All about adding value

future worker bees

I did an interesting interview with Libby Gribben, international human resources director with US chip design firm Xilinx, for last Sunday’s recruitment page of the Sunday Business Post.

Xilinx has been in Ireland since 1995, growing to 450 workers by 2005, but since shrinking to 130 as the company re-organised its global operations, leaving high level R&D and sales support jobs in Ireland and moving the rest elsewhere.

‘‘India is our engineering and software development hub,” said Gribben. ‘‘We have centralised our operations and logistics function in Singapore, close to our manufacturing. We need to be near our customers across the globe, so we have the Irish operation covering Europe, Middle East and Asia. It is not that each region carries out the same role – and is therefore in competition with each other – but more that each region has a value of its own. Over 80 per cent of our staff in Ireland would be educated to third level and above.”

We didn’t really have time to get into whether it was better for Ireland as a whole for multinationals with Irish operations to have 450 jobs spread across different specialities and levels or 130 high value ‘knowledge economy’ jobs. It’s a moot point anyways I guess.

Full article, including comment from Gribben about the HR challenges of going through a restructuring process, how Ireland is fixed for attracting high value jobs and the technology being developed by Xilinx in Ireland,  is through here though on thepost.ie, if you want a read.

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Flexible learning is now

Yesterday’s Sunday Business Post ran a story I wrote about Bluebrick.ie, a new website which helps candidates find out about the flexible learning options on offer across Ireland’s 14 institutes of technology. The site, and the courses behind it, are being promoted by Dr Richard Thorn, director of flexible learning at Institute of Technology Ireland.

say cheese

One of the more interesting features about BlueBrick.ie is the way the site can intelligently guide users towards courses or subjects, which they  might not have thought of before.

‘‘The site makes suggestions of other courses or areas based on what you have searched for already, similar to sites like Amazon and Expedia,” Thorn said. ‘‘If you are looking at a green energy course, it will remember what other things people who looked at green energy before also looked at, and prompt you to look at those courses too. For example, someone with an electrical installation qualification might be pointed towards courses around sustainable energy.”

The full text of the article, including some very interesting stuff about how the ITs are focusing more now on lifelong learning than school-leavers, and attempts to bring in flexible, modularised learning that would allow students to pick subjects from any course in any IT,  is through here on the SBPost website.

Or you could go straight to the BlueBrick.ie website itself I guess.

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Creating staff internet usage policies

i was in the scouts, but before this badge was available

The latest ebusinesslive.ie newsletter features a guide I put together for helping companies to develop and implement decent and useful staff internet usage policies.

From the intro:

Staff internet usage has always been a tricky issue to manage. Most companies now make much use of the web or email in doing business. Many staff members need constant access to both in order to carry out their daily tasks. However, no company wants their staff wasting time or viewing inappropriate material online. Hence the requirement in companies of all shapes and sizes for a fair, balanced and easily understood internet usage policy.

Read the rest of the guide by clicking here.

For the record ebusinesslive.ie is delivered by Enterprise Ireland and always choc full of handy technology tips, advice and news for Irish companies. Also in the newsletter this fortnight – email marketing spends increasing, retailers using social media and protecting your brand online.

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Upping your performance

One of the highlights of yesterday’s Sunday Business Post Computers in Business magazine was a feature from me looking at the increasingly important field of business performance management (BPM).

The intro article looks at how managers can use BPM systems to help improve performance levels in all areas of the business. Here’s a quote:

Owners or managers looking to implement changes in response to business issues are often faced with the challenge of translating strategic thinking into real change at all levels of the company. This is where business performance management software (BPM) – also called enterprise performance management (EPM) – comes in.

BPM systems tend to be overall guidance systems for companies, according to Patricia Stack, business analytics leader with IBM Global Business Services.

“BPM is focused on providing the right information to the right people at the right time,” said Stack. “It supports organisations translating strategies into plans, to monitor their execution and to provide insight to improve performance.”

The feature goes on from there with lots of tips and advice on different BPM options and systems. It also had panels on how the twin trends of software-as-a-service (SaaS) and socialisation are impacting on the BPM space, and choosing the correct metrics with which to configure your BPM system.

Interviewees included BPM experts from Oracle, SAP Ireland, Infor Ireland and Singularity, as well as an international perspective from John Colbert, vice president of research and analysis for BPM Partners.

The full feature is available on the thepost.ie website and a pdf of the magazine should soon be available in the archive at CiB’s own relatively new website.

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Getting smart

Computers in Business

Last weekend’s Computers in Business magazine (which comes monthly with the Sunday Business Post) featured a multi-page feature I put together on the ’smart’ skills that Irish businesses need to compete in the knowledge economy going forward.

The intro to the feature lead with news from an IDC research report published last December argued that European organisations must invest in training their staff in emerging ‘smart’ IT technologies:

The study, entitled Post Crisis: e-Skills are Needed to Drive Europe’s Innovation Society and commissioned by Microsoft, investigated whether workers would need ICT skills to participate in the job market. It found that, within five years, 90 per cent of all jobs – across all industry sectors and EU countries – would require up to date ICT skills, as companies required staff to make use of technology in their day-to-day job roles.

