Guru

A nice blog post from Rick over at Flip Chart Fairy Tales this week.

He says:

Motivational speakers are a bit like diet books. If they really worked, you’d only need to see one, then you’d be sorted for the rest of your life.

If even 10% of each audience went off and changed their lives after listening to one of these 'gurus' [careful, Rick], the speakers would soon go out of business.

Like much of what passes for personal development in today’s companies, motivational speakers are simply there for the entertainment of executives. You might just as well send them to see a stand-up comedian. They might even learn more.

Guru thinks Rick has a point, and will take the argument further.

If these motivational speakers' techniques work as well as they claim, wouldn’t they themselves be motivated to get a better job than continually presenting a load of pyschobabble to bored execs?

It’s a bit like pyschics - how come Mystic Meg hasn’t won the lottery yet?

Incidentally, for all of you that follow the stars (and thus believe that the position of heavenly bodies at the moment of your birth has a continuous influence over your fortune, personality, moods and behaviours), let Guru issue this reality check about the nonsense of astrology. Zodiac shmodiac.

As a cub reporter, Guru worked with a wise old hack known as the Silver Fox. He had started his journalistic career on local papers where his responsibilities were: obituaries and star signs.

That's right. The Silver Fox would return from the pub every Tuesday afternoon and make up the astrology column...

Leo - luck is on your side this week, so take a gamble on a game of a chance. Thursday is perfect for making new friends - it will be worth going out of your way to be nice. A family argument begins with money. And love wears sunglasses.

Read this carefully - a journalist made it up!

Anyway, Guru is an Aries, and we Arians typically don't believe in astrology.

It had to happen. The jealous feminists are trying to hijack Guru's HR Wild Hogs.

Disciple Fleur wrote to Guru with the following:

In these modern times I was astonished to read that women and young people are barred from membership of the HR Wild Hogs.

With the advent of various pieces of women's rights legislation during the past three decades and last year's new age discrimination laws, I respectfully wish to apply to join as an 'honorary' HR Wild Hog.

Yes you've guessed it I'm a 20-something female, with curves in all the right places (please ignore the curves in all the wrong places).

Yours in anticipation

Fleur Dulude
HR Consultant (OD)

Well, young Ms Deluded, the HR Wild Hogs were formed as part of a backlash against the feminisation and juvenation (is that a word? - it is now) of the human resources profession. That is precisely why membership is restricted on grounds of sex and age (you must be a man over 40, working in HR).

To allow ladies (or HR Sows) into our parcel would be to defeat the object.

Besides, you ladies have lots of groups dedicated to the fairer sex - The Women's Institute is an obvious example, and you don't hear us chaps demanding membership of that (even though they brilliantly slow-hand-clapped ex-prime minister Tony Blair).

There are also plenty of knitting circles, crochet clubs, flower-arranging societies, antenatal classes, the entire yoga movement, Tupperware and/or Ann Summers parties, ballet lessons, cheerleading troupes...

...wait a minute...

...the HR Wild Hogs might benefit from some female involvement after all:

Applications with supporting photographs to Guru at the usual address.

As all HR Wild Hogs know, nothing makes a man feel more, er... manly than handling a power tool.

One of Guru's favourite US TV sitcoms, Home Improvement, was a homage to this universal truth. Tim 'The Toolman' Taylor (played by Tim Allen - coincidentally a member of the cast of the film Wild Hogs) and his sidekick Al Borland (Richard Karn) spent many an episode getting into scrapes with oversized power tools - with occasional help from none other than Pamela Anderson as Lisa the helper.

Well even Guru is not immune from the testosterone boost afforded by a really big, noisy machine. So when Mrs Guru wandered in from the garden last weekend and instructed Yours Truly that: a) the grass needed strimming; b) the hedge needed trimming; and c) some trees needed pruning there was only one thing for it. Some new, petrol-engine-driven garden implements.

To Guru's delight, a quick Google search revealed just the thing he was looking for - the ultimate one-stop-shop, three-in-one, multi-purpose garden gadget.

