Why women need to take control of their digital literacy (and a couple of things to do about it today)

To celebrate International Women’s Day I’m going to focus on my own backyard and something I’ve learnt from experience: women need to take control of their digital literacy, whatever season of their career they find themselves in. As far as I can see, no one teaches you digital literacy. You learn it by doing it. According to a 2006 article (Jones-Kavalier/Flannigan), “Digital literacy represents a person’s ability to perform tasks effectively in a digital environment, with “digital” meaning information represented in numeric form and primarily for use by a computer. Literacy includes the ability to read and interpret media (text, … Continue reading

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Three big questions for every CSR Manager (and a few hints on the answers)

So we’re off and running in 2012. Places to go, people to see. Work to do. Lots. So what should take priority for those with Corporate Responsibility reporting responsibilities? These three questions may help: What are you doing to champion the value of integrated reporting within your organisation? It’s the latest push in the CSR/Sustainability field and for good reason. The case for greater integration between financial and non-financial performance is clear. Yet it’s always the how you go about adapting new concepts to your organisation’s strategy and culture that makes or breaks the change process. The IIRC’s discussion paper Towards … Continue reading

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2012: Year of the Personal Brand

I hereby declare 2012 The Year of the Personal Brand. Over the holiday period, I lost count of the number of conversations with family and friends where the central topic was their personal online web presence, including their approach to all things social media. Big business, small business, global or domestic, city or country, everyone gets it. Social media is here to stay. Your online presence in a service-based economy matters. Regardless of your sector or business structure, professionals need to adapt. If you’re the boss, for example, 2012 may be the year to establish or review company guidelines about … Continue reading

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The five post(s) with the most: yours and mine

Dear readers Thank you for your support during 2011. I really appreciate you sticking with me as I launched myself into the social media universe with this blog and my twitter account @thebriefingnote (by-the-by, most of you are fellow Aussies, half of you found me via Google, another 20 per cent found me via twitter or Linkedin referrals and the rest of you seem to know my URL. Perhaps these are my family members). Engaging in social media has been and remains a very steep learning curve. I think that’s one of the main reasons why it’s become such a … Continue reading

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Sustainability, the media and holistic performance: a conversation with the ABC’s Dr Mike McCluskey (Part 2 of 2)

The media sector is far more comfortable asking the questions about business ethics and responsible business practices than being asked questions about its own. The GRI’s Media Sector Supplement (MSS) offers the media a framework through which to consider its unique societal impacts and improve transparency and disclosure on a number of key issues such as ownership, editorial independence, content and promotion of local creative talent in the workforce. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is represented on the GRI’s MSS international working group by Dr Mike McCluskey, the Chief Executive Officer of Radio Australia and former Head of Corporate Social Responsibility. This … Continue reading

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Sustainability, the media and holistic performance: a conversation with the ABC’s Dr Mike McCluskey (Part 1 of 2)

In the wake of the News of the World phone hacking scandal in July this year, I wrote a post suggesting media organisations would do well to explore the Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) draft Media Sector Supplement (MSS). Why? Because it contains some important and timely signposts in areas such as governance, content quality and product responsibility that if adapted, could point some media organisations in the direction of building or rebuilding trust between themselves and their audiences. Australian Broadcasting Corporation Chief Executive Officer, Radio Australia and former Head of Corporate Social Responsibility, Dr Mike McCluskey became a member of … Continue reading

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Communicating change: the never-ending story

Whether you’re launching a new sustainability initiative, announcing (another) major change with big ramifications for your employees or batting up a new idea to your senior leadership team – communicating change to the people who have a stake in it is the never-ending story of our time. The story has to begin with the characters that make that story engaging. Your stakeholders. As I’ve blogged about in previous posts, stakeholder is not a catch-all, generic throwaway label. It should be segmented into specific groups or individuals that mean something to your business. Those stakeholders should be assigned to a strategy and … Continue reading

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Career karma: what goes around, comes around

It’s the penultimate cliché of modern life to express one’s busyness. Time has become a scarce and precious resource. How are you going to use it? It follows that making time to share your knowledge or insights with someone, make an introduction or share a valued contact is a gesture that carries great value for the sharer and share-ee (I made that word up, but you know where I’m coming from). I’m not talking about delivering a presentation at an industry conference, confirming your status as a friend or connection on your social network of choice or even writing a … Continue reading

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How to put stakeholder engagement on the board agenda, and keep it there

Does your board of directors join the dots between quality stakeholder engagement, good governance, resilient reputation and robust corporate performance? Or are you struggling to advocate the value of stakeholder engagement at the board level? Tabling or presenting a board paper on the value of stakeholder engagement is one thing; demonstrating how you measure it — and track progress and performance over time –is another thing altogether. This quote from the President of Oxfam America, Ray Offenheiser, quoted in The Ceres Roadmap for Sustainability (p25), sums it up for me: “To operate successfully in a complex global business environment, forward-looking companies … Continue reading

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10 things I like about mecu’s winning report

The 2011 Australasian Annual Reporting Awards were announced recently and their special awards category for Sustainability Reporting was won by Australian credit union mecu (142,877 members, $2.43b in assets, $26.8m net profit before tax, 371 staff and 33 service centres across Australia). This is the second time mecu has won this award. Here are 10 things I like about mecu’s 2009/10 Sustainability Report structure and approach: This is their sixth Sustainability Report. Chairman Peter Crocker’s introductory statement references mecu’s commitment to responsible banking and I think it’s important to hear this message from a credit union via their corporate reporting … Continue reading

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