Technorati & one billion links

Will this be the one billionth link? Probably not I think it will be at March 31st 11:45pm Australian EST which is in about 9 hours.

onebillionlinks

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Could the person you are looking for be here?

Via Asia Pacific Headhunter.

There are 3 million new graduates in China this year, hmm maybe there is a solution to the proposed labour shortage?

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Jobster has gone live

A new recruitment tool was launched overnight Jobster. They have been around for about 18 months and in the process raised $US10.5mil so what are they and what shall we expect from them?

Jobster is a new online recruitment service that joins together social networking and your network of contacts. What? Personal referrals basically. They are trying to tap into the passive job seeker market, a common trend at the moment. Good luck to them!

Oh and yes they have a blog.

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#$#%#@ blogger

Just lost a nice post about Jobster and their launch today. Pressed the Publish Post button and got:-

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, support@blogger.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error. More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

This is the fourth post today that blogger has crapped out on me.

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Mitch reviews Frog Creek job ad

Mitch Denny provides an interesting review of a job ad posted by Joe Spolsky of Frog Creek Software fame.

An great insight into how a candidate sees a job ad and if I read in between the lines the ad got Mitch's attention. While he says he is not leaving, and he is in Melbourne and the job in New York, it still got attention something all recruiters want from a passive candidate.

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Health agencies to trial ASP HRMS

The IT Australian had an article yesterday about Victorian Health Services looking to replace their existing HRMS systems for the six agencies by the end of March 2006. With the resulting vendor possibly having all the 60,000 employees.

The catch?

It must be an ASP thin client. I guess the client server vendors will be selling a citrix based solution. My previous employer might be well placed to compete in this tender, time will tell.

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Employers & Blogs

Ahh, Tuesday night brings the weekly newsletter from Workforce Management. This week a couple of interesting things to report, you might need to subscribe to view them.

Firstly a survey for HR professionals looking at who within HR is involved in blogs, 70% (when I took the survey) said they did NOT participate nor read blogs within their industry and 11% were not sure or said it depended (what ever that means).

The second item is a article by Sam Greengard on blogs in the workplace. The article highlights some of the more high profiled firings around blogs and provides links to several good quality corporate blogs. A couple of very interesting quotes from Eugene Volokh profession of law at UCLA that employers in the US should be aware of:-

"Legal challenges arising out of terminations related to blogging are a vague and under-litigated area of law."

"Companies must understand that this isn’t just a random hobby that a few people are engaging in. It’s becoming a mainstream and widespread form of communication, employers must recognize that unless they accommodate blogging, they risk losing good people."

The article goes on to promote a clear policy for employees.

A great intro for HR professional who has never experienced blogs.

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My Resume

Well tonight have begun thinking about what is going to happen post the takeover of my company (WMC) by BHP Billiton, I decided now is the time considering each have now made formal statements to the ASX. When I took the role at WMC I knew they were going to be taken over, the question was just by who. As things have happened, it all seems to be happening faster than I first thought. While there is not guarantee that I will be looking for a job in the next 6 months you never know when it comes to takeovers.

First step update my resume, for this I am going to undertake two actions. Firstly to develop the traditional MS Word version, the other manually in HR-XML. During the process I might actually hack together a small site that allows me to maintain both and generate the Word version on demand, but let's not get too far ahead of myself here I actually need to update the document first :-). The challenge is going to be how to do it. The only web server I have at home is Linux, and I really only know enough ASP (not even ASP.Net!) and VB Script to get by, hmmm. I could always go for a Java based solution, but that seems to hard for a non-coder like myself.

Ok I have downloaded the OS Recruiter Java tar a I will see where it takes me, or maybe I should look at creating my own ePortfolio?

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Blogs & Wikis by InfoWorld

InfoWorld has a good primer on the use of wikis and blogs within an enterprise. While for someone who has been around blogs and wikis for a while none of the information will seem new, it is a great introduction for new people. If you are looking to get them introduced into your company forward the link to others.

However what is useful for all is their Blog and Wiki Best Practices which can be viewed here. I have summarised below.
1. Choose the right tool
2. Enhance existing processes
3. Encourage honest and open voices
4. Establish policy
5. Support successful blogs
6. Plan for leaks
7. Review content regularly.

