Here are 10 resources about gaming and learning:

1. Aaron Dignan – Game Frame
2. Improving the Way We Design Games for Learning by Examining How Popular Video Games Teach – July 2011
3. A New Day for Corporate Learning – By A. J. Ripin – Training Magazine
4. My Marriott Hotel Opens its Doors on Facebook: Marriott Uses Social Media Gaming to Help Attract Tens of Thousands of Employees
5. If All of Work Were Gamified – By Saul Kaplan – Harvard Business Review Blog
6. The Gamification of Jihad – WNYC’s On the Media
7. Good Video Games and Good Learning – By James Paul Gee
   16 learning principles that good games, across a board spectrum of genres, incorporate
8. Gamification Wiki
9. Games for Learning Institute – New York University // Games for Change
10. DiGRA: The Digital Games Research Association

What resources on gaming and learning in organizations do YOU recommend?

Prediction 2: Companies Will Disclose Their Corporate Social Responsibility Programs to Attract and Retain Employees

The focus on people, planet and profits — known as the new triple bottom line —
will become the main way organizations attract and retain new hires. This will be critical because 80% of a sample of 1,800 13-25 year olds want to work for a company that cares about how it impacts and contributes to society. More than half also say they would refuse to work for an irresponsible corporation.

So companies will begin to move beyond corporate philanthropy by integrating Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) into their core business strategy, and by reporting quantitative goals to current employees, prospective hires and investors.

In the past year in particular, you can see Corporate Social Responsibility becoming more prominent in company strategies. Companies “going green” are seeing a difference in their bottom line and are making a good impression. (Read this New York Times article on sustainability translating to profits.)

This is already the case in Great Britain where the law requires companies to provide information and business goals for their CSR programs. For example, the Annual Report of National Grid, an international electricity and gas company, not only includes a review of all CSR projects, but also identifies quantitative business goals such as: achieving an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, having 15% of its energy demand from renewable sources by 2020, and defining a global inclusion charter for the organization.

But imposing a legal requirement may not be the real impetus that forces companies to report CSR programs. The Millennials and Gen 2020 will demand companies to be more socially responsible or risk losing valuable talent to a competitor.

CSR is a priority among Millenials. In in Magazine, Jenny Gomez writes that “the ‘Millennials,’ also known as the ‘Y Generation,’ are the driving force behind the trend to use the power of business to create a better world. They are civic minded and 78 million strong.” Companies developing and integrating CSR strategies need to keep in mind that the Millennials are a unique group that has high expectations for the products they purchase, the companies they work for and the companies with which they do business.

Companies are constantly under pressure to provide information pertaining to their CSR, whether the pressure comes from their own stakeholders, shareholders, employees or even the public, as seen in this Greenbiz.com article. (Greenbiz Group is a source for news, opinion, best practices and other resources on the greening of mainstream business.)

Corporate Social Responsibility

Forbes asks whether or not HR will adopt CSR practices this year. Millenials, it seems, will have some impact on the corporate world in the way of CSR.

Companies publishing their CSR reports include: PVH, General Mills and Verizon.

Questions:

How seriously do you take Corporate Social Responsibility?

Do you and the company you currently work for have similar views on the role of CSR?

Would Corporate Social Responsibility be a determining factor in choosing between jobs?

According to Gartner, worldwide sales of tablets will jump from 19.5 million units in 2010 to 208 million units in 2014. The expanding tablet market is likely to cannibalize the market share of netbooks, media players, and stand-alone eBook readers.

Future Workplace & IESE Business School research entitled M-Learning: From Anticipation To Reality, identified three key trends:

1. By year end of 2011: nearly forty percent of executives plan to incorporate media tablets into learning and development initiatives and three-quarters of these learning executives plan to incorporate smartphones by the end of this year.

2. By 2015: Human Resource executives plan to leverage mobile devices not only for learning & performance support but also for coaching and mentoring employees (37%), micro-blogging (27%), augmented reality (14%), and mobile gaming (12%).

3. In order to expand mobile learning, companies need to deal with top five barriers expressed by our research sample which include:

• Cost of developing content across all types of mobile devices and platforms.

• Security of issues associated with mobile devices

• Non-clarity on how to participate in mobile learning

• Out-dated IT policies

• Lagging instructional design expertise

Which barrier is the largest in your organization? How are you dealing with this?

