Worknow_Aotearoa_NZ

It’s great to see the people sharing their talents

“…Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing…”Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Whether you need help around the home,  at work, in business or you’re just looking to expand your repertoire of skills there’s a growing range of time and talent on offer.

Creating opportunities for others to help

Now, everyone likes to be able to help other people because it’s a good thing. Yet apparently we are not so willing to give others the opportunity to help us.

True fact though people; every single one of us has something to learn from others.  If you aspire at all to helping other people please consider this.

One of the kindest things you could do for another person may simply be to help them feel needed by allowing them the opportunity to help you.

With time trade one’s own motivation to help others comes second. It’s about putting the needs of others before myself by focusing less on the need to be needed – who can I help?, how can I help? – and more on outcomes that can only be secured by enlisting the time and talents of others – how can another persons talents, skills and time help me and others?

It would be great to see every member contribute at least one Time Request in an effort to provide others the opportunity to help.

Thanks to your feedback

And on that note I have to say again a big thanks to everyone that has offered feedback on the beta site. I’ve added all your thoughts to the user voice forum We are working on implementing you’re suggestions so keep them coming. This week thanks to your feedback:-

• The loop hole that allowed people to create multiple responses on a single trade has been closed. Now when you view a trade in the Marketplace that you have offered or accepted time on you will have a link to “view open trade”.
• We have added a “My Posts” page to your Workspace to make it easy to view and edit all the trades that you have posted. It’s pretty basic right now but it’s the basis for an evolving history of all your trades.

Changes to Work Flow

• Where as before you could begin trading simply by hitting the “offer time” or “accept offer” buttons we think it makes sense to begin by starting a conversation, right? So you now create a message before you hit the button.
• By default trades remain visible in the marketplace but you can now hide or display listings instead of deleting and creating new ones. There’s now a link in the right hand column visible on your trades and posts.

“…Every great man is always being helped by everybody; for his gift is to get good out of all things and all persons…” John Ruskin.

Statistics New Zealand today released the Household Labour Force Survey showing a rise in unemployment over the September 2009 quarter.

Sadly those most effected by unemployment are our future leaders, business creators and workforce:

• 15 – 19 Unemployed 25.1%
• 20 – 24 Unemployed 10.9%
• 25 – 29 Unemployed 6.8%

For more information click  through to Statistics New Zealand articles for download

Job Crisis or Opportunity for Change?

Business Week  recently lead with a story entitled The Lost Generation discussing  the effects of the existing job crisis on young people in the USA.

the continuing job crisis is hitting young people especially hard – damaging both their future and the economy…studies show that an extended period of youthful joblessness can significantly depress lifetime income

As today’s figures show, youth unemployment is also a problem here in New Zealand. Yet,  suggestions around creating a sub minimum wage to encourage employers to take on young people  does little to empower or improve their future earnings potential. It simply undervalues their time, skills and talent and feeds into the downward spiral of lower lifetime income.

We see ways to empower young people, support Gen Y’s potential, harness their talents and help them discover their place in the workforce

“…We seem to have focused wrongly on building CV’s rather than building businesses…” Sam Morgan

We currently have a wealth of talented young people preparing themselves to be employed rather than cultivating talents which could drive economic growth through the creation of new business and new jobs.

Things are changing on the education front but we believe there is  opportunity to provide additional tools to help young people transition from study to work.

The solution we are offering incorporates work experience, education and elements of the traditional CV

1. We want to encourage Volunteer Work Experience as a means to build confidence and valuable work skills  so we are facilitating a system of Time Trade (a.k.a Time Banking) to encourage, recognise and reward volunteer activity.

2. A Peer Mentoring Community connecting Graduates with recent Alumni who can share with students of the same / similar discipline their experience of the study / work transition and highlight the real life opportunities available in the marketplace.

Where to look, who to talk to, which skills are important etc. Existing examples include the future in tech initiative to which we hope Time Trade could be applied as a tool for rewarding their career ambassadors.

3. We are using social networking tools and talent profiles to allow young people to build a living work history, a CV with a wealth of testimonials to their talent, skill and work ethic. A talent profile against which they can also be matched with volunteer and paid work opportunities.

Youth unemployment is a major issue but it’s reassuring to know that there are many community based organisations stepping up to help keep young people engaged in productive activity despite the fact of high unemployment.

Build your talent CV

A letter to our founding members – Noon Wednesday 26th August 2009

Time Trade is LIVE!

Thanks to the ever talented Josh we can now begin to trade time. Simply:-

1. Login to Worknow here http://www.worknow.co.nz/login
2. Go to Time Trade and click on “go here to spend time”
3. You can then credit people for sharing their talents and time with you

And so it begins, Yay!

To connect with other members of our talent community:

1. Go to PEOPLE then click on members name or photo to view their full profiles
2. Click on the “Request Connection” link found below the profile picture to send email request.
3. Once the other person confirms the connection, you can begin trading time with each other.

