By Nicole Hasham, Jason Dowling

Creating highly skilled “knowledge” jobs in Sydney’s outer suburbs is likely to fail and governments should bring people closer to existing jobs, a new report says.

It calls into question decades of government policies designed to shift so-called “knowledge-intensive” jobs such as engineers, scientists and financial analysts outside central Sydney, including a $13.5 million federal government grant for the University of Western Sydney’s new health and education jobs hub.

The Productive Cities report by public policy think tank the Grattan Institute argues that knowledge-intensive companies often cluster in central locations where they can collaborate and reach the right workers. This leads to increased productivity.

But there is little evidence that creating knowledge-intensive jobs in outer suburbs is cost-effective or leads to significant numbers of long-term jobs, the report said.

“When people say we need to move the knowledge-intensive jobs from the CBD to the suburbs, that just doesn’t work, it is not how the economy works,” Grattan Cities’ program director Jane-Frances Kelly said.

“You just can’t subsidise [businesses] enough to compensate for the disadvantage they would have not being in the CBD.”

The report says cheap rents, land availability and less road congestion in outer suburbs can benefit some firms, such as those in transport and manufacturing.

But knowledge-intensive firms may lose the benefits of clustering, which can “harm our cities’ productivity and employment growth overall”.

The report also downplayed the benefits of relocating government offices, as local workers do not always fill the jobs.

It questioned policies such as the federal government’s $45 million Suburban Jobs Program, which last year provided $13.5 million to support a new University of Western Sydney jobs precinct at Werrington Park. It aims to generate 6000 jobs in areas such as health, engineering, digital communications and education.

UWS economic geography professor Phillip O’Neill said a growing number of western Sydney residents had tertiary qualifications and sought jobs closer to home. The Norwest Business Park at Baulkham Hills and the Macquarie Park Corridor at Ryde showed that “high end” job centres outside central Sydney do work, he said.

A spokeswoman for Population and Communities Minister Tony Burke said high-skilled workers also lived in the outer suburbs and “if we keep putting homes at one end of our cities and jobs at the other then the only future is gridlock”.

Ms Kelly said governments should focus on increasing access to all jobs through better transport connections and housing choices in established suburbs. In some outer suburbs only 11 per cent of jobs are within reasonable public transport travel times, compared to 53 per cent from the city centre, which risks locking many residents out of job opportunities, the report said.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/cbd-location-is-best-for-knowledge-jobs-20130505-2j14k.html#ixzz2SSeBy500

By Robert De Neufville

Where did America’s workers go? The future of the American economy may hinge on the answer.

The US economy added 165,000 new jobs in April and the unemployment rate fell to 7.5%. But labour force participation remained low. In fact, the labour force participation rate fell three points since the end of 2008. In April, just 63.6% of Americans 16 and over were working or looking for work. Although the unemployment rate fell steadily over the last three years, people who have given up looking for work aren’t counted among the unemployed. The fact is that a smaller percentage of Americans are working now than at any time since the 1970s.

Labour force participation rose in America—and in other advanced economies—more or less steadily from the end of the 1960s to the early 2000s as more and more women began to work. The percent of men in the workforce dropped over the same period, but not as quickly as percent of women in the workforce rose. That net increase in labour force participation is one of the major reasons the US economy grew so much over that period, since more workers means more production. But in the early 2000s the participation rate of women levelled off around 60%, and total participation began to go back down.

In other words, the influx of new workers that helped make America rich in the last century has begun to reverse. There were always limits to how much the labour force could grow. You can’t have more than 100% of the population working, after all. And in general labour force participation tends to be lower in rich countries, where more people can afford not to work if they choose. But the drop in labour force participation in America is part of a troubling long-term trend, which has been only been amplified by recent economic problems.

Part of the explanation for the drop in labour force participation is demographic. Baby Boomers began to reach retirement age right around the start of the recession. The recession probably led many of Americans to retire earlier than they planned (Why look for a new job when you were planning to retire in a few years?), but the truth is that many of them were planning to leave the workforce soon anyway. For many Americans, it wasn’t that they couldn’t find work, but they were ready not to work anymore.

Labour force participation has also dropped among Americans in their prime working years. It declined most sharply during the recession. But for reasons that are unclear it has been falling steadily since the end of the 1990s. The drop in labour force participation among Americans 25-54 means there are roughly 3 million fewer workers today than there would be if it had stayed at peak levels.

