According to research, flexible working is beneficial to the physical and mental health of employees. Apparently, those who can decide on their working hours may even have healthier blood pressure and heart rates. The findings, which are available on the BBC website, come after a think tank, the New Economics Foundation (“NEF”), recently recommended a 21-hour week for all employees.

HR outsourcing is on the increase, with around 50% of private sector organisations and a quarter of public sector organisations now choosing this option. But have HR professionals really got to grips with the outsourcing process and what it can achieve? The IRS conference on HR outsourcing will examine the complexities of outsourcing, and share practical and strategic advice from experts on finding the right outsourcing fit for any of the HR operations that your organisation wishes to outsource.

A shop assistant who was informed by the Performing Right Society (PRS) that she could not sing at work without a licence has been given an apology, reports the BBC website.

The IRS essential HR update on change management takes place in London on 8 October 2009. We’ve put together a change management resource pack to help XpertHR subscribers attending the event get the most out of it.

The IRS essential HR update on surviving pandemic flu in the workplace takes place in London on 6 October 2009. We’ve put together a pandemic flu resource pack to help XpertHR subscribers attending the event get the most out of it.

The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) and Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) have been merged to form the . . . Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).

More than one in 10 (13%) employees in the UK usually works shifts, while another 2% do so some of the time. For many, the lure of an additional premium to compensate for the anti-social working hours makes working shifts worthwhile. Meanwhile employers need to balance the needs of the business with the costs and upheaval for employees associated with working outside of the standard nine to five day.

As our current political leadership keep reminding us, we should be trying to invest and hence grow our way out of the recession. This might seem counter-intuitive but no more so that the opposite position, characterised in the 1930s as 'liquidationist' and perhaps thought of these days as 'creative destruction'. (The once-again-popular Keynes made this comment at the time which could be dropped into a more modern context without a lot of modification.)

So assuming that investment is the way forward, how exactly should as UK business go about things? Well, given the UK's non-reliance on so-called productive industries, any investment is going to fall heavily on one area: people.

Angel on the HR Space forum makes a good point. And perhaps employers don’t always think about the business benefits of having a progressive approach to age in the workplace. We’re currently looking into commissioning something on this for our XpertHR good practice guides - watch this space.

The dream has become a reality for some graduates who were due to start training contracts with City law firms later this year.

A new trial has begun to investigate whether businesses can benefit from a new virtual world called "Home". The concept, which uses online avatars (virtual people) like those used in Second Life , is designed to help senior leaders communicate across the globe using PlayStation game technology. The idea is that it will help executives cut back on business travel and reduce office space due to increased mobile and home-based working.

Given the current economic climate, there can't be too many employees who haven't been asked to tighten their belts when it comes to travel expenses. But one US bank took things a bit far when it asked 23 members of staff who were on the New York flight that crashed into the Hudson to repay the cost of their travel on the grounds that their business trip had been cancelled.

If you are online and reading this, the chances are you aren't one of those people who regards the whole interwebby thing as a passing fad akin to CB radio.

Quite possibly, you've even read a few reports recently about Twitter - and wondered whether this is perhaps one futile tech development too far. But stay with it, and you may even discover a useful application for it in your own working life.

With UK unemployment at almost two million people, many of those making up these numbers will have faced redundancy from their job.

More than 50 new model policies and documents have been added to XpertHR in 2008. But what have been the most popular? XpertHR's employment intelligence blog provides a round-up.

A common way for employers to give employees some flexibility in their working hours is to allow them to swap shifts with colleagues. Use XpertHR's new model shift-swap policy [subscription required] to see how it can be done.

Relocation of employees is a common task for HR departments, but it can also raise some difficult issues. Some new model documents on relocation [subscription required] have been added to XpertHR’s resources on this subject to help employers.

The latest novelty among US employers destined not to catch on in the UK is the practice of employers allowing parents to bring their babies to work.

The shambles of Heathrow Terminal 5’s first few days will doubtless crop up in every change management training programme for years to come.

By all accounts, staff were expected to move into the massive new building with little real idea how to find their way round, let alone how to operate the complex and sophisticated new equipment within it.

You may sometimes have wondered how the XpertHR and IRS team goes about its work. Well, you can get a pretty good idea from the careers film below.

