WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Blackboard Inc. (Nasdaq: BBBB), a global leader in education technology, today announced that it has been positioned in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Corporate Learning Systems, an influential report evaluating the completeness of vision and ability to execute of vendors in the market.

Blackboard has seen significant growth in the corporate learning space where an increasing number of corporations of all sizes have adopted the company's teaching and learning platform to deploy training programs efficiently and cost effectively. In the Magic Quadrant report, Gartner "evaluates vendors based on their ability to articulate current and future market direction, innovation, customer needs and competitive forces."

The report notes that, "In 2009, we evaluated Corporate Learning System vendors for comprehensiveness of their offering. Those that presented more effective components and capabilities generally improved in the areas of analytics, learner ease-of-use and support for structured social and informal learning. The social learning platform has emerged as a key component."(1)

Read more.

What's the biggest emerging market of them all? I'll give you a hint: The answer isn't geographic but demographic. The answer is...women.

Women leaders are the new power behind the global economy, proclaims Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu's announcement of its second annual webcast (which I moderated) celebrating International Women's Day. In developing nations, women's earned income is growing at 8.1 percent, compared to 5.8 percent for men. Globally, women control nearly $12 trillion of the $18 trillion total overall consumer spending, a figure predicted to rise to $15 trillion by 2014.

More significant, the majority of tertiary degrees are now being awarded to women. Highly qualified, well-educated and ambitious, these women are taking over the talent pool from Delhi to Dubai and bringing new urgency to the issue of managing diversity.

In a speech at the Hidden Brain Drain Summit held in New York last November, the Right Honorable Paul Boateng, the U.K.'s first black cabinet minister and most recently the British High Commissioner to South Africa, urged representatives of the 57 member organizations to overcome the obstacles placed in the path of emerging talents. "If you're serious about growth, if you're serious about innovation, if you're serious about getting a global reach, then the evidence tells you that you've got to overcome those obstacles," he said. "The imperative is to move from sentiment to strategy, to make the leap from survival to success."

Here's how two smart companies are making that leap:

• Goldman Sachs' ReturnshipSM program is a novel way of recruiting candidates who, after an extended, voluntary absence from the workforce, are seeking to re-start their careers. A returnship serves as a preparatory program, providing "returnees" with an opportunity to re-learn, sharpen and demonstrate the skills essential for success in a work environment that may have changed significantly since their most recent work experience. The eight-week U.S. 2008 pilot program comprised 11 women. The 2009 program lasted nine weeks and included 16 returnees chosen from more than 300 applicants. Acknowledging the importance of Asian markets, the program was expanded to Hong Kong in the fall of 2009, with an inaugural class of 37 returnees.

• Google's India Women in Engineering Award Program was launched in 2008 to celebrate young women in college and graduate school who are pursuing careers in engineering and computer science. That year, 16 women won the $2,000 award for academic excellence and demonstrated leadership skills; 9 won in 2009, selected from among more than 250 high-caliber applicants. Google senior management and engineers serve as judges. 2009 winner Anjali Sardana, a Ph.D. candidate at the Indian Institute of Technology, says that the award has inspired her to keep pursuing her dreams: "Not only did the award encourage me to stay in my field, it has made me confident and given me the spark to mentor other younger women engineers."

By investing in women in emerging markets, companies are betting on a brighter future — for a workforce just waiting to blossom, for economies whose development depends on this new crop of talent, and, of course, for themselves.

(From PRWEB) -- Cytiva Software, Inc., a leading provider of on-demand talent management solutions, announces the availability of a free white paper designed to help organizations hire top talent by enhancing and communicating their employment brand.

According to a Gartner Group study, "By 2011, organizations that do not manage
their employer brands effectively will fail to attract key talent." Given what is happening with the unemployment rate, businesses are receiving overwhelming numbers of job applications for open positions. The problem is that organizations are not always receiving the right applicants. Those companies that do have a unique employment brand attract the best, most compatible employees and ultimately beat their competition in bringing in talent.

Cytiva's new white paper, "Building Your Employment Brand," walks expert and novice alike, through key steps to identifying, enhancing and communicating an organization's all important employment brand.

Read the full release.

For more information on building your employement brand, consider attending the session Building the Brand Called You at the ASTD 2010 International Conference and Exposition!