The research, which surveyed 1,370 employers across 13 EU countries, found that the increased demand for ICT skillsets was not solely a response to the current economic crisis. Instead, long-term technology change, with the introduction of new smart technologies and the evolution towards a more knowledge-based economy, would be a stronger influence on training and hiring policies.

The rest of the feature included a ‘top 5 smart skills‘ panel, and interviews with a couple of different IT professionals about the importance of training for their IT careers.

The full feature is available on the thepost.ie website. Also, if you’re interested, CiB itself has a shiny and relatively new website, with info on previous and forthcoming mags.

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Winter motoring

I had a couple of pieces in yesterday’s Sunday Business Post ‘Winter Motoring’ supplement. The first was a look at how manufacturers have reacted to the new €1,500 ’scrappage scheme’ introduced by the Irish government in the recent budget. Here’s a hint:

“Manufacturers are putting together offers that are worth significantly more than the €1,500,” said Alan Nolan, director general of the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (Simi). ‘‘The manufacturers are out there competing for what will be an exciting market in January. So there is no doubt consumers will benefit in a competitive market.”

The full copy, which also includes details of exactly how the scheme will work, and the super-severe challenges faced by the Irish motor industry at the moment, is through here on the SBP site.

The other piece was a look at the latest in in-car sat-nav technology, based around a new deal between Microsoft and Navteq, and offering advice to people considering buying a GPS system as a Christmas present this holiday season:

“(P)eople should look out for features which help make the journey easier – for example, 3D graphics or visuals, which can help a driver navigate complex junctions on motorways,” said Cliff Fox, executive vice president, Navteq Maps. ‘‘Connectivity available through some portable devices provides online access to real time data such as traffic information, fuel prices at nearby petrol stations or even movie listings or car park availability.”

The rest of the piece is through here on the thepost.ie website.

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The outsourcing quandry

To outsource IT or not to outsource IT, particularly in today’s extra challenging business climate, was the question covered in 3,000 word depth in a feature I had in the Sunday Business Post’s Computers in Business magazine on Dec 6th. It’s online now at the sbpost.ie website.

Here’s a taster:

Outsourcing can also bring a greater breadth and depth of skillsets, the latest cutting-edge technologies, experience and round-the clock support and management of systems. While this may seem like a win-win situation, the outsourcing of some, or all, of a company’s IT systems is generally not straightforward.

Many firms’ IT systems are complex and bespoke, and require expert tinkering and management. The threading of IT throughout a company’s internal processes and functions can make it challenging to find particular specific pieces of infrastructure or applications to outsource. Partners may have their own best interests in mind when making decisions. So there may be sound strategic, privacy or business reasons for keeping your own staff in control of vital IT systems.

The full article is through here on the paper’s website.

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Back in the real world

It’s busy enough at the moment. Although I’m here in Spain attending plenty of films and events at the Seville European Film Festival for the filmandfestivals.com blog, I’m also working away doing some of my more usual stuff.

I had some pieces in yesterday’s Sunday Business Post. One was for the recruitment page, look at how the jobs news in the Irish IT sector might just have picked up in recent weeks. Choice quote:

‘‘The current market has provided an opportunity for astute employers to acquire key talent in areas that were historically candidate-short. Larger multinationals, particularly in the areas of gaming, telecoms, pharmaceuticals and online services, are hiring IT staff as they strive to gain advantages,” said Gough.

Read the whole article on the SBP website by clicking through here.

Another was for the SBP’s Done Deal page, about how Headland Archaeology has been awarded a contract to see what may lie beneath Dublin’s new Metro North line:

‘‘This involves thousands and thousands of metres of test trenches to identify if archaeology – whether structures, deposits, artefacts or eco facts – is present, the extent of it, and its age and significance. We will then provide proposals for dealing with the archaeology before construction,” said Moloney.

The full story is through here.

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Downturn means that quality skill sets are now up for grabs

I had an interview piece in the recruitment section of yesterday’s Sunday Business Post. It was an interview with recently announced Ernst & Young Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year – Mike Fitzgerald, of Kerry based telecoms firm Altobridge.

Mike’s take was that the recession means that some very talented and qualified people are going to be looking for work, and that this could turn out to be very useful for companies that are able to recruit at present.

Employers with positions to fill have access to talent unseen in recent years, Fitzgerald said.

‘‘We would love to grab some of the incredibly experienced people who are on the market at the moment, but we are not hiring significantly right now. From a telecoms perspective, you will have some very experienced Ericsson people coming onto the market next year. These will be phenomenal resources steeped in experience,” he said.

Also interesting to me, but not of particular use for yesterday’s HR-themed story is that while Altobridge was originally a developer of mobile satellite communications for the aeronautical and maritime industries, the Kerry company is now moving into the provision of wireless services to communities in hard-to reach parts of the globe. They have a pilot projects going with various mobile telecoms operators across Africa, Asia and the Far East. It’s pretty interesting work – here’s more details on it.

You can read the full recruitment interview on the SBP site here. Ernst & Young awards news is here.

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