The problem is that fewer workers means a smaller economy. It means—roughly speaking—fewer people producing goods and services for the population as a whole. Some Americans of prime working age are likely to return to work if the economy improves and better, higher-paying jobs become available. But with Americans living longer and birth rates staying low, the workers lost to retirement probably aren’t coming back. As Americans age, demands on the social security and health care systems will increase while the tax base shrinks. To avoid deficits, the country will probably have either to raise taxes on those are working or cut benefits for those who have retired or can’t find work.

America might still be able to maintain its historical rate of growth. But it will be hard. A 2011 McKinsey Global Institute report estimated that productivity would have to increase 34%—to a level we haven’t since the 1960s—just to compensate for the aging of the population. Barring some dramatic industrial breakthrough it’s not clear where that much new productivity could come from. In other words, the recession may be over, but that doesn’t mean the boom times are coming back.

Follow me on Twitter: @rdeneufville

Charlie Mullins argues that unpaid internships may exclude talented people without the means to support themselves through a period without pay.

As the saying goes, “a good day’s pay for a good day’s work.”  That is, of course, unless you are working for some companies as an intern.

Research by campaign group Intern Aware has led to the government referring 100 companies for investigation by HM Revenue and Customs, suggesting that these firms might be breaking the law through their use of unpaid interns.

Like a lot of things in our society – the benefits system for one – what starts out as a good idea designed to help people is continually taken advantage of until it no longer resembles its initial form.

Internships are in danger of falling into the same category. While we in the UK have always been partial to work experience or work placements, our American cousins really pioneered the internship as a way to find the most hungry and capable candidates for positions on offer.

This was personified in popular culture by Will Smith’s character in the movie, The Pursuit of Happyness where he slept in public toilets while on his internship for a lack of money to support himself.

This is an extreme example, but does highlight the role of employers in making sure they reward the people who work for them with the wage they are entitled to.

Of course, aside from any illegality there may be using unpaid interns, offering long-term unpaid positions as an entry point into a company’s workforce can exclude those without well-off parents or any way of supporting themselves.

Don’t get me wrong; there is a place for unpaid work to get a flavour for the working environment. Work experience has been a staple of British business and educational culture for many decades and it has served students and employers well.

Not everyone knows what they want to do when they are at school and work experience can give students an insight into professions they may not have considered. At the same time it may also make those who know what they want to do more hungry for that job once they’ve had a taste of the career they want to pursue.

As I’ve said, in some ways, that’s also supposed to be the reason behind internships: to see who really wants the job whether there’s money on offer or not from the outset or someway down the line.

However, it appears, for some companies, interns are used as a way to get their pound of flesh from employees without having to hand over any cash in return.

Aside from the legal argument that a worker under National Minimum Wage legislation is entitled to that level of income, it is also highlights the importance of helping people realise the value of what they do at work.

As the debate rages around getting those on benefits to realise that working is better for them, the same should be considered by employers using unpaid interns.

These interns will gain even greater motivation and deliver even better results if they are rewarded for their efforts – even if it is only the minimum they are entitled to!

Charlie Mullins is founder and CEO of Pimlico Plumbers.

By Bernard Condon

To workers being pushed out of jobs by today’s technology, history has a message: You’re not the first.

From textile machines to the horseless carriage to email, technology has upended industries and wiped out jobs for centuries. It also has created millions of jobs, though usually not for the people who lost them.

“People suffer their livelihoods, their skills and training are worth less,” says Joel Mokyr, a historian of technological change at Northwestern University. “But that is the price we pay for progress.”

A look at breakthroughs that made the goods we buy more affordable, our lives more comfortable and our jobs more precarious:

The First Industrial Revolution

For most of history, people made many goods themselves. That changed with the First Industrial Revolution, which began in England in the mid-18th century and lasted about 100 years.

New mechanical devices that allowed one man to do the work of several flooded the market with products, most notably textiles. Using cords, wheels and rollers, inventors sped up the twisting of threads to make yarn and the weaving of yarn to make cloth.

Next, steam was used to free the new machines from the limits of man’s muscle and make them run faster. The new machines produced so much, so fast and so cheaply, more people could afford to buy textiles. Demand soared and so did jobs manning the machines and doing other work.

