New research paper on work-related blogs

It's literally just off the press.

The title is: Unmediated workplace images from the Internet: An investigation of work blogging

A summary of the paper is:

The paper addresses the deficit in our understandings of the growing phenomenon of work blogging.

Work blogging is investigated in the context of developing Internet communication technologies, almost blanket use of the Internet by the youngest cohort of workers, and changing Internet application.

The approach involves content analysis of postings taken from a sample of 744 work-related blogs and qualitative questionnaire data from 204 work bloggers.

The findings support the many views taken of work blogging put forward by media reporters and the scatterings of blog-related research currently available.

The findings also explore self-reports of work bloggers, which conflict to an extent with how work-related blogs are viewed by other interested parties.

The paper dwells on the future of work with a call for wider research to investigate whether rapidly developing and easy to apply Internet communication technologies can augment human powers of organization and integration.

You can download it here.

My presentation slides can be found here.

Some work-related blog statistics

Two years ago I sent out a questionnaire to about 500 people who blogged about their work.

I got back just over 200.

For a number of reasons I've sat on the data for nearly 18 months.

So, for those who may find it interesting to know why some people have chosen work as the theme of their blog, what motivated them to start blogging about work, what motivates them to continue blogging about work, and, who tends to be the audience for work-related blogs, here goes...

Figure one: Why do you blog specifically about work?



Figure two: What motivated you to start blogging?



Figure three: What motivates you to continue blogging about your work?



Figure four: Who reads your blog?

I should have a full working paper that discusses these findings available some time next week.

It discusses work blogging as a single phenomenon and then against a wider trend in Internet application.

Migrant work in the UK

Most people who work in the UK today can take comfort in being the main benefactors of labour movement struggles over the past century or so.

However, even if most of us are protected by laws, trade unions or just plain and simple custom and practice, spare a thought for the latest wave of migrant workers who rarely do.

An article by BBC News (England) today comments on the plight of migrant labour employed by the farming/food processing industries.

An excerpt from the article includes the words of a migrant labourer:

"I was known by a number and not my name, as we all were...

We had to put a sticker with our number on all the trays we packed and that is what the supervisors would call us ... I was known as 137...

We weren't allowed to talk to each other either. Eating was also a problem, there was no refrigerator and we only had one or two toilets for 100 workers."

The words of one person I accept. Similar to many reports from call centres, no doubt. However, is it a sign of a civil society where everyone who comes to be there is entitled to the same basic rights?

For more details see Migrant worker calls for reform by Heather Hinchley.

Where does company loyalty end/begin?

According to an article on the BBC News (Business) Website, staff who work for The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) have been told that they must have their primary bank account with the firm or face disciplinary action.

Although the policy is believed to be in line with industry norms, AMICUS union points out that as many as 14,000 current staff may currently fall short of this standard.

AMICUS are clearly quite unhappy how RBS have dealt with the matter, as one official remarked:

"If you work for Tesco you won't be disciplined for buying your groceries from Sainsbury's."

It's hard to say if this is a petty request or a fundamental breach of what should be reasonably expected of an employee.

See Account warning for bank workers for more details.

I gonna get myself connected...

By being a relatively consistent feature of the blogosphere for nearly two years (and perhaps just by having an email account) seems to have made me the target for lots of unsolicited stuff.

Most this is off the mark (especially the Viagra ads.), but from time-to-time, something useful appears in my inbox.

The other day I got such an email that claims to be promoting, "the first regional and global e-research network, expert database and alumni network in academia".

By vising Academici I can have access to e-groups, blogs, forums, announcements of events, etc.

Some of this, as it seems, comes at a price.

I'm sure most professional groups have something like this going on, but this is the first I've seen that cuts across the many academic dimensions of a sprawling profession.

I might just have a look it, as it might offer some insights into the future of organized workers.

Work-related blogs as creative resistance

Work-related blogs get quite a bit of attention in the popular media and last year saw three (that I know of) turned in to books.

Last week while Googling around for any further reports or mention of "work-related blogs", "employee blogs", "job blogs", "workblogging", etc. I came across an interesting piece of work on this very matter by Abigail Schoneboom.

The working paper is called Diary of a Working Boy: Creative Resistance Among Anonymous Workbloggers and can be downloaded here.

It's particularly ironic for myself as I'm just about in the final stages of finishing my second working paper (really a better version of the first!) on work-related blogs, for a conference in Amsterdam next month - a paper that I will put on-line after I've presented it.

A quick summary of the study follows:

...the study aims to understand the intersection between workblogging, creative writing, and social change, capturing the appeal of humdrum office jobs to aspiring writers and activists who pursue their emancipation clandestinely within the organisation.

I particularly like a further line from the abstract:

In an era where employers increasingly seek to improve worker productivity by nurturing a strong organisational culture based on informal bonds and self-management, workbloggers use their writing to buffer themselves against the company’s attempt to secure their hearts and minds, making fun of management gurus and celebrating ways to reclaim time while appearing to be hard at work.

Well worth a read!

Working for Lidl

An article in The Guardian's G2 section yesterday took readers into the world of Lidl, one of the fastest expanding food retail outlets in the UK.

The article - Cheap - but not so cheerful? (Helen Pidd) - reveals a side of Lidl that many of its shoppers are unlikely to know about.

The spur for investigating employees experience of work at Lidl seems to be The Black Book on Lidl in Europe by Andreas Hamann und Gudrun Giese.

The book in itself is highly critical of what are seen as aggressively expanding discount businesses in Europe.

