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?! 

It might seem mad with the current meltdown in the financial markets to start trying to get employers to report on employee health and wellbeing in company reports, but that's exactly what employers group Business in the Community are doing. And I, for one, support them. Just to remind you, BITC tires to get its 850 members including many from the FTSE 100 to take Corporate Social Responsibility seriously. Today BITC launched the annual report for its campaign Business Action on Health. The campaign aims to make employee health and wellbeing a boardroom issue.

The report shows that eight out of 10 FTSE 100 companies are publicly reporting on employee health and wellbeing compared to seven out of 10 last year. Forty are doing this in their company reports and the campaign aims to get 75% doing so by 2011. But is health and wellbeing a boardroom issue or just a low level employee welfare matter? It all boils down to the business case.  Tools like Business Healthcheck, developed by PwC and launched in March alongside Dame Carol Black's recommendations on work and health, show how to measure the return on investment in health and wellbeing. There are many good reasons to take the issue seriously but at a time when cost cutting is high on the agenda of most boardrooms surely anything that can demonstrably save money is worth a try?

As the City begins to resemble Gomorrah, as the fat-cats make a quick exit saying 'Sodom... Sod 'em all' as they run off into the sunset with their fat wads, leaving twitchy traders to talk themselves (and the rest of us) into a recession, it seems its all the fault of one, unfeasibly powerful, all-knowing überbeing.

But while God undoubtedly moves in mysterious ways - and not just because He's got a bad case of haemorrhoids - it is not that non-existent deity that is dictating events and leading to the biggest haemorrhaging of jobs in the history of jobs.

The publication of the latest UK jobs market figures has prompted renewed speculation of just how high unemployment will go.

Now standing at 1.82 million for the three months to September 2008, the prospect of two million out of work by Christmas is now very real. Earlier this week, 5,000 job cuts were announced in one day, with rumours that Vodafone is also preparing to swing the axe among its workforce.

CIPD chief economist John Philpott predicts that unemployment will hit at least 2.25 million by spring 2009, and potentially peak at near 3 million towards the end of the year. Combine this with the grim news that recruitment activity has virtually ground to a halt, and the outlook is bleak.

As my colleague Michael Carty on XpertHR's Employment Intelligence blog says, the next round of unemployment figures, due on 17 December, means that Christmas cheer could well be in short supply.

A survey of HR directors and business leaders by recruitment firm The MBS Group has produced what it calls 'Ten tactics for tough times'.

Those involved in the research were all at board or senior management level, within the retail, luxury, and consumer goods sectors. How useful these tactics actually are is open to debate, but they provide a useful barometer of the current thinking taking place in top firms.

Tactics For Tough Times

1. Ride the storm - preparing for difficult times but not currently planning large scale layoffs
2. See upside in downturn - the best business leaders see opportunities in turmoil
3. Show me the value - rapid response and appropriate price promotion are working for some
4. Pocket returns in pockets of growth - some sectors are positively booming, such as online, home entertainment and some luxury brands
5. Refocus on emerging markets - opportunities in Asia are attracting increased attention and investment whilst Europe and the US flounder
6. Keep up with customers - businesses must find a way to match or exceed customers' increasingly agile changes in behaviour
7. Hang on to talent - attracting the best talent is increasingly vital, but also becoming increasingly difficult
8. Empower your people - business leaders are recognising the value of experience, while also ensuring that their people have the right skills and training in place to survive and prepare for the upturn
9. Keep up morale - maintaining workforce morale will be a decisive benefit
10. Engage your staff - keep staff members on your side.

'Tis the season to make redundancies... if the massive job cuts of the last week or so are anything to go by. As the nightmare before Christmas becomes more of a reality by the minute for many firms, it's perhaps not surprising that 'redundancy' tops our list of search topics on Personneltoday.com

And it's the right season to swing the axe, according to one employment law expert, who controversially is claiming that making people redundant on Christmas Eve is the best time of year to deliver this unwanted news.

Max Bestley, of SAS Daniels, boldly asserts: "The best time for many people to be told they've lost their job, or for employers to make somebody redundant, is actually as close to Christmas as possible. Letting somebody go on Christmas Eve can be a massive blessing in disguise for all concerned," he says.

How will the HR profession look back on 2008? For many it will be remembered as one of the toughest yet, as the global credit crunch hit the UK hard, affecting the day-to-day operations of UK employers and the day-to-day lives of their employees.

