Editors Blog

On his visit to the Far East last week, prime minister Gordon Brown predicted that increased UK trade with China could create tens of thousands of jobs in this country.

Brown and the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao agreed to increase trade between the two countries by 50% by 2010.

Coveniently forgetting China's poor record on human rights, Brown also said he wanted 100 new Chinese companies to invest in the UK by 2010.

Sir Richard Branson is fast becoming one of my new favourite business figures. I'd not previously been a fan of the ubiquitous Virgin boss, simply because I found him a bit annoying with his ridiculous self-promotional campaigns.

However, just recently, he has gained a new found respect with me. First, he told airline staff unhappy with their pay to resign if they didn't like the money on offer. A refreshing approach, I thought.

Now the man always voted the UK's most admired businessmen is continuing the theme, as revealed by his notes made at Gordon Brown's latest Business Council meeting.

I agree with the suggestion - put forward by the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) earlier this week - that companies found guilty under the new corporate manslaughter laws should be slapped with big fines and made to publicly explain their actions to investors and shareholders.

But I'm not so sure about the idea of suspending all or part of the board of directors, a further IOSH recommendation to the Sentencing Advisory Panel.

IOSH president Ray Hurst is right to say that some fairly radical measure are needed to ram home how serious an offence this is and how vital it is for organisations to have in place proper measures and standards to deal with health and safety.

Sir Alan Sugar's views on women in the workplace - and how they should be upfront in job interviews about their intention to start a family - are well publicised.

The boardroom Gruffalo believes employment laws are damaging to women as it puts a doubt in the mind of prospective employers about their commitment and suitability for a role. Women should be more upfront and pre-empt what may be in the mind of the person across the table, he says.

"I know this is not fair," he says, "but business doesn't always do fair. Women have to accept this reality and be shrewd enough to deal with it."

Sir Alan chose to dig himself deeper into a hole with a column in The Mirror last month. Women should tell the interviwer about their plans when it comes to having kids, then say why they are the right person for the job.

If HR is to be taken more seriously as a key player and not just as a support role, then understanding the business is essential.

So Dave Ulrich taking time out from the Price­waterhouseCoopers HR summit in Rome recently to defend his business partnering model, following continued attacks on its usefulness in a changing world (Personneltoday.com, 28 January), is quite understandable.

The news that two senior BA executives have carried the can for the T5 fiasco is a welcome example of accountability in the private sector.

BA's directors of operations and customer services are both leaving the company following the massive problems that have dogged the new terminal's opening. Both have left to presumably "pursue other opportunities" but BA is refusing to confirm whether they were pushed.

A BBC reporter said he believed they had paid the price for BA's inability to explain what had gone wrong on the first day at Terminal 5. On the morning when the problems first emerged, operations chief Kirkwood was caught by TV cameras walking away quickly from reporters, declining to answer questions.

Whatever the real reasons, we should welcome the news. The T5 opening has been a disaster for BA both reputation-wise and financially - costing £16m so far and counting. It is this type of corporate accountability that is seemingly lacking in the public sector.

"I have found you one of the biggest shopping centres in England" said Sir Alan when explaining tonight's photography task. Well done Sir Alan, they tend to be quite easy to find.

"I've got an IQ of 170" boasted Simon (does it go up that far?), "but I don't want to scare people with my intelligence." So that's why they put in on after the watershed.

"Bagsy project manager because my friend has a camera I know what SLR stands for" and Bluewater's my area said Simon.

But what Simon's IQ would never let him predict was that he was going to leave himself more than a little overexposed.

The new CBI-Axa absence survey, launched today, suggests the CBI is obsessed with people throwing 'sickies'. Allegedly, one in 10 people absent are swinging the lead. A similar attitude to the British employee was reflected in the Personnel Today story this week revealing that lie detectors could soon be used to flush out employees on bogus sick leave. Surely, all this is missing the point.

I was at a roundtable debate this morning where Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development chief economist  John Philpott  claimed that in recent years there had been 'sea change' with employers rather moving from being 'narrowly focused on absence management' to looking at the 'underlying causes'.  The event organised by EAP provider Employee Advisory Resource aimed to link employee engagement with employee wellbeing.

The CBI should adopt this thinking. I'd be more impressed if they found out how much presenteeism is costing UK employers. Check out the book 'The Living Dead: Switched Off, Zoned Out - The Shocking Truth About Office Life' by David Bolchover.  Maybe it's outside the remit of the CBI absence report but more emphasis on ideas like 'job enrichment' to incentivise people to turn up at work would be more helpful. The CBI proposes a 'carrot and stick approach' to absence. That might work for donkeys. People are a bit more complicated.

