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This week's guru
It's all down to how you code the e-mails
Ah, Barcelona, the sun, the architecture, the tapas - and the eccentric conference speakers.
The London Business School's Dr Patrick Dixon taught Guru a thing or two about the pressing HR issues facing the profession at the 33rd HR Management Conference in Spain.
Apparently, Guru has been wasting his time pondering solutions to the skills shortage and knowledge management. The really important issues to drum into managers are the need to type faster and colour-code your e-mails.
The author of How To Get A Life In The Virtual World delivered his talk with such conviction and Magnus Pike-esque gesticulation that he must be right. Guru made a mental note to buy a touch-typing book on the way home.
A politician calls it as he finds it
As Guru sits down to consider Personnel Today's General Election coverage, it dawns on him that it's going to be a real challenge unearthing straight-talking politicians who are prepared to stand up and be counted on the difficult issues - increasing red tape, the euro, which colour to use when colour-coding your e-mails etc.
In Malaysia, they don't have this problem. Its Deputy Prime Minister had a few choice words to say about the country's service industry recently. Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi labelled the work ethic of staff in the service industry as a disgrace.
He said, "We still find ourselves being attended to by unsmiling, uncooperative and inefficient workers with zero intitiative." No Datuk, say what you really mean.
Fruity approach to dismissal case
Employers, much like football referees, rarely change their mind once they've made a decision. If it's a sacking, you can try begging, bribery or bullying, but they rarely work.
Lancashire lorry driver Michael Joyce has taken it one step further. After being sacked from Clitheroe's Castle Cement works, for calling in sick once too often, he went about getting his job back by dressing up as a banana.
He stood outside the factory for several days in a banana suit, holding a placard which claimed, "
