Here is another Workplace Survival Guide written by an expert employment lawyer, T J McHugh.
How to Beat Your Boss helps you understand where you really stand as an employee, and answer questions such as “I hate my boss. Should I resign?” or “Can my boss really treat me like that?” . Psychopaths in the workplace are a very real, very common and grossly underestimated phenomenon. They can be bosses or co-workers. Most victims don’t understand what is happening to them until things have gotten way out of control.

Let’s finish with a funny though cynic novel about  daily work. It is set in an advertising agency in Chicago.
Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came To The End takes a sustained interest in the idea of the working environment and its potential to alter the behaviour of the people caught up in it.

Here is an excerpt: “We were fractious and overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise. At least those of us who smoked had something to look forward to at ten-fifteen. [...] Ordinarily jobs came in and we completed them in a timely and professional manner. Sometimes fuckups did occur. Printing errors, transposed numbers.Our business was advertising and details were important. If the third number after the second hyphen in a client’s toll-free number was a six instead of an eight, and if it went to print like that, and showed up in Time magazine, no one reading the ad could call now and order today. No matter they could go to the website, we still had to eat the price of the ad. Is this boring you yet? It bored us every day.Our boredom was ongoing, a collective boredom, and it would never die because we would never die.”
As Joshua writes, “it is really irritating to work with irritating people” !

For those you prefer to watch an online workspace odysee, have a look at an original webseries The Cube Life!
You will realize that some places or colleagues can be worse than yours.

Researchers in the Netherlands have conducted a study among 1500 women across various professions to determine the frequency with which sex enters into the workplace.

In Holland, the studies found that more than one-third of women had had a sexual relationship with a colleague at work (other than their habitual partner if their partner works at the same company).

90% of those surveyed said that at least one of their work colleagues attracted them physically. Roughly 15% of those surveyed responded that they would be capable of using sex to obtain a promotion, with the reservation expressed that their boss attracted them.

In response to the question, “how would you react to a colleague putting his hands on your backside,” 3 in 10 responded that it depended on which colleague took this particular liberty.

Similar studies in the UK reveal that more than 1 in 3 female professionals have had a sexual relationship with a colleague at work, with 16 % of surveyed women indicating that they could be inclined to sleep with the boss for a promotion.

In France, roughly 25% of women have indicated having had a sexual relationship with a colleague at work and 14% of women surveyed indicated that they could conceivably sleep with the boss to secure a promotion.

Interestingly, the authors of these studies consistently focus on women. No studies have yet been published indicating what percentage of men would we willing to sleep with the boss in order to secure a promotion.

Les RH vont demander aux “têtes de” (“head of“) de définir quelles sont les “KPHP” (key player with high potential) parmi leurs équipes. Êtes-vous un “linchpin” (pivot, goupille) jouant un rôle essentiel au sein de votre entreprise? Si oui, vous avez davantage de chances d’obtenir une augmentation ou un bonus à moins que votre esprit non conformiste ne menace la paix de l’entreprise…

Je vous invite à lire l’ouvrage de Seth Godin, Linchpin, Are You Indispensable? sur cette catégorie de professionnels capables de mener la barque contre vents et marées. Faites-vous partie de ces précieux marins qui rament avec énergie et combattent l’inertie ambiante afin d’atteindre l’objectif suprême: gagner ou satisfaire de nouveaux clients, donc engranger de l’argent et faire flotter le navire encore un bon moment!

La société  et les entreprises ont besoin de personnes indépendantes et non conformistes. “Society does not reward blind rule-following, but instead requires linchpins who do not have maps telling them what to do next. This is difficult, as we are conditioned by society to follow the status quo and to fit in. Linchpins understand this, and must continually fight off the tendency to give-up, conform and to take the easy path by simply following the rules“. Faites-vous partie de la résistance? Êtes-vous visionnaires?

