Tech Bitch

Young recruits to the UK workforce are highly confident of their IT skillz, but new research suggests employees couldn’t give a toss.

According to a poll by database firm FileMaker, 82% of school leavers are assured at using general IT skills and 85% said they know how to create a PowerPoint presentation, yet only 39% stated that they had used the application at work.

It seems many employees are not only IT literate but can use their skills in a business- orientated environment. This generation has grown up IT savvy and educators have done a good job ensuring that they have the skills to take into the workplace, so businesses better wise up and tap into the knowledge and enthusiasm the kids have to offer.

Companies should check skill levels to see exactly where new recruits’ capabilities are and how to use them effectively. Seeing PowerPoint or Excel on a CV is not good enough. To slot new staff into exactly the right level, employers need to test and verify IT skills first, so easily done in just 40 minutes online. Employers can then see immediately if training is adequate, or more is necessary.

Castle View School, a comprehensive school situated on Canvey Island, Essex, claims it has successfully reduced its truancy rates to 0.5% - this includes parent approved truancy - the total opposite of the recently published governing figures for 2006-2007, which, it is stated, show that truancy rates in England are worse than ever.

Castle View reduced its truancy statistics from 2% ten years ago using a combination of strategies - the presence of a dedicated Attendance Officer working within the school, computerised lesson resignation and a text messaging solution linked to its electronic ‘registers’. Non-attendance notification can be automatically communicated to parents and this has proved to be a good ‘deterrent’ to errant pupils.

Staff registers pupils’ attendance at each lesson, with the first period acting as the statutory morning registration. By running a report, the Attendance Office can monitor general attendance at school and also any trends affecting a particular lesson or subject.

Parents are immediately notified by text if their child fails to turn up for registration, with a request to contact the school to provide a reason for absence. The text messages are created and sent from the desktop through Text Message Server and delivered directly to the mobile phone.

There will always be a degree of absence because of illness and unauthorised absence, but it looks like general truancy can be identified and dealt with using modern technology. Well done Castle View for believing!

Is the employee of the future going to be a young, be-suited man or woman sitting at a desk from nine to five?

Could it be that future workspaces will be made up of meeting space, and the concept of having your own desk at work no longer existing? The notion of nine to five might gradually disappear (please God!), with staff working ad-hoc hours around their home in pyjamas.

Offices will probably disappear and instead mini business centres could spring up near satellite offices, with robots serving nachos all day and night. Increasingly, people will work from home as organisations cut down their overheads on office space and use remote locations as the new-age workplace.

These communities will build up around ‘streetscapes’ with services for workers such as hairdressers and cafés. Workers will only come to the office to have sex. Better technology infrastructure will make distributed working easier. All of this will have a positive impact on health and stress levels.

Changes in the wider context of work will have a great impact on the worker of the future. UK employees will need to be flexible enough to continually work across time zones, languages and cultures. With this new-age worker in mind, many employers are now considering remote working and working from home as viable options in their recruitment drive.

Web sites such as Remote Employment may even take over the world in recruiting ‘tomorrow’s workers’. Currently, around £3.1 million people usually or regularly work from home in the UK and this is likely to double in the near future.

The recent emergence of ‘virtual jobs’ and ‘virtual communities’ is changing the way companies attract and retain skilled employees. Smarter organisations reduce employment costs by adopting ‘remote working’ as a regular employment solution.

The new-age worker’s ‘green agenda’ will increase home working, which will make it much easier for families to combine work and caring responsibilities. Flexible working at senior levels will be more acceptable, which will encourage more men, particularly in younger age groups, to ask for flexible arrangements enabling them to participate more fully in family life at no cost to their career ambitions.

Vir2 today welcomed the written answer from the Treasury which states that VAT should not be charged on charity donations made by text.

The clarification came from Jane Kennedy MP, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who, in a written answer to a question raised by Vir2’s constituency MP Mark Oaten, stated: ‘Donations to charity, including those made by text message, are outside the scope of VAT-which means that no VAT is payable on them.’