In America in 1793, Eli Whitney freed slaves from the laborious work of picking sticky seeds from cotton bolls by inventing a cotton gin that did that automatically. It led to widespread planting of cotton but even more work for the slaves.

Whitney also is credited with another invention: interchangeable parts. At a workshop he ran for making firearms, he had his staff make the same part many times so that his guns could be assembled quickly. It worked, and industries such as watchmakers copied his method.

In 1831, Cyrus McCormick invented a reaper that cut wheat stalks as it was pulled by horses and piled them on a platform. Farmers could harvest faster.

In 1837, John Deere stuck the blade of a steel saw onto a plow and invented the steel-edged plow to replace cast-iron ones. Farmers could cut a furrow in the earth more easily and sow faster.

So began a series of inventions that made farming efficient, and began to drain farms of people. In 1800, two-thirds of Americans worked on farms; today, 2 percent do.

The Second Industrial Revolution

Life sped up more in this second period of innovation, from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, an age of steel and electric power, expanding railroads and the automobile.

In 1856, an Englishman discovered a way of making steel fast and cheap, and other inventors soon improved the process. Railroad companies started using steel for their rails instead of wrought iron, which bent easily and needed to be replaced often. Trains could carry heavier loads, which meant businesses could send more products to distant markets. Sales increased, and so did jobs.

In 1861, a telegraph line was strung from coast to coast in the U.S., vastly improving communication. It also wiped out the Pony Express delivery service; it went out of business the same year.

In 1879, Thomas Edison made a light bulb that wouldn’t burn out in a few hours. Factories replaced gaslights, reducing the number of fires.

In quick succession came a string of breakthroughs the automobile, an automatic typesetting machine for printing, a tractor propelled by an internal combustion engine instead of pulled by horses and the Wright brothers’ airplane.

Henry Ford started his eponymous car company in 1903. He put men and their tools in stationary positions and had a car being assembled roll from one man to the next. The moving assembly line was born, and cars could be made faster and cheaper. As with textiles earlier, car prices plummeted and demand soared, creating new kinds of jobs in a new industry  and helping to wipe out 100,000 jobs for carriage and harness makers.

The Information Age

The inventor’s focus shifted from building things to manipulating information. The tools of this new period help people gather and analyze data and communicate faster, cheaper, better.

No invention is commonly accepted as first of the age, but one contender is the first digital computer in 1937, created by George Stibitz of Bell Labs, the former research arm of AT&T. Stibitz seized the idea of using the open and closed positions of metallic devices when electricity runs through them to do simple math.

In 1947, a team at Bell Labs led by William Shockley discovered how to amplify and switch electronic signals using semiconductor material. It was the first transistor. A decade later, many of them were crammed onto a small chip, dubbed an integrated circuit.

Before the transistor, electronic products worked with bulky vacuum tubes. Now computing power could be miniaturized, a breakthrough that led to small radios, personal computers, cellphones and an array of other devices today. In 1971, the first email was sent by a Defense Department computer engineer.

The same year, John Blankenbaker built the Kenbak-1, the first computer small and cheap enough for the masses to buy. They didn’t. Fewer than 50 Kenbak-1s were sold, mostly to a community college, according to oral history by Blankenbaker at the Computer Museum in Boston. His company went out of business within two years

In 1981, the National Science Foundation set up a network linking university computers, a milestone in the development of the Internet. Its impact could scarcely be imagined then.

The past three decades, new products and innovations have allowed people to entertain and inform themselves anywhere, anytime.

In 1983, Motorola introduced the first portable cellphone, a 2-pound clunker called the DynaTac 8000x. In 1984, the first PDA, or personal digital assistant, was sold the long-forgotten Psion. In 1994, BellSouth sold its first Simon, the start of a stream of ever-smarter smartphones from which you can access virtually any information while on the run, including that staple of the telephone operator a phone number.

Which helps explain why there were just 36,000 U.S. operators in 2010, down nearly two-thirds in 10 years.

A job that rose in the same period? Software engineer. They numbered 1.03 million in 2010, up nearly 40 per cent.

AP

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/business-it/is-technology-a-job-killer-a-few-history-lessons-20130123-2d708.html#ixzz2JKcr6sQ7

Tony Moore

brisbanetimes.com.au senior reporter

Furious staff unions have lodged a formal objection with Brisbane City Council over its handling of plans to outsource 50 information technology jobs overseas.

