By Alex Wong

When you outsource work to a virtual assistant it is important to know what the best projects to outsource are. The main goal of outsourcing is to free up your time, so you can focus on the work that brings in the most results and that only you can do. Here are the best tasks that can be outsourced to a virtual assistant:

Research
Almost any type of research can be outsourced to a virtual assistant, be it speechwriting or simple fact checking. Fact checking is important because it can be outsourced for cheap and there is nothing that can ruin your reputation as quickly as presenting incorrect information. You can also outsource research that is not related to your business, such as writing a speech for a wedding or choosing the best product to buy in a given niche. The possibilities are endless. Outsourcing can free your time, so you can focus on more important tasks or it can simply create free time for you, so you can enjoy a nice vacation or time with your family.

Keep in mind that a lot of virtual assistants get paid by the hour when doing research, so make sure you choose the most effective one that can quickly complete the task in hand. Also, there are a lot of areas where you would think that only you can do the necessary research when in reality – anybody can.

1. Sales Leads – VA can find and research individuals, companies, and technologies, via blogs, websites and forums. They can prepare reports and briefs to help you determine who to contact next. With the right information in hand you can focus on developing new business relationships instead of having to spend time researching

2. Fact Checking – To be persuasive, you need facts on your side; nothing ruins your credibility quicker than inaccurate information. A VA can double-check facts, provide statistics and backup information, and verify data to make sure you always put an accurate foot forward

3. Products and Services to Buy – A VA can take into account your budget and preferences, sift through the options, check out reviews and recommendations, and create a short list of the prime contenders for purchase. Plus, a VA can comparison shop, find the best deals possible, and even arrange the purchase if you prefer

4. Products and Services to Sell – A VA can perform a lot of basic research: Products already marketed that can be privately labeled, products you can buy wholesale and sell at retail, products you can license so you have the right to sell them… the possibilities are endless.

Data entry
Data entry is one of the most time and energy consuming tasks that fortunately – can be easily outsourced. From article submission to craigslist ad posting, this type of work is most commonly outsourced, which means you can quickly find someone that can do it for cheap. Website registration also falls into this category – many businesses require you to use certain websites, for which you have to register. Doing this involves a lot of manual work and typing, which makes the job perfect to outsource to a virtual assistant.

Collecting contact information also falls into this category. You can easily find the contacts of potential advertisement publishers for example. This type of work requires total focus on the task, so it can be difficult for you to complete if you have many other projects to focus on. That’s why this type of work is best outsourced to a virtual assistant. What you can do next is have the virtual assistant type all the contact information as outlook entries – this makes it quick and easy to send offers to all the contacts at once.

Creating slideshows can also be outsourced easily to VAs that understand how to do it and are good in graphic design. Creating a slideshow for a meeting can be tough, especially if you do not have a lot of experience with it. Trying to learn all the ins and outs of PowerPoint is pointless, when you can outsource this work and focus on more important tasks

1. Turn Business Cards into Outlook Entries – putting information from business cards into your Outlook address book helps you stay organized and automatically organizes your phone or PDA. Who really has the time to do this? You can fax/scan the business cards you receive, or send Excel or Word contact listings to a VA who can transfer the information for you

2. Website Registration – Many websites require you to register to access certain articles and information, sign up for newsletters, or post your contact information for other visitors to see. Registering can be a tedious process – so outsource it! Compose a list of websites you wish to register with, along with your contact information, and allow a VA to take care of the rest. You can also ask the VA to research other relevant sites you haven’t listed, and to sign you up there, too.

3. Collect Contact Information – With a little research performed by a VA you can collect all the data you need, including phone numbers, email addresses, social media links, etc. They can then enter the collected data into spreadsheets, documents, address books… whatever is most useful to you.

4. Article Submission – Posting articles in article directories, press release directories, and other websites, can be a great way to build an audience and generate links to your website or blog. Hundreds of directories exist. Make the process easy by hiring a VA: Simply provide your articles along with a list of directories you wish to submit to (or ask the VA to create a list for you), and your words can be seen by thousands of readers worldwide.

Planning
Things like to-do list planning and travel scheduling fall into this category. This is one area where outsourcing the work can be even better than doing it yourself, because you may miss important details that virtual assistants will quickly notice. Planning meetings is most commonly outsourced and there are assistants that are specialized in it and can complete the task down to the smallest detail quickly.

Virtual assistants can quickly choose the best venue for the meeting as well as make a reservation and do a bit of research on your potential client or associate. If you participate in a meeting that has people you have never met before it is important to know at least some basic background information about them and this can be quickly researched by your VA. If you are going to travel somewhere, the VA can research the cheapest and most suitable accommodations as well as choose the best travel schedule.

