tfpl blog

The Annual SLA Winter Warmer Pub Quiz

by Helen Trudgeon, Contracts Recruitment Consultant

 

Last week saw SLA Europe’s Annual Winter Warmer Pub Quiz event take place, once again hosted by professional QuizMaster, AskTony and kindly sponsored by Swets and the Financial Times.

SLA President and TFPL Managing Director Darron Chapman welcomed the 16 teams, made up of SLA members and friends, all eager to be crowned Quiz Champions 2012.  So keen were staff at TFPL, that we were able to field 2 full teams – the IDOX Idles and TFPL & Back - competing not only for the main prize, but also to take home the honour of being TFPL’s own internal champion. Purely in the spirit of friendly rivalry, of course.

The quiz kicked off with an investigation of our knowledge of recent current affairs, which perhaps left a little to be desired, but the room soon warmed up as we were asked, amongst other things, to identify obscure television adverts, to get inside the heads of Sun readers  and to spot price an eyewateringly obscure range of commodities.  Smartphones were sadly banned, but our team nonetheless managed to achieve modest success, based on a sound knowledge of Asda pricing and at least one mathematical genius who knew the current price of Brent Crude.

The final round remains memorable, if only for the noise of over 80 people singing along to Chas n’ Dave and the Rocky soundtrack.  Possibly with more enthusiasm than any inherent musical ability. Or perhaps that was just me.

The eventual and well deserved winners were the Film Club, captained by Mark Haines, whilst both of TFPL’s teams managed a respectable mid-table ranking, with IDOX Idles pipping TFPL & Back by just 1 point.  We are already anticipating next year’s re-match.

Ultimate winners the Film Club https://picasaweb.google.com/asktony.co.uk/Sla2012?authkey=Gv1sRgCJrUv8Dvu5285AE#5698928439449238770

https://picasaweb.google.com/asktony.co.uk/Sla2012?authkey=Gv1sRgCJrUv8Dvu5285AE#5698928397971520194

Recruitment Update: Agency Worker Regulations, by Tracey South, Recruitment Manager

The regulations came into force on 1 October 2011 and give agency workers the entitlement to:

-  the same basic employment and working conditions as if they had been recruited directly;
-  if and when they complete a qualifying period of 12 weeks in the same job.

We have taken immediate action to ensure compliance with this new legislation:

-  Updated all of our contracts and procedures in line with Recruitment and Employment Confederation guidelines;
-  Updated our recruitment system;
-  Worked closely with current contractors and clients to ensure that they are aware of these changes and how they will be affected;
-  Trained our team and have been out to various AWR conferences and events;
-  Ensured all new vacancies are dealt with in accordance with the AWR regulations.
It has been a challenging couple of months for the team but we're confident that we are well prepared and fully briefed.

For more information about AWR, you can go to the information page on our website. For information about contract opportunities, please contact Tracey South - tracey.south@tfpl.com.

TFPL Connect International - Persuading, negotiating and influencing your way to achieving in 2012

Author: Claire Valentine, Training Manager

Last night’s event was the last event in our calendar for 2011 held at the Crowne Plaza in Blackfriars.In contrast to previous events there was just one presenter, Nick Davies.  Nick is a trained barrister, renowned public speaker, owner and trainer of the Really Great Training Company.  Nick was a lively presenter who really engaged with the audience, using everyday examples to illustrate how we can improve and become more effective in persuading, negotiating and influencing.  The content of his presentation was insightful and really seemed to make people think, there were many in the room busy making notes.

Nick based his presentation on the numbers 4, 6 and 2 – there are 4 mistakes people always make when trying to persuade or influence, 6 reasons why people will be influenced and 2 values you must display to be an effective influencer, negotiator or persuader.

The mistakes included:

• Going in too strong and bombarding people with logic, people buy into something emotionally and justify the reasons for it with logic.
• Satisfying wants rather than needs, it is important to understand and address what is behind the wants

The 6 reasons people will be influenced are:

• Provision of social proof – others are doing it so you are more likely to
• Authority – people are more accepting of information or instruction if they perceive it is coming from someone with authority in the area
• Scarcity – the less there is the more demand there is for a resource
• Consistency – get commitment to smaller things then it will be easier to get commitment to larger things
• Likeability – work on developing relationships, not just connecting electronically with people.  We have friends and colleagues at work, not stakeholders and internal clients.....
• Reciprocity – if you want someone to do something for you do something for them first

Most importantly I felt were the 2 values – credibility and trust. 

These facts provided much discussion and food for thought which after an interesting Q+A session, we continued over drinks and nibbles at the networking session afterwards.  We have had some fantastic feedback through from the night, particularly from our members who have not been able to get away to some of our previous events earlier in the year.  To see further comments for the evening search for #tfplc on twitter.