The Australian Services Union says the plans are in direct breach of an enterprise bargaining agreement, which states staff whose work could be outsourced must be given enough information to build a business case to bid for the work themselves.

The council has confirmed it plans to outsource IT jobs in three work areas – help desk, project services and administration – but a spokesman for Lord Mayor Graham Quirk said a final decision on exactly where the jobs would be outsourced had not been made.

However ASU assistant secretary Jennifer Thomas said the council’s staff was horrified to learn in yesterday’s report that plans could be announced within weeks.

Ms Thomas said the council had only once before raised the idea of outsourcing jobs, to a firm called QPG, which was part-owned by the Local Government Association and founded by former Labor lord mayor Jim Soorley.

In 2008, Mr Soorley wanted the 156 local councils in Queensland to think of alternatives to having their own rates section, IT sections and their own payroll sections.

Ms Thomas said the council’s current proposal had her fearing the worst, because the United Kingdom structure of QPG was recently sold to India.

“It really has been a bit of a fizzer,” she said.

Ms Thomas said the council’s IT staff were now confused and demanding information.

“In their minds they have not been provided with a business case yet,” she said.

“…There was really only some rumours about it going to some international competitors before Christmas.

“So now, the immediate view on that from staff was that they could never compete with those type of prices and they all want to keep their jobs.”

Ms Thomas said, after lodging the formal complaint, the union would begin meeting with its members before deciding how to help them bid for their own jobs.

“If they have to compete with international rates with the work going overseas then that brings a new dimension into what we will have to do,” she said.

The council’s Finance and Administration chairman Julian Simmonds said staff and unions had been fully consulted about the plan.

Council opposition leader Milton Dick questioned why the council was considering outsourcing IT jobs to overseas firms “when there are hundreds of trained IT professionals within Brisbane who are more than capable of doing the job.”

• Follow IT Pro on Twitter.

Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/it-pro/government-it/councils-job-outsourcing-plans-breach-eba-union-20130107-2ccy0.html#ixzz2HLbTJW3z

By Martin Conboy

Australia is struggling to get people with the right skills to fill the jobs that need doing. We recently heard that the are over 20,000 jobs going begging in the ICT sector and the mining sector is short of tens of thousands of specialist workers.

This from Michael Pascoe a finance journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald:

“The contradictions roll on: we’re supposed to be concerned about rising unemployment, especially in non-mining regional centres, but we have to rely on backpackers to pick our crops and pour our beer; the dole is so low as to be unlivable, a social welfare disaster, but there’s a plea to admit a new underclass of migrants to perform menial tasks.

The rise of job snobs and the unemployable means our labour market is not capable of realising its potential – and that’s before getting into the usual employer whinge of wanting to pay lower wages while hopefully selling goods and services to people who receive high wages everywhere else.”

Confusing the issue is that Ford Australia has announced it will slash jobs — and production — at its Melbourne plants by almost a third as slow sales of its Falcon large family car bite hard. The company is blaming the high value of the Australian dollar. Remember that an A$ is worth twice as much as it was only 10 years ago. This is great for imports (i.e. BPO) but a disaster for exports. (I.e. manufactured goods)

Ford also cut jobs at its Australian operations last year.

All of this is feeding into uncertainty and business decisions are being delayed.

The common thread running through global markets has been European sovereign debt fears, and in particular problems in Greece. There is no way that Greece cannot almost entirely default on its outstanding debt, austerity measures or not. The inevitable is being delayed – the can is being kicked down the road.

Capital is staying on the sidelines, as no one is sure if they invest that they will get their money back let alone a return on their investments. The All Ordinaries (ASX) finished the year down 11.25%, the worst fall for the financial year since June 2009.

There is no doubt that some companies are turning to outsourcing as a way to control operating costs, access talent and grow their businesses and a lot of the work is going to places like the Philippines. Our latest research (Australian BPO Industry report is telling us that the BPO sector will grow by 20% over the next two years)

But even in the Philippines surfaces the concern of the shortage of talent that is needed to answer the demands of the outsourcing industry. As the BPO industry continues to move up the value chain, so to are the human talent requirements to keep up with the momentum. Outsourcing industry experts and analysts keeps pushing for Knowledge –based services, the kind which entails more specific and complicated job functions.