An employee's perspective is just one dimension of the book, as the following statement suggests:

"With its expansion Lidl is not only exporting the uniform design of the Lidl stores. Numerous reports of employees from packing staff to management make it clear that Lidl also wants to establish its company culture in the new markets. Mercyless work pressure, permanent shortage of staff, small wages, enormous general pressure and unfair checks, that’s what employees experience daily also abroad from Finland to Italy, from Portugal to Poland."

The findings from the article seem to confirm the findings of the book.

Compare and contrast what Lidl have to offer new employees with the article and the book here.

Do skilled workers grow on trees?

I get really fed up when I see headlines such as one to be found on today's BBC's news website.

Just dwell for a second on the title - Skilled workers 'harder to find'.

Ask yourself, do workers grow on trees? Are they brought into the world by a stork?

Ultimately, for me anyway, it suggests British employers expect to be able to take on work, sometimes requiring very high levels of skill, sometimes requiring moderate levels of skill but in plentiful supply, and then expect to be able to click their fingers and expect workers to appear in their droves willing to work for average wages and be treated like some sort of liability.

Workers need training and in the main only employers can provide the training in the first place.

Employers - stop moaning and get your own house in order before criticising every but yourselves.

Have you got a corporate secret to tell?

I've just heard about a new wiki that claims to be: "developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis."

The primary aim of the wiki is supposed to be about assisting people who live under oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.

However, and this is where it gets interesting, a further aim is to offer a forms of assistance to those in the West who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their own governments and corporations.

If this wiki takes off anywhere near the extent to Wikipedia has, then expect it to mentioned more than once or twice in the coming months and years.

See Wikileaks for more details.

Diversity mismanagement?

In the words of a newly released survey, "...38% of [worldwide] businesses do not have any women in senior management roles, a figure which has remained unchanged since 2004."

The proportion of businesses with women in senior management varies from as much as 97 per cent in the Philippines, to as low as 25 per cent in Japan.

The UK comes in at 62 per cent (similar to Eire on 60 per cent), but marginally lower than in the USA which reported a figure of 69 per cent.

A separate study released at the same time indicates the number of women in senior management positions in the 350 biggest companies listed on the stock market shows a dramatic fall in the last five years.

However, all is far from doom and gloom, as it has been suggested the increasing cost of childcare and a new-found entrepreneurial streak in women may be among the factors for a 40 per cent fall in women holding senior management positions.

Articles on the matter can be viewed here (The Guardian) and here (BBC News: Business).

Survey points to explosion in digital information

Ignoring for one moment the ridiculous nature of the following article's title - How one year's digital output would fill 161bn iPods (Richard Wray, The Guardian) - it's quite startling to hear that the recent proliferation of digital technology equates to 161bn gigabytes of information.

The analogy of an iPod is poor, and it may be best to appreciate the amount of information with the following statement contained in the article:

"The sheer amount of data that has been created by the digital age becomes clear when comparing it with the spoken word.

Experts estimate that all human language since the dawn of time would take up about 5 exabytes if stored in digital form. In comparison, last year's email traffic accounted for 6 exabytes."

So, what does that mean?

Well, I'm not really qualified to say, but it suggests the following to me:

1) There's a lot of digital information out there that is either useless or will only be seen by an absolute minoriity.

2) Historians are going to have a field day in years to come if they possess the equipment to read all the digital information we are currently producing.

3) Unlike old forms of information, digital information can be transmitted around the world in seconds and can often be easily copied.

4) The people who own the means of production do not hold or even make the majority of information currently produced, which is often freely available if we take the time to look for it, or people take the time to draw our attention to it.

No rocket science there, but for me, this is clear evidence of how the proliferation of digital technologies and ease by which most of us can access and exploit the Internet, is changing our lives far more than we could ever have anticipated only a decade ago.

The end of labour correspondents

Today's MediaGuardian offers a timely reminder of the decline of the labour correspondent, with the news that the Independent is likely to be letting go of the last but one mainstream labour writer.

In Why labour reporters aren't working Peter Wilby laments of the time when labour stories - such those related to strikes, pay claims, negotiations, sackings - where rarely off the front pages.

Without easy access to the media Wilby argues that trade unions are often forced into campaigns designed to shame bosses.

Instead of labour specialists it is suggested that work of this kind has been subsumed into other specialisms, such as industrial correspondents who traditionally cover business stories.

However, as Wilby quite sweetly puts it:

"The labour reporters' true successors, however, are the finance and economics correspondents.

Britain's present prosperity comes from shuffling money around, not from making things.

Governments try to get bankers and venture capitalists onside, not union leaders.

Newspapers need a cadre of reporters who know about hedge funds and derivatives, rather than labour reporters who understand the difference between a stevedore and a docker."

It truly is a sad time when millions continue to face a wide-range of work-related problems and the media giants just sit back as if to say everything is fine on the workplace front.

The decline of organized labour clearly is a problem here as how do you report on many 1,000s of micro-disputes instead of a handful of altercations that involve similar numbers of workers?

I sense that part of the answer to this problem of under-reporting lies with the blogosphere, but even then the blogosphere, as it currently stands, is unlikely to match the power and influence of the Fleet Street brigade.

I hope I am wrong!

Reuters to create "grown up" version of MySpace

According to an article in the Guardian today:

"Reuters is planning to launch its own version of MySpace this year - though its community website will not be aimed at teenagers.

Instead, fund managers, traders and analysts are being targeted."

It is said that Reuters are keen to embrace the online potential of community websites.

The idea is to allow subscribers to "share research", and probably more importantly to Reuters, advertise directly to users.

See Reuters to start financial MySpace by Richard Wray for more details.