Please guys, feel free to share feedback, ideas and criticism via the discussion Forum so that we can incorporate this into to the ongoing build process.

I am so excited to see the Time Trade begin to take shape. There’s 21 founding members here and the opportunity is ours to inspire and grow Time Trade as a community building tool and working alternative to $NZ. Thank you so much for being a part of the Time Trade journey.

Best Regards,

–
Renee Lee
Worknow Ltd
+64 21 18 300 50
+64 3 455 3901
www.worknow.co.nz

Connecting Young People with Work

With John Keys announcing a $152 million package to create new work, education and training opportunities for unemployed young people we’re feeling even more confident that our vision around helping the youngest working age generation transition into work will find support on many levels. Well, we hope that it does but at the very least we’re reassured to learn that our mission aligns with the concern of our current Prime Minister who said yesterday:-

I am concerned for our young people.Those aged 18-24 are the fastest growing age group on the Unemployment Benefit, representing a third of all those who receive it.

The number of young people who wanted a job but couldn’t get one has more than quadrupled in the past year, leaping from less than 4000 in June 2008 to nearly 17,000 by June this year.

My concern is that for a young person starting out in their working life, a long period of unemployment could be very damaging. Source

Quid Pro Quo: Using Time Trade to Encourage Young People to Volunteer

When we looked at solving problems relating to work it was quickly evident that young people are the demographic most in need of solutions. So we got together to identify ways we could help them transition from study to work.

Lacking the work experience needed to gain value from our contractors’ marketplace we focused instead on ways that we could help them build the necessary work expereince, skills and references.

By incorporating unpaid work into our formula and encourage volunteering through the concept of Time Trade, we identified ways to:-

1) provide a measure of value and recognition for the development of a peer mentoring scheme, using time credits.

Enlisting alumni to mentor upcoming graduates about work life and career paths. Those graduates, in turn, trade their time to perhaps tutor fellow students who in turn again volunteer in their community and build valuable work skills.

2) provide incentive and reward to encourage more young people to volunteer, using time credits.

We believe volunteer work develops a service orientated work ethic and skills that assist the study to work transition. Some of the skills we know volunteers can develop include:-

• Leadership & team building skills
• Relationship building skills
• Communication skills
• Negotiation skills
• Creative thinking skills
• Organisation & time management skills

As Social Development and Employment Minister Paula Bennett points out encouraging Gen Y to become involved in our communities creates win-win situations. Her comments about the Community Max Scheme could as easily apply to Worknow:-

“This is all about providing opportunities – we see this as a very positive approach to addressing youth unemployment while helping fund useful community projects… I believe this is a win-win situation.”

Where we differ is that we intend the growth of youth volunteers to be a permanent fixture of tomorrows communities hence the development of out Time Trade platform.

Venture Start Up

I studied business extramurally because, as far as I could see, the best way to learn business was simply to get involved. I planned to gain real life business experience while building and diversifying my skills in preparation for “one day” when the right opportunity came along for my own venture start-up.

I never exactly knew when that “one day” might be but I’d been pretty generous and given myself until 35 to discover it, on the basis that I would intuitively know the right opportunity when I saw it. And so in early March 2009 my one day arrived and I was ready.

Status Quo, Schmo

Jamie’s idea to develop an online contractors marketplace to help people find work, immediately struck a chord with me.The idea was, in essence, exactly what I needed and wanted for myself.

It was a means to encourage and support business creators, owners and collaborative teams. It was everything I wasn’t, but wanted to be and I immediately recognised his idea as a means to achieving my longest held work aspiration – to build a company that could truly help people.

We are quite happily, not in keeping with the status quo. Indeed as statistics bemoan rising unemployment I tend to see the job losses as inevitable because for social innovation and change to occur one must in some way destroy the old.

For all practical purposes this meant; if I was actually going to help people be their own boss; if I hoped to promote entrepreneurship and new business creation as a viable alternative to employment; if I was going to prove work existed but that the way we connect with it was changing; I simply could no longer work as a full-time employee

Making the Change

Mentally, in a recession leaving my only secure source of income was a pretty tough call to make. But in life we must take calculated risks. I was determined that money would not hinder my pursuit of the dream and in that decision alone I have learnt lessons for life, about the potential to get work done without the need for cash – ergo Time Trade.

Practically however, it is not at all hard to work your way out of a job. I’m not particularly proud of the way I left my last employee role but it was best for both parties. Indeed the hierarchy and their methods of control and authority, even their use of these words – when I aspire to collaboration and leadership – are driving factors in the development of Worknow.

Worknow

We are building this community and marketplace on the belief that 1) networking platforms can help us find connect and work together in new ways and that 2) there are other talented people here, that seek new more collaborative and flexible ways of working.

With this blog I intend to relate my experience as a business creator, owner and contractor, in hopes that my journey may encourage others along this path.