Godin associe les personnes essentielles à des artistes qui challengent le statu quo, génèrent ainsi une plus-value et deviennent alors indispensables. Pour  Seth, “art is the ability to change people with your work, to see thing as they are and then create stories, images, and interactions that change the marketplace.”

Ce bouquin est un véritable manifeste sur comment devenir indispensable. Malgré ce qu’a pu vous dire vous votre chef, vos collègues ou amis, vous pouvez choisir d’être une personne clé, un génie qui réussit dans la tourmente de la nouvelle économie. En étant reconnu comme un linchpin, on n’osera plus vous dénigrer ou vous sous-payer. Hélas, devenir indispensable n’est pas facile et si ça l’était, ce n’aurait plus de valeur…

Le danger de tout collaborateur est de ne pas être un personne indispensable car elle devient alors remplaçable.

Laissez-vous guider par ce gourou aux exemples assurément amusants comme le chapitre “Anxiety and Shenpa” qui parle de cerveau reptilien de sagesse tibétaine: “Embrace your lizard brain. It’s the source of understanding why you’re in a job that sucks.”

Aujourd’hui, nous allons parler du principe satirique relatif à l’organisation hiérarchique: le célèbre Principe de Peter et son corollaire: « Avec le temps, tout poste sera occupé par un incompétent incapable d’en assumer la responsabilité.»

Dans une entreprise, les employés compétents sont promus et les incompétents restent à leur place. Vous me rétorquerez peut-être que dans votre société, les employés compétents stagnent à leur place, tout comme les incompétents ou que ces derniers s’élèvent dans la hiérarchie. Eh bien, c’est sans doute parce que les incompétents ont été promus dans un premier temps avant d’arriver à leur vitesse de croisière (quand il n’y a pas de vent)…

Aussi, un employé compétent grimpe-t-il dans les hautes sphères de son entreprise jusqu’à atteindre un poste pour lequel il ne sera pas compétent — si ce n’est pas déjà le cas au départ. À ce stade, il devient donc un incompétent qui va occuper son poste indéfiniment. Il va également faire en sorte de ne pas être démasqué en empêchant l’ascension de certains pairs qui pourraient mettre en danger sa planque professionnelle.

Résumons :
- un incompétent conserve son poste (grâce à sa stratégie de survie);
- un employé compétent promu est remplacé par un autre employé, potentiellement incompétent ;
- si le nouvel employé est compétent, il sera promu et remplacé à son tour par un nouvel employé jusqu’à ce que le poste échoie à un incompétent

Une extension ou extension aggravée du principe de Peter est appelée la Loi de Dilbert (du nom d’un personnage de BD créé par Scott Adams). Elle suppose que les employés les moins compétents seront toujours affectés aux postes où on est sûr qu’ils produiront le moins de dégâts, c’est-à-dire l’encadrement. Je sais, vous pensez tout de suite à votre chef direct, n’est-ce pas ? Si vous n’en n’avez pas, vous serez intéressé de savoir comment et par qui vous risquez d’être débusqué…

Laurence J. Peter relève que plus le nombre d’échelons hiérarchiques est élevé, plus chacun risque de subir « la stagnation de Peter ». Il remarque que les hiérarques, quand ils sont au sommet de leur niveau d’incompétence, se complaisent à fréquenter des réunions. Le corps des hiérarques peut alors entrer en « lévitation » sous le nom de « sommet volant ». Comment alors renverser un hiérarque incompétent ? Sachez que seul un hiérarque peut le faire. Mais la problématique est que par cet acte, il admet son incompétence à discerner le personnel compétent puisqu’on l’a laissé grimpé jusqu’au sommet. La solution réside dans le déplacement de la sous hiérarchie du personnel sous ses ordres. Le hiérarque à décapiter se retrouve alors seul à la tête d’une pyramide sans base, sur son « sommet volant ». Il est donc prêt à être destitué par un de ses homologues et à être remplacé par un clone !