1. Meetings – A well-planned and executed lunch meeting with one important client could be as important to your business as a meeting with 20 or more participants. Every meeting has the potential to make or break your company – make sure they are planned flawlessly! A VA can research venues, make reservations, schedule the appointment with participants, and even follow up a few days ahead of time to make sure your plans are all set. Let a VA take care of the details so you can focus on accomplishing your goals at your meetings.

2. Prepare Participant Bios – You’ve probably seen movies or television shows where a politician or leader has names and personal information whispered into his or her ear just before he greets another person. While a VA can’t attend the meeting with you, they can provide the next best thing: If you provide the names of people who will attend your event, or any other event for that matter, a VA can give you background information, recent news, and other tidbits that will help you make a great impression on everyone you meet. Then, instead of saying, “Nice to meet you,” imagine yourself saying, “Nice to meet you… congratulations on starting your new product line. How is that going?”

3. Travel Research – Planning a trip, but aren’t sure how much to budget? A VA can provide detailed research and a breakdown of potential costs including flights, accommodations, local transportation, and daily expenses (like food and entertainment, etc.). If you have multiple destinations or departure dates in mind, costs can be broken down by location or season to help you make the right decisions for your business trip or vacation.

4. Slideshows – Creating a compelling and interesting slideshow is tough. So is having the right tools and techniques to zoom, pan, and fade individual slides to keep your audience engaged and your images looking their best – while making the maximum impact possible. Whether you’re showing personal photos at an engagement party or wedding, or you’re a contractor showing off past building and construction projects, make sure your slideshow looks great and functions perfectly.

Social networking
If you own a blog it can be impossible to hire someone to write posts for you, especially if you have built an identity around your blog. However, even then you can outsource a lot of the work that comes with every article writing task, such as topic research, collecting news and so on. Virtual assistants can notify you on important blog comments that you need to approve or answer. You can even outsource something like online dating, which was first done by Timothy Ferriss – the author of ‘The 4-Hour Workweek’ and is now becoming more and more popular.

But most importantly, you can create proper social media exposure by outsourcing it. Sites like Facebook and Twitter are becoming increasingly important for business and you have to take advantage of them. Fortunately, this can be easily outsourced for very cheap.

Blog Posting – First a caveat: If you have a distinctive writing “voice,” only talented writers will be able to mimic it and create blog posts that “sound” like you. But don’t let that stop you from hiring a VA to help with your blog posts. Virtual Assistants can collect news, keep up with trends, do research… even write rough drafts of posts that you can then shape into your “own” distinctive style. And to keep the conversation among your readers going, a VA can respond to comments left on your blog, alerting you when a comment requires your expertise to answer. Many bloggers generate a mixture of posts. Some are simple news recaps and updates while others are more like opinion pieces. Let a VA help you make your blog more robust… while also making it easier to maintain and keep fresh.

1. Commenting and Linking – Leaving comments on blogs and social media sites is a great way to make new connections and leave backlinks to your own sites and blogs. A VA can take care of the process for you. Create a list of sites (or have the VA create it), give guidelines on comments you’d like to leave, and off you go! You can also have the VA send you links to new articles or sites that you should check out personally. While you’re at it, a VA can respond to comments and questions left on your sites and blogs, too.

2. Profiles and Accounts – Want to benefit from social networking but don’t have the know-how or the time to start? Hire a VA to create your accounts and profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, and/or other social networking sites. Once you’re all set, you can focus on creating and developing relationships.

3. Social Media – Social Media sites like Facebook are great ways to network and create social connections – but managing your accounts can take time away from other productive work. A VA can keep up with your friend requests, respond to messages, and keep you informed about your account activity. You can take it a step farther and hire an application developer to apply current solutions or develop a new tool to keep you on the cutting edge of social networking.

Business assistance
This is the area that can free up the most of your time. In this category fall things like email responding and management, voicemail management, sending gifts and cards to customers and potential customers and follow-up orders. A lot of business owners and even employees fall in the trap of constantly checking email and voicemail, because that is the most important part of the business. It is surprising how much of this can be outsourced. After outsourcing, it is not uncommon for business owners to start checking mail as little as 2 hours per week or even less. If checking email occupies most of your workdays, this may seem impossible but it is true.

Make a list of the most common email questions you get and write detailed answers for each. Than you can easily give this task to a virtual assistant, or even create an automatic software auto responder. Follow ups are also important and involve calling the customer after an order has been completed. It is one of the best ways to get repeat business and a lot of business owners overlook this.

1. Voicemail Management – Do you receive a lot of voicemails? Do you spend a lot of time in meetings and dread having to check your messages? A VA can check your voicemail on the schedule you set, prioritize your messages, and even email summaries to you in case you’re not in a position to receive calls. A VA can also return routine and emergency calls, saving the important or sensitive calls for you to make when you have the chance

2. Email Management – Even if you receive hundreds of emails each day, chances are a number of them are routine – and if they’re routine, that means a VA can respond to those emails using guidance you provide. Then all you’ll need to do is respond to unusual or out of the ordinary emails. You can take it a step further and have your VA forward emails only you can handle to a separate account; that way you’ll never see or need to deal with the hundreds of emails your VA can handle for you. If you feel like you type the same response – to different people – more than once, a VA can handle the task.

