Stock market is low, Gas Prices are climbing, Unemployment is high, and the pressure is on to do much more with much less. Now is the time to prepare yourself for the changes which are coming in U.S. The following are some of the excerpts from this author’s interview with Dave Shah, a founder of The Knowledge-Mart (http://www.knowledge-mart.com)

According to Dave, following 5 things are the new themes of the US work life in coming years and similarly these 5 trends are fueling the needs of his company’s knowledge sharing services. “The Knowledge-Mart” – where experts teach other experts – allows industry experts to mentor/coach/train others over the web via online meetings and conference bridges in the flexible time without needing to travel.

1. Cultural Diversity – It is not uncommon to see a successful company with lots of diversity in their office work force. For instance, the marketing person is white, the administrative assistant staff is latino, some of the engineers are from India, China and other places. Get used to diversity at work. Academic systems in other countries are catching up and their schools are producing many more competitive English speaking students than the U.S. In short: Always keep yourself up-to-date with cutting edge technologies and other advancements in your fields. There is serious competition from other side of the world.
2. Communication – Gone are the days where Pigeons were mailing the postal mails or horse carriage were acting as postal services. Telegrams, Telex, Pagers are also at extinction. Emails, Instant Messaging, Mobile Phones – have resulted in “always accessible” culture where employees are more flexible in terms of their work hours while corporations are getting more productivity through these advancements. Webcam, Video Conferencing, Push-to-Talk, VoIP, Video TV, Wi-Fi, 3G and other wireless technologies are changing the way we work. In short: Work never stops. Internet is always available.
3. Speed / Lack of Time/ Travel Nightmares: Slow movers (yesterday’s monsters AT&T (ma-bell), MCI, DIGITAL, WORLDCOM, Nortel are either gone or struggling as they didn’t move fast with the change. New start-ups and new businesses work at a speed of light. Their factories and think tanks work 24X7. You as an employee or as a business owner can not work in slow pace. You need information and you need it now. There is no time for you to go to 1 week training to resolve the issue. Getting things done faster and faster is the new way the world works and even that is speeding up. Face 2 face meetings are becoming web based meetings (video conferencing) and long snail mails have become instant messaging. In fact, The Knowledge-Mart also uses Go-To-Meeting and Web-Ex for their online training methodology.
4. Global Work Force: The 21st century workforce is geographically distributed. Having a team in different country or time zone is not uncommon anymore. Multinationals have decision making at multiple places and not just at the head office. Your project team consists of people from 3 continents. In the next 5 years entrepreneurs and those who can get things done while outsourcing easy things will be the most successful. Freelance professionals are coming from various countries and perform at same quality at one third costs. They are reachable instantly via IM and VoIP phones. Your company workforce is not just limited to the employees in your office but those freelancers or consultants are also the extension of your work force and always competing to displace you from the permanent job. This is the reason you can not afford to take it easy at your workplace. Keep your skills sharp. Even while coming up with business model for The Knowledge-Mart, Dave was compelled to keep the option open for allowing global professionals to offer the services. However, Dave has chosen to focus only US based experts to keep the high quality of his services.
5. Information Overdose – Almost 80,000 new sites or companies are sprouting up on a daily basis. Almost all sensible domain names are taken and finding information with just one click has become a night mare. Search Engines help but spit out a list of 100 pages when you are looking for one concise report or page. You need to read at least 10 articles, if not more, before you get what you want. There are always 10 choices for getting things done and that adds more confusion. Trusting a site and giving personal information poses additional risks. Identity theft is at its peak. With this trend continuing, your workforce needs to be smarter in getting things done through Internet. Internet Research becomes otherwise time passing and entertainment for your employees. The Knowledge-Mart allows you to cut down this time and allows you to speak to an industry expert and get things done. There is never a doubt about your research as a result.

As these trends suggest, we in the USA need to be prepared and train ourselves with cutting edge information, tools and skills. The Knowledge-Mart is one of those e-learning solutions.

This article’s author can be reached at Cameron@knowledge-mart.com while Dave Shah can be reached directly at dshah@knowledge-mart.com

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/online-education-articles/work-trends-in-the-us-771748.html

About the Author:

I live and work in Greeley, Colorado I enjoy photography, cooking, and writing!

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