There are obviously fewer trilbies and green eye shades, while male and female staff share the coverage of cookery and knitting-related issues equally these days, but I don't think that much has changed…

Want to do your bit for global warming? Take off your tie and wear shorts to work, advises Lord Adair Turner, the newly appointed chair of the Climate Change Committee.

According to the Sunday Times report, Lord Turner proposes that British workers should ditch the smart business suit and go for an informal look, to reduce air-conditioning output (hence reducing carbon dioxide emissions), and enable more people to walk or cycle to the office.

After the success of its virtual picket line outside the "offices" of IBM last year, the trade union movement appears to be taking to Second Life in a big way.

There is a touching sense of naïve optimism about today's press release from The Great Place to Work® Institute (love the registered trade mark symbol, by the way, but won't be using it again) claiming that people are abandoning office politics and getting on with the job.

Having problems at work? Can't drop off at night? What you really need to do is to check in to a budget hotel and catch up on some "motivational sleeping".

At least, that appears to be the solution being offered by Travelodge, which has posted a series of five "nodcasts" on its website to help you deal with the daily difficulties of the workplace.

All occupations develop their own slang – a coarser, more downmarket version of the professional jargon normally used within the trade to express complex ideas.

Over recent years, doctors have been forced to cut back a bit as medical records have become more accessible to patients. Apparently people can get a bit upset at finding their medical notes annotated "NFN" – or "Normal for Norfolk".

To balance Mark's post concerning Powerpoint hell, here are some very helpful tips on how to give a great presentation and make the best use of slides.

Over 50 new model policies and documents have been added to XpertHR in 2007. But what have been the most popular? Here’s a round-up of 10 of our most-viewed documents.

If you have ever sat through a truly dreadful Powerpoint presentation (and who among us has not), you will know the horror that Microsoft has inflicted on the world by putting this lethal weapon in the hands of every company bore.

If you have no idea what I mean by this, or know someone else who could benefit from coming to understand the prolonged "death by Powerpoint" they are inflicting on their colleagues, this video is a good starting point.

Have you ever sat in a meeting and had a real sense of time and money ticking away the longer people drone on? Now, thanks to an online tool called the Meeting Miser, you can quantify not just the minutes but the pounds and pence involved.

Love it or loath it, the view from your office window is an important part of your working environment.

Having reported recently on the office workers in Hayes who were up in arms because their view was spoiled by the M4 motorway and Heathrow Airport, I started thinking about some of the more notable vistas I've enjoyed over the years.

Above: the view from the top of XpertHR Towers.

With Take Your Dog To Work Day taking place on 14 September and a cat called Sybil taking up residence in Downing Street, there’s never been a more pertinent time to ask: are pets at work ever a good idea?

In a strange twist on the offshoring phenomenon, Lloyds TSB, having closed its Bombay call centre in March, opened a bilingual call centre (press release in PDF format, 26.7K) in Glasgow yesterday, designed to cater to migrant workers from Poland and idle polyglots who are tired of being told their call is important in English.

* "Please hold" in Polish, according to the BBC's helpful English Express service. The author therefore accepts no responsibility for misleading or profane translations from this site.

Worrying news from the Square Mile, where the economic crime unit of the City of London Police is reported to be concerned by a sharp rise in the number of bank and call centre staff stealing from customer accounts.

Is it 1986? A press release that arrived this morning from the recruitment company Poolia seems to suggest it might be.

The company which, according to its website, rather modestly claims to:

provide qualified specialist staff to core areas of the British economy,

has implemented a ‘new’ performance based incentive for its recruitment staff. A company Porsche, with personalised plates, is awarded to the best performing consultant.

A friend and I were discussing buzzwords the other day. My friend was very confused when her manager told her it was her turn to carry out “beverage leadership”. Eventually she found out that this meant it was her turn to get the coffees.

Congratulations to Charlotte Wolff, who has scooped the AON Consulting Pensions and Investment Journalist of the Year award.

The researcher-writer for Employment Review was recognised at a ceremony at the House of Commons for her ability to make technical subjects palatable.

Perhaps the idea of HR departments organising team-building sessions of Scottish country dancing isn't so inherently risible after all (particularly with a Scot taking over as prime minister).