3. Gifts and Cards – Whether they’re our friends or our customers and clients, all of us want to remember important people at special times. Provide spending guidelines and other basic information, and your VA can track down and ship the perfect gifts, send online cards, or mail pre-signed greeting cards to everyone on your list.

4. Thank You and Follow-Up – Many businesses send notes or make phone calls to recent purchasers. It’s a great way to say “thank you” and also to answer any questions and proactively resolve potential problems. A VA can send thank you cards or make post-purchase calls to new customers or clients, creating a memorable personal touch that can help drive repeat business and build long-term business relationships.

Source: Business Blogs NZ

By Martin Conboy, President – Australian BPO Association (ABPOA)

Last week I attended a symposium, which was hosted by Fuji Xerox called ‘Nextwork’. It was all about exploring the workplace of tomorrow. At the outset, I must say that it was one of the most stimulating and thought-provoking events that I have ever been to. Fuji Xerox had done their homework as they brought together some of the finest minds to share their views about tomorrow. I was amazed by the technology and trends that were presented. Suffice it to say it’s all about the Cloud, Mobility and Location, and there is some exciting new language evolving like, ‘Business colonies’, ‘Anticipatory Analytics’, ‘Cohort Theory’, ‘Disruptive Innovation’ and ‘Continuous Partial Attention’.

At the end of this report I have included some material from the Institute of the Future, which is essential for those interested in further reading.

Breakfast Panel

The Fuji Xerox NextWork symposium started with a scene-setting breakfast panel that included Peter Ulm, Desktop & Productivity Lead – (Microsoft), Steve Godbee, A/NZ Integration Leader & CIO- (IBM), Scott Mason, Director of Products – (Optus), Kevin Bloch CTO – (Cisco) and Beth Winchester Exec. GM HR – (Fuji Xerox), during the breakfast we were treated to a glimpse of the future of work.

There was a lot of discussion around the physical work space and what would that look like in the future and how we would not necessarily ‘own’ the space that we occupied in a concrete sense as there would be a lot more ‘Hot Desking’ that would cater for disparate work groups that would only come together for special events and projects. There was talk about using new technologies like Skype to video conference and people bringing their own internet connecting device to work, (smart phone/tablet/ laptop etc.) as companies of the future would not impose restrictions on the tools one needs to do one’s job – think converging technologies, cloud and thin clients, yet using your own internet access device.

Looking forward, the panel agreed that a lot more people would work remotely away from their employer’s physical location and that has implications for how real estate features into the mix: this will give metropolitan building owners and managers heart palpitations as in the future people will not go to where the work is, as we do now, in the future the work will go to where the people are. In Australia with the roll out of the National Broadband network (NBN) we will see the resurgence of rural and regional Australia as people opt for a work life balance and do away with the long commute and congested living.

Of course, if mobility is going to be one of the underlying trends then loss of the gateway devices (who has not accidently left a smart phone or laptop in a taxi?) will have to be a consideration and it was suggested by the panel that these devices would not actually hold data on them per se as all data would be housed in the cloud so that it can be accessed anywhere, anyhow, anytime by anything so long as one has the relevant access codes. In other words, data will be the most important asset in the future and being able to access it, not the devices that the data is on.

In order to make sure that we are offering services that our customers want and need, we will use tools like ‘crowd sourcing’ to engage with customers to solve business and marketing problems. We will have to get used to collaborating outside of the standard business framework and work with our own communities of interest, workgroups, and social networks to test our ideas.

If data is the key, the future will allow us to extract unprecedented analytical information. Therefore, there is the potential to get bogged down with data overload. The business issues will be around making sense of it all: how do we manage data; what business intelligence tools will we need; how will we extract data and use it in a meaningful way.

Presentation one

The first bespoke presentation was given by Mike Walsh, CEO of the innovation research agency, “Tomorrow”. Walsh determined that with new and different ways to interact with customers and more flexible ways for employees to work, there would need to be a rethink about how we create frameworks that bring out the best in people. “Unless you understand the underlying culture of what drives your employees, you cannot build the office of the future”, he said. He went on to say, “even though employees will work from remote locations like their home, they still crave social contact”. Walsh gave an example of a hotel in New York that offered Wi-Fi and an environment where freelancers would come together with others to have a sense of community and a collegiate atmosphere that would not be possible if they were working in isolation from home.

Walsh gave some other great examples that are already being used today in Japan, where people use their mobile phones to scan bar codes on posters in railway stations to buy their groceries. Perhaps his most important point was that the companies of the future would be built around a core of data. He also brought into the discussion some concepts around social anthropology as a prism to make sense of the future. He said that 56% of students nearing graduation would not work for a company that blocked FaceBook and Twitter.
Walsh also pushed ‘Cohort Theory’. Generational cohort theory argues that events, social change and even pop culture affects the values, beliefs, attitudes and ultimately behaviour of individuals. According to this perspective, a generation is less about the age of a group but more about their shared experience in their youth.

Another subject that he touched on was ‘Disruptive Innovation’. The term disruptive innovation as we know it today first appeared in the 1997 bestseller, ‘The Innovator’s Dilemma’. In the book, Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen investigated why some innovations that were radical in nature reinforced the incumbent’s position in a certain industry. Christensen analysed extensively the disk drive industry because it represented the most dynamic, technologically discontinuous and complex industry one could find in our economy. Just consider that the memory capacity packed into a square inch of disk increased by 35% per year, from 50 kilobytes in 1967 to 1.7 megabytes in 1973, 12 megabytes in 1981 and 1100 megabytes in 1995.

Disruptive innovation will often have characteristics that traditional customer segments may not want, at least initially. Such innovations will appear as cheaper, simpler and even with inferior quality if compared to existing products, but some marginal or new segment will value it.

Operating under such a value network might lead a company to “listen too much” to its main customers. As a result, it will not recognise potentially disruptive innovations that serve only marginal customers. Secondly, large companies will not be interested in small markets; they hardly offer significant growth opportunities. Again this will lead companies to completely ignore the disruptive innovation or to wait until the market is “large enough to be attractive”. That is exactly when new entrants attack incumbent’s turf, and by that time it is usually too late.

The physical and digital worlds are converging at a speed predicted by very few. According to IDC, the world’s information is doubling every two years.

Walsh spoke about Continuous Partial Attention (CPA), which is the process of paying simultaneous attention to a number of sources of incoming information, i.e. customer feedback, warehouse withdrawals, and website hits, but at a superficial level.

The term was coined by Linda Stone in 1998. Author, Steven Berlin Johnson, describes this as a kind of multitasking: “It usually involves skimming the surface of the incoming data; picking out the relevant details and moving on to the next stream. You’re paying attention, but only partially. CPA lets you cast a wider net but it also runs the risk of keeping you from really studying the fish”.

Presentation two

Dr. Thomas Frey, a futurist and Executive Director at the DaVinci Institute and Google’s top rated futurist speaker, a man with a seriously bright mind gave a brilliant presentation around the secret language of the future. He presented his theory about how the future gets created. He explained how we could influence the future by using social media and other unusual techniques for both understanding and gaining control of our own futures.

Frey put forward a proposition that in the future, workgroups would come together in much the same way that Hollywood comes together to make a movie and then break up after the project is over. “The future gets created in the minds of everyone around us. Virtually everyone has a hand in it, but not all contributions are equal. As you might imagine, a small group of people armed with powerful ideas can make a disproportionately large impact.”

“But creating the future needs to involve much more than just ideas. The ideas create a starting point but need to be put into a visual context, massaged, enhanced, and somehow made to spring to life.”
Frey spoke about ‘Business Colonies’. Business colonies are an evolving, new kind of organisational structure designed around matching talent with pending work projects. The operation will revolve around some combination of resident people based in a physical facility and a non-resident virtual workforce. Some will forego the cost of the physical facility completely, opting instead to form around an entirely virtual communications structure.

Most will be organised around a topical area best suited for the talent base of the core team. As an example, a team of photonics engineers will attract projects best suited for that kind of talent. Likewise, a working group of programmers specialising in computer gaming applications will serve as a magnet for new gaming projects.

In some instances, large corporations will launch their own business colonies as a way to expand capability without adding to their headcount. Staffed with a few project managers, the company will use the colony as a proving ground for experimental assignments best performed outside of the cultural bounds of existing workflow.

Xerox Presentations

The next two presentations were given by ‘holograms’ (very cool) of the presenters, the first ‘hologram’ was Francois Ragnet from Xerox’s Technology Innovation, French-based Think Tank, and he spoke about a ‘less paper’ office. As Xerox is a ‘green’ company, he chose not to enlarge his carbon footprint by not actually coming to Australia in person, so he came as a ‘hologram’. Ragnet presented some scary statistics such as 20% of all documents that printed are not actually picked up and 40% are discarded the next day – imagine the impact on our forests if we eliminated such waste from our business processes!

Dr. Larry Rowe of Xerox’s Palo Alto, California Research Labs also beamed in as a hologram. Rowe laid out a presentation around the importance of fostering teamwork in a disparate mobile workforce and that collaboration was the key. He argued that combining low cost computing, storage, and communication with powerful mobile devices is changing the nature of work and everyday life today. Rowe also spoke about how organisations need to think about how to use the physical place itself as a part of the information toolkit along with laptops, mobile phones, and printers. The need to manage large volumes of complex visual information will lead to workplace design needs that expand the size and scope of digital displays.

In summary, the future is looming up very quickly, and the old command and control way of running our businesses is passing. For most of us, it’s a work in progress; some will still want to hang on to the old ways and resist change.

There is only one constant in business and that is change, as my first boss told me, “if you are not going forward, then you are gong backwards.”

To support your thinking, I found this – Institute of the Future – www.iftf.org

For every forecast there exists a litany of potential implications. By drawing out the most crucial implications from each of our six main themes, we attempt to address the complexity of the future with a set of pointers that will help organisations better prepare for what’s to come.

The following implications are a result of that work, and we thank the participants for their insight. Even though they are embedded within the narratives of The Future of Work Perspectives (SR-1092A) and are part of each story we tell in this set of forecasts, we’ve included the implications here as well, because recognising them is instrumental to getting there early. These are by no means the only implications. So take some time to reflect on them, and add to them as you plan your action steps to prepare for the future of work.

1. ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE AND DESIGN: PLAN FOR TRANSPARENCY

The evolution of technologies for ubiquitous, detailed, real-time reporting on everything means that almost every aspect of organisational life can be exquisitely documented and tracked. Organisations should plan for transparency from the outset in order to stay ahead; concealing anything will become increasingly difficult. Avoiding accountability will also get harder, and moving operations somewhere else in order to avoid accountability will not be a viable long-term solution. Companies that have tried to hide pollution by “outsourcing” polluting activities to subcontractors are likely to have to account for them. Organisations should err on the side of transparency, resorting to secrecy only when absolutely necessary and as a last resort. Now is the time to examine all aspects of your operations—from human resources to manufacturing and distribution—through the transparency lens.

2. TOOLS: PHYSICAL PLACE IS A PART OF THE TOOLKIT

An important outcome of the visible world will be the convergence of computational tools and the physical workplace. Organisations need to think about how to use the physical place itself as a part of the information toolkit along with laptops, mobile phones, and printers. The need to manage large volumes of complex visual information will lead to workplace design needs that expand the size and scope of digital displays, while also spreading access to “windows” on data into non-traditional spaces for computing hallways, social spaces like water coolers, and outdoors. Plan for workplaces that enable “progressive disclosure,” i.e., the ability to reveal higher-level functionality, as users are ready for them.

3. PHYSICAL SPACE: DESIGNING FOR HEALTH

Healthy workplaces are no longer just about a lack of harmful toxins, fluorescent lights and cubicles are giving way to green spaces and sunlight. Bio-Citizens will expect workplaces that reflect their understanding of health as a value. Successful future workplace design will bring together large-scale architectural understanding of the workplace community, healthy spaces, anthropological understanding of small group dynamics, and information science. Ergonomic consultations will go from optional to mandatory as employers strive to ensure that their employees are healthy and, as a result, productive. Sensors and other advanced technologies will help to make the “healthiness” of the work environment visible. Offering incentives for healthy behaviour could prove a good way to attract Bio-Citizens, but watch out for making such incentives coercive and, thus, perceived as paternalistic and intrusive.

4. RECRUITMENT: ATTRACTING – BUT NOT NECESSARILY HIRING – THE BEST

Achieving the diversity required to amplify organisations means tapping into multiple intelligences, work styles, skills, media choices, and geographies. The products of collective intelligence are successful because each person makes contributions in the area she chooses and in the manner that suits her best. For an organisation to amplify itself, it must tap the external network of non-employees and entice them to contribute in the areas of their expertise. Beyond hiring, the goal must be to attract, engage, and connect amplified individuals to the organisation so that they view it as the most important and powerful node in their highly networked and distributed career paths. Organisations need to think in ways that suit these individuals rather than traditional promotions and compensation packages—increased freedom, ability to choose particular projects, ability to publish outside, etc.

5. SKILLS: TRAINING IN VISUAL LITERACY

Organisations and individuals will have to use new types of highly sensory- rich interfaces—artistic visualisations, simulations, and ambient and other interfaces utilising sound, movement, colours, etc.—to take advantage of massive amounts of data flooding the workplace. The next generations of workers will need to possess visual literacy and have the ability to present, analyse, and interact with visual information. Visual acumen is a survival skill in the future workplace. Younger workers who have grown up in the world of video games and virtual reality will naturally be more adept at this, but just because someone is younger doesn’t mean they will automatically possess such skills. Think about how to promote visual literacy standards for your organisation, how to identify those with the best visual skills, and how to train employees to become proficient in dynamic, image-moderated collaborative explorations of data.