Details on the 2012 programme will be released in early January and we look forward to another year of stimulating thought and knowledge sharing.

First joint TFPL and Henley KM Forum event proves great success

Authors: John Davies, Head of Consultancy and Claire Valentine, Training Manager

Last week we held our first joint, full day event with members of the Henley KM forum.  Entitled ‘Making the same mistakes and creating the same problems? Stop! - Developing collaborative behavior to make knowledge work to support agile organisations’, about 60 members of the Forum and of TFPL Connect met to hear some excellent presentations and to spend several meaty sessions in tackling real KM issues with familiar and new colleagues alike.

The day started with a great keynote from Graham O’Connell from Civil Service Learning who set the scene with a series of reflections on thinking and engagement. Graham looked at how to effect behavior change by filling the ‘knowing – doing’ gap.  He looked at how the structure of the organisation needs to be conducive to change with less of a blame and more of a rewards and encouragement focused culture.  Well designed communication strategies are key to managing change projects within organisations.

Breaking into workshops, attendees then heard brief presentations from Andrew Lambe (Department of Health Information Directorate) on the innovative KM programme underway in the NHS and Kieron Champion (KPMG) who described the challenges of promoting KM across a fragmented global partner structure.  The presentations framed discussions for the rest of the morning which touched on topics as diverse as the challenges of knowledge harvesting to the effects of IT systems being imposed on the business and issues of content overload and finability in an environment that seeks to tailor your search results.

After lunch, John Davies (TFPL) and Dave Tullett (Heidrick &Struggles) took to the podiums to look at the challenges of knowledge sharing against information confidentiality in the third sector and the complexities of how to manage a change programme, getting buy in from staff to enable a change in business focus.

The final session was a fascinating account of work at BAE by Liz Carver who reflected on a group of projects from the perspective of the Human Factors research she had been doing.  One of the important points highlighted was the value of meetings, whether virtual or physical to facilitate and ensure project success. 

Jane Mackenzie and Christine van Winkelen from Henley KM Forum ably steered the event and provided excellent summaries and pauses for reflection as the day went on.  The venue and the lunch were faultless and attendees said they’d had a great day.

We are delighted to have been working with Henley and look forward to further fruits of this collaboration.

The challenges of creating valuable and creditable content

Author: Tom Green, Sales Executive, Training and Events

Last night I attended the SLA Europe event ‘content creation - at what cost?’, kindly sponsored by Marketresearch.com and held in Aldgate’s Exchange. The premise of the evening was to address how content can be used to create and generate interest around businesses to keep them relevant within the current and ever-changing online marketplace. Before walking through the door my own view of this question was that it could be down to innovations purely within the confines of the content information itself. What I learned, however, was that getting content effectively out there required movement away from what it contains and more toward how it is publically associated, linked or connected.

The first speaker of the night was David Frigstad, Chief Executive Officer of Frost and Sullivan. His talk covered the strategic importance of their content moving into areas not naturally associated with corporate business, such as certain social media; and the effect this will have on maintaining and evolving their client base. Interestingly, an example he used to reflect his ideas upon was that of the late Steve Jobs and his use of ‘outside the dots’ thinking as key to his Apple brands public and financial success, from his trust in and transformation of certain technologies through to well publicised use of the hallucinogen LSD and even skills from a calligraphy degree to why this happened.

Secondly, and possibly most controversial of the evening, was the talk from speaker Roger Bamkin, the current chairman of Wikimedia UK. Roger covered the importance of community and sharing within the Wiki Empire, from how articles and information can be edited by anyone to the nature of this community like structure to how influential and important the content can become. He continued this by relaying the importance of sharing information to how it comes up in search engines such as Google. In overview, the more sites and links your content is attached with, the more popular you will show and the higher you will be placed and found on searches. Coincidentally, this is where the controversial moment occurred. On a question from the audience on where this idea puts the value of information aside of how it is shared in popularity, he replied by declaring that organisations can no longer have an information strategy but must instead rely on the association to other sources to extend their online market reach.

The final talk of the evening went through the slightly different, yet equally interesting, frame of news content and was presented by Nic Newman, formerly the future media controller for journalism at the BBC. Reflecting on his own experiences and ideas he addressed models and strategies of spreading news content through community and social media, indicating clearly the return on investment it has in quickly moving and spreading news information on a mass level. Nic’s talk provided an engaging end and made the clear point that content, no matter what it is, can be made important on a consensual level through different collaboration.

Overall, I found the evening to be a very informative and inspiring insight into the importance of business content and how it is managed. With the positive mention of illegal drugs, controversial statements and focus away from information and toward innovative collaboration it really shattered any previous ideas I had.

