Guru

The high rate of suicides among Japanese businessmen may be trumped by neighbouring China after 6.5 million civil servants were warned that they could face the push for keeping a mistress.

Under landmark legislation, government officials who engage in illegal or immoral activities such as having a mistress or gambling will risk losing their job, while abusing or abandoning family members or refusing to support elderly relatives will also be deemed a sackable offence.

According to a Xinhua report http://www.chinaview.cn, the regulation is "China's first to systematically stipulate what administrative punishments civil servants abusing their power will receive".

The new legislation has been approved by the State Council and is scheduled to come into force (who are we to argue with a country boasting the world's largest standing army of 2.3 million) on 1 June.

Guru looks forward to opening his post every other Thursday when his fortnightly copy of membership magazine People Management drops though his letterbox.

Any thoughts of how tough life is are immediately dispelled when Guru flicks through the magazine's pages and thanks his lucky stars he is not in their employ.

This issue (featuring yet another man in a suit on the front cover) runs an interview with soon-to-be departed CIPD director-general Geoff Armstrong. Guru uses the word 'interview' loosely, as the piece reads more like a self-penned valedictory.

In a strong contender for the most ridiculous press release Guru has received this year, the not-at-all-boring Institute of Administrative Management (IAM), claims managers are wasting 3.5 days a year clearing shredder jams.

The IAM says this is costing businesses up to £30,000 a year in lost efficiency and poses a potential security risk.

Instead of shredding confidential material, workers are leaving it in drawers and some, shock horror, are putting it in bins.

To tackle this potentially catastrophic scenario, shredder maker Acco Rexel has launched a range of 'intelligent' shredders.

Quite how they are intelligent baffles Guru. As far as Guru can tell, this intelligence involves a red light illuminating when there is too much paper being fed into the machine.

Amazing, what will they think of next?

Intriguingly, the IAM also offers a BA (Hons) in Strategic Administrative Management. Guru imagines this course is much in-demand, given the dynamic nature of the administrative management sector.

Anyway, enough of this, Guru is off to watch some paint dry...

Ahoy there, Guru has been busier than David Hasselhoff in an episode of Baywatch, attending the HR Forum on board the Aurora.

It has taken some time for Guru to find his sea legs, having first turned a darker shade of blue as the boat set sail. Guru, however, was not the only one.

When Guru attended the first seminar of the day, he was gratefully entertained by the speaker's uncanny enactment of a drunken sailor, as he worked through his speech, swaying to and fro as he spoke about eyeball-to-eyeball personal contact.

Back to back meetings and a rocky, patchy sleep later and Guru has already begun to questions his stamina to go the distance at this HR conference marathon. But the weather has finally settled down, along with the English Channel.

Guru was privileged to be invited to the Metropolitan Police Crime Museum recently.

The facility is not open to members of the public, but is used as a lecture theatre for the curator to lecture police and like bodies in subjects such as forensic science, pathology, law and investigative techniques.

It features many weapons used in real-life crimes, such as the gun used by Ruth Ellis - the last woman to be hanged in the UK - to kill her lover.

The museum also displays gruesome items like the bathtub and cooking pot used by serial killer Dennis Nilson to dismember and boil his victims.

But Guru was most intrigued by the museum curator's insistence that the Met Police know for certain the identity of Jack the Ripper.

The museum has recently come into possession of book called The Lighter Side of My Official Life, written by the head of the CID Dr Robert Anderson and heavily annotated by the officer in charge of the case, Chief Inspector Donald Swanson.

The pair were in no doubt about the identity of Jack the Ripper, claiming he was positively identified by the case's only eye-witness (who ultimately refused to testify against a fellow Polish Jews) as Aaron Kosminski.

Swanson wrote:

After this identification which suspect knew, no other murder of this kind took place in London. In a very short time the suspect with his hands tied behind his back, he was sent to Stepney Workhouse and then to Colney Hatch and died shortly afterwards - Kosminski was the suspect - DSS.

A barber and resident of Whitechapel since 1882, this was a man with an extreme hatred of women, especially prostitutes. Kosminski had strong homicidal tendencies and a history of brutal crimes. He was described by police as a self-abuser (he masturbated), he drank from sewers and ate scraps from the gutter.

As Swanson remarked, after Kosminski was identified, the murders ceased, and ultimately Kosminski died "demented and incoherent".

You read it here first.

Why all the fuss about prison 'chain gangs' working on the railways?

