Retention Post-Recession

As hard times came, companies did what they had to do to make it through the recession – including layoffs. Over the past two years we have been through a record-breaking low market, layoffs, survival mode, and now we are looking towards recovery.

One of the concerns now is that the organization’s remaining human capital may leave as companies start hiring.

Memory and Decisions

Memory and Decisions Don’t Mix

At one point in time, memory was essential to learning something new. Memory allowed you to store information you learned and later, retrieve the information you needed – when you needed it. But, today, we have access to information — too much information. The amount of information that is being thrown at us each day is overwhelming. The time has come that, to be most productive, we should take note from IT professionals — don’t attempt to learn all the answers, but do learn how to find the answer.

The Biology of It

As we learn something, neurons throughout our brain process the information separately. Our brain then makes the connection between all that activity and we come to an overall perception of the information. Later on, when we want to remember, all of those neuronal relationships must be reconstructed. That is a lot of work and your processing can alter your memory of the original information. Inaccurate memories lead to imperfect decisions.

Your Memory is Temperamental

In order for your memory to work properly, several conditions must exist. Your memory is performing at its best when:

• You already have some knowledge on the topic.
• You are attentive, alert, and paying attention.
• You are able to concentrate.
• You are interested in the topic.
• You have a need to learn the information.
• You are motivated to remember.

Even if all of those conditions are met (and that’s difficult!), you often encode an emotional connection along with the information. So the information you have learned is now dependent on the emotional state you find yourself in when you want to remember it!

Definitions and More About Memory

Research on amnesia patients has shown us that there are many different types of long-term memory.

Explicit Long-Term Memory (Hippocampus – “cognitive memory”): Our conscious recollection of facts and data. It takes hard work, as described above, to recall information from your explicit long-term memory.

Episodic Memory: Your memory of events you personally experienced. Like what you ate for dinner yesterday or the date of New Year’s eve.

Semantic Memory: The memory system that you use to store your knowledge of the world.

Implicit Long-Term Memory (Amygdala – “emotional memory”): We may not always know how we know it and we don’t choose to remember it. It comes to us fairly automatically.

Procedural Memory: The memory type most likely to be retained. It includes motor skills, such as riding a bicycle.

Emotional Conditioning: Our memory can contain information that affects our mental and behavioral functions without any accompanying conscious or cognitive connections.

Priming: Things we experience more often are more likely to be remembered. This is the reason marketing efforts work.

Conditioned Reflex: A response to the effect of a stimulus rather than the stimulus itself. An unexpected response to something, thanks to prior learned associations.

Is Your Company Prepared?

1. Are major decisions often made on the spot and with solely memory as the tool?
2. Do employees have access to the tools they need to make the best decisions possible?
3. Does your learning and development program rely on memory?
4. Do decision-makers know when to use logic/data and when to rely on intuition?

Quotes to Contemplate

“The purpose of memory is not to let us recall the past, but to let us anticipate the future. Memory is a tool for prediction.”

-Alain Berthoz, Neuroscientist at the Laboratory of Physiology of Perception and Action

“For learning to take place with any kind of efficiency students must be motivated. To be motivated, they must become interested. And they become interested when they are actively working on projects which they can relate to their values and goals in life.”

-Gus Tuberville, President, William Penn College

“The only kind of learning which significantly influences behavior is self-discovered or self-appropriated learning – truth that has been assimilated in experience.”

- Carl Rogers, Psychologist

“The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn’t think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.”

-Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft

“It’s a fact that more people watch television and get their information that way than read books. I find new technology and new ways of communication very exciting and would like to do more in this field.”

-Dr. Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Corporate Courage

Corporate Courage

Courage is a quality every great leader must possess. Courage is a quality every great employee must possess. Courage helps us endure hardships, deal with economic insecurity, and confront challenges.

Challenging economic times activate and propagate fear, but we can overcome fear with courage. In fact, fear is a prerequisite for courage. Even more good news is that courage is a learned skill. However, courage requires that physiological reactions to fear be effectively managed. The more this is practiced, the easier it is to display it.

The Courage to Try

The courage to try is the willingness to endure stressful, painful, or risky situations in pursuit of a goal, with the hope of a positive outcome. This includes innovation and initiating change. A common roadblock is a fear of failure. To overcome it, be planful rather than rash and develop a contingency plan. There is plenty of opportunity to practice your courage to try in professional settings. For example, develop new models and new ways of doing things when the old way is no longer working. Set stretch goals for your personal and professional life and pursue them with a sense of purpose.

