Relationships in the office environment

Relationships in the office environment are, sometimes, the nightmare of HR. I'm not talking about romantic relationships - that's a completely different chapter. I'm talking about the "common" person-to-person relationships that people tend to form with those around them. Once considered "a waste of working time" and "a burden to productivity", now, they seem to be approached under a more positive light as something with a potential to boost productivity, creativity and employee loyalty.

'Cow Bell' by jar (away) under
a CC license

Working in an environment where you know that you can count on people, not only as co-workers but also as human beings creates a feeling of safety and helps motivate people and brings out higher levels of commitment on their behalf. Good relationships at work creates a very positive environment that reflects to the organisations and can also be visible further beyond to customers or other third parties.

The problem with interpersonal relationships is that they may be unpredictable. People have their bad days, employees experience stress, bad things happen that spoil moods, etc. And, guess what, bad relationships can easily poison the work environment, negate the aforementioned benefits and lead to penalties for both productivity and creativity.

So how does on manage the human reationship side of the work environment?

Trialability is key to adopting the right innovations

Trialability is the possibility that a client or a user, in general, is given to test a particular product for a finite amount of time in order to test its characteristics and, ultimately, its suitability for a set purpose. Trialability has long been recognised as one of the 5 factors influencing the adoption rate of innovation.

'Mannequin in Venice Shop Window'
by Michael Summers under a CC license

Indeed, trialability is normally available for a wide range of products and services and is not restricted solely to the innovative ones. Depending on the country, common goods, such as clothes, video games, household equipment, electronics, etc. can be tried for a short time and then returned for a refund if they are unsatisfactory. Rules do apply for this process, e.g., goods need to be returned in good condition. I've also heard of gallery owners that give their potential customers the possibility to "try" paintings or other art objects in their premises for a while before finalising their purchase. Such practice is also becoming increasingly common in high-tech, high-price equipment, such as digital cameras, camera lenses, etc.

Manufacturers of industrial equipment typically offer trial leases of their equipment to potential clients, possibly offering a pilot scale piece of equipment or provide access to actual scale equipment within their premises.

Software products also follow that trend with developers offering feature-limited trial versions, full-featured but limited time trial versions or online trial versions.

The benefits of trialability come at a cost, which corresponds to the cost of making and providing a trial version of the real thing together with a reasonable level of support.

But what happens with products that normally require considerable customisation before becoming fit for the client? And since trialability is a sought feature for innovative (and regular) products that, however, comes at a cost, does it actually hinder new small players entering the innovation game?

Office common space as a tool for collaboration

Often it is people that define the success of an organisation. Making the most out of them is essential. The various different approaches in organisational structures are meant to contribute to that. Using talented people as units or in teams in a balanced and effective way is another way to add to the boost. Increasing casual interaction, even if that is not directly work-related may be another, fun way to get better efficiency at the workplace. For the latter to happen, the way that the office space is structured is important.

'A coffee machine at work' by
Wolfgang Lonien under a CC license

Academic environment aside, common spaces in the workplace are considered by some employers as procrastination hot spots or, at best, temptation areas where employees lose valuable work time. Likewise, third parties, i.e., people outside an organisation may often perceive negatively the practice of employees spending time in common spaces provided within their organisation.

However, today, it is increasingly realised that the interaction among co-workers in the common spaces of a workplace can be beneficial for the organisation.

Good and bad things of service integration in travelling

I'm not a true frequent traveller but I do complete my fair share of miles per year, mostly to destinations abroad. One of the things that I find particularly convenient, especially when I travel for work, is service integration across different companies. It is something that is usually meant to save time and money, often carrying the peace of mind bonus, too!

'Travel' by Vasile Hurghis
under a CC license

Service integration is not a truly novel thing but the steps we 've been seeing so far were rather timid. Some, such as the code-sharing flights of different airlines, are well established as a practice. Package holidays and all-inclusive resorts also have a long history in most places. Others, such as booking travel chains consisting of, say, airport parking - flight - car rental - hotel, are a bit newer.

Judging service integration as a practice depends on what vantage point one chooses. For the traveller, the emphasis is usually on the convenience factor. Things may seem differently, however, if one chooses to focus on value or the impact on the ecosystem of businesses (or the ecosystem in regions, including people and businesses) affected by this practice.