The essential competence - demonstrating value

Author: Claire Valentine, Training Manager

As one of the major conferences in our calendar approaches (Online Conference), I would like to add TFPL's support to our trainers presenting there, in particular Sandra Ward and Ian Wooler who will be delivering a session at the Online Conference on ‘ The essential competence - demonstrating value ‘.  

Demonstrating the value and impact of information, knowledge and library services requires energy and imagination.  As part of this they want to tap the views of as wide a range of people as possible before the session, and have launched a 2 question survey which is open to those attending and those unable to join this year's Conference. The questions are:

1. What are the 3 top challenges you face when demonstrating value (i.e. applying metrics, measuring and reporting value) in your organisation?

2. What are the 3 top competencies (i.e. skills, experience and knowledge) that enable you to demonstrate value in your organisation? To access the survey, please click on the following link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/9887XLP . 

Please find a few moments to complete it.

TFPL's November Health special interest group - The challenges of supporting commissioning

Authors: Claire Valentine, Training Manager and Vivienne Winterman, Senior Consultant

Tuesday this week saw us at another very successful and popular health SIG meeting hosted kindly for us by the BMA.  The meeting, attended by over 35 delegates, was chaired by Sue Lacey-Bryant, Associate Director of GP Consortia Development/Chief Knowledge Officer, Milton Keynes PCT.  Sue began by setting the scene for the evening by reflecting on key issues of the moment including: the challenges of obtaining a work/life balance from a GP's perspective - the need to work faster and more efficiently to meet the needs of commissioning, through the use of IT tools; the effects on data quality; the challenges around knowledge transfer as parts of the health sector undergo major re-organisations and the effects of this particularly on leadership development.

The line up of presenters took us through the full story of the commissioning cycle and its knowledge and information needs and how the patient experience must be at the heart of everything.  It was interesting to see the contrast between Dr Anita Jolly’s (BMJ) perspective on the best practice approach and Anne Gray's (Milton Keynes PCT) in practice support.  The issues lie not with following best practice, in fact it seems there is a good understanding that 'learning before doing' is the best way to start, it is about how to source the vast array of information/knowledge needed.  It is also about how to take that information/knowledge and use it in the context it is needed.  All too often it seems that situations are seen as so different that one common way of doing things cannot be followed.  Influencing and advocacy skills are clearly top of the agenda here for information and knowledge professionals working in this area.

Sarah Panzetta, who until recently worked for Camden PCT, described  a web resource developed for local GPs which would help the myriad of locums and contract workers with local knowledge of health issues and services in the area.  Key challenges on this project included security - when and when not to share information on such a site, keeping the content up to date, and influencing work behaviour to involve all GPs and make the resource an integral part of their working environment.

The presentations were followed by group discussions on each table reflecting on the challenges that commissioning presented. This came up with ideas and suggestions of what is required to provide a national approach to providing the right skills, knowledge and information to support GPs.  The representation of  information suppliers (including charities), IT providers (including DH Informatics) and NHS library and information professionals led to lively debate, discussion and innovative ideas helped by a glass of wine or two!

The presentations and question discussion/outcomes are available on our site here for further information http://www.tfpl.com/networks_events/health_sig.cfm There are also twitter feed comments which can be found under #tfplsig

Which world do we live in?

Author: Vivienne Winterman, Senior Consultant

Physical or virtual?

Tangible or indefinable?

Real or imaginary?

The list is endless. These are the worlds the information professional (IP) has to deal with. Skill requirements are changing. Paradoxically the world is getting bigger yet smaller at the same time in information terms. As the rate of information creation continues to increase at an exponential rate, its retrieval is still ever challenging. Digitisation is in to bring the world of archives into our homes and businesses.

When will it stop?

How do you contain it?

Is it necessary?

Does it benefit us?

To answer the questions. Never. You can’t. Yes/no (glass half full/empty syndrome). It should do.

To take the last question first. It should benefit us. We should learn from good practice, stories and events that ought not to be repeated. But do we?

Is it necessary? Absolutely. All information should be transparent and there if you need it. It does of course need to be well managed, structured and retrievable.

How do you contain it? Well the cloud concept is doing a good job, but I dread to think what will happen when there is a cloud burst! I’ll leave that to your imagination.

Will it stop? No way. There is so much to learn. With the world population rising to 7 billion more and more information will be created just to manage daily living requirements.

What an opportunity for the IP. TFPL’s recent report ‘Connecting information with innovation’ (TFPL’s 2011 survey of skills and roles) http://www.tfpl.com/resources/index.cfm shows that investment in knowledge and information management (KIM) is seen as an essential component contributing to business success. KIM skills are being embedded in the workforce to bring about a new way of working, so that KIM is ‘not another initiative’ but the ‘way we do things around here’. IPs rapidly need to increase their range of skills. They need to be IT proficient, provide e-learning as a means of communicating with the virtual, global, workforce, be metadata and taxonomy advisors, maintain information governance, be concerned about managing risk, aligned to the business supporting the goals and objectives, and many more as detailed in the report. Over 350 individuals have downloaded the report, available in English, French and German.  Have you?