Strimmer, trimmer and chainsaw all in one, powered by a 25cc 2-stroke petrol engine with easy start and anti-stall, a 600mm extension bar for extending reach, adjustable 'D' handle and shoulder strap for comfort - let Guru introduce you to the Silverline Multi Head Garden System. It's the best £177.78 (at current prices) you'll spend all year.

Your neighbours will cast green eyes over the fence as you swiftly tackle all those garden jobs in one fell swoop (okay - three fell swoops), while they faff around, juggling between various items of their own inferior equipment.

Employers up and down the country have been waiting in nervous anticipation for the first piece of large-scale industrial action from newly formed union Unite (created on 1 May 2007 from a merger of Amicus and the Transport and General Workers Union (T&G)).

Well, the waiting is over.

Guru has received advance notice that London bus workers are due to protest on Thursday 23 August at "key London transport and local government offices at the lack of toilet facilities on bus routes and in general".

A Unite official told Guru:

The campaign has taken a new turn with the capital’s bus workers threatening a full strike ballot if Transport for London (TfL) and London’s local authorities don’t act.

Some drivers have been so desperate for a toilet break they have had to relieve themselves in public places and been arrested.

The union claims its threat of industrial action raises three vital issues :

• Lack of toilets equals lack of respect for drivers and their health.

• Serious health problems arise from not being able to go to the toilet when you need to, especially bladder, kidney and prostate conditions.

• TfL says it wants to attract more women into the industry. How can it be serious about this when it cannot even provide adequate toilet facilities for staff?

The Unite spokesman concluded:

The bus workers are expected to turn out in significant numbers for a series of striking protests designed to make London’s leaders sit up and listen.

In response, Guru would like to say three things:

Firstly, shouldn't that be "sit down and listen"?

Secondly, why can't bus drivers in London do what everyone else does in town and pop into McDonalds for a McSh*t?

And thirdly, bus drivers would do well to consider their colleagues in the road haulage sector, who have been "going on the move" for decades using pee pots or disposable urinals.

Guru understands it takes a bit of practice, but just think what it could do to bus punctuality.

Guru dropped into a local Smart Car dealership the other day to visit his cousin, who is currently working as a crash-test dummy.

While Guru got the brains and the beautiful blue skin, poor old Dummy got a thick skull and a bright orange complexion. Career options have been somewhat limited for the fellow.

Anyway, these Smart Cars are all the rage around London, with their funky designs, tiny dimensions and low-emission engines.

They can squeeze into parking spaces other cars can only dream of. But they're not much good off-road... until now.

While Guru was poking around the dealership, he came across an extraordinary machine - a Smart Car monster truck.

The Smart Forfun has the body of a normal Smart Fortwo mounted on a Mercedes-Benz Unimog 406.

Greek rally champion Stefan Attart designed and developed the 12ft-tall vehicle, implanting a six-cylinder 5.7-litre diesel engine.

Just like all the best car magazine photographers, Guru managed to take some grainy spyshot pictures of this strange hybrid vehicle:

Park that!

This is the high-resolution, soft-focus photograph that accompanied a news release from Buckinghamshire County Council, which announced that Angela O'Connor side-kick Gill Hibberd, formerly director of HR and organisational development (and current Public Sector People Managers Association (PPMA) lead on OD and leadership), has been promoted to the position of corporate director of people and policy.

Humena humena!

You wait all year for a story about buses, then two come along at the same time!

Hot on the exhaust pipe of last week's blog posting about bus drivers threatening strike action over a lack of toliet facilities, Guru hears news of an innovative employee benefits scheme offering... tax-free bus travel.

Now, this may not fill employees with as much excitement as, say, a company car, mobile phone and laptop, but a perk is a perk - right?

An eager and rather 'worthy' press release announces:

Incentive and motivation firm Motivcom is introducing tax-free bus travel through its Greentravel2work scheme. The new initiative allows staff and employers to benefit from significant savings on travel, as well as show commitment to more environmentally-friendly travel.

Through the Greentravel2work scheme, employees are given the option to choose an annual bus pass and pay for it monthly through their salary by deduction from their pay. This payment, which is exempt from income tax, will offer savings of up to 41% for employees and up to 12.8% on National Insurance (NI) for employers.