But nowadays, the kind of graduates produced by the educational institutions of The Philippines are not adequate to meet up with the new requirements of the super fast growing BPO industry.

So expect to see new markets with talented labour coming into the mix. I recently visited Sri Lanka and from what I saw I believe that we will be hearing a lot more from that neck of the woods.

Lastly, have a look at my video of why the Philippines is a good outsourcing location here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Af7vvBnsWMI

By Mark Atterby – Senior Staff Writer

The quality of services a BPO delivers is dependent on the quality of the people it employs. In a tight labour market, employing quality candidates in staff and management positions and keeping them there, can become a significant challenge in terms of maintaining quality services to clients while keeping costs down.

In a tight labour market people will move from job to job, with providers and clients poaching staff and executives from each other. As staff turnover increases recruitment costs can dramatically increase.

According to Geoff Curran, who runs an agency specialising in BPO recruitment, aside from offering competitive salaries, organisations need to be able to develop a positive culture and working environment for their staff and managers.  “It’s important to be able to offer a range of non-financial benefits for managers and specialists that not only attract, but are also important for retention purposes”, says Curran

More so than for any other industry or organisation, BPO providers understand the connection between high employee retention and high organisational performance. Happy employees are motivated and productive employees who remain loyal to the organisation. Unhappy employees are unproductive and generate all sorts of hidden costs

Curran observes, “Staff retention for BPO’s with operations in the key destinations such as India and the Philippines is an important issue. Not only are there the direct costs associated with recruitment and training of new staff, but as well the indirect costs associated with people leaving the business, via loss of job knowledge, lower productivity during the first few months can be substantial”.

According to a survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting the costs of dissatisfied staff and high staff turnover, includes:

• The costs of decreased productivity.
• Lost investment in training and development
• Lost of revenue for key sales
• Recruitment costs
• The new employee’s induction into the business culture
• Management downtime in interviewing new candidates
• Legal fees and payout commitments

There are a range of factors, aside from financial remuneration that will impact people’s desire to leave or remain loyal to the existing organisations.

Climate and Culture
Numerous studies have demonstrated a strong connection between an individual’s reason for leaving and the dominant culture of the organisation. Organisational culture affects the way people and groups interact with each other, with clients, and with stakeholders. As the workplace is where people spend the majority of their day, the culture of that workplace will have a tremendous impact on the happiness of staff and management.

Leadership Style
Good managers and good leaders are key to high retention. It’s the leadership of the organisation that will have the greatest impact on shaping the organisation’s culture and workplace climate.

Continuous Improvement

Geoff Curran recommends having a culture that is based on and encourages continuous improvement. He says, “If you are experiencing high turnover, conduct exit interviews, preferably by an objective third party, to uncover the true reasons about why people are leaving the company and where possible, act on these findings. This is part of having a continuous improvement culture”.

Finally, by offering people career paths within your organisation and the opportunity to grow and develop will greatly encourage loyalty, part with your best performing staff. Curran comments,” Career progression is ultimately linked to performance and fit for future opportunities. Therefore all BPO’s should identify high performers within the business and include them in a high performers program. If the company has multi country operations, for some people, international transfers can be attractive”.

By Matt Ford

Telemarketing in Australia has been found to be one of the toughest jobs for businesses residing in the land down under. For one thing, their Do-Not-Call Registry has got to be one of the most populated lists of certain individuals that do not want to be called upon by telemarketers. Still, this does not stop businesses from trying to locate new business opportunities within the continent.

A lot of Australian business owners know that outsourcing in Australian lead generation companies provide tons of benefits for their respective firms. Such benefits include:

•         Reduction of overall costs for the firm and for the lead generation campaign
•         Better client services for lesser the cost
•         Expansion of market; from across the continent and even overseas
•         Reliable workforce
•         Access to a very attractive English accent
•         Reduction of at-home training expenses

These are but a few of the many benefits once a business organization is able to outsource their lead generation campaign in Australian lead generation companies. Let us look at each of these benefits in turn to gain a better understanding of them.