Guru has long believed that those serving time at Her Majesty's pleasure could be put to better use than simply watching daytime TV and making shanks out of chair leg splinters.

Why, there's litter to pick up, chewing gum to unstick from pavements, graffiti to scrub, potholes to fill and, plainly, railways to mend.

All this could be done at low cost in fetching striped uniforms.

Guru is putting in a special request for Paris Hilton to work on his street.

This letter to Guru from Disciple Graham is enough to make any man-of-a-certain-age working in human resources puff out his flabby chest, climb aboard his Harley Davidson and speed off down Route 66 (or the A3 - whichever is nearer)...

Dear Guru

It has finally happened - I have reached the age of 51. And whilst I was busy facing the inevitable decline in hearing and seeing, decrease in height, greying of hair, increasing wrinkles, abnormal body mass spread due to metabolism slow down, bone mass deterioration and steady decline in strength, I completely missed the reality of my life as explained in the "Have a rant" on p15 of Personnel Today's 15 May issue.

It's not that I dislike the thought of being middle aged (although I haven't seen too many 102 year old HR directors around) but whilst I was worrying about balding and decreases in testosterone levels I apparently have turned into a white, middle-class, middle-aged Daily Mail-reading woman.

Its not fair! I want to be a Wild Hog. Not a part of the mothers' union.

I sat in my local cinema last week with the giant "Go Large" popcorn, Diet Coke (watching my weight) and family size bag of Revels and was enthralled to see the first screening of Wild Hogs in my local cinema. I was thrilled to see the likes of John Travolta and friends looking greyer, chubbier, and more like me. Don't get me wrong, I love watching a hot movie kiss as much as anybody else, but the older I get the harder it is to suspend my disbelief when the male love interest is the same age as my grandchildren.

So, anyway, come on all you male HR Wild Hogs. Stand up and be counted!

Graham White
Head of HR & Organisational Development
Corporate Services
Surrey County Council

Guru would like to hear from any other male, middle-aged (40+) HR Wild Hogs out there. If there's sufficient interest he may even organise lunch at the famous bikers' hangout, the Ace Cafe London. E-mail guru@personneltoday.com and "get your motor running".

News that a baby in the US has been granted a gun licence does not surprise Guru in the slightest.

After all, the children of God-fearing Americans everywhere have a GODDAM RIGHT to bare arms, bare legs, bare bottoms, etc. Isn't that what the consititution says?

And maybe that's where the confusion lies.

Spelling is dif-rnt in Merca. A gun, Guru notes, is not always a 'gun'. Quite often, it will be a gurn, as in the common cry of the lesser-ejerkaded southern buoys: "Umma gonna git mar gurn!" or the Du Wowrk cry of: "Eh! Donny, you gat dat Barredda yed?"

Guru notes that the youngest permit owner is called 'Bubba'. Presumably when he's a bit older and can apply for a TV licence, he'll be called 'Buddy' and when he's old enough to be president he'll be called 'Goddam Monkey Boy idiot'.

How does one combine the sedentary existence of a human resources professional with the body beautiful demanded of modern society?

Well, scientists from the Mayo Clinic in (where else) America have suggested exercising while you work.

The BBC's Denise Winterman has taken the advice quite literally and attempted to do a session on her laptop while pedalling on a cycling machine. Read her report and weep.

She writes:

I manage to misspell nearly every other word, mistakenly turn the typeface into italics and come dangerously close to a serious hamstring injury after an incident involving my foot, a pedal and a momentary lapse in concentration.

You can lose weight if you exercise while you work. But you'll put it all back on when you are at home, eating biscuits while watching daytime television because you've been sacked for poor performance.

It ain't gonna happen folks. Unless you're a professional sportsperson, work is for work and exercise is for leisure.

When will fatties stop looking for some holy grail of slimming (ie something that will cause the blubber to fall off without any conscious effort) and realise that they simply need to eat fewer of the 5Cs (chips, crisps, cakes, cookies and chocolate), get their super-sized buttocks off the couch and burn away the vast quantities of energy they are habitually consuming?

Guru should have blogged on this earlier, but he was too busy being mocked by heartless colleagues about his blue-headed baldness.

Personnel Today has taken inspiration from the TV show Ugly Betty to research its readers on whether it is acceptable to tease people at work about their physical characteristics.

The report finds that people with ginger hair are the most acceptable target for workplace ribbing, followed by blonde hair ("are you having a blonde moment?), regional accent and baldness (how very dare they).