Earlier this month, I used this column to accuse Gordon Brown of dithering over what to do about the rights of agency workers.

Well, I send my apologies to the embattled prime minister, despite a rogue Bill making its merry way through Parliament which threatened to throw a huge spanner in the works, plans were obviously being drawn up in smoke-filled rooms to reach a compromise. The government has now struck a deal with the CBI and TUC to give agency workers equal treatment after just 12 weeks in a job.

Brown is in need of some kind words after the drubbing Labour suffered at last week's by-election in Crewe and Nantwich. But it is unlikely he will get any from the HR community.

The two issues that seem to be preoccupying HR professionals at the moment are agency workers' rights and flexible working. Yes, it's the old red tape story. For a couple of decades employment regulations have kept HR in gainful employment and given the profession a useful lever to make line managers take them seriously. But cynics could say the red tape mind set reflects an us and them attitude: us being the management and the others being those pesky employees threatening to cost the organisation more money and take you to the cleaners at an employment tribunal.

On the other hand, you could turn this on its head and, instead of seeing temporary staffing and flexible working as a threat, try to see  them as strategic opportunities. This week a report by the CBI and the TUC called Talent not Tokenism showed how some firms are using flexible resourcing to their advantage. Hospitality company Botanic Inns provides employees with flexible working options and enhanced maternity and paternity pay resulting in lower staff turnover.  Even small firms (Beacon Foods, Oakwood Builders and Joinery, and mouse mat manufacturer Listawood) are taking into account the need for flexibility to look after children. 

Unfortunately the sad truth is that some HR manager's focus on the red tape reveals that they see the workforce as a liability? In other words it's the complete opposite of the HR cliche "People are our most valuable resort."

This is probably a career-ending thing to say but I'll say it anyway. All this using laptops and Blackberry's on the train has got to stop, along with the geeky idea of 24-hour seamless work and home life enabled by mobile technology . Who says so? Well IT giant Microsoft for a start. Well, sort of. The company has put out a survey showing there is an epidemic of 'blackberry thumb'  and that work-related RSI cases are at an all-time high with sprialling business costs. OK, admittedly this is from a company that wants you to buy its ergonomically designed hardware.

But haven't we all had enough of the laptop-weilding commuters who take over the whole table top on the train pushing your latte perilously close to the edge, or squashing you against the window to give them elbow room so they can do their incredibly important and urgent spreadsheets. All right, I admit they make me feel lazy and undynamic as I sit there reading celebrity gossip in the free newspaper on the way home from work. 

Two points here though. First: you need to get the occupational health adviser  or an ergonomist to assess the risks for mobile workers or pay the price in tribunal awards or absence. Second: anyone who can't stop working for a few minutes even when they're in transit needs to get a life. Or at least an earlier less crowded train. Or perhaps jump under one and do us all a favour (taking their mate whose constantly making pointless mobile phone calls with them).

What another shocker. Not only is it now acceptable to lie on CVs, it's also advisable to bang on about how young you are in the hope that will win you a contract as Sir Alan's apprentice.

When The Apprentice candidate Lee McQueen lied about the length of time he'd spent at university on his CV - claiming he'd been there two years when, ahem, he dropped out after four months - he was apparently doing what many other job applicants have done and so should be forgiven.

You could see the sparkle in Sir Alan's eye when he found out poor Lee had no real education and couldn't spell. The business moguls that interviewed Lee told Sir Alan they too had lied on their CVs to get their first job - and that rather than showing dishonesty, it showed committment and a will to get on in the world.

But employment lawyers were inevitably unhappy about the act. Pinsent Masons employment partner Tom Flanagan said: "If the deceit had remained hidden and Lee went on to become the Apprentice, he could well have been in breach of his contract if it was uncovered at a later date."

Just weeks ago Patrick Imbardelli resigned from his position as chief executive, Asia Pacific Region at InterContinental Hotels Group last June, after it was discovered that he'd lied on his CV, Flanagan reminded us. 

Now in Lee's case you could see why he had lied about his education. He said so himself - he just wanted to keep up with the other candidates and he had proved his worth during the ten weeks he'd been on the show. Fine, but most candidates don't get ten weeks to prove they're good at a job.

For weeks the email inboxes of the Personnel Today team have been bombarded by press releases from all manner of companies jumping aboard The Apprentice bandwagon.

