well as the type of culture that embraces it. For example, to the non-user, Facebook and Linkedin appear quite similar.  Aside from getting invitations to friend and connect from people you don't know, both sites allow you to post status updates, develop a network, and interact in groups.  But once you begin to engage with your connections and peruse the site, you get a very different feel for its capabilities and possibilities.  

Facebook to date is a great place for socializing.  However when planned and executed correctly, it's an even better place to build a community of raving fans.  Linkedin, on the other hand, is a professional networking site which allows business people to expand their networks, to generate leads, to recruit candidates, and to engage in professional development. Strategically both sites offer significant possibilities but the choice isn't as simple as either-or.  For some companies, one site or the other might be the right choice. For others, the right decision will be embracing both. 

Once you have toured each site, it is important to sit down with decision makers and stakeholders to define what it is that you want the policy to accomplish. Management , IT, and HR must put aside their personal biases and agendas.  The question on the table should be "how can we make social media work for us," not "what can we do to crush it."  Stakeholders at the table might also include customers, vendors, and suppliers.  Explore how you might be able to utilize employees and other partners' personal accounts in order to gain a larger following...and set up the policy accordingly.  If you decide to separate what happens at work from what happens on personal accounts, your policy needs to express that too. But be careful - you might be able to control what happens at work; but what happens off-the-click is a different story. 

You also want to find how many and what kind of policies you want to put into place. Internal employee policies only cover one aspect of good social media guidelines that will protect an organization. To complete the puzzle, there are 3 more pieces: (1) internal organization,(2) external audience, and (3)safety, security, and regulations.  Ignoring one piece without addressing the others will only lead to breaches in your efforts to minimize the risks. Though it would be easier to have one all-encompassing policy, it is much more helpful to isolate what is acceptable for each network.   

Each of these social media aspects has its own set of pros and cons. Ultimately what you decide to do - embrace it or limit it - must consider the impact it might have on your business strategy and how it might represent your organizational culture. 

Disclosure: The information provided in these guidelines is not legal advice. I am NOT an attorney (although my wife says I argue like one!) An employer should seek legal advice from an experienced employment law attorney before finalizing its guidelines to make sure the guidelines express the employer's intent and don't run afoul of any employment laws.

Every Employee Social Media Use Policy Needs These 7 Things

While there is no social media and Internet use formula that will fit every organization, these seven factors should be included in every employee handbook.

 

Accountability. Employees must aware that they are responsible for what they put online.  Although they may be protected under the first amendment, Federal Stored Communications Act, and fair labor practices, that only goes so far.  If an employee posts something slanderous, defamatory or violates confidentiality or privacy, both the company and the employee may be liable for legal ramifications...and the charges can be civil as well as criminal.

 

Transparency. If an employee posts something that is related to your organization or competitors, then it is important to disclose that he or she is part of the organization including his or her job title. 

 

Degree of Separation.  What degree of separation means is that employees must include something along the lines that "The opinions expressed are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of (Insert Organization name here)." By doing so, the employee is protecting the organization based upon what he or she posts on a personal blog or social media profile.

 

Respect for Copyright/Trademark.  Companies and individuals should also include a statement that items protected under copyright and trademark laws cannot be used without proper attribution.  When unsure, ASK before posting content online.

 

Usage at work. A statement referencing whether or not you will tolerate employees visiting and using social media sites while at work must be included.  If you block certain sites block from company computers, then you should reference the sites that are blocked. It is always best to have a written and signed record to avoid any questions and ambiguity later.

 

Confidentiality. It seems obvious but employees must be reminded to avoid publishing any confidential or proprietary information; and that social media sites are not a substitute for previously established intra-organization communication. Even if the information was posted privately, it could be copied and transferred to a public profile. Employees need to know that any sensitive information, anything that involves a dollar sign and the inclusion of people's names, photos, and videos without their prior approval are not allowed.

 

Monitoring.  If you are going to monitor your employees' social media and Internet use, you need to let them know. If you are going to check on them daily and see what activities they engaged in, tell them. Whatever monitoring process you use, make sure you include a statement that you reserve the right to check their profile at anytime and see what they have posted. But be careful - the line between a personal profile that requires the employer to acquire an employee's user name and password verses information the employee makes public is becoming very distinct based on a few recent rulings.

 

Many of these guidelines may be covered in your existing handbook. If that is the case, you may not need separate social media policies.  Conversely don't assume that your current guidelines for privacy and codes of conduct address the new digital world.  Employers have policies that address what is and is not appropriate use of social-networking sites such as Facebook.

 

It's also not enough to simply have a policy-employees, managers, and management need to be trained on the policy. All employees right up to the CEO should be well informed of the potential problems that poor online judgment can cause. It's a new world out there and a simple IT mandate to block social networking sites does little if anything to protect an employer anymore.

 

In coming weeks, I'll be posting more articles about writing effective and common sense social media guidelines.  I will be highlighting specific cases where employers crossed the line and invaded an employee's privacy and protections offered for off-the-job conduct.  I'll address potential legal issues regarding employee use of social media in the workplace. 

