Browse by Tags

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...

Territorial Army soldiers go off to war with the security of knowing that, once their tour has ended, they have a job to come back to. At least that's the theory. While our brave boys might be used to receiving honours for gallantry like the VC and GC, one unfortunate soldier got nothing more than a P45. Simon Sunderland returned home after fighting...

A lot of people are being made redundant, and a few lucky ones are getting decent pay offs from their employers are part of those redundancy packages. So what to do now you're unemployed with a large pile of cash burning a hole in your pocket? One idea is to make a low budget short film. A group of Lord of the Rings fans has just released a short...

Yours truly has screened his fair share of calls in the past, avoiding telemarketers at tea-time and Mrs Guru the rest of the day. But it appears redundancies are now providing a reason for some offices not to answer the phone at all. Read More...

When Guru was a jobbing HR director he was always looking for different ways to motivate the workforce. Duvet Days, free sweets, boozy Fridays, quiz nights, naked Wednesdays were all trialed - with varying degrees of success. One piece of advice Guru can offer disciples is don't try and combine boozy Fridays with naked Wednesdays; the results are...

Music, they say, is the food of love. But this is the credit crunch and music has far more important roles to play. Guru has been sent a superb email trail from disgruntled Woolworths head office staff - some already made redundant, others merely awaiting the inevitable axe - selecting suitable tunes for their iPods. All the raw emotions that redundancy...