Guru considers himself to be a very misunderstood individual. He has been called arrogant when he is merely confident; he has been labelled narcissistic when he is only aesthetically pleasing. Some have even said he is bigoted, when he is simply strongly opinionated.
Others don’t have the luxury of such confusion. Other people are just out of line. On a recent trip to the University of Iowa, Martyn Sloman, training and development adviser at the CIPD, came face-to-face with the man with the longest job title ever. This chap was the ‘Senior HR specialist, Human Resources, Information Systems and Lean’. What on Earth is lean?
But we Brits are safe from such shameless self-promotion, aren’t we? Sadly not. One of Guru’s disciples sent in an excerpt from a CV she received, which is from a man applying for an IT consultant role:
“I am a really clever man with an excellent brain and this is not my opinion (but I agree), this is the opinion of our customers. ‘Man with the Knowledge’ – this is the title from our customers. Sometimes they use higher epithets, but I think this is mostly emotion.”
She called this bloke ‘legendary’. In his own mind maybe…
Staff clamp mania distracts workforce
A couple of weeks ago, Guru bashed out an impromptu business plan for a Staff Clampª (Guru, 9 March), which would ensure that workers stay at their desks for their allotted 8 hours. He had no idea the depth of support this would garner from the HR community.
Paul Holland, from the NHS, pretty much put together an entire marketing strategy:
“This needs to be marketed carefully – extensive use of focus groups have come up with the following slogans:
‘Increase your fixed assets’
‘Stop your staff making a bolt for the door – lock them to the desk’
‘The future’s bright, the future’s yellow’
‘Clamp down on long lunches’
‘Clamz, Meanz, Outputz’
“When people move desks, you could impose clamp duty, which would vary, according to the size of the desk.”
Unfortunately, Paul has inadvertently discovered the shortcoming of the clamp system. By spending so long thinking this up, he has shown that keeping people at their desks doesn’t mean they will actually do any work.
Oh well, back to the drawing board.
Broadband paranoia keeps us working
Meanwhile, training consultant George Edwards sent the following hypothesis, which seems more at home in the movie, The Matrix:
“In the work-from-home sector, the ‘clamp’ has been in place for some time. It’s called ‘broadband’, and ensures that even loo and coffee breaks are cut to a minimum by the noise of the e-mail pinging.
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Who is it from? Is it the boss checking? Is it a dangerous worm? Help, I have to get back to the computer now. Broadband… now tagging is for everyone!”
Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not really out to get you…
