WorkConnexions

This post relates to an article I came across the other day.

It's called HRTechnology: 'Mavens' and 'Connectors' by Wesley Wu of HR Executive Online.

I quite like the idea of using Web 2.0 in organisations for what Wu calls "tagging knowledge" (scroll down page to see).

This extract explains how tagging knowledge could work:

As employees find resources within the network, they also have the opportunity to tag them.

They may do this in employee blogs, entries on internal wikis, or participation in the network.

As employees in the network create blogs or post changes to an enterprise wiki, those entries can also be tagged to identify their content.

Discussion surrounding the auto industry has left many of us scared, frightened, annoyed and confused, especially with Big Three CEOs feeding us a story based on fear regarding numbers of job losses and the hit to Wall Street. In the short term, GM going under would cause serious job displacement. But I don't believe it would be close to the 3 million count figure being bandied about. Neither do I believe GM's demise would mean the end of the American automobile industry. In fact, it should results in an increase in sales of Ford and Chrysler products. Here's where I am coming from.

David Cameron has called for Gordon Brown to cut the red tape surrounding government contracts to allow smaller, newer firms to win business.

The Conservative leader says less than one in five contracts from the government goes to small firms and this should be changed as it is responsible for buying goods and services worth £125 billion. He points out that there are many barriers which small and new business have to overcome in order to even be considered for a contract and that this is effectively blocking access and disadvantaging both the businesses and government itself.

He added that all contracts and business opportunities should be advertised online to make it easier to apply for. Cameron also says that a goal of a quarter of these contracts being given to small businesses should be set, in order to help them in the current climate.

A small business owner friend of mine went to see their bank this week. I asked how he found their bank manager. He replied, “Petrified with fear”.

It is easy to understand why. The economy is in a mess, and apparently it is all the fault of the banks. Despite this not being the personal fault of the lowly branch manager, many of them are deeply fearful for their jobs, and the last thing they have on their mind is lending money to anybody unless they have significant collateral.

So where do small businesses now go to fund their growth? Many people will delay the process until the recession ends and look at reducing their costs instead. While this is a sensible and prudent approach, it is potentially risky as it leaves you open to more aggressive competitors, or even your chosen market quietly moving on to pastures new while you wait for the economy to recover.

The following article is reprinted from the November issue of Future of Work Agenda. The full newsletter is available here, or in the blog version here.You can also read and download a pdf version of this article by clicking here.

By Charlie Grantham

This is a short piece meant to whet your appetite for more in-depth work. The question presented to us a couple of week ago was, essentially, "Just what is the business value of 'presence'?" It was posed in the context of a question that many others having been asking for years: why hasn't video conferencing really taken off? What are the more interactive 3D technologies going to do differently?

Here's our short answer.