Text donations are a highly effective way for charities, particularly small ones, to raise money quickly and to communicate with supporters. The practice of charging VAT on the whole amount of any donation was previously widespread practice amongst UK mobile networks. Removing the VAT charge makes donation by text from mobile, for small donations, equally as efficient as debit or credit card.

Charity Technology Trust, a UK registered charity dedicated to promoting effective use of technology by charities, has worked with Vir2 to become the leading provider of text donation facilities in the UK with over 120 charities using the service. The Mobile Data Association have also backed the campaign as did the 160 Characters Association of mobile messaging professionals.

Last year, an average of 1 billion texts were sent every week and over the whole year £400m was spent using mobile premium SMS in the UK. The subject of VAT on text donations were first raised as an issue in the Asian Tsunami appeal when over £1 million was raised in just 3 days of launching the text campaign. On that occasion HMRC backed down in the face of overwhelming public pressure and gave a one off donation to the appeal in compensation for the VAT charged.

Text donations are now comparable with other ways of collecting donations in terms of the proportion payable to charity. Potential donors are as likely to carry a mobile as a credit card, but unlike credit cards, mobile phones are also a way for charities to communicate their appeals as well as an easy and convenient means of small value payment.

VAT-free short codes that can only be used by registered charities for the purpose of fundraising are, in Vir2’s opinion, the best future solution for the sector. The political head of steam that this campaign has built up has also been good for raising awareness of the potential uses for mobile technology in the third sector.

From e-mail monitoring and Web site blocking to phone tapping and GPS tracking, employers toeing the corporate line increasingly combine technology with policy to get you fired.

To motivate compliance with rules and policies, more than one fourth of employers have fired workers for misusing e-mail and nearly one third have fired employees for misusing the Internet, according to the 2007 Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey from American Management Association (AMA) and The ePolicy Institute.

The 28% of employers who have fired workers for e-mail misuse did so for the following reasons: violation of any company policy (64%); inappropriate or offensive language (62%); excessive personal use (26%); breach of confidentiality rules (22%); other (12%). The 30% of bosses who have fired workers for Internet misuse cite the following reasons: viewing, downloading, or uploading inappropriate/offensive content (84%); violation of any company policy (48%); excessive personal use (34%); other (9%).

Employers are primarily concerned about inappropriate Web surfing, with 66% monitoring Internet connections. Fully 65% of companies use software to block connections to inappropriate Web sites - a 27% increase since 2001 when AMA/ePolicy Institute first surveyed electronic monitoring and surveillance policies and procedures.

Employers who block access to the Web are concerned about employees visiting adult sites with sexual, romantic, or pornographic content (96%); game sites (61%); social networking sites (50%); entertainment sites (40%); shopping/auction sites (27%); and sports sites (21%). In addition, companies use URL blocks to stop employees from visiting external blogs (18%).

Computer monitoring takes many forms, with 45% of employers tracking content, keystrokes, and time spent at the keyboard. Another 43% store and review computer files. In addition, 12% monitor the blogosphere to see what is being written about the company, and another 10% monitor social networking sites. Of the 43% of companies that monitor e-mail, 73% use technology tools to automatically monitor e-mail and 40% assign an individual to manually read and review e-mail.

Workers’ e-mail and other electronically stored information create written business records that are the electronic equivalent of DNA evidence - some 24% of employers have had e-mail subpoenaed by courts and regulators and another 15% have battled workplace lawsuits triggered by employee e-mail, according to 2006 AMA/ePolicy research.

While only two U.S. states, Delaware and Connecticut, require employers to notify employees of monitoring, the majority are apparently doing a good job of alerting employees when they are being watched. Fully 83% inform workers that the company is monitoring content, keystrokes and time spent at the keyboard; 84% let employees know the company reviews computer activity; and 71% alert employees to e-mail monitoring. Most employees receive policies regarding use of office business tools and privacy issues on the first day of employment, but too often they don’t read them.