 

The Canadian workforce is the most culturally diverse and dynamic in the world. There is much to be gained by utilizing everyone to their full potential, but the blinding speed with which the workplace is changing requires flexibility on the part of employers.

The looming retirement of the baby boomer generation is a key development. With more than a third of the entire labour force preparing to retire over the next two decades or so, this represents one of the most significant shifts in the workplace seen in the last half-century. Employers will be faced with labour force growth that will slow to a crawl and they will need to find new and innovative ways of utilizing Canada's current labour pool.

Read the full article.

For more information on generations and diversity in the workplace, consider attending the session Relevant Diversity Dimensions Levels for More Effect D&I Management at the ASTD 2010 International Conference and Exposition!

New research by people management firm, Talent Q, has revealed that the way in which organisations manage talent has become much more secretive than a year ago. On the back of widespread redundancies and organisational restructuring, the number of senior HR executives saying that their talent management process had become less transparent, increased by over 41 per cent.

Talent Q’s second annual survey canvassed the views of 225 senior HR executives who work for organisations which together employ some 10 per cent of the UK’s workforce. They were questioned about a range of talent management issues, with the results showing that just under a quarter of all UK organisations (24 per cent) claimed to have open and transparent talent management processes and, in sectors such as industry and manufacturing, this figure fell to only 12 per cent.

Read the full article.

For more information on talent management processes, consider attending the session High Maturity Talent Management Practices: Cross Border Insights at the ASTD 2010 International Conference and Exposition!

Two out of three cheers for International Women's Day (IWD), celebrated on March 8.

My first cheer is loud and enthusiastic: High fives for women's diversity — all types of women in all types of careers! A 21-gun salute for women rising in the military! Multiple Olympic 10s for women athletes and athletic women leaders who perform high-wire balancing acts, juggling work and family! Let's raise a glass of vitamin water to womanpower, "womanomics," and women of valor!

March 10 brings more cheering. Women from Seattle to South Africa can shout-out for Melinda Gates, Gates Foundation honcho and champion of dramatic improvements in health and education. She is getting a Woman of Courage Award from the Global Partnership to End Violence against Women, a collaboration of the U.S. State Department, the NGO Vital Voices, and the Avon Foundation. This award was established in 2007 by former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. Current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who appointed the first-ever U.S. Global Ambassador for Women, is giving Gates the award.

International Women's Day emanated from the labor movement and was first celebrated in the early 1900s, before most women could vote. Suffrage began to inch along in the late 19th century, but with restrictions — e.g., whether voting meant a woman could stand for election. American women received the right to vote in the early 1920s, around the same time as Albania and Burma. In 1929, Canada determined that women were "persons" for electoral purposes. In 1971, surprisingly recently, women got the right to vote in Switzerland. Kuwait was late — 2005.

By 2010, there is much progress to celebrate, and much left to do — which makes Melinda Gates's award that much more critical. Increasing numbers of women have achieved powerful positions where they can lend a helping hand to women who are still victims of poverty, violence, health disparities, and limited education. Women leader networks that once functioned as career-builders and support systems for members, such as the International Women's Forum, now focus on what leaders can give to less-advantaged women.

Men and women alike should cheer for these women leaders who devote time to mentoring young women and supporting girls' aspirations, because one of the strongest correlates of the strength of national economies is the extent of girls' formal education. Keep that educational cheering section going.

My second cheer is for an unintended offspring of International Women's Day called (naturally) International Men's Day (IMD). Just when I thought that every remaining day of the year was men's day, I stumbled upon IMD, which I confess had escaped my notice for its decade of existence. It doesn't compete with International Women's Day, because it is celebrated on November 19, and it came to life in the Caribbean.

In the early 1990s, a professor of men's studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City had been attempting, with little success, to get IMD off the ground. Eventually, non-profit organizations with endorsement from UNESCO managed to get a day's worth of attention to issues of male role constrictions and the need for positive male role models in Trinidad and Tobago in 1999. The idea spread, as part of a growing men's movement. One important theme involves family responsibilities and engagement with children. For example, psychologist John Badalament has promoted the need for enhanced connection of men with their children through a public television film, All Men Are Sons. In Australia, organizations such as Dads4Kids ask women and children to buy flowers for the men in their lives on IMD.