Social Media adoption research

Author: Claire Valentine, Training Manager

We at TFPL have long be interested in the impact social media has on organisations.  Following on from a survey that was conducted with Edinburgh Napier Univeristy in 2008, we are now happy to promote further post graduate research that they are conducting. 

Are you interested in how social media can support information and knowledge management? Would you have 15-20 minutes to spare to complete a short survey to help us enhance our understanding of the role of social media in organisational settings?

A postgraduate student supervised by Professor Hazel Hall at Edinburgh Napier University is conducting research into the opportunities and risks of social media tools to support information and knowledge management. You can find further information on the previous work that was undertaken jointly by TFPL with Edinburgh Napier University in 2008 here  http://www.soc.napier.ac.uk/~hazelh/esis/soc_comp_proj_rep_public.pdf.  

We would be most grateful if you would contribute to this project by completing the online survey at http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/672848/5b1b3dc8a308.

All responses will be aggregated and no individual or organisation will be identifiable in the results. The findings will be shared with the broader information and knowledge management community after the project is completed.

The Cloud: Sharing information....redefined (Not nebulous, but grounded)

Author: Julia Hordle, Director of Recruitment

Let’s be honest, it isn’t often these days, that you go to an conference event expecting to interested in every topic and speaker on the schedule.

Yesterday, we heard about the principles, potential and applications of cloud technology in a way that even a lay person (me) without a technological bone in their body, could not fail to be impressed by.

I consider myself to be a lay person because, whilst I am interested in (now fascinated by) the possibility of doing so much more with the information we hold, there is always just the promise of doing wonderful work with information, and I am always reliant on others to make the magic work.

In practice, making progress with legacy systems, written in older eras, is painfully slow and there is a high dependency on IT partners who may not share or fully understand the business purpose behind the work.

We had here a group of experts, from many different perspectives, who spoke about a new era in Information; we are at a point where we can optimise value from the content we have already invested in by designing our domains so we can share, inside and outside our own organisations.

The key points driven home were:

• That given the rate of increase of the volume of data held, a cloud solution is the safest and most economical way to store information which is not security sensitive
• The way forward for most large organisations is to use a combination of private and public clouds, infrastructure and content clouds
• That in the use of the cloud, businesses perform better by encouraging self service for customer/users, thus creating the capacity to do much more
• Through social and dispersed media, the cloud can be an excellent mechanism for due diligence, through the smart use of links
•  Economies of scale and better community working are easily enabled through a cloud
• To make clouds work, thought must be given to classification, taxonomy and linkage, if they are to work across border, cultures and languages
• There are clear cost savings via reduction in classical IT expenditure
• But the ownership, value and “curation” of data needs to be carefully thought through, or we may lose information, valuable in years and decades to come
• Who pays for content, provision and/or usage? Authors, owners, users or society? How do we pay?
• Little wastage of storage or data utility in the cloud
• Need to get into good meta data habits to be fit for the cloud

Caution: we were advised that in this ”free-for-all” stage of Cloud uptake, the current wisdom is to be cautious in your commitment to cloud service providers;

Pay detailed attention to contracts. Have an exit strategy.

Who owns the data once you hand it over, what are the rights issues, will you cede power over your own IP if you are not careful?

Make sure you are prepared to have your data back, if contract terminates. Will this undo your cost reduction?

Do providers have the right to keep and use a copy of your data?

• Understand implications for compliance and for QM systems and accreditation requirements
• Independent audit  is essential. Don’t rely on service and solutions providers
• Think carefully about security and encryption versus utility
• If encryption bars algorithms for analysis, will this prevent the cloud as a useful solution to data storage and analysis?

TFPL Events did a wonderful job of bringing together a group of speakers and participative delegates who gave The Cloud a rigorous 360 degree, public scrutiny. The event discussed the Cloud as a positive, adventurous mechanism for collaborative working and for engagement with external customers for interest groups. The event worked, because the vendors did not oversell, and the users and the sceptics came to learn but not to deride.

The sentiment in the room was of an event that delighted in its effectiveness, to raise awareness and expand our perspective on the Cloud, through real experience. There was a call for more – perhaps a follow up event to share more about inventive applications of Cloud, to inspire innovation. There is also a clear demand for CIOs –intrepid strategic information and IT professionals able to lead organisations on adventures to a promised land of cost reduction, shared information and easy information living.

One of the delegates talked about a “race for adoption” and how important it is for growth, to take up new technology ahead of the curve for optimum performance. This seminar made us all want to race.