Making workplace stress into a positive

Workplace stress appears to be a hot topic, not only in management literature but also in government policy-making circles. While few will argue that stress can be a dangerous and damaging problem for an organisation, there is also an increasing argument that a degree of pressure in our lives can be a positive force. In our first story, Tracy Skyrme from TWP argues this point, and lists 10 good tips for effective management of stress.

Health & Safety obstructing green thinking

With ever-shrinking resources available within small businesses, one consultant is warning that the focus on H&S is preventing many business from adopting the green policies that they wish to adopt.

Harry Katz, principle of Norwest Consultants, criticises the spread of H&S policies based on protecting the company against litigation rather than creating a safe workplace, and suggests there are better ways to grow a business.

Read the story from HR Review.

Social media crisis management - why the old ways are not enough

With social media now able to create an audience of millions within a matter of hours, knowing how to manage a crisis that breaks via blogs or Twitter is becoming increasingly vital.

Read the BTN Special Report and be sure to click on the link to the United Breaks Guitars video; a great example of the case in point. Be warned though; it will stay in your head for a long time after you've listened to it!

Employees to be given 10 min daily Facebook break

Fed up with workers spending more time doing things they shouldn't be doing online during working hours, moves are afoot to treat Facebook use in the same way as smoking. Giles Ridgeway, a leading consultant at Employment Law Advisory Services (ELAS) describes Facebook as a curse. He suggests that by allowing two 5 minute periods for checking Facebook during the day, employees found using the site outside of this period will be liable to disciplinary action.

Read the article in The Telegraph (and use the link in the page to share with all your Facebook contacts in the office?)

docleaf Briefs

French passengers on an Aer Lingus Dublin-Paris flight were thrown into panic when a faulty announcement told them the plane was about to make an emergency landing. (AFP)

An English-language announcement 20 minutes after leaving Dublin said the plane was heading into turbulence, asking passengers to return to their seats - but the pre-recorded French version said they were about to ditch.

One passenger told the Irish Examiner newspaper that a French man who was dozing next to him suddenly woke up and looked very startled. "He translated what had been said to me. The message, he said, was that we should prepare for an emergency landing, note where the emergency exits were and await instructions from the captain.

"As there was turbulence as well I got quite alarmed. The woman behind me was crying. "All the French freaked out," he said.

It took a few minutes before the cabin crew realised the error. "They then went back on the PA system and apologised for playing the wrong announcement in French," said the passenger.

The airline spokesperson said the error was the result of the public address system malfunctioning. "We subsequently clarified this and apologised to our passengers. It was a very unusual occurrence," she told AFP.

And finally... A British hospital patient is so disgusted with the quality of his food that he has taken photos of the meals, posted them on the Internet and asked people to guess the meal, reports said Thursday. His followers have failed to identify correctly half of the 35 meals he has posted on the Hospital Food Bingo game that he has featured on his blog.

The patient provides a daily review of the dishes, along with the photos taken on his mobile phone, and describes one attempt at macaroni and cheese as something that "could have been used as wallpaper paste."

"You could have slapped a splattering of the stuff on to a pair of white overalls, stuck them on the underside of a plane and then zipped a man into them before taking off for a spin and a couple of loop-the-loops," he wrote.

The patient, who has only identified himself as Traction Man, has been in hospital since February suffering from a rare bone infection, the Daily Telegraph newspaper said. He has not identified the name of the hospital, saying the treatment itself has been "outstanding" and the medical staff "superb."

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