Business

Blogging at the office: part 2 of 2

Do you read other companies' President's blog? graph of japanese opinion[part 1] [part 2]

Over four days at the end of November and start of December last year, goo Research carried out a closed internet-based survey of 2,207 businesspeople to find out about the use of intra-company communication tools and blogs, and other related matters.

Note that this survey was carried out before probably the most famous Japanese blogging CEO became an ex-president and an ex-blogger, so I wonder how the answers to the questions in this second half would change if this survey were repeated today.

One thing I noticed from the company I worked for’s attempt to introduce a community was that a cheerleader or evangelist is needed to help get the ball rolling. Although the next survey question suggests that over half the people want to see management backing, the backing in itself is not the key, I don’t think, it is that the bosses should also be in the vanguard, otherwise there may be a tendency for the whole think to just fizzle out.
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By Ken Y-N, ago

Blogging at the office: part 1 of 2

Knowledge sharing within the company graph[part 1] [part 2]

Over four days at the end of November and start of December last year, goo Research carried out a closed internet-based survey of 2,207 businesspeople to find out about the use of intra-company communication tools and blogs, and other related matters.

This is one subject I’d love to wax lyrical on, but sadly I suspect I’d probably get sacked if my boss read what I want to say! Suffice to say I am unaware of a blog by our prez; most of his communications are by PDF files. About a year ago we did try to introduce a community-based service that failed, perhaps partially due to it being seen as a gaijin thing, but more importantly … I’d better self-censor this post now.

The main problem people report is regarding information overload; either simply too much data or inability to highlight the new information. Interestingly, almost two-thirds are interested in work-related blogs, yet only just over half are interested in a community site, although the survey does not make clear what definition of “community” was used.
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By Ken Y-N, ago

NEETs aren’t so neat

Are NEETs a social problem? graphgoo Research, in cooperation with the Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun Ltd, performed an internet-based survey in Decemeber of 2005 amongst 1,076 people regarding their views on NEETs and Freeters. At the same time, 218 companies also answered a similar set of questions, and the answers have been gathered together for presentation in this report, although the text does not make it clear whereabout the company answers have been included. Unfortunately, neither the sex nor the age breakdown of the survey is available, as that might have provided extra clues to interpreting the results.

First, I had better translate a couple of terms. NEET, or Not in Education, Employment or Training, was first coined in the UK to refer to teenagers, mainly, who left school with neither a job not ongoing education lined up. In Japan, it refers to a much wider population; there is no age limit, and as for employment, NEETs may do casual or very short-term labour (in fact, there are a number of heavily-advertised web sites that advertise these pocket-money jobs) and may very well have completed a university degree, but due to various factors have not decided to commit themselves to a job. I am not sure from where exactly they get money to support themselves, but it is most likely from their parents.

Freeters, on the other hand, is a purely Japanese word, formed by taking the English word “freelance”, or perhaps just “free”, and the German word “arbeiter”, meaning part-time, or at least not a full employee, 正社員, seishain. Many of the part-time jobs are in the service industry, so a freeter may flit from flipping burgers in McDonalds for three months, to doing the late night shift at the local convenience for another two months, to two weeks not working at anything at all.

The essential difference is perhaps that a NEET spends more time not working whereas a Freeter works just enough to fund his own time off. Along with the overall decrease in young people, with NEETs and Freeters not contributing much in the way of taxes, the ability of the government to pay pensions in the future is further threatened by the casualisation (is that a word?) of the workforce.
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By Ken Y-N, ago

2005 was the year of the mergers

In December, DIMSDRIVE Research interviewed 5,000 people, 2,457 male, from their internet monitor group about their views on the top e-business news stories of 2005. The age demographics were 1.4% in their teens, 15.6% in their twenties, 34.3% in their thirties, 28.7% in their forties, 13.3% in their fifties, and 6.7% aged sixty or over.

I find it interesting that the women rated IT firms buying baseball teams more highly than the men, as baseball does tend to have a more male image. I personally would have rated spyware and phishing more highly, but I don’t the the subject has got as much coverage in the Japanese press as it gets in the west.

I don’t think I need a crystal ball to predict what the biggest story of 2006 will be.
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By Ken Y-N, ago