Many local authorities, major public and private sector employers have already confirmed interest and are working with Motivcom to develop schemes for their staff. Nottingham City Council is pioneering the launch of the scheme for its 12,800 employees.

This is a major new initiative for which there is already enormous demand. Everyone wins – the employee, the employer, bus operators and the environment.

But does everyone really win? The bus operators win, for sure. The environment is a less obvious winner, as quarter-full buses belch out their particulate-dense emissions, stopping every two minutes to hold up the traffic and slow down average journey times (meaning everyone's engines are running for longer).

And then there's the image problem. Personally, Guru rather subscribes to the Margaret Thatcher school of public transport philosophy. In 1986, the Iron Lady famously (or was it apocryphally?) said: "A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure." (Margaret Thatcher, 1986)

As usual, she was right.

Guru would rather take a London rickshaw than a London bus - and that's saying something. The typical bus experience usually brings one into contact with one or more of the following undesirable groups: squabbling schoolkids; grumbling pensioners; ipod noise polluters; back-pack wearing terrorists; adult Harry Potter readers; numerous Vicky Pollards and their discipline-free children; gangster wannabes; and people who have lost their driving licences.

So here's a warning to all those comp & ben specialists out there. If someone offers Guru a bus pass in lieu of salary - even if it is tax free - they will subsequently have to remove it from deep within an intimate bodily orifice.

Human resources service provider Ceridian - they of the highly amusing banana guard - this week sent Guru a copy of their latest HR e-newsletter, Ceridian Connection.

The communication contained a link to the first edition of the Ceridian HR News Quiz.

Now you might think that an HR Guru would score very highly on such a quiz, especially since he sits next to Personnel Today's team of news journalists.

And you'd be right. Yours Truly managed a respectable nine out of 10 - falling down only on a tricky question about workplace conflict.

Take the quiz yourself and see if you can beat a real-life Guru.

Thanks to Disciple Anita for this contribution towards Guru's quest for the best HR jokes.

It's not a joke, as such, but an amusing parable on the modern age.

Memo From Human Resources Re Political Correctness

It has come to our attention that some members of staff are making politically incorrect comments to fellow employees, and even business contacts. Detailed below are some general guidelines in this matter, together with a glossary of politically correct terms.

Staff are asked to assess the group of people they are speaking with make some effort to gauge who might be offended by what.

If employees insist on cracking jokes, they should select only jokes that seem appropriate for the group in question. Avoid racial, ethnic, sexual or any other type of humour that may make certain audience members feel uncomfortable. The company will no longer accept the excuse that your immediate line manager was the one who told you the joke in the first place.

Staff are asked to make an extra effort to be politically correct around people they have not met before, especially potential new clients and future employees of the company.

Politically Correct Glossary of Terms

Please note that you should not describe an employee as 'lazy'. The person concerned should be referred to as 'motivationally deficient'.

Someone does not 'fail' - they 'acheive a deficiency'.

Colleagues are not 'dishonest' - they are 'ethically disoriented'.

Please do not use the word 'wrong' - try 'differently logical'.

Instead of 'ugly', try saying 'cosmetically different'.

For 'unemployed', say 'involuntarily leisured'.

Also...

Dead = living impaired

Miser = negative saver

Ignorant = knowledge-based non-possessor

Unsophisticated = socially malformed

Some of our male colleagues have complained of being referred to in a politically incorrect manner, and staff are asked to adhere to the following:

A male member of staff does not have 'a fat beer gut'. He has developed a 'liquid grain storage facility'.

He does not 'sleep around', he is merely 'horizontally over-generous'.

He is not a 'cradle snatcher', but simply prefers 'generationally differential relationships'.

He does not 'stink', he suffers from 'hygiene aversion syndrome'.

He is not a 'groping pervert', but merely suffers from 'compulsive hand movement disorder'.

He does not tell 'endless, boring, unfunny jokes', but is simply 'humourly over-confident'.

He doesn't 'eat like a pig', but has 'reverse bulimia'.

