Ireland – Tuesday, 5th August, 2008 – Cllr. Pat Whelan has called for the up-skilling of Irish workers after it emerged this week that 90% of new jobs created in the last 12 months were being filled by foreign nationals.

“This information from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) bucks the widely held belief, that many migrant workers will leave Ireland for other EU countries as our economy slows down, and that a large proportion of new jobs being created in Ireland will be taken up by the Irish workforce,” said Cllr. Whelan.

“The biggest share of new jobs are being created in high value sectors like financial and other business services, which grew by 26,300 in the year to the first quarter of 2008, and accounted for almost half (48.9%) of all jobs created. It had been assumed that Irish workers would take up most of these positions. But the CSO data indicates that foreign nationals will be recruited for a significant proportion of these new positions,” the Town Councillor continued.

“This trend needs to be fully researched by Government, as it could well be a warning about Ireland’s ability to attract foreign direct investment. There is no doubt that some of this increase in jobs uptake by migrant workers is due to their improving English language skills, leaving lower skilled jobs and moving up the value chain in line with their educational qualifications,” he said.

“Some of this is as a result of the increasing cost of childcare, as two thirds of the jobs created in the 12 month period were part time and 70% of these jobs were taken up by women. Migrant women have a lower dependency ratio and as a result are in a better position to take up employment.

“But the more worrying concern is that this is partly a result of the Government’s failure to properly re-skill our indigenous workforce to compete for these growth areas in employment. This trend cannot be ignored and it is imperative that the Government acts now, rather than sitting on its hands.

“More migrants moving up the value chain will certainly benefit the economy, but if it continues without being properly evaluated we could be skilling other economies to facilitate the transfer of jobs from Ireland. The Government has consistently buried its head in the sand on this issue, hoping that the economy will rectify itself. But the country needs clear solutions now that will benefit our economic potential in the future.”

Cllr. Whelan said the government needs to identify and up-skill vulnerable workers, expand training for those activities that still offer good prospects, such as professional services, health-related caring professions, IT, home energy efficiency technologies, and HGV drivers, use funding from the NDP and European Social Fund to fund a massive ‘eco-training’ programme for 10,000 skilled workers laid off from the construction sector, and ensure that changes to community childcare supports do not disadvantage those already in employment.

Source: Westmeath Examiner

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“I bet I could have cut back on many of the seventy, eighty, and ninety-hour weeks that I’ve put in over the years,      if I’d been more systematic and rigorous in managing time!”

Get Aggressive About Managing Time!
Time and money are both very important in business. Yet, like me, many business people tend to give a lot more specific thought as to how to spend their money. Too often, how we spend our time is only thought of in terms of “What am I going to do today?” or “What should I do next?”

Just as a well-run business should carefully develop a strategy to determine how to spend its money, an effective businessperson should carefully develop a strategy to determine how to use his or her time.

Just as a well-run business follows a budget in spending money, an effective businessperson should also follow a budget (or schedule) in spending time.

Prioritize Your Time!
The first step in effective time management is not to develop a schedule, but instead to develop a time strategy. The time strategy should be based on a short list of time priorities.

You start by identifying the number one way you can most increase profits by use of your time; then the number two way; then the Number three way; etc. This short list of time priorities forms the foundation for your time planning for every week of the year.

These time priorities may be identical to key parts of your company strategy or they may be different. For example, if your company strategy is based upon excellent customer service, spending lots of your time in customer service may not be the best use of your time if you have a terrific customer-service manager.

Narrow Your Focus!
Focus is crucial for time management, and the fewer priorities you focus on at once, the more productive you will be.

After you have your major time priorities for the year established, you should allocate them by week or by month. Like it or not, a lot of our time each week is going to be eaten up by nonstrategic items that we have no control over; hence it is important to limit the number of strategic time goals we have for each week. So even if you have ten strategic time goals for the year, you may want to focus on no more than one or two of them in any given week.

For example, in a particular week you may plan on working on your number one time objective, let’s say planning improvements for the company’s major product line, and a secondary goal, let’s say re-evaluating the dealer marketing program, but no time on other secondary time goals that you plan on tackling during other weeks.

Set Aside Uninterrupted Time
Every week you should make up a detailed time plan, which you modify each day as needed. Except in times of crisis, try to make sure day-to-day issues don’t push your strategic time priorities off your schedule.

Generally your major strategic time priorities will involve such activities as planning, thinking, and developing ideas. More so than day-to-day issues, such activities require big blocks of uninterrupted time.

Constant interruption kills any hope of effective time management. One way to avoid interruption is to make it clear that when your door is closed you are not to be disturbed. Another is to have regular meetings, such as every week, with the people that you interact with the most and insist on saving nonpressing issues for these meetings.

Avoid My Time Traps!
These are some “time traps,” all of which have plagued me, that you should guard against:

• Spending a disproportionately high amount of time in the offices where the most congenial people are, as opposed to where the most important issues are.
• Wasting too much time getting daily updates on routine activities as opposed to waiting for a more meaningful weekly summary.
• Jumping too eagerly into the routine, more straightforward work and putting off the more complex and difficult work.
• Not starting the more important work first thing in the morning.
• Not bothering to make up a schedule for each day.
• Overscheduling–scheduling each day so tightly that it is impossible to stay on track and the schedule quickly becomes meaningless.

Source Streetwise Small Business Start-Up