            Reduction of overall costs for the firm and for the lead generation campaign

Telemarketing in Australia for lead generation campaigns is already known to be a tough nut to crack. Additionally, building at-home telemarketing teams may become very costly especially to newer businesses. Outsourcing in lead generation companies within the land down under provides substantial cost reduction for the entire firm as well as the lead generation campaign.

            Better client services for lesser the cost

Leaning towards the first benefit, outsourcing does indeed lower down overall costs but it also allows firms to gain access to a high level of mastery for their lead generation campaign. This allows the firm to provide better services towards their Australian clients at only a handful of the entire cost.

            Expansion of market; from across the continent and even overseas

Every business needs to expand their market sooner or later to provide growth for their firm; Australian business organizations are no exception to this rule. Outsourcing in these companies that provide lead generation services within the land down under provides a great expansion of one’s target market within the Australian continent and even outside the Australian territory.

            Reliable workforce

Australian telemarketers are world-renowned for their high reliability when it comes to lead generation. They can assure their clients with quality results as they can get highly qualified leads from the lead generation campaign. Hence, they provide the highest probabilities of growth and financial success for an Australian company.

            Access to a very attractive English accent

Australian’s are very well-known for their very attractive accent. Even at the start of the call, most prospects would be wowed with the kind of accent that they have. As such, telemarketers are can easily build the foundation of trust between them and their client’s prospects making the acquisition of business transactions a lot less difficult to achieve.

            Reduction of at-home training expenses

Even if an Australian company has their own at-home telemarketing team for lead generation services, training costs are sure to sky rocket. Therefore, outsourcing in Australian companies that provide telemarketing lead generation services lessens down the overall training cost for the at-home team. The reason is because the lead generation company can handle the training for their own team of telemarketers.

Once an Australian company is able to outsource their lead generation services in an Australian telemarketing firm, they would have the highest chances of attaining growth and success by reaping these benefits.

Source: Business2Community

By Martin Conboy President Australian BPO Assoc.

It’s amazing how quickly the world changes, one minute we are sailing along without a care in the world, or so it seemed and whoosh it’s all different.

The Reserve Bank of Australia announced their decision to lower the cash rate by 25 basis points to 3.50%. Adding again to last month’s big 50 basis point cut, the boards decisions this month had much to do with furthered weakening economic conditions in Europe and further moderation in growth in China.

Then the release of employment figures for May echoed the surprisingly strong March quarter national accounts, the Aussie dollar may soon be back to parity with the greenback for the first time since the middle of May.

The Australian dollar rallied the most in half a year and local shares are poised to surge.

In the local economy we see that ANZ bank is outsourcing more IT jobs, whereas on the other hand St George Bank (Westpac) announced that it was abandoning its outsourcing plans. Meanwhile at Fairfax media, local journalists are on strike about their jobs being outsourced to New Zealand. Yet on another front Tourism Australia as a crowd sourcing exercise is asking its 3 million fans to share their stories about what makes Australia a unique destination to visit in a compelling and authentic way, the value of advocacy and word of mouth endorsement as a marketing tool is a brilliant use of outsourcing as a cheap and effective tool.

Our latest piece of BPO Research “The Australian BPO Industry Report 2012’ confirms that we will see a lot more uptake in the outsourcing of online marketing.

On another front the latest bout of economic figures confirm the Australian economy is just limping along. From the Australian Bureau of Statistics we have news that business inventories, adjusted for price changes and seasonal patterns, expanded at a slower pace in the March quarter. Other indicators of spending already available – retail trade, foreign trade, building and capital spending – suggest a positive, albeit not very strong, rise in GDP.

Another important economic indicator came in on the soft side. The ANZ’s measure of job vacancies fell by 2.4 per cent in May to be down by 4.3 per cent from a year before. ‘Job advertising trends are sending a signal of a softening in labour demand in Australia, including more recently in the mining states,’’ ANZ head of Australian economics Ivan Colhoun said in a commentary on the data.

During the last few days we have witnessed the Queens Diamond jubilee celebrations in London, England commemorating 60 years of service to the UK and Commonwealth of Nations as our monarch and head of state. This is a woman who has seen it all and been a constant in our lives. I believe that most people in the Commonwealth of Nations would have a sense of ownership and pride in her achievements. Lets not forget that England’s greatest gift to the world was the English language, the very thing that underpins the BPO industry.

