The Digital Workplace


Book Description

Where do you work? We may answer this question with a physical location... but increasingly that is either only a partial truth, impossible to answer or just irrelevant. In this fascinating, highly personal investigation into work, Paul Miller challenges us rethink how and where we work today. Blending his own working career experiences, with those of organizations, Miller says it is the 'digital' in the workplace that now defines and shapes our working lives. Building on compelling stories from well-known organizations, Miller explains in a powerful narrative how every aspect of work is being transformed. This is an essential exploration of modern and future work that we can all relate to personally. Addiction, disappointment, liberation, slavery, speed - 'The Digital Workplace' is a captivating manifesto for work that lingers in the head and the heart. Paul Miller is a technology and social entrepreneur. He is CEO and Founder of the Digital Workplace Forum and the Intranet Benchmarking Forum and has been at the heart of the work and technology revolution for the last decade. He is the host of IBF Live, a monthly intranet media show, and Executive Producer and host of the annual IBF 24, which features 24 hours of the world's best intranets plus thought-provoking discussion on how work is being redesigned through technology. He has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, and wrote the best-selling book Mobilising the Power of What You Know. After an early career as a business journalist and speech writer, he published the influential WAVE magazine in 1990 and established The Empowerment Group in 1992, pioneering new approaches to communication within major organizations. In 1993, he co-founded the Ideas Cafe, a regular innovation event, shaped along social software lines during the early days of the web. Paul was one of the leaders of the innovative 'Fathers and Daughters Weekends'. He lives in London and has two daughters.




The Digital Work Force


Book Description

This report is the product of an effort by the Office of Technology Policy to assess current and future needs for information technology (IT) workers through a comprehensive information-gathering project that included the following three activities: (1) nationwide regional meetings that included discussions with industry executives, representatives from academia, business leaders, students, and workers; (2) examination of a wide range of data on the IT workforce; and (3) regular monitoring of literature on the subject. The following are among the topics discussed in Chapters 1-9: (1) the challenge of developing the IT workforce; (2) the vital role of IT in the U.S. economy; (3) the business environment and its impact on the IT labor market; (4) the demand for core IT workers; (5) the supply of core IT workers; (6) indications of a tighter labor market; (7) state and regional perspectives; (8) a report of the National Dialogue on the Information Technology Work Force; and (9) answers the IT workforce challenge. Chapters 1-9 contain 45 tables/figures. Chapter 10 consists of four appendixes on the following four topics: (1) employment sectors for core IT workers; (2) core IT workforce distribution by industry; (3) core IT workforce distribution by occupation; and (4) state employment projections in core IT occupations for 1996-2006. (MN)




Leading the Digital Workforce


Book Description

Future IT leaders won't be technology leaders, they'll be business leaders who understand technology. Leading the Digital Workforce takes a fresh look at technology leadership, exploring how to lead and manage in today’s digital workplace where the pace of change is exponential. This book walks you through building personal resiliency and avoiding stress and burnout to creating a strategy, building a high-performance team, and examining how technology will change the workforce of the future. Technology leadership requires a unique set of skills, which is why traditional leadership approaches don't always work. This book provides actionable advice on how to create a culture of innovation while driving successful change initiatives. Leading the Digital Workforce provides strategies for empowering people, optimizing processes, and inspiring innovation. This book offers insights into managing change, leveraging technology, and building strong relationships within your organization, including how to understand and work with company culture. Finally, it shares strategies for using technology and innovation to create a competitive edge to unlock new opportunities. Leading the Digital Workforce is essential reading for IT leaders who want to develop their skills, stay ahead of the digital curve, and lead their organizations into the future. No matter if you’re a new IT leader, an aspiring one, or a seasoned leader who’s been at it for years, there’s something in this book that will help you level up your game.




Building a Digital Workforce: Raising technological skills


Book Description

A digital divide, a chasm between those with access to technology and training, particularly workplace information technology (IT) skills and those without, threatens the economic prosperity of American workers and America's competitiveness. The most effective way to reduce digital disparities is to improve the education and training of the existing workforce. In response to challenges to America's continuing competitiveness, productivity, and workforce employability, the Digital Economic Opportunity Committee (DEOC) was formed to expand the digital workforce by identifying ways to broaden the base of workers with technical skills and to raise the technical skills of the existing workforce. DEOC defined IT workers and found that, in effect, virtually every worker in the new economy is an IT worker or an IT-enabled worker (uses computers to perform job functions). It viewed the issue as a skills gap, not a worker shortage. DEOC believed the appropriate response to this skills gap is two-fold. The first was upgrading existing worker skills through training. Issues were basic training needs, capacity, funding, and responsibility for training. DEOC's solutions for building a digital workforce were to identify skill sets needed for each IT job category, along with principal paths to job entry and for job advancement, and to define a lifelong learning system. (Appendixes include 22 notes and a summary of the Committee's Boston Conference on June 27, 2001.) (YLB).




Construction Workforce Management in the Fourth Industrial Revolution Era


Book Description

Through a critical review of existing related theories and models, the authors address gaps in existing workforce management studies and propose a conceptual model to improve the management of workers in the construction industry.




Building a Digital Workforce


Book Description

The Digital Economic Opportunity Committee (DEOC) was created by the National Policy Association (NPA) in 2001 to confront the critical national shortage of workers with the information technology (IT) skills needed for the information age economy. The committee oversaw an 18-month workforce development research project titled Crossing the Digital Divide to Digital Economic Opportunity. The project established that the IT skills gap crisis has impacted virtually all jobs. The following areas were identified as the most critical areas of long-term IT workforce development needed to build a digital workforce: (1) create lifelong learning systems for workers; (2) improve existing IT instruction; (3) increase worker IT training resources; and (4) enlarge the pool of IT workers. Recommended intermediate actions included improving IT instruction by upgrading current teachers' IT skills, increasing the use of IT in classrooms, and reaching out to nontraditional labor pools to recruit and train IT workers. The following items constitute approximately 70% of the document: profiles of successful IT workforce development programs at 25 U.S. firms; a list of 54 web sites of resource organizations; a brief profile of the NPA; lists of NPA officers and trustees and DEOC members; and a list of 14 selected NPA publications. (MN).







Looking Ahead


Book Description




Left to Their Own Devices


Book Description

"Digital natives" are hacking the American Dream. Young people brought up with the Internet, smartphones, and social media are quickly rendering old habits and norms a distant memory, creating the greatest generation gap in history. In this eye-opening book, digital sociologist Julie M. Albright looks at our device-obsessed society, and the many ways in which the post World War II American Dream is waning for the Millennial generation. Albright notes that in the former age of traditional media (dominated by three major TV networks and the national print media), values were more harmonized and time, synchronized. Today, with a deluge of information available 24/7, we are experiencing a sort of digital tribalism, with people coalescing inside of increasingly fragmented informational echo chambers. Digital media allows bad actors to enlarge the rifts between these siloed tribes in divide-and-conquer fashion, frothing up fears by propagating fake news and fake people online. What are other effects of hyper-connectivity coupled with disconnection from stabilizing social structures? Albright sees both positives and negatives. On the one hand, mobile connectivity has given "digital nomads" the unprecedented opportunity to work or live anywhere. On the other hand, new threats are emerging, including cyberbullying and the ability to radicalize marginalized youth, decreased physical exercise, increased isolation, anxiety and loneliness, ephemeral relationships, fragmented attention spans, lack of participation in community activities and the political process, and detachment from the calm of nature or the refuge of religion. In this time of rapid, global, technologically driven change, this book offers fresh insights into the effects of always-on devices on the family, community, business, and society at large.