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Revised corporate blogging guidelines

Michael Hyatt from Working Smart has published the revised version of his companies blogging guidelines. While less legal than the first version I still think it gets the point across.

He is looking for comments and feedback, if you have any let him know.

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More on business spam (unsolicited email)

A couple of days ago I posted about business spam and where it fits within my framework. I posted about ResumeFit and a couple of emails I received from Tom Schmidt the CEO. Well it was not really spam as it was not sent indiscriminately to multiple people, just to me. As such Tom actually sent me an email explaining that he was just trying to introduce me to some new technology within the HR space.

So let me redefine it is unsolicited email, and this was the basis of my post.

As I said the service provided by ResumeFit looks really interesting and I actually plan to have a bit of a play around and see if it provides the resumes as HR-XML. So far I have not found a tool that allows me to publish my resume online in HR-XML format, maybe ResumeFit will be the solution?

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Work life balance do you have it

A couple of interesting things passed under my nose today. Firstly I saw from Scoble and Steve Rubel that several well known bloggers are trying to get some more blog life balance. Then I was listening to the second ComputerWorld Live show where they were discussing the Australian Computer Society's (ACS) Work Life Balance policy statement that was made earlier in the month.
The ACS is also trying to look for ways to get more women back into the work force to help reduce the pending skills shortage. Having an appropriate work life balance is critical. ACS are proposing several very interesting and personally good options for workers and employers. The Australian Government however have respond with yet another committee to look at the telecommuting. Not really the answer we need to address the skills shortage, nor our work life balance issues.

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JobsBlogCasts

The forward thinking (read cool) Gretchen has released a new podcast called Jobcast where she is interviewing Microsoft employees, managers and recruiters to give us all a first hand understanding of Microsoft from all perspectives. All these cool things almost makes me want to go work for Microsoft... Maybe that is the point ;-)

Downloading now and will listen today!

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Business spam

This morning I checked my Gmail and found some spam that Google had not caught. Why am I surprised? Because it was actually interesting, relevant and real. I got two emails from Tom Schmidt CEO of ResumeFit.com while the content was interesting and the proposed service might work it is still spam.

However this does put me an interesting dilemma. While the topic of the email is interesting do I ignore it and make it as spam on principle?

As things go I also saw a post today from HRMarketer on email campaigns that refers to a case study showing spam, sorry email marketing is actually working. Then there is Gretchen who has been looking at ways to contact passive candidates, email is one method, is that also spam?

I am now confused, what is spam and what is not? Do I want interesting spam?

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HR and your company's brand

Regina from deep your brand is instilled within your organisation. Very interesting read.

It got me thinking about the different clients I have worked with over the years and which of them had their brand instilled in their HR systems and processes. Some of the best implementations of workplace systems have certainly been in organisations who truly understand their brand and reference it in everything they do.

Updated:- Fixed the title, shows what happens why you blog before coffee.

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Background checking and recruitment

It is strange how things come together and where ideas pop up.

Last week I meet up with some guys from RefSure, a background screening company based in Australia with global reach. I originally meet them several years ago when they were getting set up, pre 9/11. Now business is booming!

Like all background checking services they offer identity, employment, and education verifications along with police checks, work authorisations and they will even do reference checks for you at a reasonable price. They have links with the major recruitment vendors in Australia, for everyone outside of Australia sorry. Looks like a fantastic service for busy recruiters. However having now used the service myself I cannot comment on the quality of the service.

Now the interesting piece is how this type of service stacks up against general Yahoo and Google type searching, or specific people searching on Yahoo (of course you can pay for background checks on Yahoo as well). Time will tell.

Today I noticed Doc Searls talking about a couple of services that allow you to get information about people, some of them for free. ZoomInfo provides a very comprehensive service that I feel will compete directly with paid background checking services for free, unfortunately seems to only cover the US. It is this free service that seems to have got some attention in the last few weeks.

ZoomInfo provides business solutions for recruiters. They are advertising the use of their service as a talent pool, nice concept. (I need to check which rock I have been under cause ZoomInfo have been around for several years.)