6% of employers have fired employees for misuse or private use of office phones. Fully 45% monitor time spent and numbers called, and another 16% record phone conversations. An additional 9% monitor employees’ voicemail messages. Most employers notify employees of phone (84%) and voicemail (73%) monitoring.Almost half (48%) of the companies surveyed use video monitoring to counter theft, violence and sabotage. Only 7% use video surveillance to track employees’ on-the-job performance. Most employers notify employees of anti-theft video surveillance (78%) and performance-related video monitoring (89%).

Employers who use Assisted Global Positioning or Global Positioning Systems satellite technology are in the minority, with only 8% using GPS to track company vehicles; 3% using GPS to monitor cell phones; and fewer than 1% using GPS to monitor employee ID/Smartcards. The majority (52%) of companies employ Smartcard technology to control physical security and access to buildings and data centers. Trailing far behind is the use of technology that enables fingerprint scans (2%), facial recognition (0.4%) and iris scans (0.4%).

Such was the demand for serviced office space in Birmingham last year that, outside of London, the city has come out on top in the 2007 ranking of serviced office hotspots. Compiled by Officebroker.com, the company said it conjured up the results by analysing its own ‘extensive’ brokerage data on an annual basis to provide a timely snapshot of the country’s commercial property market.

While central London and towns along the M4 rat run obviously feature heavily in the Top 10 list, it is Birmingham which is stealing a march on rival towns and cities in the UK, when it comes to demand for serviced office space from the business community.

“Birmingham continues to thrive, both as a business environment but also as a great city to live in,” says Jim Venables, Managing Director of officebroker.com. “Demand for office space remains extremely strong. Indeed, in 2007 we saw a 41% increase in the number of enquiries for serviced office space in the city compared to the previous year and, outside of London, we brokered more deals for businesses seeking space in Birmingham than anywhere else in the UK.”

“The range of office space available in Birmingham is vast,” continues Jim. “From funky warehouse space to out of town business parks, contemporary city centre developments to period style office accommodation, this is a city that offers the business community an incredible amount of choice in terms of available space, therefore allowing it to meet the diverse needs of many different types of business.”

Another popular city which saw demand increase significantly in 2007 include Liverpool, the 2008 Capital of Culture, which saw revenue increase by 46% from 2006 to 2007. Additional hotspots cited include Warrington, a viable and popular alternative business location to Liverpool and Manchester and Cardiff, Cambridge and Leeds. Nottingham, Watford and Bristol also enjoyed significant interest and growth throughout 2007.

It seems that Richard Branson’s ban on his employees at Virgin from wearing jeans is not unusual. According to a Reed Employment survey, jeans and comedy ties are banned from the majority of offices, with 47% of workers wearing smart casual business wear to work every day and 40% wearing formal office attire such as suits.

What’s more, the majority of people questioned felt that dressing smartly will advance their careers, with 51% believing it will help them win a promotion. Surprisingly, there was tickbox for ‘shagging the boss’.

Office workers seem to like dressing up in their fetish uniforms as it helps them to remember that they’re not at home and can’t touch themselves. Some losers even feel proud to wear a uniform as it represents their company’s brand image. Only 16% stated they are unaffected by what they wear to work and just 1% stated they felt uncomfortable in their work clothing. We are not a rebellious lot either - 90% of respondents stated that they strictly adhere to their work dress codes every day. It’s a sad day for revolution!

85% feel that in today’s office environment having a dress code is still highly relevant; 87% would always wear a suit to an interview and 62% also believe that wearing a suit is important to create the right impression on the first day at a new job. Again, there’s no mention of shagging.

However, some casual elements have crept into work dress codes - wearing a tie is no longer the norm in most offices, with 61% of men stating they never wear ties, 20% wear a tie only for business meetings, with only 19% wearing one every day. On the other hand comedy ties, together with jeans, short skirts, flip flops, trainers and sportswear are amazingly deemed unacceptable by the majority of businesses.

