Entries from January 2009

January 30, 2009

Going virtual for competitive advantage

Woody Allen may have been right when he said that “90% of life is just showing up.” If he was, I can tell you that the last 10% may be the most valuable. The HBR study proved what my experience had taught me. It claimed that virtual teams were MORE effective, less costly and got better, faster results than collocated teams.

I read an article in July that said that 10 percent of Canada’s labour force — 2.5 million people — work outside the office at least one day a week. (Robert Fox, Canadian Telework Association) Teletrips, a Vancouver based company, claims a company can save $6,000 to $9,000 per flexible worker. They go on to say that a worker can save 160 hours in commute time each year — four working weeks! Plus you save 3,000 kilos of carbon dioxide.

January 29, 2009

Not Using Open Source Software? Must be nice to have money to burn!

If your manager of HR came up to you and said, “I’d like to send every employee out for a $500.00 to $1,000.00 training program in the coming year,” as a business owner you would probably wince. After all, times are tough.
What if the HR Manager said to you — “by the way, there’s [...]