The Courage to Trust

The courage to trust is a sort of interpersonal courage. It is exposing your vulnerabilities and striving to be authentic with others. Revealing shortcomings about yourself and/or your skillset is a courageous act. It is difficult to admit, “I don’t know how to do this” or “I am not sure I am doing the right thing.”

The Courage to Tell

The courage to tell is a learned ability to raise difficult issues or to share an unpopular opinion. This type of courage comes from having a confidence in your own talents and a belief that your opinion is valued. A common roadblock is the fear of rejection. To overcome, focus on the approval or rejection of the task, idea, or opinion, rather than the approval or rejection of the person. The most courageous are not only able to speak the truth, but they are willing to hear the truth as well.

Is Your Company Prepared?

1. Is the skill courage on your learning and development agenda?
2. Do your systems and processes encourage or discourage failure?
3. Do you offer opportunity to practice courage?
4. Are your courageous acts impulsive or decisive?
5. What resources are avaialable to employees for emotional support when facing fear?

Quick Facts

• The French word courage means “heart and spirit.”
• Webster’s Dictionary defines courage as the mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty.

Quotes to Contemplate

“When two people in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.”

-William Wrigley

“The only real failure in life is the failure to try.”

-Anonymous

“Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.”

-Aristotle

“You must be afraid to have courage. Suffering is not, by itself, courage; choosing to suffer what we fear is.”

-John McCain in Fast Company, In Search of Courage

“Optimum performance occurs when people feel a certain level of arousal, fear, anxiety, and pressure, not when they’re feeling safe and insulated.”

-Merom Klein and Rod Napier, The Courage to Act

“In business, courageous action is really a special kind of calculated risk taking.People who become good leaders have a greater than average willingness to make bold moves, but they strengthen their chances of success through careful deliberation and preparation. Business courage is not so much a visionary leader’s inborn characteristic as a skill acquired through decision-making processes that improve with practice. In other words, most great business leaders teach themselves to make high-risk decisions. They learn to do this well over a period of time, often decades.”

-Kathleen Reardon, Harvard Business Review, Courage as a Skill

Maximize Learning

Taking a one size fits all approach does not benefit all learners; people learn in different ways. Some people are more receptive to visual stimuli while others prefer to listen to the spoken word to acquire new information.

This concept is not new or revolutionary in the Learning and Development field. Pick up a training book and they will all recommend you present your information in various modalities to maximize your trainees’ experience — not only to cater to different learning styles but to also provide an opportunity to comprehend the material. Being exposed to material via multiple modes expands the depth of processing. Information presented visually affects our brains in a different manner than information presented verbally, for example. This is true not only for learning during technical training but for emotional learning as well.

Take Advantage of Your Learning Moment

Substantial learning occurs as the learner creates a schema for the material in his or her mind. A schema is an organized system of many independent memories or data points that forms as a result of truly understanding the subject matter. This framework of understanding only develops when the learner finds the information personally relevant.

How we learn:

• We learn when we are ready to learn.
• We learn over an extended period of time, not overnight.
• We learn when we are safe to process information both emotionally as well as rationally.
• We learn from others older than us as well as others younger than us.
• We learn from people who are similar to us as well as people who are different from us.
• We learn each and every day, whether we are aware of it or not.

Is Your Company Prepared?

1. Do you encourage or discourage learning?
2. How do you connect learning and results?
3. Do employees have an opportunity to learn during their learning moments?
4. Is there an opportunity to learn from peers, mentors, coaches, and experts?
5. Is the learning environment a safe place?

Quick Stats

• Non-interactive multimodal learning (whiteboard, lecture, reading) is best for basic skills training.
• Interactive multimodal learning (collaboration, interaction with a knowledge source) is best for learning higher-order/transferable skills.

Meta-analysis data from Cisco (2008). Multimodal learning through media: What the research says.

Quotes to Contemplate

“To be metacognitive is to be constantly “thinking about one’s own thinking,” in search of optimizing and deepening learning.”