Investing in employee education

'Classroom' by Emory Maiden
under a CC license

Lifelong learning is not a new concept. On the contrary, it is quite established, at least as a term. Today, there are numerous courses, taught and self-taught schemes on a wide variety of topics. Some of the training schemes are even available for free - usually in the form of online courses. In many countries there are also legal or financial incentives to encourage education and training in businesses and organisations. However, despite lifelong learning schemes being abundant, there are still plenty of employers that discourage or deny the participation of their employees in such schemes.

Often, the reasons they quote include the constantly high workload, the lack of resources to cover for the employees' "lost" training time, the lack of resources to sponsor the training and the lack of clear benefit from the training. There are also cases where the potential benefits of further education simply go unnoticed by the managers responsible. In a few cases,  unfortunately, it may also be the result of tainted management beliefs, where keeping the staff's skills stuck at a certain level is thought to ensure"stability" for the management crowd.

To be fair, allowing or providing access to education for the people of an organisation needs to take into account operational constrains. But it is also something that the organisation will eventually need to do despite whatever constrains. The case for investing in employee education is too strong to be ignored.

The power of the crowd

Crowdsourcing is a process that utilises a large number of people to collect input, solve a problem or perform a task. It can take many different forms but it is commonly facilitated by a suitable internet platform.

'The crowd' by Matt Karp
under a CC licesne

Crowdsourcing has been successfully used in a wide variety of projects and functions ranging from astronomy, where people have been helping scientists classify galaxies, politics and policy development, legislation, where people are consulted on laws in preparation, etc. Specific problems can be helped by crowdsourcing techniques provided they can be broken down into small chunks in a form suitable to be presented and processed by an individual. For instance, the Foldit game helped scientists solve protein folding configuration problems and get ideas on how to refine their corresponding algorithms.

Beyond its huge potential in problem solving, crowdsourcing is considered to be a low-cost alternative. However, there are several limitations that need to be thought of before one reaches to such means.

Are we loosing our DIY skills?

A better question might be "do we do any DIY stuff at all?"

'Screwdriver' by Brent Thomson
under a CC license

Personally, I don't consider myself to be particularly skilled in making or fixing things. Despite that, I do enjoy attempting to fix things - at least those things that I believe I "understand" - which sometimes works great. Also I often take the opportunity to take things apart and then re-assemble them, when it comes to things that I have a duplicate of or that I'll be replacing shortly. From time-to time I also try some handiwork, such as painting, placing tiles or insulation, etc. To be honest, I'm not always successful but, as I said, I do enjoy the process. And whenever I do succeed, I end up saving some money, too.

I have the feeling, though, that the people willing to engage with such common DIY projects are getting less. I admit I haven't consulted any statistics so, maybe, that feeling of mine is wrong.

However, it is a fact that we are not given too many incentives towards DIY.

Using technology to improve communication during crises

'Hotline' by Alex under a CC license

Despite how advanced mankind may look, when disasters strike disruptions do take place and, sometimes, human lives are put at risk (the earthquake in Nepal being a recent major such natural disaster). Regardless of the type of disaster, communication is essential both for the people in the affected zone and for the staff of the response teams.

Under normal circumstances, in or close to urban areas, voice and data communication are not normally a problem, even when demand is high as, for instance, happens in big concerts, conferences or other major events.

But what are the challenges at the time of a major disaster? Are we ready to put the technology we have available into the best possible use in order to handle the crisis in the best possible way?

The meaning of life, through the values of life

'Sunrise' by Pedro Moura Pinheiro
under a CC license

One can safely assume that that the question on the meaning of life is one of the most widely expressed questions in the world. One that has received considerable thought so far from a diverse range of scholars in the areas of philosophy, religion and science as well as individuals (and, well,  comedians, too), throughout human history.

The amazing world of video games

Video games are amongst the non-essential things that compete for a share of our free time. Regardless of whether they are a good thing or a bad one, two things are quite certain:

'Day 220-the tetris' by ne!l chen
under a CC license

• some of them - somehow - do manage to get hold of our attention and, thus, of a fair portion of the free time of a wide range of individuals, and 
• they are the products of a very diverse market, often operating at the world-wide level, with noteworthy and increasing turnover share. 