Les solutions varient selon les cas :
- Pour un dirigeant constatant qu’il a des cadres supérieurs incompétents, il est conseillé de recourir à ce que l’on nomme la « sublimation percutante ». Cette manœuvre consiste à accorder à une personne incompétente une promotion vers un poste plus prestigieux en apparence, mais en fait à responsabilité très inférieure. Les titres proposés sont inversément proportionnels à leur contenu et à leur niveau de responsabilité. Si c’est en anglais, cela sera sans doute encore plus convaincant : XXX Coordinator, YYY Project Manager, etc.
- Pour les personnes constatant leur propre incompétence, Peter recommande diverses tactiques dont « spécialisation dans le détail » ou « l’aberration totale » qui consiste à arrêter d’essayer d’accomplir son travail. Ces méthodes ne sont pas nuisibles à l’entreprise ou l’organisation, du moment que toute organisation le travail est accompli par les personnes compétentes. Paradoxalement, ces stratégies sont bénéfiques à l’entreprise car les incompétents obnubilés ou amorphes gênent alors moins les travailleurs dans leurs tâches.

Poursuivons avec la loi de Parkinson qui affirme que « le travail s’étale de façon à occuper le temps disponible pour son achèvement ». Cette théorie était basée sur une longue expérience dans l’administration britannique où l’on avait constaté l’accroissement du nombre d’employés au Bureau des affaires coloniales malgré le déclin de l’Empire britannique. L’augmentation du nombre d’employés seraient dû à deux forces :
- « Un fonctionnaire entend multiplier ses subordonnés, pas ses rivaux » : il a une tendance naturelle à recruter quelqu’un de plus compétent que lui au moins dans un domaine, mais aussi à diviser le travail pour éviter d’être remis en cause par l’un de ses collaborateurs. Il crée ainsi des besoins de coordination interne, qui entrainent une charge de travail supplémentaire, puis l’embauche de collaborateurs supplémentaires. On construit ainsi un système « autarcique » qui va consommer, de manière endogène, une part croissante de l’énergie et des ressources disponibles.
- « Les fonctionnaires se créent mutuellement du travail ». Plus il y a de fonctionnaires, plus les demandes d’approbation qu’ils se communiquent mutuellement, ou tâches comparables, les occupent, de sorte que le travail accompli d’un point de vue extérieur par l’administration dans son ensemble n’augmente pas.

Cette tumeur bureaucratique ne se développe que s’il y a déficience en management. Pour y remédier, la seule solution réside dans l’ablation. Il faut donc qu’un manager décide de cette amputation, en supprimant les tâches qui se sont créées. L’externalisation est une des manières de procéder à cette ablation sans couper dans les effectifs. Notons au passage que bien des financiers valorisent l’externalisation en ne reconnaissant pas le temps et le travail nécessaire au suivi des externes par le personnel en interne.

Cyril Northcote Parkinson énonce que variable la plus significative du coefficient d’inefficacité d’un conseil d’administration est le nombre de ses membres… Je ne dirai pas pour autant que le fait de n’avoir que deux personnes à la tête d’un conseil d’administration garantisse une certaine efficacité, car rappelons-nous l’adage « qui se ressemble s’assemble »…

Terminons par la super-compétence qui est plus redoutable que l’incompétence, car tout super-compétent outrepasse ses fonctions et bouleverse alors la hiérarchie qui ne demande qu’à se maintenir. Si tel est votre cas, sachez que pour être renvoyé, il faut que les deux conditions suivantes soient réunies :
- la hiérarchie vous harcèle au point de vous empêcher de produire ;
- vous n’obéissez pas aux principes de « respect de la hiérarchie »

Il est préférable de se maintenir à un poste auquel on est compétent, non seulement dans l’intérêt de l’organisation où l’on travaille, mais aussi parce qu’être compétent à son poste est un facteur de bonheur personnel. Malheureusement, le refus d’une promotion est mal perçu par l’entourage. Espérons que notre « incompétence créatrice » nous permettra de rester à notre place sans risquer d’être sollicité dans de plus hautes sphères où l’on risque de se brûler les ailes, à moins que l’on excelle au point de profiter d’un parachute doré ignifuge.

