H aRRgh!!

Joining the latter part of the 20th century would be a start for our department, let alone the 21st.

Since time began we have relied on an entirely paper-based system for our records and information, which isn't exactly conducive to quick and efficient working.

Thankfully, it seems the penny has finally dropped.

Every so often I am reminded why I hold most other departments within our organisation in such contempt.

After a few weeks of being almost cocooned away from them, with very little interference, I was given a stark reminder today.

In HR it is fair to say that we have more than our fair share of strange, and sometimes difficult conversations with employees.

A recent ‘classic’ involved a woman going in to far too much detail about her experiences going through ‘the change’.

Today, however, I had what must go down as my strangest conversation so far.

The recent recruitment drive has lead, as you would expect, to quite an influx of new starters within our business.

Many are already turning out to be excellent additions, but some of the others are just proving to be anything but.

For the past few weeks we have had an employee off work with non-work related stress.

During that time she has already refused to communicate verbally with us as she feels too stressed, and today she went even further in her efforts to refuse any help.

It’s fair to say that the issues with some of our new employees show no sign of abating.

Absence is a particular concern, a point well illustrated by an incident today.

Today was the deadline day for submitting our departmental business plan for the new financial year, and as usual everything was left to the last minute.

However, we have learned one very important lesson from previous years; less is more. Or something like that...

A tricky situation has arisen at work today.

Over the past few weeks, our receptionist has become increasingly suspicious over the amount of times she has to re-credit our franking machine.

As the only person using it, she has a very good idea on its normal usage, so over the past few days she has decided to make a note of the credit level in the machine during the day.