Regardless of one 's feelings towards video games, their world - and impact - is practically hard to ignore.

Intrapreneurship: should organisations embrace the on-the-clock pet-project approach?

In a business, pet-projects are small-scale projects of individual employees, under their full personal control, carried out within the organisation, often using resources of the organisation.

'Luminous idea' by Tiago Daniel
under a CC license

Pet-projects have gained visibility through the successful practices of companies such as Google, HP, 3M, Genetech, IBM and others. There, employees have been given the flexibility - and have even been encouraged - to allocate a percentage of their normal working time between 15 and 20% to a personal project of theirs that may be (and usually is) different to and independent from their ongoing work tasks.

But is the policy of allowing employee pet-projects worth it or is it just a (persistent but limited) hype?

Finding the right balance between the group and the individual

'Balancing Rocks' by Viewminder
under a CC license

We often hear that successful organisations are based on effective teams. Almost equally often we hear that successful organisations are those with charismatic, efficient leaders. Those statements are complementing rather than contradicting each other. However, as the headcount and complexity of structure, operations and objectives of organisations increases, the importance of the teams that operate them becomes increasingly important. A major challenge in teams of a given composition is how to balance between the needs/ priorities of the individual and the needs/ priorities of the group.

Open source software: a helping hand for growth

Open source software is one of the things that occasionally gets entangled in the webs of ideology, politics and corporate marketing talk. However, open source software is a rather simple idea: Develop something, using an open, collaborative approach if possible, make it available to the public as a product, together with its source code and let them use it as they please. That simple.

Does this development model even make sense? Why would anybody do this? How can open source development pay their bills and, more importantly, who provides support to open source software users?

Is e-mail dead?

I don't think so (as I've argued in the past). Not yet. But it has seen better days, at least as a means of personal communication.

Is internet access a critical service?

Internet access is a mission-critical factor for most modern businesses. Even for individuals, internet access is amongst the top priorities covering both work and leisure reasons and has increasingly found its way to bars, hotels of any price range, libraries and public spaces. At a political level, Information Society (a part of which is internet infrastructure and services) is considered to be a tool for maintaining and strengthening human rights, while there are voices supporting a further upgrade of internet access as a civil/ human right.

'Internet open 7 days til late'
by duncan c under a CC license

Having said that,  the penetration of internet access across the population varies a lot from country to country (and from region to region). Recent usage statistics indicate that internet access ranges between about 26% of the population for Africa to about 88% for North America. For Europe the figure is at about 70%, ranging from 42% for Ukraine to 98% for Luxembourg. While increasing trends exist in nearly all regions world-wide and internet has established presence even in remote areas, access to internet is still far from, say, access to mobile telephony services, where, for instance, in Europe there are 125 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants.

Despite the fact that a small-but-significant of the population don't have the means to access the internet, wherever internet access has been established it has had a marked impact on business practices, both in the private and the public sectors. Communication, ordering, data gathering, information dissemination, archiving, networking, etc., are processes that tend to be done exclusively via IT and internet resources in places where such resources are available, of course.

But is internet access being treated as a critical service?

Optimising services in the public sector

Improving the public sector for the benefit of the citizens is, maybe, the (quiet but constant) wish of citizens and the (occasional but loud) promise of politicians. Quite rightfully so, especially in countries where considerable sums of public money are channelled to support the various social state functions, such as education, healthcare, welfare services, etc.

'Winner' by Alessandro Capurso
under a CC license

So, why not try to optimise the public sector as would any business do with its core processes?

Interesting idea, probably not-that-new, certainly always tempting, but with its pitfalls. So, not so fast!

Optimisation, in the mathematical sense, is the selection of the best element(s) against a pre-determined set of criteria. This implies that, in order to optimise something, one needs data to for performance and cost parameters. In the typical scenario, one would have a large set of variables, with the corresponding datasets, and would need to select the target for the optimisation process, providing any constrains that may apply to the variables. It sounds easy but it's not.

On open data

The idea of "open data" is not new but it seems to be gaining popularity, recently, especially for data generated by using public or publicly funded means.

'Molecular energy at work'
by Let Ideas Compete
under a CC license

"Open data", as a term is subject to different definitions and, thus, is applied in different ways. The most basic, clear-cut definition available dictates that "Open data and content can be freely used, modified, and shared by anyone for any purpose", although it is also possible to allow for mandatory attribution to the source.