Another service mentioned by Doc is MyDestiny, which maps your online social network, however I have not been able to get it going for some reason my Java VM does not want to work.

These tools along with Preople, Technorati, Feedster, Pubsub and the tradition Google/Yahoo are in some ways making it easy for us all to help inflate our online egos. However they are also going to form a major input source into recruitment process, if your company is just using traditional means of both sourcing and checking candidates you will most likely find yourself in hot water over the next year or so. The legal implications of getting it wrong are quite substantial and you should be ensuring you are doing everything possible to reduce the likelihood of error. Oh, you can also have some fun the process to inflate your ego.

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US based Jobs via XML

The Indeed Blog has pointed to a real world example of a JobRoll based on their XML API in the same manner that I wrote about recently.

Great to see!

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Another "On The Pod Session?"

Hmm just noticed both Mick and Cam pop online at the same time on Skype. Could this mean there is another "On The Pod" coming soon?

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Apparently I am going to be rich

I just received an email (in my Yahoo account) from someone by the name of Patrick Taylor who can gain access to the US$32mil in fund of the late president Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo, who died on the 5th of February, 2005. It has been a while since I have been privileged enough to be offered such amazing wealth, last time was about 2 years ago. I find it interesting on the accuracy of the claim, the scammers are getting better.

A search on Togo on Google gave me lots of interesting hits, obviously a real place. The first real link was to the CIA's fact book, they even mention the president's name, however the president is still alive according to the CIA. The only news link is from the Taipei Times, published yesterday stating that the president is in fact dead. Now where things go wrong is the email mentions there is no next of kin, however his son was installed as president by the military.

For a laugh I have reproduced the whole email below, but please keep it confidential ;-).

Just another real life example of why companies need spam filters and other internet tools to assist employees in how they operate online.

I am Patrick Taylor, a member of staff in a Corporate Securities firm. We keep valuables for high net worth individuals, blue chip corporations and diplomatic organisations.

I am contacting you in regards to our client, the late president Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo, who died on the 5th of February, 2005. This client has a total deposit of Thirty Two Million United States Dollars in our vaults. After the 9/11 incidents, our company policy do not permit cash deposit, so he confided in me as the foreign operations officer to make this deposit since June 2003.

The last communication I had with him was on the 25th of November 2004, where he was making arrangements to claim the deposit. Thereafter it was revealed that he died of heart attack in his hometown in Togo. After the acknowledgement of his death, it became apparent that there was no claim to his funds since he listed no next of kin in his bio-data form. He made the deposit under the name of Guardian Trust investment (GTI) and disclosed the content as company valuables and Antiques. This was for confidentiality and to reduce taxes.

If no claim is made within six months, the company under its storage terms and conditions will legally auction the content of the deposit. If discovered that the content is cash, it will be confiscated and I would be penalised, since I accepted the cash deposit against the company’s regulations. As a staff, it is impossible for me to have access to the funds or claim it myself. More so, such valuable deposits are kept at a different branch, where we have our terminal facilities. Consequently, it is important that I find a credible candidate to play the role of a Trustee or representative to Guardian Trust Investment to help claim the deposit. It is on this ground that I need your assistance to claim the funds which will be possible with the information I hold. Once this is achieved, you shall be entitled to 50% of the total funds while I shall retain the balance 50%.

I am aware of the risks involved in this proposal, therefore I ask that you consider the factors above and keep it strictly confidential. However, if you feel you are unable to fulfil this role, I request you discard of this letter.

I look forward to hearing form you.

Thank you

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Senator Andrew Bartlett weighs in

Will pointed out a comment from Senator Andrew Barlett on his blog around the recent proposed changes where bloggers will need to provide the names and address details on election related blogs. In fact it seems the Senator Barlett not only reads blogs he has one himself and provides a lengthy review of the issues.

While I don't necessarily agree with his political views, having a blog is great to see.

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Finally getting things done

I feel like I must be the last person on the planet to be Getting Things Done! Ok maybe not the last, I suspect there is someone somewhere in the middle of South America that might be after me but I could be wrong.