 

 

Let me know what questions would you like me to address.  And what is working or not working in your workplace? 

New Report: It Takes 826 Career Site Visitors to Obtain One Hire

Building a high performance workforce these days requires a fresh approach.  That is especially clear when you consider our daily news is filled with paradox: stories of layoffs, hiring freezes and reduced hours are just as common as the need to find and retain highly skilled talent.

The ability to stay competitive as the economy improves is forcing businesses to look at recruitment differently. But businesses need a workforce that is more qualified, more efficient and more skilled than ever before. Companies will not be able to fill new jobs they create or the jobs they have eliminated over the last few years using old strategies and technology.

10th Annual CareerXroads Source of Hire Report: By the Numbers Survey & Report released last week provides cues for employers ready to change.

One of the most powerful findings revealed that it takes 826 visitors to a company career site to obtain one hire. This excellent Jobs2web slide helps to illustrate that an effective recruitment strategy attracts candidates from a variety of sources including job boards, social media, and search engines. 
 
To compete for talent, employers must now add search engine optimizer to the list of responsibilities for recruiters and human resources professionals. Just last month 101,000,000 global searches on Google for ‘jobs’ last month (Source: Google Keyword Tool. From Davis Advertising, 2011 Second Annual Survey of Job Posting Sites, Chris Taylor). For employers, recruitment is no longer just a human resources function.  Getting candidates to find you requires a well-executed internet marketing strategy when writing ads, using social media, and designing a career site.

The report also reported that 57.1 percent of the respondents believed that social media played an important part in their direct sourcing program. Asked to rank the impact of social media on various parts of their recruiting program, respondents said its influence was greatest on direct sourcing, college hiring, and on hiring from job boards.

The most important finding might be that internal movement is the #1 Source of Hire. Yes that’s right – career sites, job boards, and ads on social networking sites may help increase the flow through the talent pipeline but more than half of ALL hires were filled from internal movement. It is the second year in a row that internal movement was attributed to at least 50% of the positions filled. 

Referrals contributed the most new candidates when evaluating external sources of hire, following by job boards.  Monster and CareerBuilder continue to be the leading suppliers of new hires. Of the responding companies, 88.9 percent reported making at least one hire from Monster; 85.7 percent hired at least one candidate from CareerBuilder.

Based on these results, I offer four recommendations if employers will be successful in their pursuit of skilled workers:

1. Candidates must be recruited from multiple sources including internal candidates, referrals, job boards, and social media.
2. A company career site is more important as a central point of application than a direct source of candidates.
3. An applicant processing system must be considered to facilitate the rapid and accurate screening of applications.
4. Referrals and word of mouth remain the number one source of external hires. Consequently, social networks cannot be ignored; they are a viable and important sources of candidates.

 

Can Employees Learn Using Online Games?

Educators have long known that games are good models for teaching teamwork. Employers however often view these games as ice-breakers and entertainment – in other words, a waste of time.  But MMPORGs- Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game - do a better job of teaching teamwork, problem solving, analytical thinking and collaboration skills among adults than do traditional classroom workshops because they more closely replicate the complexity of a typical office environment. 

It's easy to know what's best for the team when everyone is wearing the same color shirt, climbing a rope, and trying to kick the ball in the same direction.  But it’s much harder to be an effective team player in an environment with competing priorities, limited resources, divergent goals, and a whole slew of personalities.

MMPORGs force participants to make choices.  To be successful, the first thing a participant needs to do is select a team.  Choosing which team to join or which team members to recruit, and knowing when/if/how to leave that alliance or individual, has interesting parallels with the workplace. 

For example, consider The River City project. Recently developed at Harvard, River City has the look and feel of a multi-user video game. The idea behind River City is to create scientifically literate citizens who are able to think critically, make sense of complex data, and solve problems. The training is also designed to teach collaborative skills. Students who use River City enter a town that is beset with health problems. They then form research teams to figure out what’s making people sick. They can track clues, develop controlled experiments to test hypotheses, and make recommendations based on their lab work.

River City represents a new trend which has significant implications not only for schools but for business training as well. The trend is built around what online application developers call a MUVE, which stands for multi-user virtual environment.

In this intersection of business, education, and technology, there exists another looming trend of equal importance:  how the Web itself is going to disrupt the conventional training models. 

A whole generation of young people, the next generation of workers, has grown up with iPods, iPhones, and computers.  Many, if not most, need training on the spot.  In fact, many tenured employees need re-training today – not tomorrow, not next week, not next month, but now.  They need answers and skills when … well, when they need it.   The once a year or once a month sheep dip model of training just doesn’t work anymore.  Multi-day and even one-day trainings, what I like to call “drive-by workshops,” are costly, disruptive, and ineffective.  Companies are so lean that removing employees from the workplace for extended hours to train them literally halts business productivity dead in its tracks.  Unfortunately the alternative - not training employees - is a poison pill.

