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"Alongside this, we wanted to gauge wider views across the sector into charities' use of digital and how else they think it could help them. So today we're launching the results of our Charity Digital Survey at our sold out Charity Digital Summit, part of our Google funded programme of technology events for charities. Many of the 334 charity sector professionals who responded to the survey view digital as essential to their work, but fear they could miss out on opportunities for fundraising and income generation due to a lack of digital skills."

"The theory of motivated reasoning builds on a key insight of modern neuroscience (PDF): Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call "affect"). Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter of milliseconds-fast enough to detect with an EEG device, but long before we're aware of it. That shouldn't be surprising: Evolution required us to react very quickly to stimuli in our environment. It's a "basic human survival skill," explains political scientist Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan. We push threatening information away; we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself. We're not driven only by emotions, of course-we also reason, deliberate. But reasoning comes later, works slower-and even then, it doesn't take place in an emotional vacuum. Rather, our quick-fire emotions can set us on a course of thinking that's highly biased, especially on topics we care a great deal about."

ONE HAS LATELY heard much of the hashtag. That is, the Twitter symbol #, used to categorize a tweet. Charlie Sheen's first tweet, for example, was famously: "Winning ..! Choose your Vice... #winning #chooseyourvice." #Winning has gone on to live in irony across the Twitterverse, in mockery of the eternally less-than-winning Sheen. But even President Obama recently urged students to tweet their senators about raising the interest rates on federally subsidized student loans with the hashtag "#DontDoubleMyRate." The new thing, however, is using the word "hashtag" in conversation. Especially if you are under a certain age, you may be catching people saying things like, "I ran into that guy I met-hashtag happy!" or, in response to someone complaining, "My flashlight app isn't working," perhaps you have heard the retort, "Hashtag First World problems!" A college student not long ago reported a favorite witticism to be appending observations with: "Hashtag did that just happen?

Humans are pretty good at rolling with short bursts of pressure, but chronic uncertainty throws us for a loop. Anticipating a major stressful event can be worse than the actual occurrence itself, research shows.  When we fear the hatchet will fall, when the future is a fog, when we're paralyzed by powerlessness, we start to flip out. We pile on more work than we can handle. We don't take sick days when we need them. We start fueling up on coffee and cigarettes, and dropping the things that are good for us, like leisure activities and trips to the gym. Under chronic stress, our immune systems start to buckle from "overresponsivity."

"In a move to boost sales through social recommendations, online shoe and clothing retailer Zappos, which is owned by Amazon, has added a new feature called "PinPointing" that offers recommendations based on Pinterest accounts. Unfortunately, the feature doesn't work very well yet."

Should you start Eric Decker or Demaryius Thomas? Those types of decisions, if made during the work day, could cost employers $6.5 billion in lost productivity, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

"With an 8.1 percent August unemployment rate and 12.5 million Americans out of work, a new Temple University study examines a neglected area of research: how the unemployment process impacts the willingness of those laid off to endorse or return to their previous employer."

This website is designed as a social mirror to show the prevalence of casual homophobia in our society. Words and phrases like "faggot," "dyke," "no homo," and "so gay" are used casually in everyday language, despite promoting the continued alienation, isolation and - in some tragic cases - suicide of sexual and gender minority (LGBTQ) youth. We no longer tolerate racist language, we're getting better at dealing with sexist language, but sadly we're still not actively addressing homophobic and transphobic language in our society. Let's put an end to casual homophobia. Speak out when you see or hear homophobic or transphobic language from friends, at school, in the locker room, at work or online. Use #NoHomophobes to show your support. And visit one of our resource websites to get more involved.

Recognition, one of Herzberg's motivators, is important for employees to feel they are valued. To address this, Enterprise has introduced a system called 'The Vote'. This aims to support and encourage the development of exceptional customer service. It works on the basis of co-workers providing assessment on themselves and each other. All employees in rental branches rank everyone in their team, including themselves, in terms of their customer service efforts. They provide a constructive explanation of the rankings given. These are then fed back to all employees. Read more: http://www.thetimes100.co.uk/case-study--motivation-in-action--96-384-4.php#ixzz1AEO1R3Dw

"Without the support of whites, organizations and educational settings will fail in their attempts to navigate and manage the complexities of diverse work forces and constituencies," said Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks, an associate professor of management and organizations at Michigan's Ross School of Business. "In the face of the dramatic projected growth in demographic diversity, such failure could have severe economic, social and political consequences. "Our research reveals that this resistance can have little to do with prejudice. Instead, it can stem from a basic human need to belong."

Two new reports released from Forrester explore the state of video in the enterprise. "Information Workers Are Not Quite Ready For Desktop Videoconferencing" tells us that most workers polled do not want to use desktop video conferencing. Meanwhile, the "TechRadar For Content & Collaboration Professionals: Enterprise Video, Q1 2011" report looks at video in general across the enterprise. "Although video hasn't yet taken hold as the way we communicate or work, it will play an important role in connecting the increasingly distributed workforce," says the Radar report. The reports authors cite research showing that 46% of information workers are expected to be telecommuters by 1016.

Interesting on many levels. First is the fact that this entire agency works on big projects in a sort of competition. Second is that a smaller group of employees used email to self-organize a critique (however sophomoric) of the teams of creatives. Third is the danger that one person's lack of digital fluency (he hit the wrong button), or perhaps the organization's lack of digital fluency (could they have been having these discussions on a less-private medium than email?) presented. The fourth is the fact that a powerful/dangerous/fortuitous sort of serendipity emerged. 

In a sure sign that social media is becoming an entrenched pillar of the marketing mix, social media marketing freelance jobs have grown by 67% in the last year. This according to a quarterly report from DoNanza, an Isreali-based search engine which researches work-from-home projects. The search engine aggregates information from freelance sites such as elance, odesk and others on related online projects.

A survey by King's College London and law firm Speechly Bircham reveals that employers are facing a sustained increase in workplace unrest as austerity measures, longer working hours, stress and a genuine skills gap take their toll on the UK workforce.

During the week of February 14-18, private businesses and government agencies are encouraged to allow employees who normally make the trek into office each day to work from home instead. More than 35,000 companies and organizations have pledged to participate in the event. According to the official Telework Week Website, this would save an estimated $2,451,069 and more than 1,600 tons of pollutants from entering the atmosphere. Where these numbers come from is not entirely clear, but it stands to reason that fewer people commuting would help save money and reduce pollution to some extent.