In 2008 while the lucrative holiday period drew near, luxury watch production had slowed, brought to heel by the global financial crisis. Since mid-2008, exports declined and unemployment rose, with notices of staff reductions being announced by large multinationals each month.

In Neuchatel where a large number of luxury brands are located, the manufacturer Ulysee Nardin had to fire 12% of its 25o man work force and produced at a slower rate.

But since September, according to the management, the ateliers are running at 100% with orders rising and the company has ended its practice of partial unemployment.

Ulysse Nardin has inaugurated a new boutique in Beijing and the Neuchatel-based luxury watch maker seems braced for renewed good times. The director of the company, Rolf Schnyder, recently stated recently that the company would end the year in the black, albeit with less profit than last year. 2008 had started off very well for the Ulysse Nardin but finished off badly. 2009 started off badly and has apparently finished well.

The Director’s prognostic is that the recession has ended and that growth has returned, with November sales 30% higher than those for November 2008.

Nonetheless, Mr. Schnyder believes that the United States will take much more time to recover, and their market is important for the luxury watch maker; that said, the importance of the US market has declined from 30% historically to currently 18%.

An unstated reason for the return to health is that the company is operating with a smaller workforce, which, for the moment, the company does not seem in a rush to rehire.

Additionally, with the rise in orders, their production capacities cannot keep up. The various subcontractors upon which the luxury brands depend – for watch casings, dials and other parts– let go substantial numbers of staff over the past year and do not have the resources to produce at the old capacity levels. They probably are also wary about too rapidly hiring back staff.

Also, despite the return of strong sales, the distribution of sales has nonetheless changed, with a marked decline in sales of super expensive pieces and a concomitant rise in sales of moderately priced pieces.

The phenomenon is identical in China and in the United States. Ulysse Nardin’s director believes that the worst is also passed in the United States and the economy is recovering, though it will be a longer road to elsewhere. Besides the US and China, Russia is also an important market for the luxury brands, as well as the middle east, though with the financial crisis in Dubai, sales have dropped by 70%. A large part of the luxury watch maker’s sales figures this year in Spain, Italy, Turkey or Florida has come from Russian tourists.

Since January 2009, the unemployment rate in Switzerland has continued to rise. Though it has remained considerably lower than other European countries, the rising jobless rate in Switzerland is nonetheless symptomatic of economic transition. The process of finding a job in Switzerland has evolved considerably, with internet taking a central role in the job search.

To find a suitable job on one of the numerous internet job portals, one has to begin by identifying the sort of environment one wants to work in and the type of job one is seeking. Starting off the job hunting process by considering how one’s profile fits into the above can help the candidate identify a maximum of relevant offers and avoid wasting time on a multitude of job boards.

After choosing a few job boards, its best to configure one or more profiles as completely as possible, and stick with those portals, setting up web alerts to be informed of relevant jobs as they are published.

For managers and top experts and specialists, sites such as topjobs, qual, and experteer tend to be the preferred portals, though sites such as the latter actually charge job seekers and carry the additional annoyance of obliging job seekers to jump through the hoop of their registration process to respond to or even just to look at their job vacanciess. Both Topjobs and Qual allow the candidate to browse jobs anonymously, which also provides maximum value to the publishers of job vacancies.

There is an increasing tendency among job portals toward smaller focus, either on a particular occupational sector, professional level, or geographical area. There are more job sites now focusing on single cities, on specifically student internships, on only managerial roles, or on solely the medical profession.

A further recent development in the recruitment process is the increasing use of social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, et. al. to disseminate job opportunities and recruit ‘informally.’

