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They are a visionary; they’re always the smartest person in the room, and they drop gorgeous nuggets of wisdom without even realizing it. Elevate them! They should be blogging and Tweeting daily.

But don’t make them just shill for the brand.

Give the lowest member of the customer support team a vehicle to share his ideas with the product development team.

some economists predict it will be years, not months, before employees regain any semblance of bargaining power

this recession's unusual ferocity has accelerated trends—including offshoring, automation, the decline of labor unions' influence, new management techniques, and regulatory changes

forecast for the next five to 10 years: more of the same, with paltry pay gains, worsening working conditions, and little job security. Right on up to the C-suite, more jobs will be freelance and temporary, and even seemingly permanent positions will be at greater risk

We're all temps now.

the brutal recession has prompted more companies to create just-in-time labor forces that can be turned on and off like a spigot

Employers are trying to get rid of all fixed costs

Everything is variable

people who graduated from college in a recession earn 2.5% less than if they had graduated in more prosperous times, research has shown

Diminishing job security is also widening the gap between the highest- and lowest-paid workers. At the top, people with sought-after skills can earn more by jumping from assignment to assignment than they can by sticking with one company. But for the least educated, who have no special skills to sell, the new deal for labor offers nothing but downside.

All the employees had just stopped working

Aside from pure monetary donations, however, is a new model that is transforming corporate philanthropy.

Increasingly, corporations are turning to a shared value model, in which companies work in alignment with society rather than against it, producing mutual benefits to both the community and the corporation

It evolves the traditional model of financial and material goods donations, to one in which corporations leverage a range of corporate assets including employee skills, business acumen and partner networks, to drive social change.

Here’s the shift: Instead of viewing it as our responsibility to drive business and social value, view it also a valuable opportunity to rethink existing practices.

The business case for social innovation

there are a variety of benefits for an organization, from brand building, to staff retention, and even improved client stickiness. Shareholders and the investment community are also increasingly considering corporate responsibility when making investment decisions.

collaborations can drive innovation through necessity. Non-profits work in extreme environments, faced with limited infrastructure, connectivity and staff. Operating in these situations exposes corporate staff to new sets of customer challenges, which can often deliver innovations in product design or services into the business.

by working with a non-profit organization, a corporation can demonstrate its expertise to a new audience, expanding its business network.

Increasingly, investors weigh environmental, social and governance  data when making investment decisions. While such data has been a benchmark for European-based companies for some time, we are now seeing a more global adoption and interest in this, which should be another forcing function for more corporations to act as good corporate citizens.

Applying social innovation in practic

A good starting point is to assess the company’s available skills, expertise, partnerships against the touch-points the company currently has within a given community. From there, establish specific goals to achieve and a strategic plan to meet those goals.

Companies that have an expertise in technology, for example, can collaborate with non-profits or social entrepreneurs to provide the infrastructure backbone that turn their ideas into reality. With the social enterprise mPedigree Network, HP leveraged its technology expertise in cloud-based services to design and build an anti-drug counterfeiting service in Africa. Counterfeit medicine is a significant problem in developing countries, causing more than 700,000 deaths each year. The new service helps save lives by enabling patients to validate the integrity of their medicine by sending a free text message.

Gabi Zedlmayer is Vice President of Hewlett-Packard’s Office of Global Social Innovation.