-Cheryl Lemke, CEO of Metiri Group and Charles Fadel, Global Lead of Education at Cisco

“In psychologically safe environments, people are willing to offer up ideas, questions, concerns – they are even willing to fail – and when they do, they learn.”

-Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership & Management at Harvard Business School

“The brain isn’t interested in reality; it’s interested in survival. So it will change the perception of reality to stay in the survival mode. The fact is that the actual moment of learning – the moment of fixing a memory – is so complex that we have little understanding of what happens in our brains in those first fleeting seconds. Long-term memory is even worse.”

-Dr. John Medina, Brain Expert and author of Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Home, Work, and School

Outdated Outplacement

As companies across all industries downsize in these challenging economic times, the demand for outplacement services is growing. Providing outplacement support can help alleviate the stress of layoffs as severance alone is not enough.

But often times, financial, professional, and emotional challenges aren’t fully addressed with standard outplacement services.

Outplacement Services for the 21st Century

In the past, outplacement was considered providing job hunters with a temporary computer cubicle and resume-writing assistance.

Today, the focus of the job hunt is not only finding the right job but also developing the necessary skills for that job. Some employees want to change career directions or start a new business. As such, outplacement firms are offering a more personal approach, including career coaching. Personalized one-on-one career guidance and tools to develop employees’ critical skills are invaluable.

Traditional career coaching can be expensive, however. The key for bringing career coaching and outplacement into the 21st century is providing the means for support to occur through technology, which incidentally leads to learning more marketable skills.

Quotes to Contemplate

“Cutting outplacement services is rarely a good idea. Both your departing employees and those who stay with your company pay close attention to how you handle these situations. If you handle them poorly, studies show that it hurts your productivity as well as your ability to attract quality talent.”

-Lora Villarreal, EVP and Chief People Officer at Affiliated Computer Services (ACS)

“Traditional outplacement services have simply become too expensive in the minds of many companies. Employers are frustrated with these services, because they cost a lot but typically don`t demonstrate measurable results for employees. During a time of financial pressures, they`ve become a target of budget cuts.”

-Sanjay Sathe, founder and CEO of RiseSmart

“Experienced, long-time workers may have spent years acquiring skills that suddenly are no longer relevant or useful. Finding a position in a new industry is a major challenge to most people. When people are suddenly thrust into the job market, they can quickly become frustrated by what appears to be limited options.”

-Work and Career Corporate Organizational Strategist Bonnie D. Monych, Your WorkPlace Doctor

Quick Stats

• In February 2009, employers took 2,769 mass layoff actions involving 295,477 workers.
• Unemployment rate is at 8.5% as of April 2009.
• The average job search lasts four months.

Is Your Company Prepared?

1. How can you enhance employees’ perceived control over their job search?
2. How will you ensure appropriate emotional support is available after exit?
3. Are you empathetic to employees’ feelings, needs, and concerns during this difficult time?
4. Will those laid off speak well of the company in their future endeavors?
5. Is your outplacement solution outdated?

The Layoffs Aftermath

Layoff survivors, those who are left at the company after a round of layoffs, are faced with a stressful situation. A recent study presented at a University of Cambridge conference announced results indicating that survivors of layoffs have similar anxiety and decline in well-being as those who have been laid off, but the feeling is more persistent and prolonged.

Such effects are due to not only survivor’s guilt (“why them but not me?”) and survivor’s envy (“laid off would be prefereable to this, maybe I should just leave”), but also emotional contagion. Emotional contagion is the tendency for an emotion to spread and it is especially dangerous when there is a negative feeling of gloom and cynicism throughout the organization.

The two major contributing stressors are perceived job insecurity and an increase in workload demand. Middle managers are often the most affected, since they are the ones that must implement the layoff – but at the same time are unsure of their own employment status.

Easing the Stress with EQ

The options for coping include both negative and positive strategies. Negative strategies can be disengagement, job seeking, substance use, anger, or avoidance. Positive coping strategies include positive thinking, direct action, and soliciting support.

There is no doubt that positive coping strategies will have a more beneficial effect on individual and organizational performance than negative coping strategies. How can the likelihood be increased that employees use positive coping?