Civil servants at the Ministry of Justice have minuted their boss, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, seeking his approval to name the department's morris dancing team after his office. Apparently, the two-page submission outlines their plans to wave handkerchiefs and sticks while leaping around with bells on their knees. According to today's Times, the dancers are complemented by head of statistics Tim Stamp on violin and Eirian Walsh-Atkins from the information rights division on squeezebox.

Uptitling or job inflation has resulted in employees being given some very strange job titles. In fact, in 2002 the Telegraph reported details of a national survey that found that employees were receiving job title upgrades instead of pay rises.

A formal investigation into the affairs of the Stable Lads Association (PDF format 1.26MB) has concluded that the union breached its own rulebook over a period of 20 years by agreeing regular pay rises for its former general secretary without proper authority.

Employers are not green enough, says the TUC. Having polled visitors to its Worksmart website, it says just 44.8% of organisations have an environmental policy, and suggests that this underlines the case for "trade union green reps" in the workplace.

There is of course a minor flaw in the TUC's claim that fewer than half of employers have a green policy since many of those surveyed will simply be unaware of the fact.

Indeed, it was only when I got an email from our own chief executive this morning that I realised Reed Business Information, which publishes XpertHR and the IRS titles, actually has a solid set of targets and action plans in this area. Perhaps, with hindsight, the recycling bins and lights which automatically turn themselves off at intervals were a bit of a give-away.

And since according to the TUC's figures, workers tend to rate their bosses' commitment to recycling the rubbish, switching off the lights and using both sides of the photocopier paper somewhat higher than their own, maybe union "green reps" aren't such a great idea.

One curious figure from the survey, though: one of the few areas where managers are less green than their workforce is in recycling cups. It must be tough finding someone equipped to deal with the boardroom bone china.

"Have you got a Club Card? Safe, bruv!": Tesco sanctions the descent of supermarket communications to the Catherine Tate demotic.

A new web service provides an employer-branded search page for staff to use while they search the web at work.

Clickworkplace.com provides employers with a customised search home page, with the employer's branding, using the Yahoo search engine.

When employees click on advertising links in the results pages, revenue is generated from the advertisers and this is shared 50/50 between Clickworkplace and the employer. The company deducts a £99.99 yearly fee from the employer's gross revenue generated before the employer concerned starts making any profit from the scheme.

According to Clickworkplace:

Indicative figures suggest businesses with fifteen to twenty members of staff could earn no less than £12,000 per annum. These indicative figures are based on our research of half an hour of personal time spent searching the web within business hours per employee.

More on this from Telegraph.co.uk's small business section: Workers using the net can pay off.

Almost all large companies now have some form of confidential whistleblowing procedure through which employees, and sometimes outsiders, can report their concerns to someone senior in the organisation, according to some new research.

Professor David Lewis, who has carried out a series of surveys of public sector organisations' practice on whistleblowing in the past, has now surveyed FTSE-250 companies. His findings show that there is a perhaps surprising level of similarity between these companies and their public sector counterparts.

Ed Bowyer, a solicitor at Lovells, looked at situations where the law requires collective consultation with employee representatives.

He provided some interesting figures on the incidence of tribunal claims relating to different areas of collective consultation. In 2005/06 there were 4,056 claims in respect of consultation on collective redundancies compared with 900 on TUPE consultation. By contrast, there has been just one claim under the Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 2004 since 2005.

Philip Bartlett, Partner at Simmons and Simmons, fielded numerous delegate questions throughout his update on the statutory dispute resolution procedures - testimony to just how 'enormously difficult' they can be to deal with. His promise to write some practical guidance on some of the intricacies of the subject for www.xperthr.co.uk was therefore much appreciated.

Speaking on the Government's consultation document on the possible repeal of the procedures he reminded delegates that they now have a 'once in a decade' opportunity to influence employment law - although the DTI is indicating that employers will be stuck with the current system until at least April 2009.

Office life is a rich source of inspiration for cartoonists, and Dilbert is without doubt the uber-cartoon of the genre. Tormented and exploited by his heartless boss, Dilbert is an everyman for our times.

But do you see anything of yourself in Catbert, the evil HR manager and possibly the world's most famous fictional human resource practitioner (albeit in cat form)? Apparently, American HR people do.

