Interesting Contingent Workforce blog posts for the week of March 1 - 7th

Bill Gates: Skilled foreign minds needed in US or competitive ...

6 hours ago by Bill Inman ... so the nation can double the number of graduates in those areas by 2015. See the whole story at the financial times here. Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing. Workforce Vision - http://workforcevision.blogspot.com/index.html [ More results from Workforce Vision ]

Japan’s newly contingent workforce

5 Mar 2007 by z One of the key reasons for the rise of depression, dissatisfaction and malaise in modern Japan is the changing nature of work, and the decline of community within Japan. I’ve just read a piece by Masahiko Ishizuka, originally published ... AsiaFile - http://www.shuttingoutthesun.com/wordpress

Levi Strauss & Co. To Participate in Contingent Workforce ...

5 Mar 2007 Original post by Levi Strauss & Co. and software by Elliott Back. RetailInsider.net - http://www.retailinsider.net

HOME BASED BUSINESS - THE CONTINGENT WORK FORCE!

3 Mar 2007 by Howard Hanson Many of these individuals became a part of what has come to be called the contingent workforce. The contingent workforce consists of temporary, part-time, contract and leased employees along with people who simply decided the time was ... HOME BASED BUSINESS COMMUNITY - http://homebasedbusinesscommunity.blogspot.com/index.html

Albany Acquires eWork Services to Expand US Contingent Workforce ...3 Mar 2007 by HR Marketer
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA—March 1, 2007—Albany, a leader in global contingent workforce management services, announced the acquisition of eWork Services, Inc., a specialist in contractor payrolling services and 1099 compliance. ...
Breaking Human Resource News - http://www.hrmarketer.com/~blog/index.html

Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing

The Rise of Crowdsourcing

The Wired magazine article "The Rise of Crowdsourcing" reads, "Remember outsourcing? Sending jobs to India and China is so 2003. The new pool of cheap labor: everyday people using their spare cycles to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R & D."

The internet, low cost equipment and access to information, and professional and hobbyists who have extra 'cycles' to burn have become low cost resources for corporations big and small. Here are some crowdsourcing examples (from Wired magazine):

Lego
The beloved toy company encourages its fanatical customers to design everything from robot operating systems to Lego sets.

SportingNews.com
Last summer, the sports media company made blogs and social networking the foundation of its Web relaunch. Traffic and ad revenue soared.

Second Life
Residents of this popular online world put in more than 22,500 hours of “work” each day, stocking the virtual world with everything from ninja armor to giant tree houses.

Threadless.com
This hipster company prints T-shirts with designs submitted to its Web site. It expects to earn $20 million in revenue this year.

What are the rules of Crowdsourcing? Here are 5:

1. The crowd is dispersed
People spread around the world can perform a range of tasks – from the most rote to the highly specialized – but this would-be workforce needs to be able to complete the job remotely.

2. The crowd has a short attention span
These new workers find time after dinner and on weekends. So jobs need to be broken into “micro-chunks.” Most tasks on Amazon Mechanical Turk, for example, take less than 30 minutes to complete.

3. The crowd is full of specialists
For Procter & Gamble, the crowd is the world’s scientific community; for VH1 it’s any ham with a camcorder; for iConclude it’s the handful of professionals with experience troubleshooting Microsoft’s server software.

4. The crowd produces mostly crap
Networks like InnoCentive, Mechanical Turk, and iStockphoto don’t increase the amount of talent – they make it possible to find and leverage that talent. Any open call for submissions – whether for scientific solutions, new product designs, or funny home videos – will elicit mostly junk. Smart companies install cheap, effective filters to separate the wheat from the chaff.

5. The crowd finds the best stuff
Even as a networked community produces tons of crap, it ferrets out the best material and corrects errors. Wikipedia enthusiasts quickly fix inaccuracies in the online encyclopedia. Viewers of Web site YouTube find the one tastelessly funny amateur video from the 10 that are merely tasteless.

The Rise of Crowdsourcing. [Wired Magazine - Jeff Howe]

5 Rules of the New Labor Pool. [Wired Magazine - Jeff Howe]

Look Who's Crowdsourcing. [Wired Magazine - Jeff Howe]

Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalization * Trends * Outsourcing

It's Time to Retire Retirement

"Long-standing human resources practices invest heavily in youth and push out older workers. This must change--and public policy, too--or companies will find themselves running off a demographic cliff as baby boomers age" (It's Time to Retire Retirement, Harvard Business Review).

This HBR article highlights the need for all types of companies to create a plan to battle the coming talent shortage. 60% of companies do not account for workforce aging in their business plans! Working with 'older' workers is a main tactic to beating this threat to competitiveness. Creating a culture that honors experience, offering flexible work and introducing flexible retirement will be critical to companies that want to remain competitive in their field.

It's Time to Retire Retirement. [Harvard Business Review - Ken Dychtwald, Tamara Erickson, Bob Morision]

Workforce Vision * Post: Bill Inman * Human Capital * Contingent Workforce * Globalism * Trends * Outsourcing