Guru enjoyed the irony in Sunday's News of the World story which accused the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) of paying its female staff less than men.

Apparently, figures revealed in an answer to a Parliamentary question tabled by Tory MP Philip Davies, unearthed a pay gap of almost £2,000 at the equality watchdog.

The EOC has come out all guns blazing this morning, pointing to its own data that proves no such gap exists. The News of the Screws story was using the pay of part-time staff and not comparing full-time equivalent earnings, the EOC raged.

It's one of the big problems facing organisations that merge - how to ensure that employee cultures do not clash.

Nationwide Building Society and Portman Building Society are taking steps - this week - to "increase their understanding of each other's organisations prior to their planned merger on 28 August".

The two building societies (equivalent to credit unions, for Guru's North American readers) are planning a week-long quiz asking employees of each organisation about the other.

A spokesperson for Nationwide said:

The quiz will cover areas such as history of the societies, business performance, people and products. Prizes of £100 will be awarded to the winners. We see this as the perfect vehicle to enhance our programme of integration.

A week-long quiz seems excessive to Guru, who got bored of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? after two shows.

Guru thoroughly enjoyed BBC Panorama's recent exposé on the Church of Scientology, as much for the clip of reporter John Sweeney losing it on camera as for any deep insights into the workings of this mysterious cult.

But just in case Sweeney hadn't fully discredited his own investigations by his unjournalistic rant, the Scientologists are putting the boot in with their claims of BBC bias.

Guru has received a letter from Freedom Television - a service from Freedom Magazine (published by the Church of Scientology International from its UK headquarters at Saint Hill Manor in East Grinstead) - with which editor Graeme Wilson enclosed a DVD documentary entitled Panorama Exposed. You can view it for yourself here - Panorama Exposed documentary.

The letter reads:

This documentary details 154 would-be violations of the BBC and OfCom guidelines in the making of a recently-produced Panorama story. The reporter claimed at the outset that he was interested in both the positives and negatives of the story, but when he couldn't find the negative information he staged scenarios to fit his story line, resorting to proven unreliable sources.

Guru has his own beef with the BBC - not least that they have failed to secure ongoing rights to broadcast Aussie soap Neighbours - the bedrock of daytime TV and career springboard of Kylie Minogue.

But he knows better than to get into a slanging match with the sinister sect of Scientiology, other than to say it's a shame the Scientologists don't hold themselves to the standards of fairness and accuracy with which they seem to hold any member of the press that questions their religious credentials.

And you thought the Labour Party were the masters of spin and digging dirt on their enemies!

PS. Note BBC News' main rivals in the documentary's credits: "ITN Archive/Reuters is thanked for their contribution of documentary footage."

While Guru is on the dangerous subject of religion...

In his regular outpourings for Personnel Today magazine, Guru recently tackled the subject of global leadership, old monkey boy George W Bush, subservience to the royal family and the oily media whores who consistently paint themselves into a corner with their florid prose and habitual forelock tugging.

And talking of florid pros, ruddy cardinal Janis Pujats, the archbishop of Riga in Latvia, has branded homosexuality as an "unnatural form of prostitution" and is encouraging citizens of Riga to repeat their excesses of 2006 and hurl abuse and human excrement at participants in the Gay Pride march, which is scheduled to take place on 3 June.

It's heartening to see a 'man of god' take such a reasoned and thoughtful approach to the issue of sexuality. It is also good that he can manage to put to the back of his mind the excesses regularly committed against young boys and girls, presumably in the name of god, by 'good catholics' the world over.

Guru notes, however, that the key 'message' in the cardinal's outburst is his tacit support for 'natural' prostitution. This is understandable however, seeing as the world's oldest profession was endorsed by the 'fisher of men' himself - old Mr Jesus.

Guru hears on the burger vine that McDonalds is recruiting a bunch of tubsters to lend weight to its argument that the dictionary definition of 'McJob'
is unfair.

The definition describes a McJob as "an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector".

Guru decided there was only one way to find out and went straight to the heart of the matter - visiting McDonalds outlets and quizzing staff on their view of their glamorous job...

Talk about bad timing.

As Guru made his way into Personnel Today's office this week, he spotted this poster by the side of the road.

This poster campaign - fronted by Nicky Hambleton-Jones, presenter of Channel 4's 10 Years Younger - was launched just last week to make up a fundraising shortfall of £7m.

