Click here for the full agenda.

Disabilities Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) in 2010: Benchmarking, Best Practices, and Key Opportunities for Impact

Jennifer Brown, President & CEO Jennifer Brown Consulting
Lori Golden, Inclusiveness Consultant and Lead of AccessAbilities, Ernst & Young, LLP, USBLN® Board member

Description: Given the organic, fast-paced nature of how ERGs form in today’s organizations, it is difficult for diversity advocates to gain visibility into best practices occurring across leading companies. The good news is that Employee Resource Groups, and Disabilities ERGs specifically, are being created or accelerating in many workplaces, and marketplaces.  JBC’s ERG Readiness Index and our Disabilities ERG benchmarking work have revealed multiple insights which will be shared in this session, along the following key areas:

• Structure and governance
• Strategic focus areas and practices
• Impact on the business
• Leading practices and common challenges across different ERG models

The session will also provide a window into the best practices of Ernst & Young’s disabilities efforts and its ERG.

We would like to start off by taking a look at how different types of leadership can play a factor in the development of an emerging leader.  How would you define different kinds of leadership?  Has one been more important than the other, and why?

As always, we value your input whether on our Facebook page, via Twitter and LinkedIn, or comments here on the blog!

Registration for the Summit is officially open, so plan to meet the JBC Team in LA!

1. Workshop: High-Impact ERGs: Building a Roadmap to Business Impact

FINAL Workshop Description: ERGs continue to evolve from community-building organizations to those that can have real and sustained impact on the business, from new product development to recruitment and retention to emerging market penetration. Does your ERG have the right structure, talent, and strategy in place to win that coveted “seat at the table”? Will it be able to maximize that opportunity when presented? JBC works with Fortune 500 companies to map this process and prepare ERG leadership, members, and executive sponsors to develop their capabilities to more effectively interact with internal stakeholders and their external communities, to add business value and provide development opportunities that cultivate next generation leaders. This workshop will share the JBC ERG Progression Model and challenge participants to consider their ERG’s value-add in a whole new light.

Workshop Presenters: Jennifer Brown & Brian Sorge

2. Panel on LGBT Inclusion and Generational Differences

ERGs work hard to deliver content-but end up leaving opportunity on the table if output does not align with organizational goals and needs. A strong business foundation and a well-structured plan that builds the business case for ERGs and its projects with clear success metrics is critical to receive buy-in and support from stakeholders. Panel representatives from Cisco and Genentech share tools and strategies for building a solid business plan that will document key project management dimension goals, timelines, success criteria, communication outlets, and more, for each initiative, in order to guide and maximize an ERG’s activities and prove its value to the organization.

Panel Moderator: Jennifer Brown

Click here to download the 2010 Summit Schedule and learn more about Linkage.

Key Learnings

• Discover your personal leadership edge and how it will benefit you, your team, and your organization
• Gain the necessary strategies to succeed as a senior leader
• Learn the skills crucial to high impact performance as an emerging leader
• Realize the effect of challenging times on your health and wellness—and what you can do about it

Who Attends

• Executive Officers, Presidents & Vice Presidents
• Directors and Managers of Business Units and Line Functions
• Vice Presidents, Directors & Managers of HR, Diversity, Sales, Marketing, Leadership Development & Women’s Initiatives

Benefits

• World-class, inspirational keynote speakers
• Strategy and skill-building breakout sessions
• Best practice presentations on developing female leaders
• Networking and community building
• Learning Teams–small peer work groups designed to help participants process information and develop action plans to apply to their workplace goals and challenges
• The Senior Leader Circle–an opportunity for senior executives from large companies to network in an intimate setting
• Ongoing learning community–exclusive access to leadership development resources through our participant website, blog, articles and webinars

• More than 400 million active users
• 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
• Average user has 130 friends
• People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook

Activity on Facebook

• There are over 160 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups and events)
• Average user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events
• Average user creates 70 pieces of content each month
• More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month.

Global Reach

• More than 70 translations available on the site
• About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
• Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application

Platform

• More than one million developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries
• Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications
• More than 550,000 active applications currently on Facebook Platform
• More than one million websites have integrated with Facebook Platform
• More than 150 million people engage with Facebook on external websites every month
• Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have integrated with Facebook

Mobile

• There are more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
• People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
• There are more than 200 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products

Taken from Facebook’s Statistics Page.

See more Videos on our Vimeo Channel.

On Tuesday June 8th, Jennifer Brown, CEO and founder of Jennifer Brown Consulting was honored at the NAWBO-NYC 2010 SIGNATURE AWARDS. The night was deemed an evening Celebrating Women Who Made Their Mark in the New York Non-Profit Community.

Signature Award winners are remarkable women business pioneers who have left their unique mark — their “signature” — on the business and non-profit communities.

The Social Entrepreneur Award winner is a woman who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principals to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change. She focuses on creating social capital.

Congratulations to Jennifer for winning such a prestigious award and being recognized in her field.

Diversity Best Practices, in partnership with Jennifer Brown Consulting, a diversity leadership and coaching firm, has developed a comprehensive study that helps companies assess the readiness of their Employee Resource Groups to help drive business and impact bottom-line business goals.

As a reader of our blog, you have the opportunity to participate in this survey which assesses the strengths of key areas of your ERGs, including structural basics and partnerships, as well as emerging value propositions, such as business alignment, technology utilization, and global capacity. Your company’s participation in this study will help us work together to develop best practices and strategies that will ultimate provide models to enable companies to best leverage ERGs as key business drivers.

Join Jennifer Brown Consulting at NALC on May 11-12, 2010 in New York City

TAKE THE ERG READINESS INDEX SURVEY NOW: The survey takes 15-20 minutes to complete. Survey responses are due May 3rd. The survey should be completed by the Chief Diversity Officer, Program Manager or other individual responsible for the organization’s overall diversity and inclusion effort, but can also be taken by individual ERG leaders. General knowledge of the organization’s Employee Resource Groups is critical. Organizations should have ERGs that have been in place for a minimum of one year.

CONFIDENTIALITY:
All data from this study is kept strictly confidential. Your organization will receive an analysis of your data that will be compared to all other respondents in aggregate. You will not have access to any of the specific data of any other respondent organizations and no other respondents will have access to your individual data.

FEEDBACK:

Jennifer Brown Consulting will provide a written overview to all survey respondents. In addition, respondents have the added benefit of participating in a 30-minute one-on-one session to review the results with representatives from Jennifer Brown Consulting at the Network and Affinity Leaders Congress on May 11-12. Feedback from the survey will include an analysis of the organization’s readiness and recommendations for enhancing the overall development of the organization’s ERGs.

The deadline for participation in this survey is Monday, May 3, 2010. We cannot guarantee feedback or consultations with any respondents who submit their surveys after that date.

If you have questions, please contact david@jenniferbrownconsulting.