Talking Talent

Teleworking, global collaboration and virtual worlds - here’s an ABC World News report on the future of work (courtesy of YouTube).

The real challenge for leaders in today’s world of work is to shape their own roles – before it is reshaped for them!

This means a commitment to pursuing life long learning goals, and facilitating and encouraging others to do the same. For leaders to stay ahead they must step outside the boundaries of their own organisation and competency to ensure they are informed about trends in population, the environment, technology, social contexts and the economy.

I like to apply the ‘n+1 Principle’ for myself and my staff. For every n (number of conferences attended in your own industry or competency), attend one that is outside your field, and use the information to make positive change.

In his runaway hit, The Four Hour Work Week, author Tim Ferriss features the story of AJ Jacobs, editor-at-large at Esquire magazine, who decided to “outsource his life”.  Jacobs writes:

It began a month ago. I was midway through The World Is Flat, the bestseller by Tom Friedman. I like Friedman, despite his puzzling decision to wear a mustache. His book is all about how outsourcing to India and China is not just for tech support and carmakers but is poised to transform every industry in America, from law to banking to accounting.

I don’t have a corporation; I don’t even have an up-to-date business card. I’m a writer and editor working from home, usually in my boxer shorts or, if I’m feeling formal, my penguin-themed pajama bottoms.

Then again, I think, why should Fortune 500 firms have all the fun? Why can’t I join in on the biggest business trend of the new century? Why can’t I outsource my low-end tasks? Why can’t I outsource my life?

Read on to find out why this trend is just the beginning, as employees work without the boss knowing it.

I’ve just finished reading a very interesting article by Steve Hodgkinson, Director of research firm Ovum.  He observes that the tools of information sharing in the past have been poor.  “Most information is, in practice, stored in an ad hoc manner in thousands of computer hard drives and network folders, application databases and content repositories.  Why is it so?  Because we can.  Because we have equipped ourselves with the tools of personal expression.

“Everyone is a writer.  Everyone can create, name and store a document in an instant and send it by email.  It is easier to create afresh than to find and reuse pre-existing content.  The tools have empowered us to create documents with scant regard for the past (has this been done before or is anyone else working on this topic?) or the future (will anyone else need to find or use it tomorrow?). 

Hodgkinson argues that whereas the previous generation of tools were designed to support individual authoring and one-one exchanges such as email, the next generation is emerging to support collaboration. 

“These new tools make it easy and natural to share knowledge,” Hodgkinson says.  “New features, for example, include the ability to create a document in a shared repository, with many authors but only one authoritative version – a ‘Golden copy’ – searchable, secure and archived.  Not in a separate document management system that nobody actually uses… in the tools that all knowledge workers will use every day.”

His punch line is this: one of the key determinants of your ability to hire the best and brightest young employees in the near future may well be the quality of your knowledge worker tools and the culture of collaboration that they engender.

When IBM Chief Executive, Sam Palmisano, called on major corporations to become ‘globally integrated enterprises’, some companies believed it sounded the death knell of the twentieth century multinational.

While some historians trace the multinational back to the days of banking under the Knights Templar in 1135, the structure we know today emerged when nineteenth century firms set up sales offices abroad to gain access to local markets and resources, with big business establishing mini versions of itself across the globe. And for decades, it was a very successful model.

However, what looked like efficiency has become redundant. Multinationals simply replicated or duplicated their businesses in every country. Each multinational outpost developed its own models for distribution and supply chain optimisation, procurement and marketing.

And while these corporates traditionally built factories overseas, they tended to base high-end functions such as research and development in their home countries.

With technology dismantling geographical borders, the goal of world class and sustainable competitive advantage can no longer be achieved in isolation. Everything is connected, the barriers that once blocked the flow of work, capital and ideas is diminishing and work can move to the place where it is done best.

New model corporations, built on collaborative innovation, integrated production and outsourcing to specialists, are beginning to reshape geopolitics, trade, leadership, workforces and education. Big business has realised that a more integrated approach to organising business activity is inherently more profitable and benefits both developed and developing worlds.