And finally, staff should be respectful when speaking to female colleagues too:

Please note that a female staffer is not a 'moaner', she is merely 'vocally unappreciative'.

She does not have 'breast implants', but is 'medically enhanced'.

She is not a 'nag', she simply becomes 'orally repetitive'.

Thank you for your co-operation.

Guru feels a little dirty today – and this is unusual for a Monday morning, as it comes just hours after his weekly bath.

But there is no escaping the creeping feeling of cheapness and violation that has enveloped Yours Truly since he kicked off his working week by reading a particular press release. This was not so much a case of piggy-backing on a topical event as it was of shamelessly lassoing the event, hauling itself up onto its creaking back and stabbing it 85 times in a bloody fury.

Gangmasters in Redruth, Cornwall, have taken ignoring the minimum wage to new depths by not even paying people peanuts in a transparent bid to cut their wage bill.

Bulgarian workers were forced to scrabble about on their hands and knees foraging for potatoes and courgettes after their gangmasters decided to deprive them of their pay for 35 days.

Yet with a history of being treated badly by those in the West, Guru would have thought the nomad workers would have risen up and revolted, what with being descended from the Hunnish warriors who carved up Central Europe in centuries past.

However, it seems the fear of being shipped back to Bulgaria was enough to keep them on their knees. Either that or the gangmaster paraded around the field carrying a loaded

To borrow an old, alliterative newspaper marketing catchphrase, Personnel Today magazine is a right riveting read.

You'll see human resources professionals reading the publication anywhere - on their commute to work, in their coffee breaks, in boring conference sessions etc.

But Guru challenges anyone to beat Disciple Richard, who reads his copy of Personnel Today while waterskiing...

Send Guru pictures of yourself reading Personnel Today in unusual places to win an unspecified prize.

Personnel Today 's news editor Mike Berry has put out a call to the HR profession to find out what people who work in human resources do in their spare time.

Mike is particularly looking for unusual hobbies and strange pastimes.

We've already seen that Disciple Richard likes to waterski while reading Personnel Today magazine.

And Mike has since heard from model boat builders and tuba players.

But Guru's favourite response to date has been from Disciple David (a founder member of the HR Wild Hogs), who admits to teaching Ceroc.

He writes:

I am what we call a "taxi dancer" one who helps teach the basic moves to beginners and dances with new starters. It doesn't fit in with my hard-man motorbike rider image, but it is good fun.

Sadly, David's fellow HR Wild Hogs have got the wrong end of the stick.

Disciple Harpo comments:

Thats fantastic! I was prompted to do a Google search on Ceroc and found to my astonishment it's not quite dancing with taxis (which I have to admit I found hard to imagine), but rather a "crazy, fun fusion of jive and salsa".

Bloody Hell - doesn't all that salsa get all over your dancing clothes when you jive about?

Disciple David helpfully clears the whole thing up (though not literally):

If you jive about really skilfully, you don't get the salsa over your dancing clothes, or the outfit of the girl you are dancing with either! But that is the much more advanced level...

To share your unusual hobby and take part in quality, high-level discussions like this, e-mail mike.berry@rbi.co.uk

Following his highly successful post on out-of-office e-mail replies, Guru has been inundated with requests for more top tips on managing e-mails.

So a press release on the subject from Global Integration couldn't have been more timely.

It reads:

600 e-mails waiting for you when you get back from holiday? Delete the lot!

New research conducted by teams of academics from Glasgow has identified an all too familiar problem now commonplace among office workers: e-mail stress. The researchers' study found that 34% of people feel 'e-stressed' by the sheer volume of e-mails they receive.

These findings come as no surprise to Global Integration, whose own survey has identified that people get an average of 58 e-mails per day. So a typical person will return from a two-week holiday to find nearly 600 e-mails waiting for them.

Of these, only 43% are necessary for them to do their job, meaning that staff can spend up to 20% of their time dealing with unnecessary e-mails.

Kevan Hall, CEO of Global Integration and author of Speed Lead: Faster, Simpler Ways to Manage People, Projects and Teams in Complex Companies, believes that dealing with the e-mails is counterproductive in terms of managing time,­ not to mention well-being.

