Guru

Working for a living is terrible even when you had very low expectations as a child, such as working as a middle manager in HR, which was always Guru’s dream. Not all children are lucky enough to have such mundane dreams though. Poor little Jessica Rosbrook is being primed for a life of bitter disappointment, having landed a job as a toy tester at the age of five.

Poor Jessica is sent the latest toys by toy firm Tomy. She plays with them and provides her feedback on how much she enjoyed the playing. It’s the perfect job! Guru would love to do it, so imagine how a five-year-old feels. For Jessica a life of terrible disappointment awaits, beginning with her next job after toy-tester, which is very unlikely to be toy-tester. Her parents would do well to acquaint themselves with the work of Seneca before her teenage years.

According to a survey into the graduate jobs market by research company High Fliers, there has been an average of 52 applicants to every graduate job in 2012.

Furthermore, competition is stiffest in banking and finance. This may seem puzzling given the not entirely positive attention banking has been generating recently, but this would be missing the point. People who might consider banking aren’t going to be discouraged by tales of filthy rich bankers lining their pockets while flouting regulations and destroying the world. The bit of the story they’re paying attention to is the “filthy rich” bit. Guru predicts applications to banking will continue to rise until the media has reason to stop writing stories about how rich and awful they all are.

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Guru has been asked by them in charge to ensure preparations are in place for the Olympics. Guru has always been a huge fan of the Olympics. He’s always loved athletics and has some treasured memories of Olympics past: seeing Derek Redmond hobble over the line to complete the 400m after suffering a hamstring injury; Linford Christie taking gold in Barcelona; and, best of all, the imperious Michael Johnson running a hitherto unthinkable time in the 200m in Atlanta.

Despite these cherished memories, Guru now hates the Olympics and will be enacting policies that reflect his hatred for it. There are two main reasons for this newfound hatred: the torch and football. Guru’s many reasons for hating the parade of the torch are well encapsulated by this clip from the torch’s inspiring trip around Britain: Olympic torch: Security team tackle cyclist. In the clip a fairly small boy cycles quite near the torch - as close as ten feet - and gets hauled off his bike by the neck for fear that he might attack and kill the torch. Since when did we attack children to protect torches? If a parent were carrying a child and a torch up some stairs the majority of people would expect the parent to drop the torch if the situation necessitated another hand, yet when it comes to the Olympic torch (a symbolic torch!!!) all reason is abandoned. Reason is abandoned to the extent that a multimillionaire American who makes absolutely terrible music for teenagers, in America, was asked to carry the torch and British people were expected to consider it acceptable, and not an abomination (which it was). And, presumably, if some right-thinking person had leapt out of the crowd to take the damned torch to smash it into one thousand tiny pieces, they’d have been hauled off by the neck to the Olympic Federation’s version of room 101 instead of being celebrated as a hero of rationality over mawkish sentiment.

Guru’s second reason is football. Why is football in the Olympics? It’s a sport played by multi-millionaires who take their holidays in the summer. They don’t want to play football in the Olympics. As if that weren’t insulting enough to the ideals of the Olympics, the one footballer who did want to play wasn’t allowed. As a result of all this, Olympic football will be filled with second-rate footballers who probably don’t really want to be there and they’ll be in every second advert telling us how much they care about the Olympics, when really they don’t.

For all these reasons Guru will be telling his staff that they cannot talk about the Olympics at work unless it is to discuss how unbearable it has made life in London. And nobody at all will be given time off to volunteer, unless it is to join protests against the football or to break the stupid torch.

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Guru expressed his disgust for the procession of the torch, or “stupid torch” as he wittily wrote in Guru hates the Olympics, in his latest hard-hitting blog. Guru also wrote, in the self-same blog, of his respect and admiration for the great Michael Johnson, a man who’s furnished many athletics fans with treasured Olympics memories.

