Editors Blog

So the rugby World Cup is expected to eat into employee productivity costing British businesses more than £461m, according to email and Web content security firm Marshal?

What a load of tripe! TV rights have gone through the roof for the 2007 tournament. ITV, alone, has paid £30m for the rights to broadcast the event — three times more than it paid for the 2003 tournament.

The fallout from last month's unveiling of the Equality Bill continues apace. The suggestion that employers should, in effect, be paid to hire more women and black and minority ethnic (BME) workers will undoubtedly provoke controversy.

As this is a view expressed by the managing director of one of the leading names on the high street, does it truly indicate the way the wind is blowing in boardrooms across the UK?

The idea put forward by Boots' managing director Alex Gourlay suggests that top employers have yet to be fully convinced of the business case for diversity ­ if they were, surely there would be no need for financial incentives in the form of tax breaks to operate a more diverse workforce?

Carolyn McCall, chief executive of Guardian Media Group, and David Robinson, chairman of hi-fi retailer Richer Sounds, join the CIPD's director of research and policy Linda Holbeche to speak about how companies can cope with uncertain times.

I'll be covering the speeches live - feel free to add your comments at any time, from 4:30pm today.

You will remember Financial Times columnist Luke Johnson - he of the 'The truth about the HR department' article that caused such a stink among the profession at the start of the year.

He launched a scathing critique labelling human resources a "necessary evil", and a term "that should strike fear into the heart of every self-respecting entrepreneur". He even compared HR's power within an organisation to that of the CIA and the Israeli intelligence service Mossad.

Well, he's back, but his musings in last week's FT was something HR professionals should read for different set of reasons. The vast number of employment regulations are "an intolerable burden on the private sector", he says.