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This week's guru column
Radio tagging keeps track of your dinner
Unfortunately, it's not just the Victorians who didn't trust their workers (see cartoon). Guru has heard some disturbing stories from across the pond. An increasing number of US employers are making their workers wear electronic tags, similar to those used to track criminals released on parole.
The devices are designed to boost productivity, and casino owners and restaurant chains have proved to be the most enthusiastic proponents of this "progressive" management technique.
Guru can't decide which is more scary, this or watching George W Bush gyrate his hips with Ricky Martin? Answers on a postcard to...
Yomping your way to team building
It makes modern day employers in the UK look like soft touches. That is unless your name is Bruce Thew and you're the managing director of Centrefile.
He has taken team bonding events to a new level. He recently arranged for 30 executives to go on an army management training course. Nothing new in that, I hear you say. Think again.
The managers spent 24 hours on the Yorkshire Moors, without so much as a tent or a tin opener. They slept rough, fired guns and I dare say even considered eating worms to tame their hunger.
The exercise has been designed to "push people to the limit" and teach anger management and people management skills. I hope it worked because 30 tooled-up, wet, cold and hungry managers could do a lot of damage.
About putting the HR in hurricane
Guru's award for boardroom bravery surely goes to a well-known HR practitioner in the IT industry, who used his skills as a mariner to save a conference from a tornado.
"I was at a conference held in a hotel by the sea in Florida," he told Guru. "After dinner when everybody was about to go outside I felt the pressure drop very suddenly and asked the concierge to call the coastguard. He thought I was mad, but I insisted and the coastguard said there was a tornado forming out to sea."
No sooner had the concierge made his call than the