Well, it seems the Olympic Committee was reading and was so angered by such an eminent public figure as Guru expressing his disdain for the torch that they’ve decided to destroy all of Guru’s Olympics memories by having Michael Johnson dress up in white pyjamas and run around Stonehenge carrying the stupid torch. Guru refuses to let this revolting spectacle destroy his memories of Michael Johnson and his gold-spiked brilliance, and has chosen to believe that while the great man trotted around the big stones with the big torch there was a team of snipers lining the Wiltshire countryside with their sights set on him.

Even if this were not the case, Guru is heartened to see that the world’s greatest ever 400m runner seems to be suppressing, with considerable difficulty, his amusement at becoming part of what looks for all the world like a cheap Michael Jackson video. Watch from 0.44 to see his noble efforts to hide a smirk.

Guru was reading an article this morning about Olympic brand police hitting the streets to ensure the integrity of the Olympics isn’t destroyed by local businesses trying to associate themselves with the games, and it gave him a brilliant idea…

So… please allow Guru to unveil the Olympics HR blog. Until the end of August the Guru blog will officially be known as the Olympics HR Blog and Guru will be known as the official Olympics HR blogger for the games. Because of very complicated rights issues (Guru hasn’t bought any rights at all) this will be the last time the official name is mentioned or referenced at all, but Guru would appreciate it if his readers could bear the name change in mind for the duration of August.

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It’s not been a good week for G4S. They’ve spectacularly failed to fulfil their contractual obligations to secure the Olympics and then Nick Buckles stunned everybody at the Home Affairs Select Committee by appearing as incompetent and witless as any of the bankers or Murdochs that have been dragged through the various committees over the last few months.

Worse than any of this is the G4S theme song, which is less inspiring than a Bon Jovi B-side (do they still have B-sides?).

In the light of recent events surely it’s time for G4S to update its corporate song. Guru has some ideas and welcomes contributions from his many millions of readers:

I Predict A Riot
Money For Nothing
Just Can’t Get Enough (security guards)
Help! (I need somebody to provide security for the Olympics)

Guru awaits your suggestions.

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Guru’s interest was piqued today by a Daily Mail story about a manager’s book from the Royal Worcester porcelain factory in the 19th century. The book details the disciplinary issues faced in the porcelain factory and the punishments meted out to offenders.

Guru was surprised to discover that he faces many of the same issues as the 19th century factory managers. For example, the book lists that an employee was fined three pence for mouse-hunting during work. Guru has faced the exact same issue. Obviously, today, Guru cannot just hand out fines, but instead he sat down with Julie from accounts to ask why she felt her time was better spent crawling around on the floor with a tiny spear than processing payrolls. Guru and Julie came to a compromise that she come in early to do her mouse-hunting before formally starting work at 9 (and that she gets to keep any mice she catches).

The book lists another employee who was fined three pence for letting off fireworks in the shop. Again, Guru has faced the exact same issue and again has had to deal with it with more understanding and tact than his 19th century predecessors. He had a particular problem with an employee who was absolutely determined to set off daily fireworks in his pod during Jubilee week. After a long and harrowing discussion to establish that the setting off of the fireworks was not something absolutely demanded by his religious beliefs it was agreed that the employee could watch YouTube videos of fireworks each day to celebrate the Jubilee, but would face further discussions were he to set off rockets in the office again.

One issue Guru has absolutely not faced is that of whistling during worktime. Anybody caught whistling during worktime would definitely not face a one-and-a-half pence fine; they would be sacked on the spot. That is one thing Guru will not abide.

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Wednesday is set to be the hottest day of the year, with temperatures predicted to reach 30C. In fact, it’s going to be nice all week, unless you live somewhere ridiculous like Northern England or Scotland (heaven forbid).

For Guru, and all HR professionals, such conditions automatically trigger a heightened sense of alert. It is inevitable whenever the sun comes out in the UK that there will be employees who’d rather be out enjoying the sun than sat in the office. Guru’s tactic for dealing with these emotions is inspired by the large supermarket chains - ensure that your employees forget it is sunny by blocking out all signs of the outside. Just as after 10 minutes in a large, artificially lit, windowless supermarket you’ve forgotten there’s a world outside the toilet roll aisle, closing all the shutters and prohibiting discussion of the outside world will achieve the same effect in your office. By ten o’clock nobody will remember they ever had a life outside the office, let alone believe that it might be sunny out there.

