Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: jobs of the future

  • Old king coal loses his merry men

    Old king coal loses his merry men

    The industrial revolution’s most important energy resource was coal, even today it generates most of the world’s electric power.

    However, the last half century hasn’t been good for those communities and workers whose incomes are dependent upon coal as the industry has moved away from labour intensive ways of digging the stuff up, alternative sources of energy have developed and the consequences of dumping billions of tons of carbon into the planet’s atmosphere come to be understood.

    The US Energy Information Administration’s annual report on the nation’s coal industry makes grim reading, with both production and employment levels falling.

    Coal industry jobs were one of the touchstone issues in the recent US Presidential elections. As The Guardian reported, former staunch Democrats in the mining regions – some of America’s poorest counties – supported Donald Trump on the strength of the promise to reinvigorate the sector.

    Sadly, as the EAI reports, those coal jobs are never coming back even if the world starts using more. Since World War II, the productivity of US coal mines has increased from .72 tons per worker to 5.22 in 2011.

    Despite a recent slight drop in US productivity at the end of last decade – apparently due to spoil recovery during a period of booming prices – the trend is not good. As Australian academics warn, increased mine automation means jobs in that industry are going to become increasingly scarce.

    Like Donald Trump and the distressed US mining regions, Australian politicians believe that coal mining will provide the jobs of the future. They are wrong.

    Those communities and politicians hoping for jobs in the 21st Century may well be better off looking to the future rather than the past. Nineteenth Century thinking is not going to provide answers.

    Similar posts:

  • ABC Nightlife – building the businesses of the future

    ABC Nightlife – building the businesses of the future

    This Thursday night join Dom Knight and myself on ABC Nightlife to discuss what tools you can use to start or improve your business and how can we encourage more people to have a go.

    Last week the last Australian car making jobs finished and a survey of the Geelong Ford workers found only one percent were interested in starting a new business.

    If you missed the spot, you can listen to the podcast through the Nightlife website.

    Despite the reluctance to start new businesses it’s never been easier to do so with a range of tools making it simpler to run one. Tonight on the Nightlife we look at some of those tools and what we can do to encourage more people to have a go at running their own companies.

    For the program, I’ve a compiled a list of tools businesses should be using. It certainly isn’t exhaustive or definitive and if you have any suggestions on better or newer tools, I’ll be happy to add them.

    Some of the questions we cover on the program include;

    • who ran the survey of motor industry workers?
    • what were most of them going to do?
    • so what sort of businesses can these workers go into?
    • what programs are being offered to these workers?
    • how has starting a business changed over the past twenty years?
    • is the focus on tech startups intimidating people who might want to start a business?
    • what are the basic tools every business should have?
    • a few years ago social media was all the rage, does it matter any more?
    • what’s the number one advice for anyone thinking of starting a business?

    Join us

    Tune in on your local ABC radio station from 10pm Australian Eastern Summer time or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

    We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

    You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

    Similar posts:

  • The three S’s of employee engagement

    The three S’s of employee engagement

    We need to rethink how we measure performance in the workplace says Andrew Lafontaine, Senior Director Human Capital Managemet Strategy & Transformation at Oracle Australia.

    As business adapts to a changing society and mobile technologies, one of the questions facing managers is the mismatch between the Millennial generation and those GenX and Boomers who make up most of the executive suite, Lafontaine sees this as been in how the younger cohort approaches authority.

    “There certainly can be a disconnect between Millennials and boomers. Millennials don’t see hierarchy the way boomers see it as important,” says Lafontaine. “Boomers have ingrained view of the way they have come through the workforce.”

    Breaking the old rules

    Unfortunately for those older managers, their world was based on a formalised, ‘straight line’ hierarchy dating back to the days ships’ captains used flags and voice tubes to communicate.

    That rigid military style worked well for nearly two hundred years of business with mail and then the telephone only reinforcing that management model. Now newer collaboration tools mean different ways of working becoming possible.

    A problem with those different ways of working in teams is how performance is measured warns Lafontaine.  “What they are not measuring at the moment are what I call ‘network performance’. How workers they helping their colleagues, collaborating and working together.”

    Separating home and office

    With mobile technologies becoming ubiquitous it becomes harder to separate work from home life, “we working now from home and on the tram. You don’t need a nine to five workforce nad companies have to deal with and embrace the technology,” says Lafontaine.

    In the context of babyboomers and GenX workers, that technology meant longer hours in the office but Lafontaine suggests things are now changing. “There other areas to measure. How are they looking after themselves? The days of babyboomers working 12 or 14 hours a day and neglecting their health or outside life are over.”

    For the future company, the key to success lies in engaging their employees Lafontaine says. “A more highly engaged workforce delivers better outcomes. Engagement is the three S’s: Stay, Say and Strive”

    Those S’s come down to three questions for the worker; should I stay? What should I say? and How should I strive to do a better job?

    For managers the challenge is engage all workers regardless of age, the task of finding what engages and motivates workers of the computer generation is only just beginning.

    Similar posts: