Work-related blogs mentioned in the news

Web Access Limits: Not Suitable for Work? - David McCann, CFO Magazine, 1 June 2010.

Employing adults with autism: Don't write them off - Louise Tickle, The Guardian, 17 October 2009.

Bloggers are the authors of their own destiny - Huma Qureshi, The Guardian: Work, August 15, 2009.

Top 10 … career-related websites - Johanna Leggatt, The Guardian: Work and Careers, June 11, 2008.

Employers bring blogs in from the dark - Marley Obi, The Scotsman, July 27, 2007.

Clever blogs - Hannah Frankel, The Times Educational Supplement, February 2, 2007.

Blogging and work - WorkSmart (TUC), January, 2007.

Bloggers' guide to your dream job - Nicole Mowbray, Cosmopolitan, December, 2006, pp. 132-137.

The Blogs: a story of internet folk - David Derbyshire, The Daily Telegraph, July 22, 20o6, pp. 10-11.

Best of the blogs - David Stonehouse, The Age, June 15, 2006.

Simply the best - David Stonehouse, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 29, 2006.

This is what I did at work today... - Nic Paton, The Mail on Sunday: Financial Mail, January 2006, p.25.

Blogging is more than a fast track to joblessness - Patricia Kitchen, Newsday: Business, November 5, 2005.

Web Watch - The Times, October 25, 2005.

Blabbing on blogs - Margarita Bauza, Detroit Free Press, August 8, 2005.

Best of the Web: The Blogs That Matter - Forbes.com, August 2005.

Guest blogger at:

What did you do at work today? - Bloggapedia, May 15, 2006.

Other flattering mentions:

Workblogging Blog: A Treasure Trove of Anonymous Blogs - Heather Green, Business Week Online: Blogspotting, May 26, 2006.

Summer Intern + Blog = Unemployment? - Melissa McNamara, CBS News: Blogophile, May 31, 2006.

Learn About Different Careers Through Work-Related Blogs - Workers Work, June 2, 2006.

Mentioned in:

The Rough Guide to Blogging (Jonathan Yang, Rough Guides)

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Arbeit macht frei

I visited the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau on Wednesday. Above the entrance (see photograph) you'll see the words "arbeit macht fret" - or in English, work shall set you free. This was obviously a guise to cover the gruesome nature of the camps.

I couldn't possible imagine the horror of being sent there as part of a death sentence, but I did try and imagine what it may have been like to work there as an employee. (Apparently, as many as 7,000 people were employed there at the camp's peak). What I mean by this is that work can be an enormous distraction from what is going on around us. After a while it may have been possible to become de-sensitised (to a point) to what the camp was really about.

Gone to Poland

I've really let my blog go in the last few weeks, but hey, it's Christmas! I've done the family thing and now it's time for my first ever winter holiday - Krakow, Poland. I won't be blogging again for another week so if anyone actually looks at my blog before the New Year then I'd like to wish you all the best for the coming year. Cheers!

Workplace bullshit

I recently blogged about the use of bullshit as a means to mask in a way what most businesses are all about - profit. See previous posting for more details. Well, I came across a similar book the other day called Bullshit Bingo by Graham Edmonds, except the emphasis on workplace bullshit is slightly different.

It should come as no surprise to learn that the book is more about playing a workplace game than challenging the underlying meaning of sayings or words such as "the bottom line", "core business", "downsize", "value-added", "go the extra mile" and "results-driven". Apparently, you are expected to copy a grid with about 60 of such words and when you have heard six of the words in the given context, i.e. at meetings, a conference, or a training event, you shout BINGO! I think it's worth a look if you are surrounded by bullshitters where you work or just want to know what some of the less obvious words or phrases really mean. A synopsis of the book follows for anyone who's interested.

Bullshit is all around us, everywhere we go - but nowhere as much as the office. Fortunately we've had our bullshit detectors scouring offices from around the world for the best bullshit words and phrases and now, with the help of this invaluable guide, you can identify that bullshit in your own workplace and put it to use - by playing Bullshit Bingo! With special sections for types of activities like conferences or advertising, and for departments such as Finance and HR, this book includes a glossary of over 500 bullshit words and phrases, plus vital Bullshit Bingo game cards to use in meetings. And to help you understand what's going on in your company the book also includes sections on what job adverts really mean, how to recognise the company bullshitter and help in understanding the characters and managers in your office.

Podcast about blogging and "podslurping"

Go Digital, a weekly BBC World Service programme that looks at how technology is changing our lives, has a podcast available called - Your digital world. This week's programme speaks to the founder of a French blog site Agoravox ("features stories from hundreds of citizen reporters who efficiently provide local news and analyse events with clever and original angles"), reviews new and exciting computer interfaces and investigates "podslurping" - using mobile gadgets to steal company secrets.

A second article that caught my eye towards the end of last week is a follow up to the controversy over Wikipedia that I mentioned in a previous posting. The article Wikipedia survives research test (BBC News: Technology) suggests the free online resource is about as accurate on science as the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Rapid increase in use of Blogs and RSS in last 12 months

According to a report by Forrester, "social computing" (blogs and RSS as far as I'm concerned) grew dramatically between August 2004 and July 2005.

You can access the report here - Social Computing Takes A Step Forward (Charlene Li and others), but at $249.00 for two pages I doubt whether they'll sell many. The executive summary says quite a bit and is reproduced below:

Between August 2004 and July 2005, social computing tools like blogs and Really Simple Syndication (RSS) grew dramatically across the board. Consumers regularly use blogs twice as much as they did last year, with 10% now reading them at least once a week. RSS feeds are more popular today than blogs were in 2004. Web sites and media feeds are gaining more attention, especially among youth, and marketers should take notice.

Work blog research

Sorry for the temporary break in postings. My teaching for the semester finished the other week so I've been visiting friends and family south of the border.

I've not much to comment on except that I became aware the other day of another person who is researching work-related blogs. You can visit the research site here and take part in her questionnaire if you blog about your job.

Working long hours: The new organizational status symbol?

According to the article Being busy 'new badge of honour' (Alexandra Frean, The Times), working long hours, once regarded as the miserable but unavoidable fate of the lower classes, has been elevated into a badge of honour among the well-off. It goes on to state that today’s privileged classes are more likely to boast about being kept in the office until late at night. What is more, there is mounting evidence to indicate that people feel busier now than people of 40 years ago. Sounds like the "lunch is for wimps" and "macho management" of the 1980s has spread upwards to me.

For more details about the study mentioned in this article consider this link to the Institute for Social and Economic Research. From there you can also access the actual discussion paper entitled "Busyness as the badge of honour for the new superordinate working class" by
Jonathan Gershuny.

Is diversity training more harmful than good?

In Ticking all the boxes Munira Mirza (BBC News: Magazine) considers whether sending workers on race awareness courses inflame workplace tensions that never used to exist.

During the article a particular "race awareness" training course is outlined and described. More specifically, the aim is to give "nice blue-eyed white folks the opportunity to find out how it feels to be something other than white". Ultimately, the theory is that if people are careful about what they say, workplace relations will be more relaxed and productive.

Whilst later admitting that this particular course may not be representative of all race awareness training courses, Mirza goes onto consider what diversity training actually delivers. Despite any long-term data to gauge the success of such training programmes, it would appear that problems arise when workers feel under pressure to change their views in such a short period of time - one problematic outcome is that workers then go onto turn the anger on themselves because of their own prejudices.

I can't help feeling that a problem with diversity training is very much like any kind of brief training for big issues, i.e. see previous posting on training front-line staff to deal with abusive and often violent customers. In effect, it may just be that the anger comes from designing training courses that make out that the problem is owned by the individual (in this case potentially racist views) when in reality racist views, or an kind of prejudice, is the result of very long periods of socialisation, sometimes harking back to childhood. In other words, one-day training courses may be fine for learning skills such as how to use the Internet more effectively, etc. but expecting people to change habits they may not even be aware requires more than a quick course courtesy of their employer.

The contradictions of work

Today's style of blog is a first for me. I was driving past a billboard just before the M9/M8 interchange on the outskirts of Edinburgh when I came across an advertisement making clear reference to work, the many looming office Christmas parties and obviously alcohol.

If you can't see the small writing it says, "enjoy the contradiction", i.e. suggesting work is not a party, but for a few hours it could be if you consume enough alcohol.

The message of the advertisement can quite clearly be interpreted in several ways, but for someone who tries to teach about the nature of work, i.e. often tedious, contradictory and alienating (not necessarily in that order!) it could quite possibly become a teaching aid. However, what does the advertisement mean to you?

Information contention: The case of Wikipedia

It may seem like a big digression to blog about an on-line enyclopedia, but as far as I'm concerned Wikipedia is a wiki, and like blogs and podcasting, a relatively new, emerging and arguably exciting form of web communication technology. It would seem that the furore started with an article in USA Today about ten days ago. Here, John Seigenthaler, a former assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960's, accused Wikipedia (and the anonymous contributor) of writing a false, malicious biography about him.

This is not the first time in recent weeks that Wikipedia has been mentioned in the popular press - i.e. see previous post on whether we should trust Wikipedia; however, due to the above incident alone, it seems that Wikipedia has banned anonymous contributors to prevent libel - (Bobbie Johnson, The Guardian). In the actual article, two views are explored: the first is that Wikipedia (probably like all new forms of media such as blogging) should taken with a "pinch of salt" or been seen as "work in progress." The second approach seems to imply that "the wisdom of the many is more accurate than the wisdom of the few". Again, likening the issue to blogs more than anything else, i.e we should consider the aggregate output and not worry too much about specific and often isolated examples. After all, this is often the view taken by large corporations who misdemeanour from time to time.

Acting as further comment on the Wikipedia incident, one of The Guardian's leaders is dedicated to the very issue. In In praise of ... the Wikipedia it is suggested that Wikipedia is a recipe for disaster. However, in reality, for the most part, it works remarkably well and reflects remarkable goodwill on behalf of the contributors in a world supposedly full of cynics. The leader goes onto argue that Wikipedia is in effect an experiment that on the whole works. The clincher for me, however, is to suggest that information should not be seen as sacrosanct. In other words, whilst some information is clearly wrong and needs to be corrected, the rest should be open to contention. New forms of web communication technology are arguably at the fore front of this contention.

Update: false and malicous biography allegedly written by a "joker".

To what extent are corporations run on Bullshit?

Whilst browsing the university bookshop I spotted an interesting book in the window - The Dictionary of Bullshit: Self-defence for English Speakers By Nick Webb (2005, Robson Books Ltd). Of particular note is an introductory chapter called "A theory of bullshit" and the first proper chapter entitled "Corporate bullshit: Let me share this with you".

Only got it a few hours ago and just thought it would be a good blog entry, even if the idea of the book isn't that new. The introductory chapter distinguishes between bullshit with a small "b" - amusing and relatively harmless. To bullshit with a capital "B" - describes words and phrases informed by a world view which may not be understood by the user. If you don't know where this is heading consider the following quote from Webb's book:

"Capital 'B' Bullshit is weapons grade. It is ingrained so deeply that it affects the speaker's ability to think clearly. That lack of focus is part of the seduction; we don't always want to be able to tell ourselves with unforgiving claritywhat we're doing. Much Bullshit diffuses personal responsibility. Over the years its moral content has leaked away like air from a slow puncture."

Now for some examples of corporate bullshit. After reading them imagine what working life would be like with all the bullshit stripped away. I can't imagine how corporations would survive!

Core values (n./jargon) This is flattering, for it presupposes that the corporation has values.

Get with the program (v./threat) Do what you are told.

Knowledge management (np.) Fancy filing, lots of meetings

MBA (acronym) Master of Business Administration. Otherwise known as More Bullshit from America.

On-the-job training (np.) Throw them in and see if they drown

Proactive (n.) So much more than just doing something...

Public Relations/PR (np.) Satan was not so bad; he just suffered from a bad press. Corporations are similar. It's easier to fix perceptions of the problem than the problem itself.

Shed labour (v.) Fire lots of people. The expression has the virtue of sounding nonestly heartless.

Sub-optimal (n./jargon) Pretty crap really

Word hard, play hard (macho cliche) Heard on the lips of executives who reckon they droit de seigneur over the sexier junior staff. Oddly, most of them don't work hard.

Workers want help to 'get on' not 'get even', says new trade union report

A new report courtesy of the Fabian Society and written by David Coats - associate director of the Work Foundation - suggests the 'fighting back' strategy and rhetoric adopted by left-wing trade union leaders risks making the unions irrelevant and endangering the link between the Labour Party and a shrinking trade union movement.

Despite union membership declining by half since 1979, Coats sets out how a new strategy that could reverse decline. He claims that two-thirds of workers want a collective voice in the workplace but many potential members are put off by "union rhetoric of struggle, strikes and strife which has little appeal to employees who care more about 'getting on' than 'getting even'". A reference to the relatively recent election of union leaders who he believes have based their election strategies on a "crude adversarialism". He goes onto say that "unions are stuck in the past, fighting battles in a class war that is of little relevance to most people today" and fails to address the workplace issues which matter to younger workers and women in particular.

There are four main parts to Coats's suggested strategy for decline:

- unions must appeal appeal to both the top and bottom of our new 'hourglass economy'

- unions must go through a painful exercise of political reinvention in response to social and economic change

- unions must not merge to avert decline

- unions must abandon the pattern of making unrealistic demands from the Government

I can see where the man is coming from, but trade union membership is far more likely to rise again when both governments and employers see benefits from recognising trade unions. Without employers recommending membership and accepting recognition, unions will continue to fight on two conflicting fronts - trying to recruit members, but at the same time trying to appeal to employers. Neither seem likely in the near future. See 'Unions face bleak future without reform' warns former TUC economics chief (Fabian Society) for more details.

Lack of self-awareness and business failure

I found a particularly good article the other day that considers whether workers have the capacity to accurately evaluate their ability to do their own jobs. The article - Ignorance is bliss (Chip Heath, David Dunning and Jerry M Suls, The Guardian) - suggests people, on average, tend to believe themselves to be above average - a view that violates the simple tenets of mathematics.

For instance, in a survey of nearly a million high school seniors, 70 per cent said they had "above average" leadership skills; only 2 per cent felt they were "below average". On their ability to get along with others, almost all rated themselves as at least average - with 60 per cent rating themselves in the top 10 per cent and 25 per cent rating themselves in the top per cent.

One of the reason behind a widely held view of being better than in reality is that people are often motivated to reach flattering conclusions about themselves and their place in the world. They mould, manage and massage the feedback the world provides so they can construe themselves as lovable and capable people. It is also firmly argued that when one looks at self-assessment in the workplace, from the office cubicle to the boardroom, it would seem that people tend to hold overly inflated self-views that are modestly related to actual performance.

It's quite a long article and it goes onto discuss ways in which workers can be more effectively assessed (i.e. 360 degree appraisals, 3rd party assessments, etc. instead of self-assessment). However, it is only near the end where the potential harm in having an organizational lead by self-unaware employees is explored. It would seem that "egocentric neglect" comes to a head when entrepreneurs feel they have the skills to succeed in a situation when most would fail. I'd be as much concerned about what factors allow people to make such flattering conclusions about themselves.

Decreasing morale in the public sector

A survey by Mori and The Work Foundation has shown a surprising rise in "unhappiness" in the public sector since February. A shift not mirrored in the private sector. The main overall finding suggests public sector workers are nearly three times as likely to be critics of the services they provide as private sector workers.

More specifically, one in six (17 per cent) of public sector workers say they would be critical of the services they provide, up from ten per cent in February. There has also been a decrease in dissatisfaction with senior managers in both sectors (10 per cent), although private sector managers continue to get better overall ratings.

It is believed the rise in unhappiness can be attributed to a decrease in trust of senior management and a breach of the implicit part of the employment relationship over pension arrangements. In other words, it would appear that senior managers are having problems in managing the psychological contracts held by public sector employees. See Growing dissatisfaction amongst public sector workers for more details and links to further technical data.

Call centre work - "like a never ending interview"

A lot has been said about call centres re-locating to India even though the most recent government statistics show that there are now around 375,000 such jobs in the UK. Clearly, call centre jobs are being created as quickly as they are disappearing, for the time being anyway. Therefore it's timely to draw attention to an article about the working lives of a sizeable core of workers in an article entitled Battery operated by Vicky Frost of The Guardian. It's also an article that may be of interest to the growing number of call centre bloggers.

The main aim of the article appears to be in suggesting that despite widespread renaming of call centres as "contact centres", they remain tough places to work. The main feature of call centre work continues to be low pay, strict time keeping, intense monitoring of employees, stressful work, low-trust from management, boring and repitive work, strict target call times, high labour turnover and demoralised staff. It appears to be no coincidence that call centre styles of employment and work organziation took off at a time when organized labour was on the run from hostile governments and intense lobbying from business affiliations. In effect, despite a wide acceptance that call centre work is generally demeaning and some evidence of union activity in the call centre sector, there appears little collective will in the direction of employers to put the stops on a clear example of a viscous circle. Overall, the call centre sector is an obvious example of what is often termed as the "race to the bottom-line" approach to managing the employment relationship.

What caught my eye from the article is a part of being monitored so intensely is that the pressure to perform and remain appealing to the employer is constant - the analogy given is of a never ending job interview. People who who have the opportunity to earn large amounts of money or command a high degree of job autonomy may accept such an approach, but is it really fair to expect extraordinary levels of output and such low levels of personal space for a pittance of a wage? Well, British call centre employers clearly appear to think that it is reasonable and worringly it's increasingly being seen as the norm.

Traditional media and blogosphere on collision course?

Two interesting blog-related articles appeared over the last week, courtesy of BBC News. The first - Cut and paste (Alan Connor) - looks at how some journalists are accused of passing blog material off as their own, or in some cases using the work of bloggers without their permission. Incidentally, the articles refers to the Mail on Sunday publishing the work of Policeman's Blog - see actual article or previous entry of mine.

The second article - Blogs reflect power of the pen (Bill Thompson) - looks at the continuing growth of blogging and how such growth may be changing the way journalists think about their work. The author argues that engaging with new media is a sensible option. What I found particularly appealing about the article is the idea that journalists may find it increasingly difficult to write about something and then consign any response to the letter page or an occasional "have your say" programme. To me it suggests that the blogosphere is increasingly rivaling all traditional forms of communication, particularly communications that come from corporations that may have a hidden agenda. And that includes employers! However, we shouldn't forget that the blogosphere (see first article) is also capable of producing the news in the first place.

Watch your arse at the office Xmas party!

According to a rather tongue-in-cheek (no extra pun intended!) article in Personnel Today this week, photocopier manufacturers are anticipating a 25 per cent rise in call outs over the festive period because of workers abusing the machines. The reason for an increase in call-outs is apparently due to staff sitting on photocopiers to make pictures of their bottoms!

Quotes from David Smith, marketing director at Canon UK, said: "People obviously let their hair down at Christmas time and the photocopier tends to get a bit of extra-curricular activity." "I had to repair a machine with a photocopy of a man's groin jammed in it," said Canon technician Steven Mannion. "The manager suggested an office identity parade to see who Canon could charge for the call-out."

It's a short article, but more details can be found at Canon looks after bottom line with reinforced copiers (Mike Berry).

Sacking workers Irish Ferries style

To get an idea of how some Irish Ferries' employees have been treated by their employer in recent times read the follow excerpt from All at sea by Steve Morris of The Guardian:

The operation was organised with military precision. As the two ships neared port, groups of men quietly slipped into the vessels' bathrooms and swapped their civilian clothes for dark uniforms and padded jackets. Back out on deck, they took up their pre-arranged positions. It was coolly announced over the Tannoys that these men in dark uniforms would henceforth be in charge of security on the vessels.

Sound quite sinister? Read on...

Believing the ships under attack, some crew members raced for cover; one group of officers sealed themselves into a secure engine control room. The officers were still there last night, a week on, refusing to budge. Both ships have now effectively been taken hostage by their crews.

And some more...

The raid, it turned out, was no act of modern piracy; neither was it a terrorist attack. In was, in fact, a hijack of a very different nature, the latest, extraordinary, chapter in a bitter industrial dispute on the Irish Sea.

According to the article, what really happened is that Irish Ferries (runs ships between Britain and Ireland) wants rid of 543 of its workers. It wants to replace them with cheaper workers, mainly from eastern Europe, and for pretty obvious reasons, the existing workers, and those concerned with the import of cheap labour from overseas, do not think it is such a great idea. The security guards were smuggled on board the ships to make sure that the handover to the new, cheaper crew went smoothly.

The reason behind the dispute, if we are to believe Irish Ferries' chief executive, Eamonn Rothwell, is summarised in the following quote: "It's about the right of freight and passenger customers - and the Irish tourist industry - to low-fare carriers on the Irish Sea." The main question to come from this is: are customer "rights" more important than worker's rights? However, who exactly is defining customer rights? The customer or the corporation? I sense it's the latter.

Honeywell launches career blog initiative

Apparently a select number of employees at Honeywell are being allowed to blog about their work related experiences. According to their blog site - Honeywell Careers - the purpose of the new venture is summarised below:

"Honeywell's career site blog is a great way to gain a deeper level of understanding to the culture, people, work and environment of Honeywell.

As we begin this new endeavor, we'd like you to meet three of our current Pathways Leadership Development Program participants."

It's unclear as of yet whether the scheme is to expanded beyond three employees - human resources, marketing, and, intergrated supply chain - currently allowed/encouraged to blog about their life and times with Honeywell. It remains, however, to be seen how Honeywell, or any other business using such blogs, are to measure the success (or failure) of their ventures. Thanks to Blogspotting at Business Week for the link.

Some more work-related blogs I'd like to add to my site (all teachers): 180 days as a teacher, Iranian teacher XP, Little Miss Teacher, Mean teacher, Right on the left coast: Views from a conservative teacher, Teaching with technology, Technology in teaching, To be a teacher, WulfTheTeacher.