FlexiTimes  

We met Ann Fitzpatrick yesterday from WITS where she runs the Re-Enter Programme - an all Ireland course which aims to re-skill and re-train experienced women scientists, engineers and technologists who want to return to work after a career break of a year or more. It's an excellent programme and the calibre of participants is particularly high. Ann is sound and actually a flexitimer herself running this course on a part-time contract basis. I suppose I'm telling you about our meeting for two reasons. Firstly, if you're a female engineer, scientist or technologist thinking of going back to work after a career break, well then you've nothing to lose by checking out this excellent resource. Secondly, it's no surprise that the majority of participants finishing Re-Enter, like Ann, want flexible work and that's where we come in. Our philosophy at Flexitimers is just because you want flexible work doesn't mean you have to compromise your career and do work that is pitched below your skill set. So if you're looking for flexible work i.e. part-time, freelance, interim and contract work well sign up with us because our plan is connect you with high skilled professional work - no dog walking or envelope stuffing. So thanks Ann for the great meeting, we look forward to working with you and I'm still waiting for the photo you promised. :)

Our local paper ran a story about us winning one of the Awards at the NovaUCD Start-Up Awards back in November. It's bizarre: we've been covered in the Sunday Indo, Business Post, Irish Times, Business & Finance and so on since late September but oddly enough, this snippet seems to have garnered the most attention (locally). Went for a coffee with a few mates the day after the paper was published and was stopped by no less than about 8 people congratulating me. Of course I find this hugely embarassing but Dervla says 'I'm loving it.' Anyway, my moment has come and gone. Thanks to the People Newspapers for the story.

As a winner in the recent NovaUCD 2008 Start-Up Awards, Flexitimers has been asked to talk at the NovaUCD Open Day which takes place next Monday (8th December). Everyone is welcome and I can't recommend the enterprise support there more highly so it's really worth checking out for all budding entrepreneurs, media and indeed investors. I'll be around for chit and chat afterwards if anyone has any more questions. Hopefully see you there.

Flexitimers attended the Big Debate in City Hall last Wednesday and were fortunate to put a question to the panel. The panel, which was chaired by by respected broadcaster John Bowman, consisted of Jay Bourke (Cafe Bar Deli), Martin Murray (Interactive Return), Brian Carey (Sunday Times), Marc Coleman (Newstalk), Mark Fielding from ISME, Damian Young Head of Small Business, Bank of Ireland, Paula Fitzsimons, Global Entrepreneurship Monitor author and Pat Lynch, Chairperson of Dublin City Enterprise Board.

Q: Did the panel think that companies (under pressure to cut headcount) were more likely to outsource activities or use part-time, freelance and contract staff in order to remain competitive during these challenging times?

Summary: there was unanimous agreement that companies must outsource and use flexible staff to stay in business.

Quotes:
Marc Coleman - 'there is no doubt, no option that companies will have to outsource / use agency staff'

Pat Lynch 'your largest overheads walk in to your company on two feet....businesses must control these costs', 'It (outsourcing and using flexible staff) is a good business strategy'

Jay Bourke - If you're not letting people go, you'll go out of business, outsource right away'

Brian Carey 'It's a growing trend in Irish businesses'

This is good news for Flexitimers and particularly good news for freelancers, part timers and contractors out there who can now rest assured that more interesting projects and positions will be coming down the pipeline. Flexitimers offers part timers, freelancers and contractors access to skilled part time, contract and freelance positions and projects.

An article called 'Seeing the bigger picture' in the Independent made an interesting case for using career coaches to assist with dealing with change in the 21st century. We all know that the 'job for life' is largely a thing of the past and that's not just to do with the recession but it's more to do with our generation's career promiscuity. We prefer to shop around and indeed move around - upsizing our career prospects with strategic moves every couple of years. However, we're now seeing a very definite move towards outsourcing which will have a profound impact on the traditional employee. Maybe the next opportunity will be contract or freelance - something that exploits your skill set but to a very tight and specific brief.  Anyway the article is about using a career coach to identify what you want, why you want it and how to manage your career - worth a read. Times are changing and chance favours the prepared.

An article caught my eye in Friday's Irish Times about the CEO Forum that takes place this week in Dublin. CEOs from some of Ireland's largest companies are meeting to discuss how to operate in challenging times ahead.

A comment by Brian Long, chief executive of venture capital firm Atlantic Bridge struck me as relevant to Flexitimers "during periods of recession, opportunities tend to open up in the outsourcing space as large corporations pare back, reduce their workforce and then realise that they don't have the "bandwidth" to carry out certain activities such as the development of non-core products. This creates opportunities for smaller players to step in and offer their services". This is also the case for freelancers, contractors and anyone offering themselves 'flexibly' to companies. Food for thought indeed.

Just read an interesting post by Alexia about The Green Party's hopeful recruitment of a Machiavellian web hero to address their webdev, design, web2 and social networking needs in one tidy, one person contract over 9 months. Alexia's suggestion to "divide up the work and don't go for a yellow pack solution" and to literally contract out the specific tasks is exactly why we launched Flexitimers. We agree with you Alexia and Damien in that one size does not fit all and indeed one person does not have a complete skill set to carry off something as large as the web presence of a political party in power. I wrote a blog post specifically about this divide and conquer approach a few weeks ago.
PS, Damian from the Green Party, I appreciate your prompt and honest response and if you plan to take Alexia's advice, maybe you'll post all those choice freelance and contract tasks on Flexitimers.