Catalyst / Coach / Consultant
As of April 2012, 15% of Fortune 500 boards have one or more female members. Organizations with boards which are characterized by 30% gender diversity “outperform those with no women by a wide margin measured through multiple metrics” [Source: SmartBlog on Leadership].
This poses a chicken-or-the-egg conundrum: are organizations more efficacious because of their gender-diverse boards or are more efficacious organizations more likely to be more equitable in their recruitment of board members?
In the way of an update on my earlier posts regarding businesses using social networking tools, I wanted to direct readers to an article by Dion Hinchcliffe, who does a great job of covering the various platforms for creating online communities.
Read “Ten leading platforms for creating online communities.“
One-in-five Americans now use one or more Social Networking Sites (SNS), according to a Pew Research Center for the People & the Press report, and many SNS are finding the 35-years-and-older crowd to be their fastest growing demographic, as James Challenger of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc observes about Facebook. (While, ironically, more and more teens are becoming more cautious when approaching SNS, with more than 75% holding significant concerns about security on SNS and almost 25% not joining one for security reasons, according to Lee Cheshire). These recent trends paint a rather unlikely portrait of the current state of SNS and, even more unexpectedly, are forcing businesses to grapple with what their policy concerning employees’ use of SNS should be
As Robin Gareiss of Network World observes, SNS such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace present a swath of opportunities and hurdles for employers. Contrary to what you might expect, many companies are taking the issue of SNS head on. Gareiss notes that “about 26% of businesses use [SNS], and another 28% are evaluating or planning to use them” while another “46% of companies [have] no plans” for SNS.
What’s the position of your organization?
Continue reading “Social Networking Sites: A Business Pangea?”