Today, the globally integrated enterprise can locate functions anywhere in the world, based on the right cost, skills and environment. IBM now has more than 50,000 employees in India and plans for further expansion there. And while India is now IBM’s second largest operation outside America, head of procurement has moved from New York to Shenzen in China.

China and India are already moving up the value added chain. One study suggests that between 2000 and 2003 foreign firms built 60,000 manufacturing plants in China. While some of these factories are directed at the local Chinese market, others target the global market.

The shift from multinational corporation to globally integrated enterprise has meant the ‘where’ and ‘who’ of production have changed. In the past, companies usually produced goods close to the market that purchased them. Today, enterprises are spreading strategies, production capacity and management around the world in order to be close to markets and customers.

Dutch banks open savings accounts for customers in New Zealand. American radiologists send x-rays to Australia for interpretation. Customer service centres in India handle telephone billing enquiries for English customers. Around the globe, economic activity is embracing shared business and technology standards and plugging into a truly global systems of production.

Australian business leaders across the spectrum of industry - from technology to tourism and from mining to manufacturing – need to decide on our nation’s value proposition. Is Australia just about beer, prawns and sunny beaches or do we need a more sophisticated value proposition to compete on the world stage?

If the film The Graduate were remade today, writes Director of IBM Research Dr Paul Horn, the word of career advice whispered in Dustin Hoffman’s ear might well be ’services’ instead of ‘plastics’.

Today, we exist in an economy where the services sector is the economy.  Services – everything from fast food to brain surgery - accounts for about three-quarters of Australia’s GDP and an even larger share of employment, with around 8.8 million, or 85 per cent, of Australians working in the services sector (according to the Australian Government’s Services Report, released in June 2007).

Deloittes research tells us that our best performing manufacturers generate 50 per cent of revenue and profits from services.  IBM’s rapid revenue growth can be directly attributed to services.  And IBM is not alone - services are fastest growing part of many businesses.  Despite this, less than 20 per cent of CSIRO’s R&D is classified as ’service related’.

The drivers of growth an innovation in the services sector can be attributed to the following factors:

• Outsourcing; 
• Changes in manufacturing (whereby manufactured products are the basis of a service rather than an end); 
• Consumer demand resulting from increased discretionary spending; 
• Globalisation; 
• And through the deployment of new technology. 

At the Australian Institute of Company Directors conference in Shanghai last year Professor Michael Enright, Director of Enright, Scott and Associates broke down the costs of your average Barbie doll.  If a Barbie doll costs $10.00, he argued, then:

• Manufacture parts costs $1.00 
• Assembly costs 0.35 cents 
• Logistics costs 0.65 cents 
• Retail costs $4.00 
• Brand (such as design etc) costs $4.00

So, we can see that Australia needs to be in the design end of goods and services.

The race has never been more intense to acquire, develop, and retain long-term client relationships as the e-business evolution continues to redefine corporate models.

The last 10 years has spawned such buzzwords as: customer-centric, customer loyalty and client relationship management. While many companies are ‘customer-centric’ as a core value, I know of few that have ‘partner-centric’ as a core value.

And yet, partnering has proven to be one of the most powerful business tools for dealing with fast changing markets, technologies and customers. As the global economy speeds up, partnering is becoming the weapon of choice for today’s successful competitors.

There are, of course, many variations in partnering arrangements, from informal arrangements, through teaming agreements, outsourcing and joint ventures. Partnerships exist within and between industries and sectors – and are crucial in Australia’s highly competitive recruitment sector.

Being part of a globalised economy means doing things faster, cheaper and at world’s best practice. In order to be successful it is no longer enough to work within an organisation, we need to think outside in and develop relationships with key partners.

Is our education system rapidly becoming archaic as we plunge headlong into a world where people trade their DNA on eBay? Where virtual supply chains and on-demand products rule? And where people conduct virtual romances with people they’ve only met through Cyberspace?