The other day I had cause to be in a nursing home in Melbourne and I met George Mann who was celebrating his 100th birthday. It turns out that George was a sheet metal worker and during WW2 he was one of six men who worked on the first Spitfire fighter plane prototypes and the Wellington bomber. For those of you who don’t know the Spitfire turned the tide of WW2 in the Battle of Britain which was summed up so eloquently by Winston Churchill when he said “ Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few’.

George was pleased as punch that he had made the great milestone at the same time as Queen Elizabeth was commemorating her own personal historic occasion. In Australia when you turn 100 you get a personal message from the Queen. What could I say but ‘Thank you’ George Mann for giving us the freedom that we now enjoy.

ANZ plans to outsource 110 Melbourne information technology jobs to business services group Capgemini by the end of the year. The bank also plans to send 250 permanent staff of ANZ’s Indian processing office in Bangaloire to Capgemini. The bank said Capgemini will supply ANZ with information technology testing services globally.

“As part of ANZ’s 2017 technology roadmap, we need to continue to access increasingly scarce IT skills to deliver major projects and ongoing business requirements,’’ said ANZ chief information officer Anne Weatherston.

ANZ said the deal, subject to regulatory approval and final contract negotiations, won’t result in employees losing their jobs as they would be offered comparable jobs with Capgemini.

Earlier this year, ANZ said it would chop 1000 positions to lower costs, while Westpac cut 560 jobs so far this year. Australian banks have been slashing jobs since the start of this year, in order to boost maintain profits in a time of slowing demand for homeloans.

However, regulators have cast a wary eye towards the big four banks’ outsourcing and off-shoring plans. In May, the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority warned banks it would probe plans to outsource jobs which could undermine the stability of the banking system.

Capgemini, a global outsourcing firm, is expected to accelerate the technology used to aid ANZ’s super-regional Asian growth strategy.

Source: The Age 

Fairfax journalists have walked off the job in response to the outsourcing of around 60 jobs to New Zealand.The 36-hour strike sees print and online staff from The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Financial Review, The Age, The Sunday Age, The Sun Herald, the Newcastle Herald and Wollongong’s Illawarra Mercury stop work.

The industrial action was taken after Fairfax and News Limited journalists held a stop work meeting with union representatives, The Herald Sun reports. However, union officials have told the ABC that their strike is unlawful, and that individually they face fines of up to $6,000.

The decision to outsource editorial production of several Newcastle and Wollongong newspapers was made last week. It was taken as part of an ongoing, three-year, $170 million cost cutting process, triggered by plummeting newspaper circulation. The move will affect The Newcastle Herald, Newcastle Star, Port Stephens Examiner, Lakes Mail, Myall Coast Nota, Illawarra Mercury, Wollongong Advertiser, Lake Times and Kiama Independent.

“This is unlawful industrial action, it hasn’t been taken lightly,” said Sydney Morning Herald house committee member Stuart Washington. “We want them to know that outsourcing journalists does not allow us to provide the dynamic journalism that the digital future requires. We want intelligent, considered management. We don’t want reflexive management that just presses on the cost-cutting button,” he said.

Fairfax has defended the move saying it’s part of a “wider company strategy to pursue operational efficiencies while strengthening the focus on audience growth and producing quality content”.

Thursday and Friday newspapers will be produced by a skeleton staff, according to reports. “The paper will still be produced by management staff but obviously they will be substantially lesser papers than people will expect,” said Chris Warren from the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA).

Source: Media Spy

By  Kim Arveen Patria

Philippine job seekers were advised last week to consider local outsourcing jobs instead of going abroad, with an industry group noting that the sector is in need of accountants, nurses and engineers.

“New graduates and established professionals don’t have to go abroad for international, well-paying jobs,” Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPAP) senior executive director Gillian Virata said in a statement.

“We have jobs in IT (information technology), software development, customer service, finance and accounting, health care, legal, creative services, and engineering,” Ms. Virata added.

BPO players aim to generate 120,000 jobs this year as part of its goal to employ 1.3 million Filipinos by 2016, the BPAP statement noted.

Information campaigns are also being boosted to attract more potential employees to the sector, Ms. Virata noted.

“We are doing this campaign to address a potential talent gap that could impact growth of IT-BPO,” BPAP president and chief executive Benedict C. Hernandez said in the statement.

Source: Business World Online