Each year, the Bellwether Book Award recognizes one “trend-setting book that has implications for the future of community colleges nationally.” We are so please to have received this honor! While accepting the award at the Community College Futures Assembly, there was  quite a bit of discussion about how community colleges could expand their partnership with  corporations with a particular interest in working with corporate learning departments  to issue “articulation agreements,” assessing possible eligible credits for corporate training  programs. As more community college leaders become familiar with the leading companies with forward looking corporate learning practices, we see greater opportunity to develop and nourish these type of corporate/college partnerships.

To read more about this, please visit the Community College Futures Assembly.

• Wendy Murphy, Managing Partner, Chief Human Resources Officers Practice, Heidrick & Struggles
• Lauren Doliva PhD, Managing Partner, Chief Adviser Network, Heidrick & Struggles and Member of the CHRO Practice

We started 2011 by examining what skills the marketplace currently values in the CLO role. The question that kept us engaged for over one hour was:

What are competencies and skills most valued by a CEO in the CLO?

While we talked about many skills and competencies the six below appeared to generate the most dialogue and we started our discussion by having Lauren and Wendy share what are the key skills & competencies most valued in a CLO by a CEO. The list below is what we discussed as the key “market-driven skills” of a CLO and they include:

1) INNOVATION DRIVER & STRATEGIC BUSINESS LEADER: A focus on “next practices,” rather than copying best practices is key to being thought of as an Innovation Driver for the organization. This is a broad competency incorporating insight and conceptual thinking skills to create  build and strategically link the learning and the development agendas in the context of the talent required to accomplish organizational goals.

2) DIAGNOSTICIAN:  A future focus to both observe and analyze internal and external trends impacting business outcomes and linking these to develop a clear picture of what the organization can do from a talent development perspective in order to better meet its strategic business priorities.

3) RELATIONSHIP BUILDER: An ability to involved stakeholders both internally and externally in a pursuing a business direction. We talked about the growing importance of developing relationship with new  stakeholders such as: Heads of Marketing, Digital Marketing, Internal Communications and/or IT as social media and social learning increase in importance.  Or possibly to include developing a relationships with the head of the corporate Foundation as a growing number of companies are building strategic views to their corporate social responsibility programs and adding leadership development as one component. Consider examples mentioned in the book, The 2020 Workplace such as  IBM Corporate Service Corps, Ernst & Young Corporate Responsibility Fellows,  and Pfizer’s  Global Health Fellows.

4) FLEXIBLE AND FLUID OPERATOR: Be open to changing operating models and organizational design when you consider options for how to expand the scope and style of learning, and how work gets done in the future. Key issues that innovative minded CLO’s will be attuned to include: mobile working & learning, leadership development in a collaborative working environment and manager certifications.

5) INFLUENCER/CHANGE AGENT: Paint a clear picture for changes in strategies and/or organizational models. This means be able  to persuasively align and engage others to take action. This ability to  influence and be a change agent will be viewed as critical as many high profile initiatives undertaken by a CLO will demand the involvement of a cross functional team of C-level players in the organization.

6) BREADTH OF EXPERIENCE : Deep experience across all areas of Talent Management including Leadership Development, Organizational Design, Organizational Effectiveness, Recruiting, Performance Management, Retention Strategies, Compensation, and Succession Planning.

Where does this leave the state of the industry?

According to Heidrick & Struggles, demand for CLO’s continues to be robust, but it is the Chief Talent Officer (CTO) title that is taking on steam. CLOs often report to a Chief Talent Officer who is responsible for end-to-end talent management from recruiting and staffing, performance management and succession planning/lifetime career management, total rewards, and corporate learning & development. So here’s some advice to current CLO’s consider how to broaden your set of experinces and skills so your next position can be one as a CTO.   That is the good news here: the CLO has a career path in an organization from Chief Learning Officer to Chief Talent Officer and perhaps to Chief Human Resource Officer. And as more CLOs gain exposure to the company board of directors as an adviser on talent issues, this will build a case in assuming this boarder role.

We ended our call with a provocative question from one of our members to both Lauren & Wendy: as the job of CLO gains in stature and scope why has the compensation for this role not followed the same trajectory? The answer was not surprising: it is the responsibility of the incumbent CLO to demonstrate that learning & development delivers business impact and is able to communicate this in business terms the CEO will understand like increases in revenue, decreases in cost or gains in market share. They pointed to examples of forward thinking CLO’s that are asking for & gaining exposure to the board of directors and are seen as the company’s expert on talent development.

Think about your current role and the enxt role you want to assume: what new competencies do you want to add to this list? Share with us here!

And if you are interested in learning more about the CLO Innovation Network, a network of practitioners who are pursuing an innovation agenda: send me an email at: jeanne@futureworkplace.com