However, following Monday's tragic fire, Guru suspects the Cutty Sark will need a bigger celebrity and a few more millions to complete its renovation.

Stephen Archer, director of Cutty Sark Enterprises, which runs the ship on behalf of owner the Cutty Sark Trust said:

We will be launching a rejuvenated campaign. What form that will take we aren't too sure but I daresay it will be a fresh poster campaign.

Devoted disciples will recall Guru's recent analysis of Christian names in which Yours Truly exclusively revealed that if you want to get ahead in human resources it helps if your name is Michael or Susan.

Guru was immediately inundated with demands for surname analysis to complete the picture.

Smith, Robinson and Williams polled highest among HR directors, and Guru immediately identified Mike Smith, director of HR at Yorkshire Water as the very model of a modern HR professional - by moniker, at least.

Personnel Today followed up with an excellent opinion piece on the career-threatening phenomenon of alphabetism, whereby people whose surname initial falls towards the end of the alphabet suffer great disadvantage in life (though it hasn't appeared to hinder the aforementioned Smiths, Robinsons and Williams).

And finally, this week, the national newspapers have caught up - The Daily Telegraph publishing an article entitled Is your name to blame for your life?

It cites real-life examples of workplace discrimination based on whether you are an A-lister or Z-lister by name. And human resources is the very bastion of this nominal inequality.

Never fear your embarrassing hangover at work - you can now legitimately blame your boss!

Guru has learned of new research that says if there is a relaxed attitude to boozing in the workplace - during lunch hours, after work and the like - it tends to lead to heavier drinking at home.

So, when you slope into work feeling like you are at death's door, wondering why oh whyyyyy did you drink that "one last glass" of wine, you don't have to hide it. It's bullying and peer pressure from the workplace that has caused you to be like this.

And Guru has even found a posh term for you to use to prove your 'illness' is a result of work pressure. Remember this - you are suffering from Veisalgia - 'the sum of unpleasant physiological effects following heavy consumption of alcoholic beverages'.

Fellow blogger Featherynscale, author of the Sic Transit Gloria Monday blog, has written some wise words about safety training in her post Things Featherynscale is No Longer Allowed to Do in the Human Resources Office.

She opines:

When creating multiple-choice exams to support safety training, the answer choices for "What is our general procedure in case of an emergency?" should not include "D. When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout."

This has some resonance for Guru, who recently heard of a health and safety emergency in an unnamed HR office, where a young lady got her fingers trapped in the raise/lower mechanism of her chair.

Her own panic was, according to one observer, only exacerbated by the hysteria of her colleagues who dashed about shreaking and squealing, making the situation much more tense than it really needed to be.

Calm was only restored when the Fire Brigade arrived to release the woman's swollen digits from the chair.

Guru is just surprised that the arrival of several brave hunky men in fire-fighting uniforms didn't cause even more excitement and fainting among the HR ladies than the original incident.

Sadly, Guru cannot be too smug about this near tragicomedy, since he has a rather poor record in the 'rescuing damsels in distress' department himself...

You've got to admire its cheek.

Communications company Bluewood Training has written to Tony Blair offering him a job.

Speculation has been rife about what the prime minister will do next, when he steps down from his duties in June. It has been suggested that he will be far too busy writing his memoirs or being a roving ambassador for Britain to take on much else, but Bluewood Training seems sure he could find some spare time to help it deliver its training courses.

Hot news from the Association of Personal Assistants (APA) (which describes itself as the equivalent professional body for PAs as the Institute of Directors (IoD) is for directors.

It reports:

[Our] survey of 2,340 PAs has found that over 50% believe their bosses are working much harder than they were three years ago and 8% feel the level of work is causing them to be seriously stressed.

They believe that standards are slipping and some of the fun (or good humour) may be missing from the workplace.

If Guru understands the association's press release correctly, the main complaint of personal assistants is that their job is less fun than it used to be. There's probably a bit more shouting and a bit less flirting. Diddums.

Those dictation sessions have become much less exciting since the boss has actually had to get on with running the business.

But fear not, because the APA has an ingenious plan to solve this crisis - hire more PAs!

Says an APA spokesman:

Hiring a great PA is one remedy and they can help take some of the strain from a busy executive by managing their diary, their travel and their meetings and scheduling in some quality time to help the boss unwind.

Guru is off to "unwind". Linda - hold all calls! And see you in the boardroom in 15 minutes with a notepad and an open mind.