Brave Cool World

Cool new ideas for your workplace

Doodle for your Noodle
The worker who doodles during your presentations may remember more than you think. According to an article published in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, doodling while listening has been shown to improve memory. In a study conducted by the Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, test subjects asked to doodle while listening to a boring phone message experienced an improvement in recall by 29% compared to the non-doodling control group. According to Jackie Andrade, Ph.D., one of the study’s researchers, doodling is a simple task that prevents daydreaming, a behaviour that does interfere with the memory process.

Who Needs a Fax Machine?
MyFax offers a new free service for business and individual users who need to send a fax only occasionally. MyFax Free allows users to transmit two faxes per day of up to 10 pages to 41 countries without going through the fuss of setting up an account or providing a credit card number.

MyFax Free allows users to send faxes electronically via a Web browser. This method helps reduce office expenses by reducing paper use and eliminating the need for a fax machine, toner and dedicated fax line. It also helps organizations reduce energy consumption. For more information about MyFax Free visit www.myfax.com/free.

No Small “Thank You”
While vacationing in Italy a few years ago, Roger Hardy, CEO of Vancouver-based eye care products firm, Clearly Contacts, got an idea for a novel way to reward his hardworking employees. Being a car aficionado, Hardy toured a Ferrari car factory, where he came up with the idea of buying cars as a perk to be used by his best performers. Ferraris being outside of his budget, he purchased a fleet of Mini Coopers. Employees who earn enough stars get to drive a fully paid Mini Cooper for 90 days. More than 50 Clearly Contacts employees have enjoyed taking to the road in one of these little gems.

Virtual Interviews
Using webcam technology, Calgary-based InterActive Applicant (www.interactive applicant.com) enables job seekers to show how well they communicate, and employers get a feel for the personality and perspective of their potential recruit without having to actually meet. Employers save time and money by using Interactive Applicant as a screening process to narrow down the candidates for fit, and job applicants get a foot-in-the-door opportunity to personalize their application in a way that could improve their chances of getting a live interview.

360-Degree Feedback Made Easy
360-degree feedback helps employees improve their skills by providing anonymous feedback from those who know their work best—usually supervisors, peers, direct reports, and external contacts. But some of the tools are awkward and inflexible.
Administrators are praising Panoramic Feedback’s new dashboard (www.panoramicfeedback.com), which features up-to-the-minute status reports about current projects. Its tab-driven design provides users with immediate access to each stage of the 360 process: creation of the questionnaire, selection of participants, editing of automatic instructional emails, and generation of reports. Panoramic Feedback is highly customizable and provides feedback in more than 50 world languages.