6. HUMAN RESOURCES: MATHEMATICIANS AND NEUROSCIENTISTS?

Hiring practices, training, and management will draw from a deeper understanding of neuroscience and complex behavioural algorithms. Already, start-ups have emerged that promise to train individuals to increase their mental acuity, focus, and efficiency based on brain science. Company- specific algorithms will be developed for software that vets new applicants based on detailed questionnaires. As science comes to work, human resource managers will need to become versed in these new sciences. While most HR personnel will likely not be scientists, they will need to be able to understand the language of these disciplines and collaborate with scientists in order to assess and implement some of the new tools. A manager may not know how to design Monte Carlo simulations to optimise workflow, but he must be able to speak the language of mathematicians to understand the theory behind suggested methods.

7. LEADERSHIP: GIVING VOICE TO THE COMMONS

The world of amplified individuals calls for a different type of leader—not ones who dictate and make pronouncements, and not necessarily those with the most charisma and unitary vision. Rather than assuming absolute authority, effective leaders in amplified organisations must work to understand the values and opinions of their employees to enable a productive dialogue about what the group embodies, what it stands for, and, thus, how it should act.

Good leaders will increasingly need to see themselves as “speakers for the commons”—those who are able to give voice to what the commons members, including non-employees, want, and to provide the infrastructure and resources for accomplishing this. It doesn’t mean the end of vision; the vision of amplified organisations is not enforced from the top but emerges in dialogue and conversations from the bottom up, dependent upon cooperation and support of constituents.

Institute for the Future www.iftf.org

Written by Alex Wong

Assigning tasks or responsibilities by way of a third party is known as Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). Virtual assistance is now the most popular Business Process Outsourcing there is.

A high level of employment is the reality of a number of countries in more recent times. To compound the issue, research has shown the due to the fact that there has been a great improvement with respect to both technology and health care, that more babies are surviving, people are remaining healthier and living much longer. As such, demands have been increased and it has resulted on a strain on the existing resources of the world’s population.

Unemployment has a lot to do with the fact that the government of their country has to be dealing with limited resources. This limited resources, for the most part, has been caused by the necessary act of them having to cut back on capital expenditure and now leaning more towards revenue expenditure.

The bureaucracy of a number of labour legislations have been rendering it much more difficult for employers to find qualified people to employ at a cost that they can afford to pay them at. As such, a number of companies are opting to use assistant service and/or administrative services that are being run via the computer. Many countries, including first world as well as third world, are going towards internet-based jobs, and as such, there are many assistant service, administrative services as well as business assistants available via the internet.

The great thing about the internet is that it eliminates all boundaries. What this means therefore, is that wherever you live, you can both employ and be employed by persons anywhere in the world. You can receive great service via this means, and it has even been said that there are many persons who work in the virtual assistant service and the administrative services as business assistants are sometimes far more industrious than those person who are sitting in an office.

Most virtual assistants work on their own initiative, and as such, you will not need to spend a lot to time supervising them. In addition, to let a permanent staff member go who is employed in your office is not an easy thing to do, even if they are not performing. This is due to the strict labour laws that exist. This is yet another reason why more and more persons are opting to hire assistant service, and administrative services online. Many employers have concluded that hiring virtual assistants is the way to go if they want to save both time as well as money.

FooBoo has a virtual Assistance service for Recruitment and Staffing companies called RVSA (Recruitment Virtual Support Agents)

Visit: FooBoo RVSA

Source: Business Blogs NZ

By Martin Conboy, President – Australian BPO Association

The ‘invisible hand of the market’ is the term economists use to describe the self-regulating nature of the marketplace. The invisible hand concept was created to explain the conjunction of the forces of self-interest, competition, and supply and demand. There is always the temptation for governments to intercede with protectionist policies, but the prevailing wisdom is that the allocation of resources should be left to the markets to decide.

It’s clear that we are at an inflexion point in our society and yes it’s true that as we change from a manufacturing to a services economy, there will be real people causalities. After all it’s not very easy to turn from being a low skilled factory worker (demand declining), to a health worker i.e. a nurse (demand accelerating) overnight. It was exactly the same when we transitioned society in the 19th century when everything was being made by hand to most things being made in factories, as a result of the industrial Revolution.

There was massive social dislocation, starting in the later part of the 18th century. There began a transition, Great Britain’s previously manual labour and draft-animal–based economy moved towards machine-based manufacturing. It started with the mechanisation of the textile industries, the development of iron-making techniques and the increased use of refined coal. Trade expansion was enabled by the introduction of improved roads, canals, and railways.

The Industrial Revolution was a period in time where major changes in farming, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a deep effect on the socioeconomic and traditional way of life. It began in the UK, and then subsequently spread throughout Europe, North America, and eventually the world.

The Industrial Revolution marks a major turning point in human history; almost every aspect of daily life was affected in some way.