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Britain’s spies are not being paid enough to go the “extra mile” according to the head of MI6, Sir John Sawers. New recruits to MI5, MI6 and GCHQ start on £25,000. This rises to £43,000 after ten years of service. Sawer’s comments, from the Intelligence and Security Committee’s (ISC) annual report, paint a very different picture for those of us who imagine spies to spend their days racing around in Aston Martins with beautiful girls. Ironically, it seems that if you want to earn big money and attract beautiful women you’re probably far better off actually working in exports than being a spy.

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If, like Guru, you are greeted each morning by rows or miserable faces poking over their computer screens, you’ll be surprised to hear that Britain is generally quite a happy place. This cheering news comes from the first ever survey into the nation’s well-being.

The survey, by the Office for National Statistics, found that three-quarters of Britons are satisfied or very satisfied with their lives. It also found that people in rural locations are happier than people in urban locations and that the very happiest places in Britain are Rutland and Somerset around Bath.

The most surprising result from the survey is that the happiest groups of people in Britain are teenagers and pensioners… yes, seriously, teenagers and pensioners are the happiest people in Britain. The only explanation for this is that they succeed in making everybody else so miserable that they are cheerful by comparison.

Obviously, this data is significant for employers, who can now reasonably insist on all their staff being happy at all times, especially if they are old or young. Anybody not appearing happy should be informed that they are unusual and told to sort themselves out, perhaps by retiring and moving to the country.

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Guru absolutely loved the first day of the London Olympics 2012 and hopes the North Korea, oops South Korea, flag mix-up is a sign of things to come. With all the stuffiness surrounding the corporate sponsorship of the Olympics and the intense professionalism of many of the athletes, Guru thinks this new cheeky approach to ceremony will inject a much needed sense of bathos to the Games.

Guru imagines this approach being taken in the medal ceremonies, with silly songs playing in the place of anthems and the flower girls squirting water in the faces of the winning athletes when they bend down to receive their medals. The marathon could be spiced up with comedy food and drinks provided in the place of sports drinks - perhaps custard pies could be thrown at the athletes. Guru has loads of ideas like this… could some of the discusses (disci? discees?) be replaced by cheap plates, in the hope that the athletes realise what’s going on only when they’ve launched the plate into the air. Pole vault poles could be replaced by broomsticks. One of the lanes in the 100m could have a hole in it, or lead off out of the stadium. Boris Johnson could run the anchor leg for Britian in the 4*400m… the possibilities are endless. Guru hopes that right now Seb Coe, David Beckham and the other Olympics rulers are coming up with their own ideas for making these the funniest Olympic Games ever!

If you have any ideas of your own, the comments section below is probably the best chance you have of making them a reality. Guru has reason* to believe that Seb Coe is a massive fan of the Guru blog.

*just because the Guru blog is so good.

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It’s the first working day of the Olympics. People having to go anywhere at all in London are braced for chaos and confusion, but Guru is going to make a bold and uncharacteristic prediction about travelling in London during the Olympics: it’s not going to be that bad. The whole Olympics travel thing has a whiff of the millennium bug about it, where a combination of good planning and unwarranted hysteria ensured that the public was left wondering what all the fuss was about.

Consequently, Guru recommends that employers be wary of any staff trying to capitalise on Olympics travel hysteria by asking to leave work early, or work from home or explain lateness with tales of tube carriages full of synchronised swimmers.

According to XpertHR research, there are more organisations that involve senior managers from outside HR in planning HR strategy than organisations that seek the input from managers within HR.

The research mentions some numbers and percentages. It says that so and so amount of organisations do involve HR and an amount of others don’t. It says that 10% of business people do their HR strategy outside of business strategy, presumably in a separate meeting room or something… frankly, Guru can’t make head nor tail of it. There are far too many numbers and words all saying different things.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter exactly what the report says - the take-home message is that Guru doesn’t have enough say about strategy and should be given more responsibility for planning strategies. The situation at the moment is clearly not right. Guru just needs to think of some way to communicate this to management…