His solution is quite simple: delete the lot, he advises, adding that 99% of them will have solved themselves whilst you were away and the urgent ones will contact you again anyway.

Guru salutes this approach to communication, as he recently returned to work from a week's holiday to find his "inbox full" of 300+ mostly irrelevant e-mails (though there was a potentially very interesting one from a Nigerian prince who wants help transferring £350m into a UK bank and is offering a generous reward of 20% in exchange for Guru's account details).

Guru's fellow Personnel Today blogger HR Hartley at HaRRgh! has also just posted about the phenomenon.

That said, it's a good thing for the PR people at Global Integration that Guru didn't follow Kevan Hall's advice to delete all his e-mails without checking them on this occasion, as its press release had been sent to Yours Truly... by e-mail!

Thanks to Disciple Colin for the following new talent management technique:

Put 400 bricks in a room; then shut all your new employees in the room.

Leave them alone and come back after six hours; then analyse the situation.

• If they are counting the bricks, put them in the accounting department.

• If they are recounting them, put them in auditing.

• If they have messed up the whole place with the bricks, put them in engineering.

• If they are arranging the bricks in some strange order, put them in planning.

• If they are throwing the bricks at each other, put them in operations.

• If they are sleeping, put them in security.

• If they have broken the bricks into pieces, put them in information technology (IT).

• If they are sitting idle, put them in human resources.

• If they say they have tried different combinations, they are looking for more, yet not a brick has been moved, put them in sales.

• If they have already left for the day, put them in marketing.

• If they are staring out of the window, put them in strategic planning.

• If they are talking to each other, and not a single brick has been moved, congratulate them and put them in senior management.

• Finally, if they have surrounded themselves with bricks in such a way that they can neither be seen nor heard, put them in government.

Pyramid schemes and chain letters have suffered a bad press, as if they are some kind of scam.

But thanks to Disciple Andy, Guru can bring you exclusive details of a pyramid scheme that apparently, definitely does work!

Simply send this message by e-mail to nine of your (male) friends. To avoid accusations of mysogeny or sexism, Guru suggests that this might also work for ladies who want to trade in their boyfriends/husbands.

PYRAMID SCHEME INSTRUCTIONS Anaesthetise your wife/girlfriend, put her in a large carton (don't forget some ventilation holes), and send it to the person who is at the top of your list. Soon, your name will be at the top of the list, and you will receive 823,542 women through the post. Statistically, among those women, there will be at least: 0.5 Miss Worlds; 2.5 models; 463 nymphomaniacs; 3,234 'perfect 10s'; 20,198 who enjoy multiple orgasms; and 40,198 swingers. In total, that is 64,294 women who are better looking and less inhibited than the woman you posted off. And, best of all, your original package is guaranteed not to be one of those that come back to you.

WARNING! DO NOT BREAK THIS CHAIN LETTER

One bloke, for example, who sent the letter to only five instead of nine of his friends got his original wife back, still in the old dressing gown he sent her off in, with the same old migraine attack, and the usual accusatorial expression on her face.

The bloke that is in 6th place above me has already received 837 women and is lying in hospital suffering from exhaustion. Outside his ward are 452 more packages.

YOU MUST BELIEVE THIS E-MAIL

This is a unique opportunity to achieve a totally satisfying love life. No expensive meals out, no lengthy, trivial conversations. No obligations, no grumpy mother-in-law, and no constant demands of engagement and marriage.

Do not hesitate .. send this letter to nine of your best friends today!

Guru has just managed something quite extraordinary, and feels he has to share it with his Disciples.

It is an unprecedented achievement, and one that may never again be repeated. So listen carefully - you'll hardly believe your ears. Guru recently made a complaint about the ticket office at his local train station, along with a suggestion for improving matters, and... they have put Guru's idea into action!

Guru doesn't travel on public transport regularly - certainly not by choice.

But the other morning, the 9.32am Southern train service from Sutton to London Victoria seemed like the sensible choice. As it was after 9.30am it was an off-peak service to boot, thus costing about half the peak-fare amount.