So fast forward to today; the roads, canals and railroads of yesteryear have become the information super highway along with incredible technological developments and the totally interconnected social media instant world of today.

According to a white paper by IBM – ‘A new way of working’, Work is no longer bounded by co-worker proximity or time zone. It also involves a much broader set of ‘workers’ – not just employees, suppliers and partners, but customers, freelancers and an increasingly capable network of smart devices and interconnected systems, all tied together by business processes that span organisations, time and distance.

Society adjusted after the industrial revolution (eventually) and people will adjust now (eventually). The 20th century’s factory worker has adjusted to become today’s online eBay merchant or they have re-skilled to become a knowledge worker and sell their skills via platforms like Guru.com.

From a historical perspective, we are in the middle of another structural shift. Look what’s happening with unemployment; first world companies do not need the same number of workers because of globalisation and the Internet. Australia has a 5% unemployment rate, which is considered to be full employment, whereas the US has an unemployment rate of 9.1%. The US has a skills / worker mismatch. The lower people are on the education curve and their relative socio economic status the more likely they are to be unemployed. Thus we see African American and Hispanics with an employment rate of double the national average.

Companies are looking for skills that reflect the new types of work spawned out of the age of Infotronics (the merging of information and electronics) Look at the names of the companies that now dominate the most powerful corporations on earth, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, the skills that these types of companies need are in short supply. Graduates are not belting headlong into the professions any more, they are looking for the new and exciting and well paid jobs in the new economy and they want to work on their terms.
People who do not have the required skills are marginalised and thus we have a mismatch in the demand for and the supply of skilled labour.

Throw in the availability of highly skilled and available knowledge workers from Asia who can telecommute via the Internet and it’s easy to understand that society has got some serious thinking to do. Adding to the conundrum is that productivity from robots and Asian workers out strips US workers ability to produce.

As they say ‘there but for the grace of God go I’, and if Australia did not have the mining industry to fall back on we would have an unemployment rate similar to the US.

Transfer of knowledge

During the industrial revolution knowledge of modernisation was spread by several means. Workers who were trained and had the knowledge might move to another employer or might be poached. A common method to spread the word was conducting study tours, gathering information where one could. During the whole of the Industrial Revolution and for the century before, all European countries and America engaged in study-touring; some nations, like Sweden and France, even trained civil servants or technicians to undertake it as a matter of state policy.

In other countries, notably Britain and America, this practice was carried out by individual manufacturers anxious to improve their own methods. Study tours were common then, as they are now. So history is repeating itself, call centre agents and knowledge workers with skills are being poached and this feeds into the 60% staff turnover in BPO vendors. Asian trade delegations are coming down to Australia for study tours and major corporations are sending their executives into the new markets as evangelists of BPO. The new ground is not the serving of first world markets but the internal markets in China and India.

Australia’s strength is our knowledge of contact centres and customer service and we are blessed to be in such close proximity to the fast growing Asian markets and by and large, uncoupled from the tarnished and under performing markets of the US and Europe. The Asian markets have plenty of highly educated and highly motivated knowledge workers but lack the managerial and creative know how. That of course will change very quickly, the Asian markets have had ten years to develop their skills and get their house in order. There are 3 billion people to the north of Australia and within this enormous group is a huge middle class, who are hungry for all of the goods and services that one would expect, are characteristic of the demands of the middle class.

Australia’s opportunity is to sell its knowledge of innovation and expertise as China and India start to refocus on their own internal markets.

By Sara Horowitz

Welcome to the Gig Life. The boom in independent work is changing the way we think about jobs and careers. Does Washington get it?

It’s been called the Gig Economy, Freelance Nation, the Rise of the Creative Class, and the e-conomy, with the “e” standing for electronic, entrepreneurial, or perhaps eclectic. Everywhere we look, we can see the U.S. workforce undergoing a massive change. No longer do we work at the same company for 25 years, waiting for the gold watch, expecting the benefits and security that come with full-time employment. We’re no longer simply lawyers, or photographers, or writers. Instead, we’re part-time lawyers-cum- amateur photographers who write on the side.

Today, careers consist of piecing together various types of work, juggling multiple clients, learning to be marketing and accounting experts, and creating offices in bedrooms/coffee shops/co-working spaces.

Independent workers abound. We call them freelancers, contractors, sole proprietors, consultants, temps, and the self-employed.

And, perhaps most surprisingly, many of them love it.

This transition is nothing less than a revolution. We haven’t seen a shift in the workforce this significant in almost 100 years when we transitioned from an agricultural to an industrial economy. Now, employees are leaving the traditional workplace and opting to piece together a professional life on their own.

