Monthly Archives: June 2008

Or so says the CBI’s Katja Hall in her response to the government’s proposed Equality Bill. On the subject of compulsory equal pay audits, she said: They are very expensive and very time-consuming. Pay gaps are not the result of discrimination … Continue reading →

There’s an interview in the Guardian with Mike Turley, the head of the public sector consulting practice at Toilet and Douche. A lot of what he says rings true from my experience of working in the public sector. In which management … Continue reading →

Laurie Ruettimann is at the SHRM conference. For British readers, that’s the US equivalent of the CIPD. That woman has natural comic talent; she can even make an HR conference sound funny. The party culture of HR is weird. Get … Continue reading →

Research by employment law advisers Peninsula found that two-thirds of job applicants had tried to hide their accents durning interviews and that most employers knew of cases where people had been discriminated against because of the way they spoke. We should take … Continue reading →

Alistair Darling and Mervyn King have called for pay restraint and warned of an inflationary spiral if wages and prices increase. Angry Alice is having none of it though: The plea is almost certainly a hopeless one. Back in the 1970s, when pay … Continue reading →

Now you don’t often see terms like ‘pikey’ on an HR blog but Guru has leapt to the defence of motor-racing commentator Martin Brundle, who remarked: There are some pikeys there at turn 10 putting tarmac down – what do … Continue reading →

A conversation between an HR manager and a group of line managers. It’s appraisal time again and the scene is the appraisal and objective setting workshop where the process is explained for the umpteenth time to managers who have worked for … Continue reading →

Our meeja have gone Apprentice-mad. Even Wayne Rooney’s wedding has been blown off the front pages. The finalists were interviewed to death on the BBC last night and then again this morning. All the papers have extensive commentary about the show. … Continue reading →

The latest HR blog carnival is over on Jon Ingham’s site. (I wouldn’t let Jon anywhere near my office until he promised to stop doing his impression of The Fonz – see the avatar in the bottom right corner of his blog.) Anyway, … Continue reading →

Oh FFS! This is just bleedin’ stupid. Essex County Council has said that it will offer a job to the runner up in tonight’s final of The Apprentice. Which job will that be? Apparently, it will be tailored to the person’s strengths. … Continue reading →