At the legal level, things are a bit more complicated. The key problem of how to handle copyright in a way to reasonably achieve the intended objective of open data is not very hard to address. However, adding various restrictions to that, which in some cases is needed, makes it tricky. Taking into account that intellectual property legislation varies widely from country to country things become even trickier. To that end, the people at GNU and the Free Software Foundation have compiled a list of different free and non-free licenses commonly used for software and documentation projects. Further advice can be found, amongst others, on the World Bank.

Putting legal issues aside, open data, if used correctly, can help bring added value to societies. I understand that this is part of the typical pro-open data rhetoric but, for a moment, let's think of a couple of examples, besides transparency and accountability that seem to be well established already:

(a) A lot of money is invested, world-wide, on research and technological development activities. In cases where grants are provided on a competitive basis, applicants are commonly requested to demonstrate the relevance of their proposal to the current challenges and the scientific state-of-the-art. The latter normally takes a good literature review, while the former often relies on policy documents and some handful of studies that might be available on line. Even worse, during project implementation, project partners normally don't get access to additional data. Having relevant open data readily available would greatly help the research and innovation system in producing more relevant research proposals and better, closer-to-needs solutions.

(b) Competitiveness is considered to be a key for growth. But does this automatically translate to growth relevant to the needs of a society? Proving open data could stimulate growth-through-competitiveness around major needs. Further to that, it could facilitate adoption of best practices elsewhere, making it easier to compare cases and effects, hence, to identify solutions.

Is all data suitable for becoming open data? Clearly no. That wouldn't even apply to all data obtained through publicly funded means. Some data cannot not (and should not) become open because that would compromise national security or personal security, would limit or cancel a person's right to privacy, would possibly contradict court decisions and orders, etc. That means that it would be hard to apply a single approach to all kinds of data regarding their "openness".  It is still possible, though, to apply the open data policy on step at a time, or - better - a dataset at a time, keeping an eye of the effects, of course. In the future, it may be possible to define and implement a single, concise open data policy - at least for government data or data generated via public resources.

By the way, the open data call is finding top level support - at different intensities, perhaps - by entities such as the EU (http://open-data.europa.eu/en/data/), the US (http://www.data.gov/), Japan (http://www.data.go.jp/?lang=english), etc. More importantly, the Open Government Partnership, launched in 2011, now has 65 member countries and publishes reports on those.

The video that follows has been made by the Open Government Partnership in promotion of Open Government.

Face-to-face meetings. Still much needed.

'Penguins have a meeting' by
Laura Taylor under a CC license

Businesses and people have grown past the local scale for quite some time now making communication an obvious priority. Despite the increasing number of communication means available, face-to-face meetings still persist. That happens in spite of their higher cost compared to other commonly available alternatives. Why is that? Are they truly irreplaceable?

In all the jobs I had so far, the king of communication means was e-mail. Formal or informal, long or short, pre-run by the management or not. Yes, I have had the experience of the occasional paper-printed letter and, unfortunately, a bit more often, the experience of its distant cousin, the fax message. And then it has been the phone. Plenty of my working hours have been spent there. Every once in while, though, I had to arrange for or participate in face-to-face meetings. So far, that has been with clients or potential clients, project partners, funding bodies, policy makers, working group members, colleagues and peers, top management executives, middle management, trainees, sector stakeholders, ..., you name it...

Have all those face-to-face meetings been worth the time and the cost, especially when international travel was involved? Yes. Even when the hard objectives of the meeting were not met.

You see, when you interact with others in the real word, you exchange much more information than that which words alone convey. This can be via body language, via facial expressions, via interactions with others that may be present but not part of the meeting, via comments that although irrelevant to the topic of the meeting convey information when perceived in context, etc. More importantly, this exchange of information goes both ways. At the end of most of my meetings I had a clear feeling on where things were going and that, in turn, helped me choose my follow-up actions accordingly.

Face-to-face meetings are engaging, too. Agreement (or disagreement) on actions feels firmer. Trust (or distrust) is established more easily and so are other things, such as tolerance, patience and understanding - all necessary from time-to-time in successful, durable collaborations - that we exhibit in our everyday life but are harder to do when using, say, written means of communication.

