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In a partnership with the University of Phoenix the Institute for the Future has produced a new report titled Future Work Skills 2020. You may be weary of the University of Phoenix, but I can vouch for the IFTF. However, I have mixed feelings about the report. It identifies the key driving factors changing the workplace, but the actual skills section leaves something to be desired.

This report is probably best for college students or mid-career workers thinking about making a change but haven't looked deeply into the matter yet.

About 20% of information workers report that they have conducted work-related activities from a mobile device while driving. That's just one of the findings reported in a Unisys and IDC survey on the consumerization of the enterprise, released today. The survey has a number of expected findings - employees are using their own devices for work, IT sees mobile support as a priority, etc.

But the survey also puts some numbers on the current "always on" nature of work in the post-PC era.

Is there any truth to the belief that U.S. tech jobs are outsourced to India at least in part because Indian developers are better skilled than U.S. workers? According to GILD, a company that combines professional social networking with games that assess skills, there are some areas in which Indians beat their counterparts in the U.S, but there are others in which Americans excel. GILD examined the results of over 1 million assessments taken by over 500,000 developers with an average of 2-3 years of experience.

Miami University's Augmented Reality Research Group developed an Android app that helps librarians find mis-shelved books and determine where they should go. It's a simple idea, and one that could save librarians hours of drudgery (or cost many temps their jobs, but that's another story). Sounds a lot more useful than virtual mirrors for trying on sunglasses, doesn't it? As I've written before, I've long been of the mind that AR will be more useful in the workplace than as a consumer technology. And based on this poll, most of you can imagine uses for AR in your workplace. So when will we start seeing more business-focused AR?

On May 17th and 18th, technology thinkers such as Jaron Lanier, Bruce Sterling, Vernor Vinge and Will Wright and many more and will gather at are2011 in Santa Clara, CA to discuss AR's present and future. Workplace AR will be among the topics discussed.

I won't be able to attend the event, but Sterling and Vinge were kind enough to share some thoughts on the future of AR in the workplace with us in advance of the event.

Gartner Research VP Mike Rollings is calling for an end to Taylorism as a management doctrine. "Humans have become cogs in business machinery pursuing efficiency," he writes. If you think that sounds radical, last year Wall Street Journal editor Allan Murray wrote a piece titled "The End of Management" decrying hierarchy, bureaucracy and encouraging business leaders to embrace change.

But Rollings and Murray are contributing nothing new. It's a rallying cry that has been heard for decades. Enterprise 2.0 and social business proponents like to talk about breaking down silos, flattening organizational structures and making work meaningful again. I know I do. But we're fooling ourselves if we think these are new ideas.

Plenty of people have tried to make customer service "fun." If you've ever worked a customer service job, you may have seen a FISH! Training Video. But chances are a video about a bunch of happy-go-lucky fish throwers somewhere in Seattle didn't make working the swing shift at a call center for minimum wage any better. (Apparently, those videos don't make the people who actually work at that fish stand very happy either.)

This week UserVoice, the idea management/customer feedback software-as-service we've raved about, announced that it's getting into the hosted help desk business. And UserVoice hopes to make customer service fun by adding game mechanics to the help desk. The target audience is different - UserVoice is targeting application support teams, not contact centers - but the idea is the same: to make customer service fun.

Forrester released today a report called Caution: IT Investment May Be Hurting US Job Growth. The report's authors - Andrew Bartels, Christopher Mines and Sarah Musto - note that despite record corporate profits, unemployment remains unchanged. Forrester notes that poor job growth both causes and is caused by poor economic growth. It's a vicious cycle.

The report suggests that corporations are investing in IT instead of hiring workers. The analysts looked at research from 62 industries to find out what's going on. The report says that the industries with the highest IT investment are also the ones with the biggest decline in jobs. The analysts conclude that there is a causal connection between IT investment growth and the lack of employment growth.

Earlier this month we covered Gartner analyst David J. Cappuccio's concerns that a data center crisis is looming. This week we're seeing increased data center hiring. We talked to SunGard Availability Services's Managing Principal of Consulting Services Dr. Mickey Zandi, who says that although data center hiring isn't in crisis yet, it's already difficult to find qualified people. He shares some advice for data center managers and workers on how to prepare to for the future.

The prophesied great migration to the cloud is often seen as a career killer for data center workers as storage and infrastructure requirements are consolidated into the hands of a few IaaS providers. In the past we've looked at the impact of cloud migrations on IT jobs in general, though not data center related positions in particular. However, Gartner analyst David J. Cappuccio thinks there could be a looming data center staffing crisis.

Curtis Franklin Jr. has written a post for Enterprise Efficiency on becoming a better IT manager. Specifically, Franklin's advice is on how to manage IT teams - not contracts or technologies. He notes that although some elements are important for all managers, there are some distinct skills necessary for managing the sorts of people that gravitate towards careers in IT. Some of Franklin's points are obvious ("hire well"), but all bear repeating.