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Imagine this as the workplace from hell; Sir Alan Sugar is the chief exec, Alex Ferguson the MD and Simon Cowell heading up HR. The egos at work there would be monstrous. Recruitment review site HireScores.com polled 1,386 people to find out which well-known names they would like to see in business roles. 82% of the respondents said they thought Britain's...

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...

Disciples rejoice! Someone has finally got round to Guru's way of thinking. Business psychologist David Taylor is pushing the idea of 'Naked Fridays' as a way of boosting team spirit. This is something Guru first mooted at the beginning of the year, although Yours Truly preferred Wednesday as the day to bare all. Let's not quibble over...

Guru heartily applauds Canon Electronic's approach to motivation at its Japanese HQ, where chairs have been removed and piercing alarms sound if staff walk too slow. Company president Hisashi Sakamaki, author of the future bestseller "A Company will do Well if you Get Rid of the Chairs and Computers", recently revealed the tactics that...

Guru was recently alerted to this applicant.com blog which has posted on the Five Best Office Pranks Of All Time. Some classic YouTube clips here, Guru's favourite being the frightened co-worker. Guru must also point disciples in the direction of a clip showing an employee's workspace completely covered in tin foil and workers who turned a colleague's...

Guru is often asked by disciples: "How do I get ahead at work?" The conventional answer obviously is "hard work, ethusiasm and ambition" - or is it? Another piece of tat from the Institute of Pointless Research has found that one in five British workers would rather have sex with their boss for an instant promotion than put in hard...

Yours truly is as cynical as the next man (nay, more cynical), but one can't help but be won over by the rise to power of one Barack Obama. From his days as a community organiser in Chicago to his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, his tale has been told time and time again. And again. And again. And so it is with a heavy heart that...