Randy Pendleton’s Workplace 2004 update makes some interesting points for planners:

Pricewaterhouse Coopers asked CEO’s of small to mid-size companies to rank the factors under their control which were most critical to success in the next twelve months. Retention of key workers ranked number one in a report issued in March of this year. Accenture reported that forty percent of U.S. workers plan to leave their current job within the next five years…
… An AOL survey showed that 58% of 5,000 respondents said they “may” or “definitely” will start a job search when the economy improves. The ability to retain staff was the number result of mistrust in the Trust Factors @ Work™ study conducted by Pennington Performance Group in cooperation with Pilat NAI and IRI Consultants to Management.

How are your reward and recognition programs doing? Sounds like now is not the time to cut back.

Sarbanes-Oxley has led to change. This new corporate accountability will set the stage for broader change. The push for integrity will expand from public companies to organizations and institutions that operate within the public interest. Corporate boards will hold executives more accountable for meeting goals and maintaining the trust of all constituencies. Non-profit boards and privately held corporations will voluntarily adopt higher reporting standards…The New York Attorney General is leading an effort to require non-public organizations in that state to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley, and board members in a variety of non-profit organizations are expecting higher levels of accountability.

Get ready. If your organization isn’t already scrutinizing your department’s spend patterns, you can be pretty sure they will be soon.

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Nothing whatsoever to do with meetings, but since almost every conversation I’m having today is devolving into politics…

Go to Google and, depending on your political affiliation, type in either “waffles” or “miserable failure” (you can probably guess which will make you happier) and see what comes up (the Democrats seem to be better at this than the Republicans–Kerry was third on the list when I checked, while W comes up first). Ah, Google-bombing at its finest–I think somebody needs to get a job!

More silly ways to while away a lovely Friday afternoon, courtesy of Corbin Ball’s TechTalk e-newsletter:

museumofhoaxes.com, which details “the top 100 April Fool’s hoaxes of all time.” I like the Liberty Taco Bell–people are so gullible.

Dilbert Games. Corbin recommends the Mission Statement Generator, but I prefer the Dilberito game—-spent way too much time playing it last night!

OK, back to work!

I don’t usually blog about leisure hotel packages, but this one’s a goody. For a very, very small meeting-—make that a girlfriends getaway–the Fairmont Washington, D.C., has a deal for you, good until the end of the year. Called the Femme Fatale Package, it’s a Saturday-night stay for four in the two-bedroom Presidential suite on Fairmont Gold Floor. First, you’re greeted by multilingual staff who escorts you to the suite, where you’re treated to monogrammed terry robes, aromatherapy candles, Taittinger champagne, Tsar Nicoulai caviar, and an in-room spa manicure. Also included is a limousine to take you out for a night on the town, and a gourmet breakfast the next morning. All for $3,000, total.

Oooh, la la! I wish my sisters and I could treat my Mom to this one—she would love it (and so would we). If you go, say hi to Marcie, the black lab puppy I blogged about a while ago that this hotel is raising for Guiding Eyes for the Blind.

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John DiScala—aka, JohhnyJet, creator of what I believe has to be the most comprehensive travel Web site I’ve ever seen, made me cry when I read the preface to the book he co-authored with Eric Leebow, You Are Here Traveling with JohnnyJet.com (available at amazon.com). He talks about traveling with his mother to Europe as she battled cancer, and how they revisited that trip on an awful night in the hospital, and…I have to stop before I get weepy again.

Anyway, the book, written as a companion guide to the Web site, is crammed with pretty much every travel-related Web site you can imagine: where to go to get the best airfare and lodging of all types; ground transport; all kinds of boats and cruises; outdoor adventures, sports; health and safety—even links to sites that’ll help relieve those boring times with nothing to do in a hotel room. There are literally thousands of sites connecting through this portal. The book includes both short descriptions of some sites, and shortcuts to find other sites through johhnyjet.com.

While both the book and the site are aimed more toward the leisure traveler than those who plan meetings, it is way beyond comprehensive and has lots of interesting links for everyone. I have no idea how they pulled it all together, but I’m glad they did it so we don’t have to.

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