H aRRgh!!

After 11 days of filling my time with typical festive 'over-indulgence', it has been a struggle to get back into the swing of things at work today.

It's fair to say that, as is often the case, the start to the day really set the tone for the remainder of it.

Wandering around work over the past few days has been a bit like wandering around a Ghost Town.

Absence has, inevitably, shot through the roof directly after the Christmas break, undoubtedly a combination of genuine illness, which is rife at this time of the year, and to a (hopefully) lesser degree due to those who may fancy an extended break without using their precious holiday entitlement.

As mentioned yesterday, absence is something of a hot topic at the moment.

Those that are angling for dismissals got their way today in a seemingly straight forward case, which has turned out to be anything but, and as such could come back to haunt us.

Just before Christmas it was announced that a member of our HR team would be leaving us for pastures new at the end of January.

Inevitably, we have got stuck in to recruiting a replacement HR Officer as a matter of urgency.

We have many other vacancies, but you have to look after your own don’t you?

We're currently undergoing a large recruitment drive for one of our departments, and have received over 150 applications for the vacancies so far.

Over the last few days we have been logging the applications, and started to make a note of those that we will want to interview.

As an interesting experiment, we thought we would hand all of the forms to the departmental manager to see what he came up with in terms of potential interviewee's.

The results were somewhat disturbing, but sadly not too surprising.

You may have gathered from some of my previous postings that many of the people who work here are a constant annoyance to me, particularly some of the so-called management.

Today saw a fine example of just why that is the case.

I feel like I’ve been to the gym today.

After spending the morning drinking plenty of fluids (obviously I’m still riding the cusp of the January health wave), I discovered that the toilets nearest to our office were closed for maintenance work.

Not an ideal scenario.

Over the next few weeks we have an abnormally large amount of women going off on maternity leave. Evidently there was something in the water several months ago.

This isn't strictly anything to do with me (particularly the pregnancy part, I would like to assure my partner), but has been causing me a great deal of annoyance this week.

Every so often we hold presentations for those who have been unfortunate enough to work here for 10 years.

Basically, we get them a fairly expensive gift, the Directors say a few words, there's a few handshakes, a presentation and a photo to mark the occasion.

What could possibly go wrong?

In a couple of weeks we are launching a training course with an external provider on the important subject of Diversity.

Some of our management have questioned the need for such training, but there is no such doubt in my mind after 2 separate incidents today.

I'm very troubled by events that have occurred today.

We are recruiting quite a lot of people at the moment. One person that attended an interview today used to work as a cleaner on-site here through the company that we used.

This would be irrelevant news, if it wasn't for the fact that his breath used to stink of alcohol every day.

Love is a funny thing.

Now there's a statement I never thought I'd open a work related blog with.

It is, however, very true. It makes many people act irrationally.

Two such people are employees of ours.

Our office resembled something out of the West Wing today, as a major diplomatic incident broke out.

One of our major customers is based in France, and it's fair to say that our relations with them have not been great over the past few months. Today, they sank to new depths.

A delegation of our employees has been sent over to carry out some work at their Headquarters just outside Paris. This should have been a straightforward job, but as always these things turn out to be anything but.

3 years ago I entered the world of HR at my present company, with no real plans to be there longer than my initial 2 month assignment.

Since then, it's fair to say I have had my ups and downs with not only our department, but also the wider world of HR.