Guru

This
week’s guru

Eversheds
event roots out its Weakest Links

On
a recent away day to Brighton, Guru dropped in on Eversheds’ Employment Law
Conference at the Grand Hotel.

The
lawyers staged their version of The Weakest Link to illustrate the impact of the
Human Rights Act and other anti-discrimination legislation.

Audrey
Williams – ironically, a partner in the firm’s Cardiff office – starred in the
Anne Robinson-style interrogation, in which Eversheds’ lined up its aspiring
female lawyers. While Guru suspected that several contestants were being paid
to take a fall, there were a few howlers.

The
following questions received positive responses: Could an employer make staff
clean the toilets as a disciplinary action? Could a Rastafarian smoke cannabis
at work after 2003? And could a transvestite wear women’s clothes to work?

It’s
clearly getting tougher even for City law firms to recruit the best staff.

Now,
hands up any readers out there who didn’t know the answers, either.

A
new spin on artistic thinking

Guru
had just sat down at his workstation the other morning when a ballerina
pirouetted by.

As
Guru was starting to wonder about the possible hallucinogenic effects of Coco
Pops, a colleague put him out of his misery. Apparently, it was all part of Arts
& Business Week. Thousands of employees up and down the country got into
the spirit of the event, which ended today.

It
was designed to showcase how business and arts can share skills and ideas,
develop creative thinking at work and motivate staff. Well, that’s what Guru
told the MD the next day when he wanted to know why his greatest management
thinker was wearing pink tights and a tutu.

It’s
red faces not red noses here

The
unfortunate Darcey Bussell impersonation is an object lesson in not getting too
carried away with these national events.

An
employee who helped raise money for last month’s Comic Relief, by letting
colleagues look at his payslip, is now facing disciplinary action, claims the
Oxford Mail.

The
staff member raised £10 before bosses at Super Conductivity stopped him.

He
had been charging his colleagues £1 a peek.

Now
that is a serious sense of humour loss.

Calling
time on clockwatchers

Time
stood still at the HQ of Internet access provider AOL last week when it removed
its employees’ access to clocks. The 400 staff in London were asked to leave
their watches at home last Monday (with security guards removing the time
pieces of any transgressors). A further 100 staff were also denied access to
clocks in the workplace. Clocks on desks, PCs and mobile phones were taped
over, and staff had to go to lunch when they were hungry and hold meetings for
as long as was necessary.

A
spokeswoman explained that it was an experiment to see if staff were less
stressed and more productive without the clocks ticking.

The
trial coincided with the company’s launch of a new pricing system, which offers
Internet access on a non-timed basis. The jury is out at the moment, but one
member of staff found it so liberating she immediately disposed of her shiny new
watch.