Guru arrived at the ticket office at 9.25am, in good time to buy his ticket. But alas, the queue for the solitary open, manned ticket booth was out the door.

So Guru turned to the ticket machines outside the station entrance. But it seemed that, until their internal clocks had ticked past 9.30am they would not provide off-peak tickets.

To make his train, Guru therefore had to purchase a peak-fare ticket for an off-peak rail service.

Guru prides himself on complaint letters (he once received a wholesale pack of deodorant cans after one 'exploded' in his armpit - but that's another story) and subsequently wrote a very elegant missive to the Southern Railway customer services team explaining the injustice of the situation and suggesting they allow off-peak purchases a few minutes earlier.

Expectations of a response were low, so Guru was understandably delighted to receive the following note a few weeks later:

Thank you for your letter.

Please accept my apologies for the delay in responding to you. However, I have been in contact with the relevant manager who has changed the settings to allow people to start purchasing off peak tickets from 9.24am.

We are hoping that this will make a difference for you and if you require any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact us again.

Regards

Louise Giles
Southern Customer Services

Well done Louise and well done Southern Railways for beating this (very influential) customer's expectations. Guru may even use the train again one day!

If the Guru blog was a film, it would be a blockbuster. But what rating would it get from the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) or the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)?

Well, thanks to the people at Mingle2.com, you can now find out about the suitability of any blog (and many other social networking sites) for any given target audience.

Amazingly, the Guru blog is rated as "G" - the tamest rating that the MPAA gives and equivalent to the BBFC's "U" rating. According to Mingle2, only a single mention of the word "breast" in the entire blog caught the censor's eye.

The "G" rating is described thus:

A G-rated motion picture contains nothing in theme, language, nudity, sex, violence or other matters that, in the view of the Rating Board, would offend parents whose younger children view the motion picture. The G rating is not a “certificate of approval,” nor does it signify a “children’s” motion picture. Some snippets of language may go beyond polite conversation but they are common everyday expressions. No stronger words are present in G-rated motion pictures. Depictions of violence are minimal. No nudity, sex scenes or drug use are present in the motion picture.

Guru can't help but be a little disappointed that he isn't a little more "NC-17" (MPAA) or "R18" (BBFC). Guru's clever use of asterisks in swear words has probably spared him from an adult rating.

But the world of human resources blogging isn't a complete teddy bear's picnic. Just check out Guru's HR blogroll (right) and you will find some quite risque content.

Fellow HR blogger Scott McArthur's liberal use of naughty words earns his McArthur's Rant blog a "PG" rating.

While the potty mouth on Rick over at the Flip Chart Fairy Tales blog ensures he receives a cautionary "R" rating.

Shame on you both!

Guru finally has scientific proof of what he has known for a long time. That blueness = intelligence.

Scientists in America have found that people with blue eyes appear to be better strategic thinkers.

In tests, blue-eyed boys and girls proved to be more successful in activities that required them to plan and structure their time, such as golf, cross-country running - and studying for exams.

Imagine how clever you would be if your whole body was blue... Oh look - Guru's whole body is blue! Well, you just can't argue with science.

Please be upstanding for the 'best door-kicker-inner in the UK'!

Yes, the Credit Today Debt Collection Agency (DCA) of the Year awards 2007 will be held during a gala celebration dinner at the Hilton Metropole, Birmingham, on 28 November.

All the country's top bailiffs will gather in the West Midlands to celebrate the finest debt sale, purchase, collections and recovery businesses in the country.

Sadly for those expecting a punch-up between teams of enormous hired goons, the event is being billed as a rather more professional affair.

A bit like the Personnel Today Awards (which take place just a week before), but with just a subtle undercurrent of menace, perhaps.

An awards spokeswoman says:

Only DCAs with a responsible approach to debt collection and adherence to best practice will win an award.

Nominees will be expected to demonstrate how they have excelled in areas like customer/client satisfaction, how they have taken a responsible approach to debt collection, and have contributed to the cause of better business and credit practices externally.

Guru can't help but wonder if, in the teeth of one of the biggest recent global economic crises, there will be a special award for recovery of sub-prime mortgage lending debts.