Using social networks to hook up with an interesting job opportunity can be a delicate maneuver for the candidate if he does not plan well in advance. It is best to keep entirely separate those networks on which one socializes and those which one uses to ‘advertise’ one’s professional skill set.

Every year the WEF, based in Switzerland overlooking lake Geneva, publishes a global ranking of the most competitive economies.

This year the WEF noted that Switzerland was characterized by both an excellent environment of innovation as well as a sophisticated business culture.

The WEF also noted that Switzerland had been much more resistant than the US and Europe to the world economic crisis. Further, the problems in the financial sector were much less pronounced in Switzerland than elsewhere in Europe or in the US. In effect, problems in the Swiss bank sector were essentially circumscribed to UBS.

Switzerland also earned its first place for its top research institutes and excellent collaboration between its research institutes and the private sector. Switzerland’s public institutions are among the best in the world and its infrastructure was rated as excellent.

However, the WEF noted that access to university education in Switzerland remains weak – on this criterion Switzerland was rated 46th globally. Even if immigration is allowing Switzerland to compensate for the penury of educated qualified professionals on the Swiss job market, the WEF recommended that Switzerland raise the level of average education to better respond to the needs of an advanced economy.

The WEF’s ranking was a welcome shot in the arm for the Swiss economy, which has nonetheless suffered slowdowns and layoffs in the luxury watch making, textile and hospitality industries.

Among the sectors, flourishing despite the overall economic in Switzerland, the insurance industry remains strong, with an industry unemployment rate below 2%.

The energy sector is also doing very well — every business and sector touching production of electricity, gas, air conditioning, etc – with an industry unemployment of about 1.5%. Another sector oblivious to moroseness is teaching: teachers are practically untouched by unemployment with the sector showing slightly more than 2% of teachers without a job.

Among the professions which appear to be crisis-resistant are managers – there seems to be no end to jobs for managers who can streamline, rationalize, increase productivity, etc. – top IT specialists, and finance professionals. The majority of cuts that some banks have had to make due to strong declines in revenues have not been in trading and finance, and job offers for top financial talent remain strong.

Tangentially, the World Economic Forum is among companies, organizations, and institutions having resisted the crisis, and with its chic campus in Geneva’s ritziest suburb and solid revenue stream of expensive membership fees, is an attractive employer in the Geneva area.

The prognostics for Switzerland in 2010 are not especially optimistic.

According to the Swiss unions, purchasing power will strongly decline in 2010 as prices rise, inflation begins, and salaries stagnate.

We might point, at this juncture, that the unions and syndicates of Switzerland were all willing advocates of the open markets in Switzerland and the integration with the European community, which is the principal causative factor of the decline in purchasing power and standard of living.

Currently the unions are predicting a decline in the gross national product of about 3%, with a further decline in 2010 of perhaps 1%. The unions’ predictions are more pessimistic than the government economist’s because they take into account precisely the decline in purchasing power which will have a strong effect on the Swiss economy for some time to come.

The decline in purchasing power of Swiss households is estimated to diminish by several billion francs in 2010 as a result of the massive rise in health insurance premiums, a rise in the CO2 tax, and austerity measures by the different cantons to brake the acceleration of public debt. Overall the forced savings represents about 1% of the GNP – about 5 billion francs. Converted into employment, this equals about 40,000 jobs !

The current recession is expected to follow a W pattern and the positive signs of improvement are expected to reveal themselves later on as just a simple renewal of stocks. The small perceived rise in production is not a sign of rise in demand as claimed by certain over-optimistic observers. And the rise in unemployment is expected to further damage demand down the road.

A variety of economists and commentators are expecting to see over 250,000 unemployed by 2010. This constitutes a historic record for Switzerland and of course the record unemployment will cause ancillary damage in psychological problems and other health and social problems.

