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 sec