More than 200 people – bus drivers, their passengers and passers-by - were there when the “Bus Driver of the Year” was awarded Friday 2nd September in central Copenhagen.

Six bus drivers were nominated for the title of Greater Copenhagen bus passengers, who had sent text messages with good moments in the busses. The winner – Linda – was the bus driver who most passengers had voted for.

For the Stagis team this party was the culmination of months of hard work getting campaigns, press work and the actual event going. This year, it started in May with a campaign in the busses that urged bus passengers to send their best moments from a bus trip to the webpage www.buschauffor.dk where users could vote on the best moments and from thousands of text messages, and later on the passengers voted on the nominees to win the award “Bus Driver of the Year”.

Danish entertainer Huxi Bach hosted the event and singer-songwriter Alberte went on stage. Three awards were given to outstanding colleagues in the bus industry, and one lucky passenger won his own bus with a driver for a weekend for having sent the best text message. Movia CEO Dorthe Nøhr was on stage, and Movia market manager Anders Due and Jan Aage Hansen of 3F’s transportation group presented the prizes.

Bus driver Avi Achi, who won the prize "Joker of the Year," thanked his passengers - and Denmark - for giving him the prize in a speech that seemed to touch everyone present. And "Child Friend of the Year", Jan Willum Jensen, sang a children's carrol on stage. For me, these moments were the real treat of the day: Meeting Avi, Jan and especially Linda – the Bus Driver of the Year – and seeing the pride and joy in their eyes. As the first winner of the prize Linda will fly to Singapore with her colleague (who is also her husband) to experience public transportation there. One of the things that thrills Linda, she told me, is that it will be her first time on an aeroplane. Ever. You can meet Linda on ChaufførTV (Bus Driver TV) where she's been active making videos about her life since the spring.

The party gathered bus drivers and passengers to give each other a pat on the shoulder. For the same reason, "Pat Day" (Skulderklappets Dag) was founded - with the bus drivers as ambassadors.

The Pat Day and the party were created to focus on recognition and the bus drivers, who are making an effort to turn bus trips into a good experience for their passengers. The plan is that the awards be given each year, so the focus on good moments and recognition is maintained. It was a proud day for the bus drivers and a proud day for everyone working on the project at Stagis!



Avi Achi is reading a highly unexpected and unusual speech that he prepeared - he thanks his colleagues and Denmark for the life that he now has. The speech touched many in the audience.

Within the recent couple of weeks a discussion about CO₂ emissions from IT service providers has attained considerable media coverage. It is said that two searches on Google use the same amount of energy as boiling a kettle of water. This is worth giving an extra thought the next time you google at work, or at home. Working at a communications bureau, and everywhere else, you use the Internet to gather information to support your working process, or as a source for inspiration. Using Google, for example, to search the web uses much more energy than you probably are aware of. Surely, opposing arguments about the validity of the conducted research on Google’s energy efficiency have been presented, but this does not affect my point; we consume a lot of energy that we are not even aware of.

A couple of weeks ago I heard about Blackle. Blackle is a search engine build upon Google’s databases, but provides an eco-friendly interface to the information. The background color is black, which uses less energy, than the normal white background color you usual see on web pages.

That made me think – if it really does use less energy, should CSR-minded companies, and everyone else, add a black version of their website so the environmental-minded visitor have the opportunity to choose an eco-version, and there by reduce their personal CO₂ emission?

According to the creator of Blackle it was the blog ecoIron that inspired him to the development of Blackle. You can read more about this and how to reduce the energy used by your computer on Google’s blog.

Recruitment and Employer Branding are project related communication and leadership concepts that I'm working on now, as part of projects in STAGIS' pipeline. That includes taking part in seminars and networks on Employer Branding. Here figures confirm that employees seem to thrive in job-change: Apr. 61% have been offered positions in other companies. 68% consider changing their job. 49 % don't think they'll be working for thir present company in just three years. Our Ministry of Employment tell, that more than 700.000 a year change their job in DK.

With the growing challenge for companies to attract employees, the unemployment rate in DK now also being as low as 86.000, demanding questions for businesses and organizations to ask themselves are:

"How can we recruit the people we need, to enhance our services, product development and business - what makes us attractive, in a way so that we can not only hire, but also keep our work force engaged? And how can we do better in competing for man and brain power, compared to other businesses and companies?"