Skills secretary John Denham used Personnel Today's first issue of the year to call on employers to make 2008 'the year of skills'. In fact, you could say 2008 has been more like the year of redundancies, with training taking a back seat and many HR teams focused on keeping their organisation afloat.

No doubt many practitioners will look to their Christmas break as a well-deserved rest, somewhat battle-scared by the events of the previous 12 months. But when looking back at 2008 later in their careers, they may well reflect that this was the year they really proved their worth to the business and earned their stripes.

The gloomy message that survival is the name of the game for the HR community in 2009 is reflected by this week's special issue of Personnel Today.

Barely a day goes by without one company or another announcing job cuts or calling in the administrators. Predictions from leading HR thinkers, employment lawyers and senior practitioners all point to the fact that, first and foremost, this year will be survival of the fittest for many employers.

With so many redundancies expected in the coming 12 months - and HR staff are just at risk as other employees - many experts are sounding a warning that employment tribunal applications will go through the roof.

HR consultancy Mercer has identified the top challenges that employers, trustees and governance committees should consider for their defined contribution (DC) pension plans in 2009.

According to Tony Pugh, Mercer's head of DC: "Plan sponsors and trustees begin 2009 on the heels of an extraordinarily bruising year. In 2009, numerous issues need to be addressed by sponsors and trustees - from the plan's governance to the choice of investment options."

• Review the adequacy of DC benefits and consider whether current pension provision is meeting employees' needs. Members who joined these schemes with an expectation on which they are relying in retirement may need to adjust their expectations as DC values fall short of these expectations.

The current wildcat strikes hitting nuclear and power plants across the UK, in support of workers at Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire, have given the unions something new to focus their anger on.

Instead of being up in arms about firms cutting jobs, it's a case of brothers in arms with the labour movement angry that a contract to expand the refinery was sub-contracted to an Italian firm, which then decided to use its own workforce.

According to the unions, it's all down to how the UK applied something called the EU Posted Workers Directive which seeks to ensure companies cannot use foreign employees to get around domestic labour laws and pay rates.

Paul Kenny, GMB general secretary and a man never knowingly underquoted, claimed overseas companies were refusing to employ Brits on projects in the UK because recent legal interpretations of the directive have effectively permitted them to do so.

Yet more job cuts announced this morning in car making industry.

Ford says it will cut 850 jobs across its UK operations by the end of May. Bosses are blaming the recession and with new car registrations falling by 30% in January it's clear that the situation is very grim for manufacturers.

A pay increase agreed by unions and management at Ford's Southampton plant last year is also going to be looked at again - which has really upset the unions.

Vauxhall workers will be working a shorter week with reduced pay, Honda has closed its UK plant for four months, Aston Martin is operating a three-day week, and other car makers are running reduced production schedules.

Lord Mandelson's £2.3bn support package unveiled last week doesn't provide immediate help to employers forced into implementing these measures. By the time the money filters down it will probably be too late for thousands of workers made redundant. The industry can't develop new 'greener' cars if there's no-one to build them.

The government could soon find there isn't much of a car industry in the UK to save.

As if he didn't have enough to worry about already, prime minister Gordon Brown today faced his twice-yearly grilling by the chairmen of all the Commons committees.

He had the unenviable task of defending his choice of ex-HBOS chief Sir James Crosby for a senior role with City regulator the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in 2004.

Crosby resigned as deputy chairman of the FSA yesterday after claims from HBOS's former head of risk that he had been axed by him after warning that the bank was growing too fast.

Brown insisted whistleblower Paul Moore's allegations had been investigated by the FSA and found to be without substance, and that they were not the reason HBOS fell.

Rather, it "was because its whole business model was wrong."

If this was meant to be reassuring, it hasn't worked.

It seems ironic that the first casualty of yesterday's select committee, which questioned the men at the top of Britain's biggest banks - former HBOS chief executive Andy Hornby, his former chairman Lord Stevenson, former RBS CEO Sir Fred Goodwin and his former chairman Sir Tom McKillop - wasn't even there.

Inevitably Brown was also quizzed on the issue of the banks' 'bonus culture'.

The PM said: "The short-term bonus culture in banks has got to end and we are putting in measures that will bring that to an end."

At yesterday's committee the four bankers apologised for what had happened to their institutions, but did not say they were to blame for it, and denied behaving recklessly.

The debate looks set to run and run.

I was fortunate enough to attend the Employers Forum on Age awards last week, which showcased organisations leading the way in workplace age diversity.

Winners on the day included McDonalds, Centrica, First ScotRail and British Gas - who won the award for innovation in attracting and retaining baby boomers. A key part of its policy was to remove the default retirement age (DRA) and allow employees to work past the age of 65.

