World Productivity Day is marked by the sniffing of lemons, CVs designed for bot eyes and the imminent arrival of a novel all about an HR manager who gives new meaning to the cliche ‘It’s the quiet ones you need to watch out for’.
The UK has long been blighted by poor productivity but a cure has arrived – and it doesn’t involve robots taking over.
We wondered why it had taken so long for this particularly magic wand to materialise, but it seems the people who have discovered it (er… Furniture At Work) were waiting for World Productivity Day to come round (today, 20 June).
And here are those productivity gamechangers, and I quote:
1 Sniff lemon or lemon essential oil
The scent of lemon has been found to increase concentration and alertness as well as lead to fewer errors.
2 Say the alphabet backwards out loud
Quick brain games are great to help stimulate the mind. Trying to say the alphabet backwards forces the brain to fully engage and snaps you out of autopilot. Try it with a colleague and time each other for a challenge.
3 Say hello to yellow
Yellow has been found to help employees feel more creative and energised. So, whether at home or in the office, get out the yellow stationery, wear a yellow outfit, and decorate your space with all things yellow. (It is also the colour of lemons – you see, you see.)
A lighthearted take on HR
Hey HR, don’t blame it on the sunshine
Are the Brits too polite to discuss salary?
Going for a walk, and wearing smart clothes, which give you psychological lift, were the other suggestions. But I think we’ll gloss over them.
How to make bots like your CV
So that’s the productivity crisis cracked, now for job searching. The experts at Instant Office have informed us that CV writing has been turned upside down by the use of AI. In short, if you want to get a foot in the door you’ve got to impress the bots.
This means that a “good” CV may need to read a little oddly to human recruiters. For starters, bots scan for keywords, so job hunters need to “identify recurring skills, tools, and responsibilities and integrate these keywords into your skills, experience, and summary sections.” Not much fun to read, I would suggest, from a human point of view.
Bots also love numbers, we are told. Of course they do. So in terms of CV-writing, people should include measurable achievements: “Managed a team of 6” or “increased social media engagement by 40%.” Apparently, “this shows impact and helps you rank higher”. You should also avoid wacky fonts and layouts, advises Instant Office, because the poor old bots get confused when they see anything by Arial or Times New Roman.
Will this lead to having to write two CVs and covering letters for each job, one addressed as ‘Dear Bot’ and the other as ‘Dear Human’ (in a Gothic italic font)?
HR manager likes to ‘exit’ people
If you are riled by any of this, given that you are warm, caring HR professional, consider the case of Janice Mead.
Janice is a fictional HR manager in an upcoming debut novel “People Personnel” by Celia Holup, available online and perhaps in some bookshops from next week.
The novel is described as “darkly comic and sometimes shocking”, rather like this column, albeit for different reasons.
Our hero, or antihero Janice, commutes (working from home presumably doesn’t make for very interesting novels) every day from her home in Whitstable, Kent, to London and is soon to retire from her standalone role for a not-for-profit sector organisation, which is facing difficult financial decisions. The blurb rather unflatteringly describes her as “innocuous, dull, easily overlooked”.
It continues: “She has cut an inconsequential, loveless path through, what appears to have been, a largely non-eventful life. Everyone knows she wouldn’t lift a finger. Everyone knows she wouldn’t swat a fly. Everyone knows she’ll just sit there and be quiet. No one would think twice about her, but Janice Mead’s savage way of ‘exiting’ those who are now surplus to her requirements may change all that … but she always seemed so nice.”
Perhaps the bots would be a better option after all (and they won’t need any lemons to sniff).
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