Over the last 36 hours I have made it through most of David Allen's book and I feel like saying "D'oh", "is that it?", "how silly am I" or "where was I when logic was handed out?". Now I just need to set aside the time to implement the process.

Fantastic book, worth the expense.

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Scoble misses the point

Scoble "bashed" Tony Chang for his post on Google's 20% time policy (not that I think Tony is right either). Scoble seems to have changed his tune a bit when prompted by Aaron Hockley in his comments. Robert goes on to admit that "Lots of people also get stuck in ruts and don't know how to get out. This might be a good method for getting out and finding something new to work on."

It is very hard to have a revolutionary or even evolutionary idea when you are in the trenches day in and day out. You need time to step back reflect and assess where things are up to and then go forward. A policy like 20% time helps in this area.

Now back to Tony, he suggests that only companies with "lots of data" could make the process work. I think he is missing the point that 20% time is not about leveraging what others in the organisation are doing it is about coming up with something completely new. For this you don't need lots of data, what you need is a management practice that supports your efforts. When the idea does not work out, you are not looked at at a failure or if you never come up with anything from your 20% time.

The point is that an organisation needs to provide a supportive environment for employees to experiment, learn, develop and invent. At Google this process if 20% time, at Microsoft :-

"One is to just do it and say heck with the consequences. One way is to submit a
Thinkweek paper. One way is to join someone who is already doing what you want
to do. One way is to email one of the mailing lists that is pretty close to what
you want to do. One way is to just email Bill Gates and tell him your idea."

Other organisations have other processes the fact is each organisation needs a process that works for their culture.

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Amazon missing books?

I have been trying to find a couple of books on Amazon without any luck, however they do appear at Dymocks here in Australia. Maybe they are yet to be published in the US I'm not sure but it is the first time I have not found what I am looking for on Amazon.

I guess I will get them locally, which is probably a good thing anyway, support Australian businesses.

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Online ego tool

Steve Rubel has posted about a new online ego tool, called Preople.

I had a play with it this morning and it is nice to know that there are only 9773 names above me and 27914 below. At least I am on the right side :-), now my ego feels better and I can face the weekend with a positive attitude.

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Corporate Blogging Policy

Michael Hyatt (from Working Smart) CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing has set out with his in-house counsel to design a corporate blogging policy.

Michael says he has spoken to a Microsoft blogger about their unwritten policy "Be Smart" and decided they needed more, which is probably a good decision. He has decided to post a draft of the policy for two reasons, firstly to get feedback and secondly it might help other organisations.

While I am not an IR or legal expert the policy looks like a great starting point, many of the comments are very relevant and should be considered as well such as who owns the content. The policy is clear and easy to understand, I would expect that in most organisations such a policy would form part of a general Internet Usage policy.

I would strongly suggest anyone who is looking at developing a blogging policy look at this draft and Sun's (via Tim Bray).

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Usage of Indeed.com

Steve Rubel has posted about how many jobs there are for bloggers out there. How does he know? He used Indeed.com.

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A History of Communications

A fastinating read on the history of communications from 35,000 BC to 1998 AD, while only up to 1998 it shows how things are dramatically speeding up. I am looking forward to the next 7 years.

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Are you a cultural misfit?

Steven (The Asia Pacific Headhunter) pointed me to a really interesting item published yesterday on Radar (a blog like site run by The Sydney Morning Herald).

While the item is an interesting read which I can relate to and know of people who have been "cultural misfits" it is the comments that really interested me. Not even the next item in support of Paris Hilton has had the same reader reaction!

I am just glad I am not a recruiter in Australia based on the comments, lower than a used car salesman? Unfortunately I do know many recruiters and while most of them are not like the ones described in the comments, many are.

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Ideas for corporate RSS feeds

Elizabeth Albrycht from CorporatePR has 10 interesting ideas for the use of RSS within corporations, while mainly externally focused they do offer food for thought on internal applications.