As of 2005, one-third of our workforce participated in this “freelance economy.” Data show that number has only increased over the past six years. Entrepreneurial activity in 2009 was at its highest level in 14 years, online freelance job postings skyrocketed in 2010, and companies are increasingly outsourcing work. While the economy has unwillingly pushed some people into independent work, many have chosen it because of greater flexibility that lets them skip the dreary office environment and focus on more personally fulfilling projects.

Over the coming weeks, I will be writing about this profound shift and the three major trends that are central to it. These trends will have an enormous impact on our economy and our society:

1. 1) We don’t actually know the true composition of the new workforce. After 2005, the government stopped counting independent workers in a meaningful and accurate way. Studies have shown that the independent workforce has grown and changed significantly since then, but the government hasn’t substantiated those results with a new, official count. Washington can’t fix what it can’t count. Since policies and budget decisions are based on data, freelancers are not being taken into account as a viable, critical component of the U.S. workforce. We’re not acknowledging their prevalence and economic contributions, let alone addressing the myriad challenges they face.
2. 2) Jobs no longer provide the protections and security that workers used to expect. The basics ­ such as health insurance, protection from unpaid wages, a retirement plan, and unemployment insurance ­ are out of reach for one-third of working Americans. Independent workers are forced to seek them elsewhere, and if they can’t find or afford them, then they go without. Our current support system is based on a traditional employment model, where one worker must be tethered to one employer to receive those benefits. Given that fewer and fewer of us are working this way, it’s time to build a new support system that allows for the flexible and mobile way that people are working.
3. 3) This new, changing workforce needs to build economic security in profoundly new ways. For the new workforce, the New Deal is irrelevant. When it was passed in the 1930s, the New Deal provided workers with important protections and benefits ­ but those securities were built for a traditional employer-employee relationship. The New Deal has not evolved to include independent workers: no unemployment during lean times; no protections from age, race, and gender discrimination; no enforcement from the Department of Labor when employers don’t pay; and the list goes on.

The solution will rest with our ability to form networks for exchange and to create political power. I call this “new mutualism.” You will be reading more about this idea in subsequent articles from me next week, as I believe that new mutualism will be at the core of the new social support system that we need to build for the new workforce.

Source: The Atlantic

By Martin Conboy, President – Australian BPO Association

Give me a home among the gum trees
With lots of plum trees
A sheep or two, a k-kangaroo
A clothesline out the back
Verandah out the front
And an old rocking chair. – Wally Johnson and Bob Brown (1975)

Businesses must change their attitudes about people working from home and use the Internet to connect employees through “telework”, the Minister for Broadband and Communications Stephen Conroy said.

According to a story in the Fairfax media today, Australia is lagging behind other developed countries in harnessing the Internet for business and needs to catch up, the federal government says.

“In Australia the number of people with an arrangement with their employer to work from home has been low by international standards,” Senator Conroy said.

Working from home is a lifestyle choice and offers high achievers an opportunity to either run a Small Office Home Office (SOHO) or work as a full-time or part-time contractor with out having the hassle of the daily commute.

It makes sense as it offers a nice alternative to companies that cannot get staff, but by teleworking they can access talent pools in outer suburban, rural and regional Australia. It’s an attractive option for enterprises looking to outsource but with objections or fears around off shoring.

With concerns rising about offshore outsourcing in terms of quality and security, more companies are becoming very interested in the cost-saving benefits of using agents who can work from their homes.

In the past, a variety of barriers have prevented people from getting into the home-based call centre industry. Now thanks to the proliferation and affordability of current technology [cell phones, e-mail, internet, etc] has made it possible for work at home opportunities to exist and succeed. There are some issues around OH&S and insurance but these can be easily managed.

Australia is lagging behind other developed countries in harnessing the Internet for business and needs to catch up, the minister says.

Businesses must change their attitudes about people working from home and use the Internet to connect employees through “telework”, the Minister for Broadband and Communications Stephen Conroy said.

“In Australia the number of people with an arrangement with their employer to work from home has been low by international standards,” Senator Conroy said at a Telework Forum in Sydney today.

“According to the ABS, just 6 per cent of employers from Australia have reported having any kind of telework arrangement with their employer.

“In the US, 10 per cent of US employees telework at least one day a month and eight European Union countries reported that more than 10 per cent of workers [were] involved in telework a quarter of the time or more and that was in 2005.”

Senator Conroy continued his sell of the National Broadband Network (NBN), promising the high speed connections would “potentially revolutionise” business.

By connecting workers from home, employers could tap into the skills of workers from across the country, improve work-life balance and potentially reduce absenteeism, he said.
“The delivery of reliable high speed broadband to every Australian premise will potentially revolutionise how we will work.

“It promises to transform who is able to work, when you can work, where you can work and how you can work.”
The comments follow the launch of a Deloitte Access Economics report that the Internet made a direct contribution to the Australian economy of $50 billion, which is almost on par with that of the retail sector or Australia’s iron ore exports.