Further, 2009 has seen the destruction of banking secrecy in Switzerland, leading to an important exodus of foreign funds under management in Switzerland. Subsequent to the agreement made with the United Sates, the Swiss federal government is now besieged with demands for similar cooperation from France, Germany, Turkey, and elsewhere.
No one has yet provided a credible estimate of the part of GNP made up by the Swiss financial services sector but private estimates such as by Banque Pictet in Geneva have estimated that the removal of Swiss banking secrecy will cost roughly 100,000 jobs in Switzerland.

In a period of recession and great economic uncertainty where many are worried about the stability of their jobs, keeping a healthy, positive attitude at work can become a challenge. And it can render the normal process of evaluating and criticizing colleagues work a minefield.

Some rules of thumb to keep in mind in an era of generalized anxiety:
Prepare your criticisms.
Clarify your ideas and isolate the nature of the behavior you seek to change in your colleague. Have you discussed this problem with your colleague before? What is the impact/seriousness of this behavior? When is the best moment to discuss it ?

Stick to the Facts.
It’s easy to get emotional and bring in personal elements that will make a smooth resolution of the problem far less likely. Be precise and detailed in your examples, try to avoid an accusatory demeanor and keep an open attitude inviting dialogue.

Enumerate Consequences.
The colleague should be explained the consequences of the behavior in question. For example, if Joe is consistently late with his work and this tardiness delays several of his colleagues who depend on his output, this should be made clear. Ascertain that this realization is shared.

Define the Change(s) you Expect.
Explain clearly what you want changed, in concrete terms.

While interpersonal skills are clearly required to effectively criticize and obtain behavioral modifications, other no less important interpersonal skills are necessary to effectively receive criticism. Many people become immediately defensive and cease to listen. One should listen carefully when one is being criticized, and –once the criticism has been formulated – question one’s interlocutor calmly to induce him to express exactly what is on his mind. Make sure you fully understand the criticism being addressed to you by reformulating it in your own words. Once clarified, you can take a clear stance vis-à-vis the criticism. Avoid taking criticisms personally as reproaches. Work is work – don’t get emotional over it.

The Leisure Revolution is brewing in Switzerland. A popular initiative has been launched to raise the minimum vacation allotment in Switzerland from 4 weeks to 6 weeks. The required 125,000 signatures have been obtained and the Travail Suisse union is expected to formally register the initiative at the end of June.

Companies are already growling over it, calculating that it represents an insidious salary increase of about 4%, without taking into account the accompanying expenses of implementing the change and insuring continuity and production with a greater turnover of employee presence.

HR Managers have responded that if the measure passes, the result will be a strong brake on salary increases.

The Unions are unfazed by these arguments. They are aware that small companies — PMEs — will have difficulties adapting. But they argue that employees are squeezed more and more and have received little in return.

Except for top managerial salaries, wages have stagnated in Switzerland for more than ten years.

The manager of the Travail Suisse campaign for 6 weeks annual vacation argues that nearly half of employees are overworked and that the cost of work stress in Switzerland is nearly CHF 8 billion per year.

Will voters pass the initiative ? In 1985, voters rejected a proposal to increase the minimum annual leave by one week to five weeks/year. Commentators interpreted that conservative result as proof of the strong commitment to work in Switzerland.

But perhaps times have changed since then and the increased competition and globalization of the workplace in Switzerland, as well as different demographics, may lead to a different result this time around.

In an epoch where good or uninspired management can make or break a company, there is a growing trend toward ‘interim management’ solutions.

Often companies simply cannot wait until the right candidate is found. In the current economic climate, many companies needing an experienced executive management may not be able to wait the 6 – 12 months often required to recruit a top manager. Interim management solutions can provide the remedy.

Among the companies offering such interim management solutions, CEO-Europe offers a flexible ‘Management on Demand’ solution. CEO Europe offers certified top executives available with a minimum of 15 years of professional experience, covering 166 countries in Europe, Asia and the US. The recruitment process takes about three weeks, the executives can be contracted on a permanent or temporary basis.