1) Email is an increasingly problematic communications tool due to the growth of spam and the overwhelming amount of email most businesspeople receive.
2) RSS is perfect for the online press room.
3) Keep your partners informed.
4) Keep your customers informed.
5) Provide specific informational categories so people can just receive what they are most interested
6) Make your resource centers/online libraries dynamic!
7) Put your events to work for you online.
8) Capture and publish the buzz.
9) Set up a feed for special promotions.
10) You can just as easily create private (password-protected) RSS feeds as public ones. These can be a great way to keep employees, partners, customers informed of company happenings, events, promotions, office closings, and other information you don't necessarily want widely available.

Each of the above 10 items can also be applied to internal applications in different ways but the general themes stay the same.

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Bloggers, spammers face clampdown

This has been popping up on many sites over the last 24 hours. I wonder what will happen in the long run.

We have had several pushes in the last few years in Australia to regulate and control what happens on the internet, all have failed. Being a bit cynical I wonder if it is just big business, government, brother, media etc wanting to keep control of what is going on and what is said. Which if that is the case, are we not moving more and more towards George Orwell's 1984?

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Bloggies recognised by ABC News

My wife found the Bloggies being written about by ABC News Online, good to see the mainstream press catching on.

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Effective use of recruiting blogs

Gretchen from Microsoft has provided a fantasticreal world example of how to effectively use her blog within a recruiting environment.

Gretchen and some of her colleagues are looking at cold calling candidates to try and attract "passive candidates". So before they undertake the exercise she has decided to run a short survey to find out what the readers of her blog think.

Is it scientific, probably no. Is it the most accurate method of collecting data, probably no again. However, it is easy, effective, fast and a fantastic marketing exercise for Microsoft. I am not sure how many readers she has but, if the comments are anything to go by she has a lot of candidate and recruiters reading. Therefore the feedback received will be real, and honest. Honest you say. It will be honest because due to her blog she has been having a conversation with her readers over the past week, month, year or however long they have been reading. There is a trust that has developed. Yes, she might only get people who like her and Microsoft replying, but I am sure this is not their only benchmark. What the process is doing is instead of launching their new "recruiting product" into the market place they are getting a quick temperature gauge on how it will be received.

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Rugby and the English

Ok this is completely off topic and even a bit petty but I don't really care as I am a huge rugby fan and love stirring the English.

Philip Malone directed me to an online voting process being conducted by the London Development Agency who want the public to name the new bridge which will lead up to the new Wembley Stadium. It seems a bunch of us Australians want the bridge named "The John Eales Bridge".

And yes I was childish enough to vote, sorry.

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Digital IDs at Cebit

Computerworld has an item today talking about digital identity and how some of the work from organisations like Liberty Alliance were starting to make progress on enhancing security online.

While an interesting read, the article really says nothing, I found it filled with PR-type comments and meaningless announcements from big companies. It is sad to see such when so much good work is going on, and a lot is available already in the public domain.

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Blogging = Good Career?

Tim Bray from ongoing wrote last week about how blogging can be good, yes good not evil. Basically Tim brings it do to a couple of clear facts.

1. You will have employees who blog
2. Becuase 1 is true then you must have a policy!

Tim's post also gives us 10 reasons why and how blogging can be good, while he has focused on the benefits for the individual who blogs I see the same benefits can be found for the employer.

If you are HR manager then please add blogging to your Internet Usage policy! If you are unsure how or what should be included then there are lots of people out in blogsphere, just ask.

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Well I'm back!

I am back from my trip to the Olympic Dam mine out at Roxby Downs. I flew on Qantas from Melbourne to Adelaide and then Rex Air to the Olympic Dam airport, which is really the Roxby Downs airport. The whole trip was an interesting experience, it is about 15 years since I have flown in a prop plane, a first time into the centre (well close enough) of Australia (I know I really should have been there before but the cost), my first time at a mine site and my first business trip for WMC. Overall a great time, and I think successful.

Over the next couple of days I am going to catch up on my feeds.

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Away

I will not be posting over the next few days as I will be away on business at a mine site, my first visit! Should be very interesting.

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Indeed thoughts

Michael sees some flaws with the Indeed system, I however see the potential of their system, with some changes (which I guess could be seen as flaws).

Why only search jobs? Why not search the resumes that are on the web and delivery matched candidates to recruiters via RSS as a paid service.