Virtual Classrooms: Panacea for Employee Training?

Up until this most recent recession, business had the luxury of time, money, and resources when developing and training employees.  From this point forward, time will be short, money will be tight, and resources will be limited.  The only thing that will change will be the need and demand for faster, better training.

“Trainers used to have six months to create a learning program,” says Bob Lee.  “Now we have 6 weeks.”  Lee, Product Marketer for GoToTraining at Citrix Online, has worked on both sides of the training fence – both as a Director of Training as well as in his role today working for a training and learning vendor.  Many of the people with whom Lee worked and trained are gone, not unlike thousands of employers across the country. “That has only increased the need for training. But with every business so lean, few organizations have the time, resources, and people to experiment and adopt new technologies. The stakes are higher and time is limited.”

Like most of the other experts I recently interviewed, Lee talked about changes in terms of social learning, informal learning, mobile learning, and virtual learning.   Training was done until recently for the entire company or department on a physical campus.  But now, locations are decentralized.  Many organizations don’t even exist in a brick-and-mortar world.  Employers are dispersed - working from home, remote locations or across time zones if not large bodies of water.  The cost and logistics to bring all employees together at one time in one location is expensive and daunting. Lee sees training moving from a single campus toward “individual islands of learning.”

The challenge for organizations will be to connect these islands.  Social networks, the same online communities like Facebook, Twitter, Salesforce Chatter that many employers seek to block, may be the panacea for capturing and sharing knowledge across the organization.  “The vast majority of learning comes from informal conversation when needed,” Lee reports.  Social networking and instant messaging technologies offer a solution that requires little training and minimal expense.  And with the plethora and universality of mobile devices that employees and customers carry, learning can be delivered anytime, anywhere effectively and inexpensively.

Lee sees the near-term solution as a “new blend - a witches’ brew of new training stuff.”  Training will be all about both content and interaction. Traditionally employees sat through classes lasting about 8 hours.  E-learning took the training out of a classroom and put it online.  But many e-learning initiatives failed in the past because the emphasis was on content not learning.

The “new blend” will focus on access.  It might begin with a virtual class.  The purpose of the class however won’t be a data transfusion from a trainer to an employee but a catalyst for conversation.  And the conversation won’t end with the discussion in class but continue afterwards through instant messaging, VOIP phone conversation, wikis, and social networking communities.  The metric for effective training won’t be on how many employees participated in the training but how long the conversation continued and what knowledge was captured.

Logistics isn’t the only challenge that will disrupt the traditional training and learning systems.  Virtual classrooms are not only less disruptive to the work flow, but people learn better and faster when you can “chunk” it down into training sessions that last for 2 hours or less, says Caroline Avey.  Avey is the Director of Innovative Learning Solutions at ACS Learning Services.  Avey’s current focus is developing strategies and practical applications of learning in 3-D virtual worlds.  “It’s difficult to recall all the information heard in 8 hours, no less apply it.”  At the same time, it’s too costly using traditional learning methods to bring trainers and employees together for four 2-hour sessions of face-to-face training.

The 3-D virtual world immerses an employee in the learning experience. For example, let’s say a company like Xerox was training new technicians how to diagnose and troubleshoot problems in their copiers. The technician in training could be given a tour of the inner workings of a copier right down to the circuit board.  The trainer could then present the trainee with a series of problems to solve. Traditionally, this technician might have watched a video and then selected the correct answer from a multiple choice question.  Now the technician is forced to interact with the virtual machine and deal with Murphy’s Law – what can go wrong will go wrong.  In addition to “hands-on” technical skill training, it forces people to learn how to manage their time, how to reprioritize, and how to interact with the customers.  The technicians can’t hide behind a mouse and keyboard but is forced to interact in real time. Based on gaming technologies, the software can then respond dynamically to your actions, give you feedback, and offer recommendations.

The biggest potential benefit of using virtual worlds for training will be the move from using formal courseware for performance readiness to what Avey calls “performance proficiency” – what do I need to know right now to solve this problem?

Social Media: Productivity Killer or Training Solution?

There are few topics these days that animate a CEO more than the mere mention of social media, video games, and web surfing.  To them, these activities are a waste of time, a distraction, a productivity killer. 

But what if there was a way to harness the power of technologies like Facebook, Twitter, Farmville, and Second Life to train and retrain workers faster, cheaper, and more effectively?  Would that get management to stand up and take notice? 

Well, the future is now and the timing couldn’t be better. It’s no secret that America’s businesses have a real need to educate and re-train workers quickly.  The skill levels of the current workforce and unemployed don’t match the needs of employers.  Unemployment remains high but job openings go unfilled because the skills required today have completely changed since the post-war industrial era began, when many workers were trained.  If employers fail to educate, train, and re-train workers quickly, they will miss out on the global economic recovery that is underway now, and they will fail to improve productivity, the key to future growth.  Ironically, the very technology that many employers see as a workplace distraction may be the magic bullet they seek to close a growing skill gap.