I admit that I haven't done any hard-fact cost-benefit analysis. But face-to-face meetings still get a lot of praise, having several valid reasons in their support. True, virtual meetings, including video conferences (conference calls never really appealed to me), have a lot of potential but they also come with their own disadvantages, as people in the meeting consultancy side say. Of course, when resources are running thin, one can always try to make the best out of virtual meetings. After all, face-to-face meetings do have their own peculiarities :-)

(as anything that involves people)

 

(but are still better than conference calls)

One hundred posts

This is the 100th post I have prepared here.

'05 Birthday' by Marie Coleman
under a CC license

OK, I' m cheating a bit. Two of my texts have not been published yet, so, actually, it is 98 published post plus 2 on hold. Nonetheless, I consider it a personal milestone.

What started, at the end of 2009, mainly as the result of my curiosity to see what keeping a blog is all about, has survived until today. It has even managed to become (a tiny) part of my routine. Despite all the distractions I come across when drafting posts, some of which are inherent to the process. Flickr, for instance, where I normally scout for suitable photos (under a Creative Commons license, of course) to put at the top of each post, where I easily get carried away looking at people's photos.

Despite the years that have gone by, this is still a project under development. Altogether, the blog is still not fully mature in terms of content, with topics ranging from... well... the is no actual "range". Rather, whatever topic happens to cross my mind and bug me enough to look it up and write a few words on it. Understandably, it is still rather low on active readers. Not too encouraging but, at the end of the day, there are zillions of other blogs, of which many are backed up by talented people who take blogging much more seriously than me.

At any rate, though, having this blog has proven to be a great experience so far, educational, self-motivational and - above all - fun.

Many thanks to all of you, who stop by here!

Antimicrobials use and antimicrobial resistance in humans and food-producing animals

EFSA, EMA and ECDC have published a joint report on the correlation of the consumption of antimicrobials by food-producing animals and humans and the occurrence of antimicrobial resistance. Not surprisingly, they found positive associations between antimicrobial consumption and antimicrobial resistance in humans and food-producing animals but also, in some cases, positive associations between antimicrobial consumption by food-producing animals and resistance to antimicrobial agents exhibited by bacteria in humans.

'Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria'
by NIAID under a CC license

Antimicrobial resistance is a topic that I re-visit from time-to-time. In brief, antimicrobial resistance is the phenomenon where a bacterium acquires resistance towards an antimicrobial agent. This may happen via a spontaneous mutation or via gene transfer. The emergence of antimicrobial resistance is a very important issue, regardless of whether the micro-organisms where resistance is developed are, themselves, pathogens or not. Bacteria have the ability for horizontal gene transfer. Thus, once the genes responsible for a specific antimicrobial resistance appear in a microbial population, the propagation of the genes to other microbial populations, including different bacteria, will take place at some point. Obviously, this becomes critical when pathogens acquire such genes, especially when taking into consideration that the antimicrobial agents (antibiotics) we have at hand to fight them are finite (and rather few).

The report of the three agencies highlights a problem that has been known for a while but sometimes still tends to be overlooked. There are vastly different practices across countries with regards to the way that antimicrobial agents are used by doctors and veterinarians to tread human and animal diseases, respectively. To make things worse, residues of veterinary medicines in food-producing animals may also remain in the meat at the time of consumption. As you may suspect, bad practices in either of those fields can give further rise to antimicrobial resistance and, in the longer run, can both accelerate the emergence of antimicrobial resistance of human pathogens.

Given the increasing globalisation of livestock production, as well as the increased mobility of people around the globe, it is necessary to boost efforts for better management of the use of antimicrobial agents, both against human and animal diseases.

This is no simple task, though.

Optimum management requires resources and infrastructure that differ a lot from place to place. Think, for instance, that keeping food-producing animals healthy without resorting to the use of antimicrobial agents needs hygiene, animal-housing and health monitoring practices that come at a cost. On top of that, such animals may be less productive in terms of meat. Such effects discourage the adoption of practices featuring responsible use of antimicrobial agents. There, education, as well as legal measures, have a strong role.

In any case, however, the fact that the task in question is difficult that doesn't mean that the effort should halt. At least not until we find other, reasonably effective ways to deal with pathogens.