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Volunteering for IDUG has benefits for both the Employee and the Company

By Bernie O'Connor posted Mon November 04, 2019 04:43 PM

  

Volunteering for IDUG has benefits for both the Employee and the Company.  Recent photos, videos, tweets and articles about the Rotterdam conference have me thinking about how much being an IDUG volunteer helped me and my company, and I'd like to share how much it can help you.

For the Individual, Networking is the most obvious reward of volunteering.  Perspective is there for those who get to know the technicians in the IBM Db2 labs, IBM executives, the Consultants in various technology and industry specialties, and fellow customers with whom to share woes and victories.  Participating as a customer advisor can help prioritize product requirements and chart the direction for Db2.  Technical proficiency and a solid network of colleagues are two of the great outcomes of volunteering for IDUG.

Less obvious rewards of volunteering include the chance to prove leadership skills by serving on the Conference Planning Committee (CPC), where individual contributors develop into team leads for Marketing, Presentations, Networking.  These, in turn, can lead to overall responsibility for delivering a conference!  This is line responsibility for an important event involving hundreds, even thousands, of people.  And at the IDUG Board Level, those complexities increase to become a proving ground for aspiring executives.  These roles can lead to a job promotion for someone who might otherwise never have had a chance to prove themselves.

For the Company, the rewards of having an IDUG volunteer include the whole range of individual benefits, from technical proficiency to a robust network, and the employee gains the soft skills and executive experience to provide leadership at multiple levels of an organization.  Beyond that are the extraordinary benefit of Employee Engagement.  Employee Engagement is critical to the success of an organization.  Take your cue from the Gallup Organization: 

Business units in the top half of employee engagement (compared with business units in the bottom half) show on average:

  • 86 percent higher success rate on customer metrics
  • 70 percent higher success in lowering turnover
  • 70 percent higher success rate in productivity
  • 44 percent higher success rate in profitability
  • 78 percent higher success rate in safety figures

From:  Follow This Path, Curt Coffman and Gabriel Gonzalez-Molina, Ph.D., copyright 2002 by The Gallup Organization, pp. 127-128

For both the Individual and the Corporation, volunteering for IDUG leads to a richer, more rewarding career that drives a more successful company.

 

About Bernie O’Connor: 

Bernie O’Connor is a Director of IT whose other roles included Application Developer, Development Manager, DBA, DBA Manager, Technical Architecture, BI/DW/Analytics, Pricing Analytics, Computer OPS, System Programmers and Admins, Web Services, M&A and Divestitures.  Bernie is a member of the IDUG Speaker Hall of Fame, and served as IDUG North America Conference Chair (2005 – Denver), IDUG Board Member (2004-2009), and IDUG President (2007-2008).  Bernie is active in the Midwest Db2 Users Group (mwdug.org), and with the Evanta CDO conference.  Bernie taught at De Paul University’s Institute for Professional Development, and has been the Senior Technical Advisor for an Educational Software startup.  Bernie’s industry experience includes Insurance, Banking, Publishing, Manufacturing and Distribution.  Bernie is an IBM Champion.


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Tue February 11, 2020 01:19 PM

Great post Bernie.  You bring out a lot of compelling points here.