If you really want your employees to stay in the building, you have to work out ways to keep them satisfied.
One example of best practice is Danish IT company LL Media, which has offered its employees free subscriptions to internet pornography sites to boost their productivity.
All the sites are blocked during work time, but after hours, employees palm off their friends in favour of staying at their desks. Now that’s hands-on management that will certainly see a growth in staff.
Incidentally, a survey last week by IT consultancy, Detica, showed more than a third of British adults are so concerned about ‘accidentally’ accessing porn and adult material via the web in the workplace, they fear they could be prosecuted or lose their jobs as a result. Guru hates it when that happens.
A disarming tale of maiden in distress
Recent international jet-setting has offered Guru both heart-warming and distressing employment fables, and the participants deserve to be recognised.
Let’s start with Sindy, a casualty doctor from St Louis in the US. She was minding her own business when a young gang member was brought into the hospital with gunshot wounds. She did the decent thing and patched him up and sent the teenager on his way following a stern talking to about the merits of a life of crime.
Having finished her shift, she left the building – only to be faced by the self-same cretin in the car park trying to rob her. Apparently, the Tasmanian devil on her watch was his gang symbol.
She promptly disarmed him of the knife he was irresponsibly waving around and sent him packing.
If you think a Taz watch wasn’t a big enough draw for work-related skulduggery, how does a £1.8m lottery ticket sound? Last week, a friend of Guru’s from Johannesburg ordered a security guard to look after his home in the crime-ridden city and was taken aback when a very nervous teenager arrived to do the job.
It transpired he’d locked himself in the garage to get through the night. The twist was not that he was scared of armed intruders, but rather his family and colleagues. In his pocket, he had a lotto ticket worth 22m rand (£1.85m).
For that amount, they would have seen him sleeping with the fishies without a moment’s hesitation, apparently.
So top marks to the company he works for. After discussing this rather pressing issue with his manager, the financial director decided that, to avoid the death of their employee, they would pretend that he had been given regular promotions over six months, thus justifying a little bit of expenditure.
The poor millionaire plans to flee when the six-month period is up. And you thought your workmates didn’t like you…
In a bout of uncharacteristic philanthropy, Guru is calling for your startling, yet heart-warming tales from work. You deserve to be recognised. Maybe.
Full of beans over coffee comeback
Hold the front page! Research by Nescafe has discovered that a ‘premium beverage offering can play a pivotal role in encouraging staff to stay on the premises’.
Nescafe estimates that more than 40 hours a year are wasted by each member of staff popping down the shops for a piping hot liquid solution.
Fortunately, and a mite predictably, the coffee makers are on hand to offer their new product to solve this dilemma.
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Apparently one store was suffering from a ‘mass exodus’, which was subsequently stemmed by the installation of the aforementioned product.
Is this the most thinly veiled piece of self-promotion ever? Possibly. The nicely posed photo that came with it shows an office full of contented employees all enjoying their premium beverages. Thank heavens Nescafe got there in time.
