Guru

This week’s guru

Top five New Year resolutions

A plethora of
consultants have come up with a list of five key New Year’s resolutions for the
committed HR professional.

At number one,
pop-pickers, is aligning your training to support business objectives by MaST
International.

Number two is value
differences in perspective by that crazy beat combo Synopsis Communication
Consulting.

Up next is the promise
to support a charity for a year through payroll-giving, by those worthy RebusHR
types. Like Guru, they do a lot of good work for charity, but don’t like to
talk about it (except in press releases).

In at number four is
don’t let your CV get out of date, from that grungy group the University of
Plymouth Business School, bringing us all back down to earth with business
realities.

And, finally, at
number five, take time to notice how your colleagues feel by Coutts Corecare
(this doesn’t mean the blindfold game in TV programme They Think It’s All Over).

Guru thinks these are
all valuable messages but has a different five – the first of which involves
business process re-engineering and the last of which tackles his love handles.
Got any out there you think we should know about?

Office
pests reunited.com

Remember
Tim from marketing? Guru winces every time that office pest’s name is
mentioned.

He
was such a card the way he’d always shout: "Thanks for dropping by",
across the office if you tried to leave early. Then he’d regularly e-mail
everyone with pictures of people who had been hideously injured in accidents
and call all bald colleagues ‘chrome dome’.

Well
now Guru and Tim can be reunited through a new website. The couple who set up
the incredibly successful FriendsReunited.com – which has nearly 4 million
members – are about to launch the same service for old work colleagues.

The
originally named ColleaguesReunited.com is expected to go live next month. It
will be operated in the same way as the school friends website, which charges
an annual fee of £5 to let members e-mail anyone else listed on the site.

Guru,
however, will not bee-mailing Tim, particularly following that hilarious
incident with the toupee, the stuffed squirrel and the fire extinguisher.

Strippers
find euro attractive

The
euro is causing chaos in Italy. Last week, Guru reported on the problems of
Italian bank workers who were losing their sex drive due to the stress of
converting to the new currency.

This
week, it’s strippers. Accepting the euro proved a problem for the ladies of the
Mille Lira Club in Preganziol. Customers used to pay by tucking a 1,000 lira
note into an item of their apparel – but that only equates to a 50 euro coin.

Luckily,
the problem has been overcome by the introduction of magnetic knickers to which
‘donations’ can be attached.

Guru,
who regards himself as something of a lady magnet, advises customers at the
Mille Lira Club to secure their watches, loose change and keys before entering
the premises.

Finnish
sweat over the minutes

A
Finnish company aims to take the stress out of top-level business meetings
after designing a sauna with videoconferencing facilities.

Media
Tampere’s creation features a webcam inside looking out at a screen.

Director
Jarko Lumio said his execs use the sauna and he is optimistic other firms will
take the opportunity to talk business while clearing their pores.

Guru
is all for it, although he is concerned the dress code may be a problem – it’s
Finnish tradition to sauna in the nude.