There are economic reasons to think about men on Women's Day. High rates of unemployment of young men and their likely brush with gang violence or incarceration are significant social problems afflicting urban communities. While getting girls to school is an issue in the countries-formerly-known-as-third-world, keeping boys in school is a concern in developed countries such as the U.S., where more women than men earn college degrees.

That's two cheers down, and one cheer missing. That's because the very idea of having a "Day" is a bit patronizing. It smacks of 364 days of neglect made up for in one grand 24-hour media event.

On the one hand, great marketing benefits can ensue from concentrating attention on a single day, building anticipation for it and conveying a powerful message. Take Your Daughter to Work Day (now Take Your Child to Work Day) is a good example targeted to a specific happening. So is Super Bowl Sunday. On the other hand, calendars are cluttered with days that trivialize as well as days that uplift. Backlash against Mother's Day and Father's Day are nothing compared to cynicism about Secretary's Day.

On IWD, lumping together all "women" smacks of a homogeneous category singled out primarily for difference from men. Whether black, white, brown, short, tall, executives, educators, or stay-at-home moms, suddenly all women are the same because of what they are not — that is, not men. This concern is captured brilliantly in the title of Simone de Beauvoir's classic book, The Second Sex. A new translation by my friends Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier in Paris makes the message as relevant today as in 1949. DeBeauvoir explored the meaning of being the "other," an after-thought, defined by difference from the male norm and needing to contend with it. A Day for Women can be a reminder of this second class status.

So I'm cheering two-thirds of the way. I will release Cheer Three when gender gaps close, limitations fade, and there is attention to problems of opportunity and inclusion throughout the year. I'm not holding my breath. But I have a bottle of vitamin water ready for a toast to gender equity, just in case.

A report presented today by the European Commission shows that countries still face challenges in modernising higher education, a decade after the launch of a blueprint for reform known as the 'Bologna Process'. The report, based on data provided by the 46 countries participating in the Process, shows that the economic crisis has affected higher ...\n

The European Commission has just presented the Europe 2020 Strategy to help Europe emerge from the crisis and prepare its economy for the next decade. Education and training are to play a key role for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.\n

Adopted by Education Ministers earlier this week, the 2010 joint progress report of the Council and the Commission on the implementation of the work programme "Education and Training 2010" is now available online.\n

European e-Skills Week highlights the growing demand for skilled users and professionals of information and communication technologies (ICT) to drive a competitive and innovative Europe. This campaign seeks to inform students, young professionals and SMEs about the vast range of opportunities that ICT-related jobs present. The ...\n

Nearly 500 teachers are meeting in Seville to celebrate the fifth anniversary of eTwinning, an action that creates online communities of teachers and schools across Europe. Through eTwinning, over 85 000 teachers from across Europe work together in international school activities involving more than 50 000 schools in 32 European ...\n

A new forecast on the demand and supply of skills up to 2020 foresees a steady rise in knowledge- and skill-intensive occupations in Europe. The forecast was presented today by Cedefop, the EU's reference centre for vocational education and training, at the European Commission conference 'New Skills for New Jobs: Action Now'.\n

Immediate action is required to solve Europe's skills deficiencies and give Europeans a better chance of labour market success in the future, says an independent expert report published by the European Commission today. The report - 'New Skills for New Jobs: Action Now' - stresses the need to provide the right incentives for people to ...\n

A new publication looks at the different ways to measure creativity both of individual people and at national and regional levels. The publication is based on the outcomes of an international conference, which the European Commission hosted in May 2009 under the title "Can creativity be measured?" The publication Measuring Creativity looks ...\n

Did you know that Spain, France and Germany are the most popular destination for Erasmus students? That the average Erasmus student stays abroad for around 6 months? That the number of university teachers going abroad with the help of the programme each year has more than tripled over the last ten years and is now at over 27 000? A statistical overview ...\n

A group of independent experts will present its key recommendations on 4 February 2010 on how to further develop the skills and jobs agenda in Europe and to better build bridges between the worlds of education, training and work. The report will be presented at a conference in Brussels, jointly organised by the European Commission's Directorate-Generals ...\n

Registration is now open for the European conference "Grundtvig, a decade of European innovation in adult learning", which will take place in Brussels on 26-28 January 2010. This conference will mark for the adult education community the start of the European Year for combating Poverty and Social Exclusion and the launch of the 10th anniversary ...\n

How do you approach business process improvement? By keeping the focus on the customer? Or by seeking efficiency?