October 2009 - Guru Blog

Remember these guys? The HR Validation Group Monitoring team at the Department of Health were up for the impressively vague 'Improvement Award' at the Civil Service Equality and Diversity Awards. Apparently, they are quite good at getting people to tick more boxes on monitoring forms. Alas, they didn't win. At a (no doubt lavish taxpayer...

What a tangled web HR weaves - especially if you happen to work at Aviva (that's Norwich Union in old money). Chief executive Andrew Moss has been uncovered discussing Ugandan affairs with Deirdre Moffat - a former senior member of the firm's HR department seconded to his office. What makes matters even more complicated is that Deirdre is married...

What have Simon Cowell, John Terry and Joanna Lumley all got in common? No, it's not guests at the dinner party from hell, it's the fact they've been named by yoofs as inspirational leaders in a poll by The Prince's Trust. The survey of more than 1,000 youngsters found most viewed civil rights leader Rev King as the greatest leader,...

Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times , is a smart man. Faced with the prospect of telling hacks that he had to make 100 of them redundant by the end of the year, he decided to steer well clear of the newsroom and feign illness. Here are the opening lines of his letter, sent to staff on Monday. "Colleagues, I had planned to invite...

Guru was pleased to see the Japanese bank Nomura demonstrating so perfectly the problems of language barrier when it comes staff communication. A year after snapping up the bits of Lehman Brothers that were actually worth something, Nomura managers emailed employees in a bid to get them to smarten up, according to Management Today. Bosses reminded workers...

Guru has been sent this classic cutting from the July 1943 issue of Transportation magazine. It's essentially a top tips guide on how to manage women in the workplace, written for male line managers. Needless to say, if Harriet Harman read this she would choke on her Yorkie bar. Read More...

This video is going viral and shows Tube worker Ian showing great sympathy to an elderly gentlemen that has just been trapped in a train door. Guru thinks he could do with some extra training... For the full story check out Jonathan MacDonald's blog. Read More...

Here are a selection of the latest entries into the competition to win a pair of tickets to the Personnel Today Awards. Disciples will remember that all the competition involves is emailing , in no more than 30 words, why you should go. Victim of Shared Services induced trauma seeks hedonistic, swanky night out in glamorous classy joint to redress balance...