GetKeepGrow’s Chief Talent Leader, David McLean recently spoke at the  2010 HRPA Conference held in Toronto.  The topic of the presentation was:

The Accountability Factor:  Addressing Manager Accountability in Employee Engagement

Highlights from the presentation will be posted in the coming days – for now, check out this pic of David at the conference!

John Savio and Reko Rivera of Florida pay homage to the iPhone with their working “guyphone” Halloween costumes.  Completely ‘teched’ out with 42-inch flat screen TVs, powered by portable battery packs, Savio and Rivera spent over 90 hours crafting their costumes.

Upon viewing the video, a number of reactions swept through me:
the geek in me said, “WOW – that’s cool!”
the athlete in me said, “that’s gotta be heavy !”
the Mom in me said, “I hope they’re careful when dancing!”

But something else struck me – Savio and Rivera are an example of what can happen when people are fully-engaged.  From their initial inspiration, they put their skills, talents and energy to work in order to execute their idea flawlessly.  In an interview with a Florida newspaper, Rivera expressed:  ”We do what makes us happy…and this makes us happy.”

Fully-Engaged Indeed!

HT: Annie Colbert viaGuy Kawasaki

Full Article on Savio and Rivera: St. Petersburg Times

The carrot and stick approach to inducing behaviours has been around for years – combining rewards or punishment has been thought to be an effective way to mould behaviour. But does this approach really work? Do people change their behaviour under those circumstances – and can employee engagement be driven by rewards and incentives?

Well, I came across the following two videos this week that speak to the core of what really motivates people. The first, a TED talk by Dan Pink on Motivation. Dan really challenges our traditional beliefs about what motivates employees to want to perform at their best. Spoiler Alert…it isn’t carrots and sticks.

And the second video by Volkswagen Sweden and ad agency DDB Stockholm, who tackled the question: “How do you get more people to take the stairs?”

HT on the Volkswagon clip to: Garr Reynolds

One of my learning goals for this quarter has been to dive deep into the “social media” sphere: blogging, Twitter, Technorati… all new concepts for me. While dipping my toes in the water, I came across a great piece by Adam Singer, on a blog called The Future Buzz. His post from early January 2009 highlighted 49 really neat social media and Web 2.0 stats – ranging from the number of Google searches per day (2 billion) to the number of different languages used on Facebook (35).

Given this is my first blog entry, I thought it was interesting that there are over 900,000 blog posts per day. Yes, over 900,000 PER DAY! Amazing! As a newbie blogger, the question certainly arises…why blog? There are already loads of people out there sharing information through their blogs (133,000,000 in the blogosphere as Adam would tell us). Why one more?

Well, my thinking is simple. In the employee engagement and retention work we do at GetKeepGrow it is “the differences that make the difference”. And I do believe that this blog will be a little different. From this forum, I will explore employee engagement and retention issues, tackle tough talent situations, and offer take-action tools and solutions – all from a Canadian perspective.

So, I guess I am now part of the blogosphere; adding to the over 900,000 pages a day. And, like 55% of other bloggers out there – enjoying more than 2 cups of coffee in that day. But how many of those are a Timmies?