Positive coping strategies are more likely to be used when employees feel a sense of confidence that their situation is controllable. Negative coping strategies are used when emotions overtake the reasonable, logical thoughts because of a sense of danger, loss of control, or feelings of doom-and-gloom.
Help ease survivors’ stress reactions by:

• Addressing their job insecurity fears
• Focusing on their career plan to boost confidence
• Acknowledging the increase in workload
• Being liberal with rewards and recognition
• Providing a means for emotional support
• Coaching them on coping strategies
• Striving for fairness in both layoff process and outcome

Is Your Company Prepared?

1. How can you enhance employees’ perceived control over their employment outcome?
2. How will you ensure appropriate emotional support is available?
3. Are you implementing layoffs with fairness, consideration, and a focus on performance?
4. Are you empathetic to employees’ feelings, needs, and concerns during this difficult time?
5. hat are you doing to shift negative energy toward a positive outcome?
6. Do survivors have a good reason to trust, stay, and be engaged?

Measuring Business Results

The best way to ensure the success of any initiative – whether it is personal or professional, individual or organizational – is with measurement. Tracking and measuring your progress will allow you to see where you’ve gone, where you are going, if you are on the right track – and most importantly – whether your strategy is working or not working.

In the human capital business, the concept of measurement can sometimes become unclear. There are often many variables that come in to play when determining the factors that influenced turnover or satisfaction or performance. Further complicating the situation is the fact that there are also many methods of measurement available. Each will give you a different answer, so how to determine which is appropriate?

Quantitative vs. Qualitative Data

At the highest level, there are two types of measurement, quantitative and qualitative. Qualitative data consists of words while quanitative data consists of numbers. Both are important for decision making.

Use qualitative methods when:

• you are not sure what you are looking for
• you need detailed information
• you are seeking feedback for improvement
• subjective information is relevant

Use quantitative methods when:

• your question is well-defined
• you want to classify information
• you want to count something
• you want an explanation for your observations
• objective information is needed

Is Your Company Prepared?

1. How will you know if you’ve been successful?
2. What information will help you make the best decisions?
3. How do you ensure the accuracy of interpretations assigned to the data you have collected?
4. After obtaining data, what are you going to do to take action?
5. Are you measuring attitudes, behavior, and results?

Emotional Intelligence

General intelligence and technical skills are important in the workplace, but to attain true personal and professional success, one must also possess a high level of emotional intelligence (EQ).

Emotional intelligence is incredibly relevant to the workplace, especially for leadership, management, and teamwork. It is a major factor in many of the best decisions, the most dynamic and profitable organizations, and the most satisfying and successful lives.

Enhancing EQ

Unlike one’s level of IQ, which changes very little from childhood, emotional intelligence includes skills that can be learned at any age. True EQ learning, however, occurs over an extended period of time – not in a classroom, two-day seminar, or workshop – because we are a product of our daily experiences. Each experience yields a set of emotions, which ultimately drive our behavior. When we learn to connect the impact of our emotions to our behavior and the impact of our behavior on others, we can really effect lasting change. However, simply working to improve behavior, when not coupled with improving EQ, could deliver minimal results.

The most effective way to enhance EQ is to:

• Learn from someone who has walked your path.
• Learn over a committed and extended period of time.
• Learn in an emotionally-safe environment.

Emotions change with experiences on a daily basis, so the challenges individuals face are almost constant. Thus, EQ is  learned best at the point-of-need – meaning that when there is a relevancy and immediacy to the application of the learning, adults will have true learning experiences, the kind that really make an impact.

Is Your Company Prepared?

1. Are you providing training on emotional competencies in addition to technical training?
2. How do you ensure that transfer of training occurs following a workshop?
3. Are you providing the type of learning experiences your associates need, when they need it?
4. Do leaders in your company model positive behavior?
5. Do you take responsibility for providing emotional support during tough times?

Retaining Gen Y

Recruit and Retain the Best

There is a simple two-step process for Gen Y-focused recruitment and engagement; get their attention, then keep them satisfied. The tricky part is what attracts them to your organization may not keep them satisfied for the long-term.

Regardless of the status of the economy, recruiting and retaining Generation Y is a priority in many top organizations. Even during a recession there is an employee shortage – thanks to the well-known demographic trends. In fact, there will be 10 million more jobs than workers available to fill them by 2010. The demand for college-educated workers will be especially high over the next ten years, at 30 million – when only 23 million new U.S. college grads are expected. These factors result in a very favorable job market for the Gen Y professional. Research tells us that Gen Y professionals are confident they can get another job elsewhere, some have their own entrepreneurial ventures in the works, and – when all else fails – are willing to move back in with the parents.

