Kylie Minogue has long been recognised as someone who will motivate and inspire those around her. In fact, there are many HR parallels with the Aussie singer’s routines.
Whether it be the time and effort she puts into manipulating her figure into tiny outfits or how successfully she makes the aforementioned clothing redundant while on stage. No complaints or tribunals for those dismissals, one feels.
With this thought in mind, Guru was surprised to learn that a Minogue concert in Zagreb, Croatia, was called off after furious protests from the staff of the event sponsors.
The concert was supposed to celebrate the change of name of Croatian Telecom, but staff protested, saying the money should be spent on saving jobs.
As we’ve seen, this is clearly a mistake. Kylie Minogue is a best practice case study waiting to happen – her songs are a veritable encyclopaedia of good HR in practice.
Take the following typical staff/HR dismissal scenario and the Minogue inspired retorts:
Employee: Did you use 360 degree appraisal?
Manager: Yes, I’m spinning around.
E: But the system is rubbish!
M: Better the devil you know.
E: Have you given this enough thought?
M: Yes. In fact, I can’t get you out of my head.
E: Can I please have my job back?
M: You should be so lucky.
Mr 10 per cent pays price for poor tip
Last week we shed light on a rather unfortunate grocer in the Ukraine who got his ear bitten off after he refused to give a customer a free watermelon. The obvious question then is, if there was an employment dispute later in his career, would he get a fair hearing?
Tasteless ear-eating jokes aside, be thankful staff don’t chase you down the street if they think they are not getting paid enough. This allegedly happened to a New York man after he didn’t leave a big enough tip in a restaurant.
After Humberto Taveras, 41, from Long Island, and his party left 10 per cent instead of an 18 per cent compulsory service charge, he claims staff “chased us down like a bunch of criminals”.
Whatever happened, he’s now due in court to face a misdemeanour charge of theft of services. That’s a meal that definitely didn’t agree with him.
Religion grips the barking mad toffs
A rather interesting recruitment drive has arisen following Parliament’s decision to ban the ‘sport’ of fox hunting with dogs.
Last June, Tony Blair was asked about making a law to ban the ritual slaughter of animals. Blair said nothing could be done as these were religious matters.
So people did some research, as they are wont to do. Apparently, the definition of a religion is an organisation with a minimum of 5,000 followers, which has leaders who are distinguishable by their special form of dress, and which holds regular meetings that have their own vocabulary, etc.
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And yea, there came unto the internet a religion, which verily and forsooth doth purport to follow St Hubert: the Free Church of Country Sports. Legend has it that Hubert discovered his faith, while hunting, when he had a vision of a fox on a crucifix.
At the time of writing, they were close to the necessary 5,000 members. The lesson is pure and simple: get people interested and passionate in something and they’ll get involved, literally to a biblical level. Guru feels this might be of use to HR departments.