Thought leaders in education are now suggesting that the top ten in-demand jobs for 2010 did not exist in 2004 (see Karl Fisch’s The Fischbowl). If this is the case, how do we prepare the next generation of workers for technologies that are not yet invented?

This question is vitally important to business leaders, educators, parents, politicians and recruiters in today’s world. Together, we must examine the way we are educating our kids. Ensuring our young people receive the best education possible is not so much about algebra and alliteration, but arming them with the knowledge and skills they will need to enter the workforce.

Young people today seem to be born with an innate ability for text-messaging and gaming. And while they may not be able to spell they can tell you their life story on MySpace, entertain you on YouTube, muse philosophically in the blogosphere, contribute to knowledge on Wikipedia, create cutting-edge art on Flickr.

But they learn very little of this in school.

The need for creativity in all aspects of economic and political life is beginning to be recognised. Creative talent is now gaining economic as well as symbolic currency.

Charles Leadbeater, author and Senior Research Associate with the independent think-tank Demos, says that “our children will not have to toil in dark factories, descend into pits or suffocate in mills, to hew raw materials and turn them into manufactured products. They will make their livings through their creativity, ingenuity and imagination.”

Technological innovations are closing the gap between physical limitations and productivity and a significant, untapped workforce is looking for job opportunities.

There are many wonderful assistive-technologies now available that ease access and increase productivity.  From video-descriptions to screen readers, technology is encouraging people with disabilities into the workforce and integrating them further into society.

Accessibility experts and executives from corporations such as IBM, Yahoo, Internet Speech, Deque Systems and e-ISOTIS are already telling us about new products such as the latest and greatest speech recognition software, assisted-listening devices, real-time translators, keyboard filters and alternative input devices which enable individuals to operate computers without using standard keyboards or mouses.

These tools, which are designed to enable employees with disabilities to overcome barriers in the workplace, can help those with hearing, speech, vision and mobility impairments.  Coupled with this, mainstream technology, such as word processing software and operating systems, also have features that can benefit people with disabilities.

And of course, the more companies move toward the paperless office, the more it opens the workplace up to people with mobility impairments.

One of the greatest perceived barriers to implementing assistive technology is cost. But a study by the US’ Job Accommodation Network (JAN) has revealed that 15 percent of assistive accommodations cost nothing, 51 percent cost between $1 and $500, 12 percent cost between $501 and $1,000, and 22 percent cost more than $1,000.

The digital divide still exists between people with disabilities and those who are non-disabled, but the Web has the ability to be even more accessible than other parts of society.

Let’s work together to ensure that accessible technology continues to advance and that our workplaces are flexible and open enough to consider using the tools to harness the untapped potential of a new pool of talented workers.

I am an economist by education and one of my favourite economists, John Maynard Keynes, wrote in 1930, in his book The Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, that by the end of the 20th century we would all be working just five hours a week.

In 1996, Jeremy Rifkin prophesised the end of work altogether. In the 21st century, he predicted, employment would be phased out, at least in the industrialised world. Jobs would be taken over by machines and workers forced on to the dole.

The German sociologist Ulrich Beck, in The Brave New World of Work, published in 2000, claimed the work society was disappearing. The working environment of the future, he said, will resemble that of Brazil, with no permanent jobs, only informal and insecure labour. 

And Charles Handy, in his book The Empty Raincoat, said what is disappearing is the job itself.

These were some bleak predictions – but going by current trends, Keynes’s proposition is impossible and Rifkin’s, Handy’s and Beck’s seem implausible.

The next revolution in our workplaces will not be no work.  Instead it will be flexible work.

Flexible working has enormous potential to raise productivity levels, increase employee job satisfaction and create business cost-savings. Moreover, as our workforce ages and shrinks over the next 25 years, practical solutions that assist organisations attract and retain staff will be fundamental to the way companies retain their competitive advantage.