Another extension of this would be to allow candidate to register themselves for free, post their resume (in HR-XML format of course) and then deliver matched jobs to the candidate.

What about the temporary labour market? What about adding the RSS feed into a system like eShift currently being used in Boston for nurses to bid on extra shifts?

I mentioned yesterday about the options for using the Indeed API for specific types of vertical market solutions.

These are few of my initial thoughts, I am sure there are many great ideas I have forgotten. I would be interested to hear from Indeed what their plans are and to see what feedback they have received from the marketplace.

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PeopleSoft loses local customers

seems that second tier vendor Aurion in Australia has picked up a several of high profiled clients.

I wonder how many more there are out there? I do know that while I was in the vendor area I spoke to many potential clients who were looking to move away from PeopleSoft.

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Aggregated jobs site indeed.com

Slashdot reported overnight on the Job market for developers based on data from indeed. While the results that Slashdot have are interesting if you are a developer, but from an HR/Recruitment perspective it is much more!

indeed went live Nov 2004 and aggregates jobs postings from many different sources in reading their FAQ they describe themselves as a Jobs Search engine, very similar to RSSJobs. As a user you enter what you are looking for and where you would like it; ie SAP Project Manager in New York. The system then conducts the search providing the job seeker aggregated results across many different sources, today they claim to have 2,510,345 jobs from the last 30 days. The search can now be set up as an RSS feed, or email alert.

Indeed are also providing Job Trends across the US and the service can be used to benchmark the current demand for certain skills. Both useful pieces of information for both employers and job seekers. Indeed also state that they plan to add additional information as time goes on. They also have a blog which if you are interested in these types of developments I would recommend subscribing to.

There have been a couple of posts over the last few months about the service.

One very cool piece of functionality that they have provided is a series of web services to allow third parties to query their data via XML. You can create a simple version of this using the Jobroll function, or a more complex solution if you register as a developer. For example here is a query I created for SAP HR project managers in New York.

Indeed have provided the framework for several services to be provided based on their data. For example professional organisations could provide a scrolling jobs service for their members, or education institutions could help students to find jobs once they have graduated. There might even be some vertical markets for the service, we shall wait and see.

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ResumeWiki Shutdown

Jeremy has had to shutdown ResumeWiki due to wiki spam. This is an unfortunate event, I hope he is able to get it back up and running.

ResumeWiki was a great concept Jeremy set up late last year allow job seekers to publish their resume and allow others to provide feedback and change the resume for them. A unique and fascinating use of wiki technology.

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Teachnology a new term or an old one worth suing over

From Scoble about Dan Mitchell who has a blog at www.teachnology.org covering teaching and technology, who received a cease and desist letter from an organisation that runs their site at www.teach-nology.com.

Yet another great blog, into the RSS feed reader it goes. While Dan only posts about once a week, if you are into education and technology it is worth a read he pulls together many interesting articles from around the Internet.

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Flickr photos

Just loaded up a number of photos that I took yesterday at the Melbourne Grand Prix practice day. I have also been playing with the banner on the side of the blog, now my Flickr images appear in a random order, I will see how it goes.

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Sending blog entries from my phone

My post yesterday from the Grand Prix practice round made it up, but with a typo in the title. I plan to leave it there. I am in the process of uploading several other pictures to Flickr.

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Celebrates qualifying

Melbourne Grand prix

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My iPod earbuds are damaged

I am quite sad and a bit disappointed with my iPod earbuds. About two days ago while listening to Adam Curry's DSC I started hearing static in the earbuds at certain bass level (I am not a audio expert so I might not be describing the problem correctly). Initially I thought it might have been on the podcast but no I tested a couple of other podcasts, a Midnight Oil song and yes deep base sounds now cause static in the earbuds. The really disappointing part is the iPod is only 2 months old and I have been reasonably careful with it. Normally I am very hard on technology items but I was given very clear instructions from my wife that if the iPod broke there would not be a replacement.