Now ahead of the show's final episode tonight, that bombardment has reached unprecedented levels with firms eager to dispense advice on interview techniques, employment law, pyschometric testing, body language, CV-writing... the list goes on.

Perhaps the naffest example of this publicity seeking comes from Essex County Council.

The council has said it would consider offering the runner-up in tonight's final a job "to help the authority continue its drive to deliver excellent quality services".

Council leader Lord Hanningfield said he wanted the "best and the brightest" to come and work for the organisation. He obviously hasn't been watching the show. The remaining contestants have spent most of the last two months lying, back-stabbing, lurching from one balls-up to the next and desperately trying to save their own backsides.

Actually, perhaps they might be suited to a career in local government.

The move has been attacked - quite correctly - as a publicity stunt. Note the council's use of the word consider. No cast iron offer, and a convenient get-out clause for the brainiacs in Essex's PR department, just in case the bloke who does the pterodactyl impression wins.

People are undoubtedly beginning to tighten the purse strings as the UK economy moves ever nearer to recession.

High street retailers have been feeling the pinch for a number of months now as consumers cut their spending on all manner of purchases, from eating out to electrical goods. The rising cost of food and household bills means there isn't much choice to do otherwise.

A report by PricewaterhouseCoopers out today predicted it would be "a survival of the fittest" among retailers and leisure operators as consumer confidence plummets and fears over job security rise.

If that indeed is the case, then the fast food retailers, ironically, seem to be shaping up as the fittest of them all.

McDonald's has revealed plans to hire an extra 4,000 staff over the next three months - its biggest recruitment drive since the turn of the century. And sales of Dominos pizza have rocketed as more people choose to eat at home rather than dine out.

News that employees at BP are to lose their option of working a nine-day fortnight is an embarassment to the company and the government.

The policy allows staff at various BP offices in the UK to take every other Friday off if they work a set number of hours every fortnight. The oil giant is thought to be axing the benefit as part of a cost cutting drive, alongside plans to cut thousands of jobs worldwide.

BP has been held up as a shining example of flexible working. In 2003 it was named by the government as one of 50 model employers in its approach to work-life balance. The revelation that it is now ditching the approach is a blow to its reputation.

If it wanted to introduce a standardised policy across all its UK operations, why not level up instead of level down? The damage this decision will inflict to both staff morale and employer brand will be hard to measure precisely, but it definitely goes against the grain of most forward-thinking employers.

High-profile employment tribunal cases, usually involving allegations of sex or race discrimination or bullying against City firms or celebrity employers attract huge amount of press coverage.

Recent cases include a race discrimination claim against Sadie Frost's fashion boutique, allegations of abuse at one of Gordon Ramsay's restaurants, plus bullying and sex discrimination claims against F&C Asset Management by ex-employee Gill Switalski.

Now top employment lawyer Howard Hymanson from law firm Blake Lapthorn Tarlo Lyons is arguing that reporting rules in these types of big cases need a rethink. He says:

"The threat of sensationalised media coverage of tribunal claims does nothing to encourage deserving claimants to come forward and bring their case, and it often also leaves employers with a good defence with little option but to settle a claim in order to escape lurid publicity."

His article is well worth a read and can be found on The Lawyer magazine's website. 

Surprise, surprise, unions have yet again urged the government to introduce another bank holiday - in late October as always - to bring the UK more into line with European countries.

A 'new' report by the TUC out today (more likely a re-hash from reports of earlier years) says one million UK businesses could benefit from a new bank holiday. This time the day off is under the guise of a Community Day, to "celebrate and encourage volunteering and community activity."

You only have to do a quick google search to realise the TUC have been calling for this year after year. Some four years ago they were on the BBC website asking for another three public holidays to bring the UK total in line with the average of 11 in the EU.

In fact, also for years now, Gordon Brown has been calling for a British Day to celebrate all that is good about being British. Hmm. Whatever it is for, you could be forgiven for thinking that surely the new Day is on the cards any moment now.

The gushing TUC report - Why the UK can afford a Community Day - lists reason after reason why bank holidays are a good thing. It says that many customer-facing businesses, such as those in the retail and tourism sectors have stronger trading days on bank holidays and could benefit from a new public holiday.

As well as encouraging people to go on holidays and short breaks, bank holidays lead to more 'days out', which bring in £90 billion worth of spending a year to the economy in England alone, the report argues.

So why is nobody actually introducing one?!