Learn from your favorite volunteer organization
One way to develop your organization's attraction factor on the job market is to let your Employer Brand be inspired by the high degree of engagement that characterizes successful voluntary organizations.

Even though we tend to spend many hours on our jobs, the interest in voluntary work in our society is still advancing impressively. Especially among young people. And in many different kinds of sectors and fields. One explanation could be the present prosperity in DK. Another, that people actually lack meaning and the sense of making a difference through their (paid) jobs; so they seek to give and be additionally fulfilled on this parameter other where.   


Create loyalty on another level
Sense of pride and meaning, humanity, thankfulness, sharing and being part of a larger and mutual beneficial 'project' are key words here - values, that most businesses would do good nurturing within their organization.

Why is that? Because with our present job-market, employees simply expect salary and workplace organization to be in order: The loyalty from co-workers and employees is to be build on another level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where softer values are present. Especially young people - Generation Y - seek value-based leadership, and to be part of organizations that clearly signal what they stand for and how they make a difference! They don't want too easy solutions...

Give employees a reason to stay
That's why private companies may learn from the engagement to be found in volunteer corps or organizations. I'm not just talking CSR, even though this is a part of it - but also values, ethics, general meaning, 'project-pride' and community spirit!

So, with the weekend coming up and all, think about it: What characterizes your favorite volunteer organization, learn from it - and give your present and future employees obvious reasons to choose your project, spent half of their wake hours on contributing and sharing - and staying engaged.

This week STAGIS helped Kræftens Bekæmpelse publish its new version of www.blogomkraeft.dk that we designed for them.

Meet Charlotte, Jacob and Malthe at www.blogomkraeft.dk, three strong persons blogging openly about their everyday life or what they have at mind, while living with and fighting cancer, to share their experiences, advices and realities.

They - and the bloggers that will follow them in team rotations now and then - have chosen to make a difference that I personally admire in the debate and raising awareness of the fight against cancer; something that matters to all of us, since its a disease that affects and threatens so many and different people all over the world.

Maybe you or someone in your life is also affected by cancer? Feel free to participate in the dialogues on www.blogomkraeft.dk. In short; its a blog for life!

Help sharing: Spread the word on www.blogomkraeft.dk
So in the new version of www.blogomkraeft.dk, the perspective has gone from CEO to patients’ postings. And later on also employees from Kræftens Bekæmpelse will be among the bloggers.

With Kræftens Bekæmpelse prioritizing to develop www.blogomkraeft.dk, it tells us something really good about the organization being aware of their social responsibility related to cancer and people affected by the disease - and their awareness of how they can communicate in new ways and create the necessary dialogue with new tools that we helped them bring in and take to use.

The contributions of www.blogomkraeft.dk from Kræftens Bekæmpelse is to create a concerning debate, that can make a difference for people in Denmark affected by cancer, directly or indirectly. Sharing is one valuable way of handling tough challenges, demanding realities and life-changing experiences. One reason being, that sharing brings in feedback that can turn into dialogue, change your perspective and move you!

So you are welcome to spread the word on www.blogomkraeft.dk, thereby contributing to a meaningful cause; raising awareness of the reality of and fight against cancer.

No firm is!
I mean, up until this very friday, my relationship with everyone here was good and amicable. But nothing more than that. That isn't bad. Not at all. It's good mannered work-ethic.
However, after our party, it just seems that these people now are beyond colleagues for me. They're, like, grown-up friends ! And I definitely think that it shakes together a company to do something else but work together. Of course, all you smart PR-People out there already knew this. But hey, I'm just sharing my point of view here!
So, let your hair down and shake it up with the person in the cubicle next to you!
x
Emma
(Looks like the summer's coming back now, lads!) :-D

Pretty much the view from where I was standing the entire night; The bar!

The picture is taken from the Stagis Moblog where there's loads and loads of other pics from this great evening!

Historie om Specialekontoret nu også nu DRs online nyheder

Radioavisen (the danish national newscast) woke me up this morning to talk about Specialekontoret. The idea is to create the best physical and mental environment for students. I just grabbed it with my Mac. You can hear it here:

Specialekontoret DR P1
or find it on DR Radioavisen - it was on at 8.00 this morning.