It's a funny coincidence that these awards were held just a week before the European Court of Justice decision on the Heyday case, due on 5 March.

The ECJ is set to clarify policy with the EU directive upon which the UK's age discrimination legislation is based, but is unlikely to look at the overarching issue of whether the default retirement age can be justified overall.

So, in short it is likely the status quo will remain, until the government commits to reviewing or scrapping the DRA.

The encouraging thing about the EFA awards were the enlightened employers that had decided to ditch the DRA and change their working practices to accomodate employees working past retirement.

Their feeling is how can you have anti-age discrimination laws which still allow an element of discrimination?

Personnel Today continues to campaign to get the government to commit to scrapping the DRA, rather than merely reviewing it in 2011. I'd encourage readers to sign our petition and back the campaign.

The survey last week of more than 2,000 UK civil servants that found that found that working long hours can reduce cognitive function and wellbeing,   worries me. I keep thinking about the likes of Margaret Thatcher who famously survived on three hours sleep a night. Then again, you might think that proves the point. But how does this finding fit with other research that suggests the more you use your brain, for example by doing sudoku,  the less chance you have of getting dementia?

Perhaps the answer isn't so much the hours that you work as the way you work and what you are working on. There is a view that working in sprints, rather than trying to go flat out is the answer. Try reading this article by Dr Wolfgang Seidl, who knows about these things.

As I am about to organise an HR conference on business contingencies for a flu pandemic, I listened to a webinar by the HR and pay consultancy Mercer this afternoon. A lot of the basic stuff about swine fever preparations has been covered elsewhere, in Personnel Today  for example, but there was some useful heads up stuff on issues like preparing for home working and making sure people get paid properly or at all.

For example, if it's possible you may have a lot more people working from home during a pandemic, then it is a good idea to test your IT system to make sure you have enough bandwidth and server availability, as well as ensuring the security arrangements do not leave you at risk.

When it comes to pay, the Mercer speakers advise employers to segment the workforce to calculate the likely impact of a pandemic, including adjusting sales bonus targets to take into account lost time due to absence, quarantine etc. They also pointed out that you need to make sure there is back up for whoever administrates the payroll system or risk employees not being paid at all.

At a breakfast briefing this morning, Alan Sugar's right hand man and PR advisor Nick Hewer gave all the gossip on the hit TV show The Apprentice. Here's a few tid-bits you might be interested in.

1. Topshop owner Philip Green and Virgin boss Richard Branson were considered by the BBC in the early days to host the TV show. Alan Sugar ended up kidnapping about seven people from the BBC production team for a weekend, taking them to his fancy home in Marbella, Spain, to talk them into giving him the part. It obviously worked.

2. Nick and Margaret - both famous for their quizzical facial expressions and eyebrow raising - do not know who Sugar is going to fire until he says the magic words "You're Fired". They tell Sugar who they think should go before the boardroom until they're blue in the face, but he might not listen.

3. The 16 candidates do not meet each other until they first step into the boardroom. They stay in 16 separate hotels prior to the show beginning.

4. Sugar and the team have no scripts for the boardroom.

5. Each episode is edited from 100 hours of footage to one hour.

HR professionals are often accused of lacking strong opinions and 'sitting on the fence' when it comes to voicing an opinion. But a sharp attack on the HR profession is one sure-fire way to provoke a reaction, as Times columnist Sathnam Sanghera demonstrated last week through his deliberately goading piece 'HR departments: I've never understood the point of them'.

His comments prompted a range of spirited responses from the HR community with HR directors quick to hit back at criticism and share their thoughts with Personnel Today.

My favourite response is from Alan McGillivray, group HR director at housebuilder The Gladedale Group who quipped: "Many of Sanghera's observations would not be out of place in an episode of BBC 2's Mock the Week. However, like all good comedy, there is an underlying degree of uncomfortable truth in what he says." McGillivray's comments, along with others, make essential reading.

Even Personnel Today's very own Guru has got in on the act with his considered response to Sathnam's assertion 'You'll find more neurosis between the covers of your average edition of Personnel Today than your average edition of Cosmopolitan.'

We'd love to hear what the rest of you think. Join the debate by posting your comments in HR Space.

We're always keen for our readers to make their voices heard within the industry and influence its direction, so I'm excited to tell you about the forthcoming launch of a brand new initiative that encourages you to do just that - Personnel Today's HR industry opinion panel. More details to follow shortly.