Settling Day by Kate Howarth

Author:Kate Howarth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Published: 2015-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

Two months after I’d returned to work full-time I noticed an unopened box from Manpower’s head office, sitting in a corner of Darrol’s office. This time I didn’t ask if I could take a look at the contents. It contained a program called ‘Skillware’ a user-friendly system for training and testing word processor and computer operators.

My pulse raced with excitement as I worked my way through the new material and realised its potential, but when I showed it to Darrol he was less than enthusiastic. ‘Don’t get big ideas about that stuff from the US, we can’t afford it,’ he said.

I told him that if we didn’t get ourselves up to speed and invest in computers we would become dinosaurs in the industry within five years.

One morning Darrol asked me to join him in his office for coffee, which was a rare moment. There simply wasn’t enough time in the day for me to enjoy coffee breaks, but he said he needed to discuss something.

‘I’m bored,’ he said, running his hand over the soft leather lounge.

‘Bored? How can you be bored?’ I was astounded.

‘I don’t have enough to do.’

After the incident with Bryce, Darrol lost confidence and retreated into the ivory tower he’d created for himself. Since we’d introduced a new program for industrial services, hiring and training the personnel in that division had also fallen to me. I told him that if he needed more to do, he could take this off my hands. I went to my office to get all the material he’d need and dumped it onto his desk.

More information arrived concerning the IBM/Manpower partnership agreement recently signed in the US. This came about after IBM had conceded that Manpower’s Skillware programs exceeded anything IBM could produce. IBM sold the hardware and Manpower provided the training. In addition, Manpower also received a commission from IBM for any computer hardware that was sold. It was a perfect partnering of two specialist companies to meet the demands of a rapidly changing workplace. It was impossible to forecast what this meant in real dollar terms, but I expected it could produce revenue of around one hundred million a year. When I told Darrol he said that I read too much science fiction.

After months of badgering he finally agreed to make a modest investment and purchase two word processors to use as a trial. Within months we were making plans to open the first wordprocessing training centre in Australia, with two additional offices, one in North Sydney and another in Bankstown.

We were a few years away from being able to take on something like the IBM/Manpower partnership, but my plans with regard to recruiting and training staff were to achieve that end.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.