Dilbert creator Scott Adams, who draws from experience of office life, having both an MBA and 16 years' corporate employment under his belt, was guest speaker at a recent Society for Human Resource Management conference in Orlando, Florida. Apparently he had them rolling in the aisles.

Looks to me as though the speech lost a little in the translation, but perhaps Adams' own blog will do it for you.

Working from home has many advantages, not least of which is to allow entry for the man to repair the dishwasher. In the midst of making the obligatory cup of tea, a familiar noise is heard - the Microsoft Windows start-up tune.

Turns out that in addition to screwdrivers and pliers, repairmen for major appliance companies now carry laptops with faultfinding equipment... and GPS tracking devices.

"What?"

"Yes, it goes with the new computerised job allocation system. They know where we are going, when we get there, how long it should take us to fix the problem and how long it is actually taking. They've been able to increase the number of jobs we do every day as a result."

"Do you get paid more?"

"Don't be silly."

Isn't new technology wonderful?

There has been much talk of Gordon Brown following up one of his most successful early initiatives as chancellor (making the Bank of England independent) with a similar approach to the National Health Service (NHS) when he moves from Number Eleven to Number Ten.

The idea of NHS independence was floated as long ago as last September, recently won the backing of the British Medical Association (BMA), and would certainly give the government some respite from having to defend a constant stream of contentious and highly sensitive decisions. But what would it mean for NHS workers?

Back in February, the Department of Health signed a partnership agreement with NHS Employers and the NHS unions, with the aim of "developing a strategy of engagement" at local level in the NHS. This could well form the basis for a more modern system of industrial relations at hospital level.

But it is difficult to see how this or "independence" would have any real meaning on the bigger resourcing and workforce issues. Twenty years of independent pay review bodies have proved that pay-setting - a multi-billion pound exercise - can hardly be removed from the sphere of politics. Taxpayers will continue to foot the bill, and we elect governments to act on behalf of the taxpayer in matters such as this.

Similarly, overall levels of public funding, workforce planning and the building of new hospitals (or more particularly the closing down of old ones) are all incredibly political issues. Hard to see how a government can hand that lot over to a body which is truly independent - how can it, unless it also hands over the means to raise resources as well?

Given that we can't have quangos raising their own taxes, it does raise the question about what sort of financial independence the NHS would enjoy. No wonder many independent commentators and the unions are a little sceptical, and warn that the worst case scenario is a privately owned and run NHS.

The Centre for Economic and Business Research is forecasting a dramatic growth in the "five-to-nine" economy over the next few years.

It's easy enough to see the logic: we are so 24/7 these days, with our expectation that call centres will always be ready to deal with our banking problems, shops will open early and stay open late so we can use them on our way to and from the office, and GPs will cure our ills at a time convenient to us.

But what's missing is a sense of the continuities in non-standard working times: railway maintenance workers, nurses, the people who sort the post, and those who hoover up the mess around your desk have always worked outside the nine-to-five window and continue to do so.

And then there is the decline in shiftwork because the factories and coal mines that needed to be kept running if they were to be economic are no longer there. The fact is, we didn't invent the 24/7 economy - it was dreamed up by our Victorian ancestors and has changed little in its essentials ever since, even if many of the jobs now involve a computer rather than a lathe.

A study of shift work [subscription required] published by IRS last year found that:

"Despite a decline in manufacturing jobs and the growth in service sector employment, the typical shiftworker is still more likely to be a factory operative than a call centre worker, and is more likely to be male than female."

In fact the proportion of the labour force describing themselves as shiftworkers has remained unchanged at around 14% for the past two decades.

Sometimes the things that don't change are more interesting in their way than those that do.

Those focused on delivering a positive customer interface should take note of my recent telephone experience; particularly where your customers may be lacking a cut glass accent The laudable attempts of a certain local authority (mentioning no names) to embrace front line technology on their switchboard seem doomed to failure.

Ring, ring... ring, ring...

Automated System: Hello, thank you for calling... if you know the name of the person you are trying to reach say it now."

Me: Bob Simpson
AS: "I heard... John Wilson. Is that correct?"
Me: Bob Simpson
AS: I heard... Alfred Arthurson. Is that correct?"
Me: BOB SIMPSON
AS: "I heard... Rupert Twelvetrees. Is that correct?"
Me: inadvertent cough into the receiver
AS: I heard... Asbo. Is that correct?

Click.