To attract the attention of Gen Y, you must be able to offer a good salary, an enticing work environment, and career growth opportunities. When compared to previous generations, Gen Y employees are interested in finding meaningfulness at work, hard-working, and educated — and they expect to be rewarded appropriately.

The second step is to keep them once they join the company. When a company does a great job onboarding their new hires, there is a better chance that the new employees will stay and remain engaged. Look at retention as ongoing recruitment. Remember that the factors that were successful at stage one might not suffice to retain them long-term. The key at this stage is making sure they are satisfied on the job and working on projects that matter. Personal fulfillment and satisfaction are a requirement, not a benefit. After that, the second most important factor is a social work environment with quality friendships. Some examples are company athletic leagues, weekly happy hours, and social events with colleagues. The two most oft-cited retention factors in surveys of Gen Y workers are making an important contribution to the company and working in a fun atmosphere.

Top 4 Don’ts: The biggest mistakes that turn off Gen Y

Restricting access to social networking sites. According to research by security company Sophos, 43 percent of workers polled said their employer blocks Facebook access completely. The younger generations take advantage of technology to make their jobs easier and their companies more successful. Today’s world is changing. Embrace the technological change and use it to your advantage, rather than simply restricting or banning the use of tools that could prove useful.

Bureaucratic structure to succession planning and lateral job movement. Young workers will change careers 10-14 times during their lifetime. Job hopping is not really a goal for most people, but it is something young workers do when they see no other choice – because it’s easy and they can.”People would rather stay at one company and grow, but they don’t think they can do that,” Stan Smith of Deloitte says. “Two-thirds of the people who left Deloitte left to do something they could have done with us, but we made it difficult for them to transition.” Make it clear that they have options and how they can reach their career goals by staying with the company.

Boring seminars and workshops labeled as training and development. Gen Y’s are one of the most educated generations yet, and they love to learn. Offer them early advancement opportunities where they can learn by doing. They need latitude to explore and learning needs to be on-demand, when they need it.

Misconception of who they are and what they want. Your workers’ values have not changed, they are just manifested differently. Gen Y want to spend 100% of their time in meaningful and useful ways, no matter whether they are at work or at home. It feels normal for Gen Y employees to check their BlackBerry all weekend, as long as they have flexibility in their schedules during the week. In fact, 76% of Gen Y claim they are accessible for work most hours of the day. For Gen Y, the line between work and home does not really exist.

Is Your Company Prepared?

1. How are you ensuring your employees are satisfied?

2. Do Gen Y employees have the freedom and latitude to easily move up or across departments within your organization?

3. Are you providing Gen Y employees with meaningful work that matters to them and the company?

4. Are you planning company social events on a regular basis?

“The experience I’ve had with EQmentor so far has greatly exceeded my expectations, and has been enriching in ways that I never anticipated. Getting started was very easy, and I found the results of the EQ test to be revealing and accurate. After just a few exchanges, I was basically blown away by how much we had in common in many areas, but especially by how clearly my mentor seemed to understand me and skillfully pose probing questions and offer relevant advice, articles and books that directly spoke to issues with which I was dealing. Thank you for the opportunity to be part of what I feel can be of great benefit to many people, as it has helped to enrich my life.”

~EQmentor Mentee

Quick Facts about Gen Y

• 48% want to work as an entrepreneur
• 95% of Generation Y believe it is important that they feel fulfilled and challenged at work
• More than 70% of older employees are dismissive of younger workers’ abilities
• 91% expect to leave their employer within 2-3 years
• 88% expect promotion within 1-2 years

Sources: Deloitte, Lee Hecht Harrison, Atos Consulting

In Their Own Words

“I want to work, I want to grow and I want to learn. What I’d really like is challenging, fascinating projects and a perfect mentor.”

-Ryan Healy, a Gen Y and a co-founder of Employee Evolution

“Receiving a ‘website disallowed screen’ at work is second only to a shark attack in terms of stress and anxiety.”

- Gen Y Business Consultant in 2007

Quotes to Contemplate

“Aided by new technologies and more effective organizations, Generation Y may add more value in the workplace than any generation in history. They may also be the most demanding generation in history.”