I searched Google but did not find any real help, iPodLounge had a similar but different issue that caused static

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Project Manager does suicide PowerPoint presentation

Another item from Trevor Cook about a very sad case of death by PowerPoint. Ok once you have read the story my pun might be a bit on the tacky side, but am currently in a project management role and the story kind of stuck a cord and no I am not suicidal :-)

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A solution for labour shortages

Michael from the Canadian Headhunter points to an interesting perspective from Germany on the discussion of labour shortages.

I suspect it will not pick up as a common approach.

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Electronic Forms & a paperless office

Angus Logan pointed me to a new blog Electronic Forms from the developers of InfoView, a product that works with the Microsoft product InfoPath, I sort of referred to InfoPath on the weekend in my post on HR-XML and resumes.

The InfoView product adds a new dimension to the picture and could provide the framework for SMEs to build forms based solutions that match solutions from the large ERP vendors. On the flipside if you have an ERP solution there are numerous possible combinations on how you could connect InfoPath to your ERP, how is the so? Because of the magic of XML.

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More on the labour shortage

Business 2.0 blog has a good follow up on my earlier post on the different generations.

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Are workplaces family-friendly?

Trevor Cook as found a great opinion on family friendly workplaces via Tim Watts of the Nous Group.

I am concerned by the comments from the CEO Tim was talking to, as it seems was Tim and Trevor on how to manage the aging workforce. Gen Xs and Ys are very different to the current Baby Boomers in what drives them and what they expect from an employer. Paternalistic employers will begin to find it harder and harder to attract key talent in the future if they do not start to engage in many of the activities Tim highlights.

Many of these topics were discussed last year at AHRI's People in Business conference. Such as how to manage when you have 3 generations in the workplace, you know when the Gen Y sitting next to you is only there 3 days week, because the other two they are running their own business in a completely different market, who's mobile phone goes off every 5 mins with an SMS, and the IM screen buzzes as they keep contact with their social/business network. Or the Gen X'er that just wants the baby boomer in the corner office to retire so they can have their rightful place. While the baby boomer is staying in the corner office because they can no longer afford to retire. Now this is not a bad thing it is just different, and organisations need to learn how to engage with these employees.

I personally also feel that as things progress if your organisation does not present itself as a forward thinking organisation from a workplace technology point of view you will just not be able to attract Gen Y's. This process will begin with the first contact the applicant has with your organisation, which will most likely be in an online fashion. Therefore do you track abandonment from your career's site, maybe this should be can you? Will we need to understand why people keep arriving at your site but leaving within 10 secs and you have a very low conversion rates of visitors to job applications? There are many other examples.

Will your processes internally make is easy for employees to have a family friendly life. I know many organisations that make it extremely difficult for employees to connect back to the corporate network from home. While there is a debate that working from home is not family friendly I would far prefer to be at home to see my child and then work late at home than work late in the office and not see him. Of course in the pure sense of the term "family friendly" you really shouldn't need to work late :-)

Tim's article certainly poses many great questions, which unfortunately there are not many great answers to.

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Are you present?

Over the last few weeks I have been thinking a lot about presence. By presence I am talk about your online presence and what that means to workforce solutions. I have posted about this before but now I am seeing the whole idea pop up in several different places. The traditional area is in instant messaging, which is cool, but now all sorts of other tools have presence built in Skype, mobile phones (initially ones like a Blackberry but others will soon just listen to The Gadget show to hear more) etc.

Presence awareness when integrated into business process interesting things happen. Firstly, systems can make “intelligent” decisions based on who is available to action the next business step. Systems can become more ”event” based, such as remind Fred to approve the next step in a critical business process I know a bad example but I hope you get the idea. Alternatively time sensitive processes can automatically redirect/escalate if the first approver is not available.

Presence can also be determined via security systems (previously the old clock in clock out type tools) and more recently organisations have been trying to implement RFID to track people. Once all this data is brought together into a system two things happen, firstly we have a very powerful foundation for business process, but secondly the possibilities for poor use of the data and information aka "Big Brother" and the option for the world to become like George Orwell's 1984.

Once we have a propagation of presence aware systems the Seven Laws of Identity become VERY important. Why because presence is a form of identity, how you feel if systems started to communicate about you and your presence either at your desk or in the office without your knowledge.

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