‘Dress down Fridays’ is still quite popular and a third of respondents claimed that their company had a policy in place to allow more casual business wear on Fridays. What’s the point? Ah, yes, now I remember.

SteelEye Technology, the world’s bestest continuous data protection and disaster recovery solutions provider, said new IT graduates suck.

According to its second annual survey examining adoption levels, best practices and attitudes regarding business continuity among IT professionals and C-level executives, universities and graduate-level information technology programs are not arming their students with the skills they need to prevent or recover from IT disasters. I reckon the company thinks grads haven’t got a clue, but is being totally PC.

While 87% of respondents indicated they think the average IT organisation faces the same or more threats to business continuity than it did a year before, a strong majority (61%) said that today’s college and graduate IT programs do not place enough emphasis on skills to implement business continuity.

Similarly, 60% of all organisations said that the average IT organisation is no more prepared for these threats to business continuity than it was a year previously. And among respondents from organisations with an admitted business need for disaster recovery or business continuity protection, the top reason given for avoiding investment was the lack of skills to implement it.

It’s very clear that there’s a skills gap that needs to be addressed when it comes to the expertise needed to assure business continuity. Universities and graduate programs need to take a leadership role by evolving their programs to keep pace with today’s biggest IT challenges. There was no mention in the report about New Zealand.

Three quarters of UK SMEs (74%) now claim to offer their employees some form of flexible working, according to a new report released today by BT Business. But the report says that the adoption of newly defined ‘third-generation’ flexible working is slow due to a lack of technical know-how across the workforce.

Researched by independent forecasting think tank, The Centre for Future Studies, and backed by new YouGov research, the IT Skills for Flexible Working report, for the first time introduces definitions for different types of flexible working. The first generation involves time flexibility - offering part time or short term working to employees, whilst the second generation involves both time and location flexibility; so in addition to offering flexi-hours to staff, technology is provided for employees to work while on the move.

Finally, the most sophisticated and revolutionary flexible working, third generation, involves the emergence of the ‘virtual office’, which has total location independence and employees are given greater autonomy in the way they manage and plan their work. While many SMEs have successfully adopted first and second generation practices, few SMEs are using the third generation practices where technology is fully integrated to create a virtual office. This limited application of technology is confirmed by the 62% that say that they lack the appropriate IT skills and training to properly exploit their existing technology and therefore third generation flexible working.

We are witnessing the emergence of flexible hours, flexible tasks and flexible locations. The technology to support this is available to businesses of all sizes and sectors and is delivering tangible business benefits. The bummer is if you work for a company that doesn’t recognise that by offering you the flexibility to work at home while watching Jeremy Kyle they can attract and retain the very laziest best people to bring business success.

Caxton FX, masters of the spreadsheet, have revealed that those leaving our windswept shores are hitting the UK economy hard. The company estimates that the typical émigré from Briton is costing the United Kingdom £100,000, with the majority of this sum generated from the sale of the emigrant’s primary home. The additional cost of potential earnings and retail spend make up the remainder of the figure. Those looking to start a new life abroad (come on, who isn’t!) are exchanging an average of £70,000 upon leaving the country to fund their move, with most emigrants choosing to take these funds to Australia, New Zealand, Spain, France or the U.S.

A recent study by the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates that there are currently three million Britons living overseas. This represents one of the highest levels of emigration since the 1960s and has been described as a “brain drain” as many of the emigrants are highly educated professionals. Presuming Caxton FX’s figures are correct, the emigration trend is costing the UK economy £14 billion. It’s obvious the UK is in trouble. The environment for wealth-creators has become unwelcoming. Stealth-taxes, increased bureaucracy, failing government policies, and crappy public transport are blamed as the main drivers for this exodus. Are real opportunities outside this country, or is it just a case of greener grass….

p.s. I made up the bit about public transport, but it should be in there…