-Bruce Tulgan & Dr. Carolyn A. Martin

“Each generation assumes that the succeeding generations will experience the same desires, have the same values and appreciate and cherish the same things, in a unchanging continuum.”

-Cam Marston, Motivating the Workforce: What’s in it for Me?

“Generation Y wants it all and is willing to walk away or reject a lucrative or promising future at a company if it means having to give up their personal life or if they feel that they are not recognized for their contributions.”

-Lisa Whall, managing director, Steven Douglas Associates

“While traditional companies shy away from training employees who might fly the coop, Google puts its strongest young recruits into management positions and gives them two years of hands-on training as a way to attract the best and brightest.”

- Andrew Tilin, 18 Recruiting Gen Y: Four Killer Tactics

“I’ve had the opportunity to participate in a fair amount of research on Gen Y and young adults over the years. I’ve also worked with quite a few young enterpreneurs and young adults in Silicon Valley. Based on both my research and work experiences, I think the Entitlement Generation is a generation of enormous talent. They are smart, aggressive, innovative and make things happen. I wish I entered the workforce with their skills and abilities. Yes they have big expectations – and yes they can be difficult to deal with – but they also have what it takes to deliver.”

- Steve King, Small Business Labs

The High Tech Election

Political commercials have ended, the signs have been taken down, and the votes have all been tallied. We have newly elected government officials. Life is returning to the pre-election norm. The election was historic for a variety of reasons. When something momentous occurs, it is important to determine what valuable lessons can be learned and applied to your business. To determine the lessons learned, let’s look at how technology was a vital factor in the election of the President-elect and how technology will continue to play a role when the transition of power occurs. Barack Obama’s campaign was supported by an unprecedented use of technology:

• Fundraising online totaled half a billion dollars in just 21 months.
• More than 1 billion e-mails were sent out to Obama’s contact list of approximately 13 million addresses.
• The text messaging program included a million people.
• Two million voter profiles were created on mybarackobama.com.
• Obama had a profile or page in more than 15 online communities.
• Facebook’s election page reported 5.4 million users clicking the “I voted” button. 

What does the future hold for technology in the oval office and the initiatives for the United States? Many sources are reporting that the most significant change will occur in a forthcoming Cabinet-level position of national Chief Technology Officer. There is a possibility that Obama will have a laptop on his desk, which would make him the first president to have technology at his fingertips in the Oval Office. Recently the Democratic radio address was videotaped and archived in order to be placed on YouTube. There is no doubt that the President-elect will continue to embrace and implement technology when taking office in January 2009.

Technology initiatives discussed by the President-elect and VP-elect:

• Protect the openness of the internet: Network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet.
• Deploy a modern communications infrastructure: Get true broadband to every community in America.
• Improve America’s competitiveness: Ensure our goods and services are treated fairly in foreign markets, invest in the sciences, and provide new research grants to the most outstanding early-career researchers in the country.
• Open up government to its citizens: Use cutting-edge technologies to create a new level of transparency, accountability, and participation for America’s citizens.

Lessons Learned: Implications for Your Organization 

An election creates interest across the nation and unites people in a shared anticipation of the results. The buzz of an election is different from operating a business; however, what lessons can you and your company employ? And how can you reach and energize Americans – across the generations – as successfully as the Democratic campaign has? 

Reflect on a few ideas:

1. Use the web to reach out to all customers – across the generations and interest groups.
2. Market your company through social networking sites.
3. Make your product or services relevant to people beyond your typical demographic.
4. Reach the marketplace through  innovative use of technology.
5. Create a buzz about a project or new service through online communications.
6. Invite your current customers to join a group or create a profile in a network.
7. Determine ways to harness those in your network -  receive feedback and make suggestions for innovation.

You and your team know your marketplace and customers. It’s up to you to embrace the ever-changing World Wide Web and harness all it has to offer.

Is Your Company Prepared? 

1. Do you have a presence on some of the social networking sites: LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Twitter, etc.?
2. How are your services or products relevant to the marketplace and the current economical changes?
3. Do you continue to update marketing plans to stay current with online opportunities for marketing?
4. Are you tapping into the knowledge Generation Y has to offer?
5. How have you utilized the power of social networking, blogs, and wikis at your organization?
6. How do you plan to reach out to the many users in online communities?