If you're working in a business consider if you could support the project. It's a great way of getting involved in the development of Denmark as an innovative nation, it's a great way of getting young managers training in coaching, it's a great way of getting the next generation of talents into business. There's lots more to know about the project. Read about it on www.specialekontoret.dk.

Not so long ago, I paid a visit to one of the many small communities that students have created in order to have a place to go to as they do their final dissertation at the university. As of now there are about 8.000 students working on their master-thesis (specialestuderende) in Copenhagen and only 7-10% of them can get a space to work in during the 6-12 months they are working on their masters. The room is about 20 m2 and a group of six students are sharing this space. They've each brought a table and a chair. There's a window at the far end of the room placed just inches above eye-level so there's no view. A few posters and the other students constitutes inspiration and motivation. Is this how we help the next generation of knowledge-workers and innovators thrive and deliver their best to Denmark?

Today Nanna and Marta launched the Specialekontor-website. It's the first public annoncement of an ambitious socially responsible project we've been working on during mid-2006. This year we are aiming to make it become a reality!

About a year ago our sociologist Katja had finished her dissertation from Copenhagen University and during the last four months she rented space in a small commune of students that had the same problem as Katja: They couldn't concentrate at home and needed a space they could go to every day to work on their master-thesis. With few exceptions, most university students working on their final thesis has the same challenges. They are supposed to make a grand finale but can't make it happen within the space and time that they are given. And the spaces at their respective campus facilities are too few and not administered in a way that makes it possible to gain access (we've done extensive research last year and only 7-10% of the need for these type of spaces are covered by universities, public libraries etc.).

So Katja and I discussed the issue and thought to ourselves "why not make the worlds best space for research and help the students get to collaborate, share ideas, work more focused and feel that they are part of a working student-community rather than sitting home alone?".

At the same time lots of companies we know (and even more that we don't know) are trying to think of ways to make their worth in other terms than money. Helping others, for instance. Taking responsibility for the society in which we live. Taking care of the world around them. And some of these companies are even giving this issue more thought than just sending money to Africa (not that I think that's a bad idea - I just think they should fit it into their business model instead of writing a check).

So, we've wound up inventing this great project. It's a pilot project that's going to exist for three years and host 200 students per semester (the danish government has decided that regular master-thesis (kandidat-afhandlinger) has to be written within six months), giving a total of 1.200 students the best possible environment for their research and writing process. What's more is, the project will aim at testing and developing the best possible model for hosting this type of activity giving the universities a unique possibility of redesigning their future projects to suit this need and not having to guess what works and what doesn't. And what's really great is we're going to facilitate that the students, leading designers and architects will collaborate on the making of the best possible environment for research together with practitioners from leading innovative, knowledge-based companies. The same companies that will help make the project possible and who will gain an easier access to new research from the universities through their meetings with students in this new project.

Sofar a couple of supporters and sponsors have decided to drive the project further. Among others FUHU, DEA, Dansk Erhverv, Novozymes and of course the students from a bunch of organizations like DSF.

Something interesting caught my attention as I was reading the morning paper. In a supplement to Politiken about Trends I read two articles about CSR in the fashion industry. Two Danish designers with two different takes on CSR. Malene Birger is ambassador for Unicef, and if you buy clothes from this brand you’re also helping kids with HIV/AIDS in Africa. Peter Ingwarsen, founder and designer for another Danish label, Noir Illuminati II have another take on CSR. He’s integrating CSR in the business concept. Illuminati is in fact a separate business which is producing and selling high quality cotton from Uganda. Uganda has a long tradition for producing cotton of very high quality. The idea is that Illuminati delivers fabric and piecegoods to Noir and other high fashion brands. The thing I find interesting is the hole idea about integrating social responsibility in the business concept. Previously on this blog we have written about CSR and the search of social responsibility in other ways than donating a tree to Africa (not that this isn’t a very good thing to be doing). But in the case of Noir Illuminati II the socially responsible actions becomes much more authentic and thereby the credibility is heightened of Noir as a brand. In my opinion more companies should be thinking about integrating CSR in their business concepts and/or do social responsible actions that actually correspond with the business concept in general. To give an example: Danish companies that rely on knowledge should be interested in helping students from universities and other education institutions. This would be a very authentic way of showing that they are taking a part in Denmark as a knowledge producing society.