CEO-Europe illustrates the phenomenon of interim management solutions with the case of Glowria, an online video rental company which was rapidly losing business – shareholders needed a capable manager to come on board right away and turn the company around or close it. The company was turned around in 7 months, thanks to an interim manager.

This type of scenario – a company that needs to recruit an experienced manager rapidly—is becoming more and more frequent. CEO-Europe develops and maintains a ‘manager pool’ and promises its customers a short-list within one week and an overall recruitment cycle of 3 weeks.

In the case of Glowria, the interim manager needed to rapidly obtain a commercial and financial turnaround. To achieve this, the manager chose, Eric Caen, had to manage in parallel several major projects, such as raising funds, developing sales and to restructuring the company.

One of the pitfalls of interim management – or any recruitment where a manager from outside the company is brought – is that the manager is often perceived as responsible for downsizing staff.
And is this sometimes the case.

Whether it is or it isn’t, the manager needs to win the confidence of the managed.

In the case of Glowria, Eric Caen though judged that his internal resources were competent and efficient staff but not working effectively as a team. The team needed a leader to unite and channel these energies. That formed part of his strategy to turn the company around:
Structure, Convince, Motivate

In the above case, which dates from 2007, the interim management solution was able to bring the company back to profitability through strategy and more efficient use of the company’s resources, without dismissing any staff.

The polemic over the ultra-high salaries, remunerations and compensation packages of top managers continues to rage. Over the past 30 years, the multiplier between the least well-paid and most highly paid workers has continued to grow, from roughly 20 – 25 in 1980 to over 500 in 2008. The shining incompetence of many of these top paid executives — particularly in the finance sector– which has brought several venerable financial institutions to the brink of ruin, has put in relief the absurdity of the market’s valuation of these jobs and these executives professional skills.

When last month it was published that the new CEO of ABB had obtained a CHF 19.2 million annual salary, commentators in the press and specialists on governance were scandalized, particularly in view of the climate of economic meltdown, in which the business world was supposed to have learned that such high salaries were based on fictitious metrics of added value. These commentators remark that market principles should dictate that executive compensation falls drastically in a period when profits plummet and there are mass layoffs. Not so, it appears. Rather, there is an enormous discrepancy between the logic and the widely held public opinion, and themarket principles that appear to operate.

While all over the planet companies being helped by governments are being forced to cap salaries, those that have not as of yet need public rescue are also re-thinking their compensation packages. Consultancies specializing in executive compensation have reported a large movement among industry to follow the trend to restructure corporate salary scales after the forced shake-out in executive compensation in the financial / banking sector.

An important factor apparently limiting reform is the global market for CEOs, and consequently their salaries are set as a result of international norms based presumably on supply and demand. The new thinking in the progressive fringe of executive pay reform is to define a base salary relative to the market in which the executive is operating and linking the variable / performance part of the executive’s compensation to such indices as employee satisfaction and the long term development of the business, looking beyond simple short term profits. Clearly, one of the lessons bitterly learned has been that enormous bonus compensation was disbursed based on short term profits which were subsequently revealed to be figments of accounting, vaporizing into staggering losses.

Management schools, academic institutes, government officials and itinerant consultants are now sagely speaking of pay relative to “long term results.” Professors at the University of Lausanne and at IMD have recently made statements about the necessity for judging performance on the long term – that is, over 5 or 10 years.

The fortunes of the luxury watch making sector in Switzerland have continued to plummet with the number of workers joining the unemployed increasing 13.2% in one month.

The official rate of unemployment in Switzerland across all sectors is now 3.4% — although, as in all countries these official statistics are vigorously massaged and include only those currently receiving unemployment benefits.

At the end of March there were 135,000 unemployed enrolled at regional placement offices (ORPs), about 2500 more than in February, according to the federal government’s SECO. Compared to March 2008, the number of unemployed increased about 30%.

According to the statistics, unemployment affects foreigners more than Swiss with the respective rates 6.9% and 2.4%.

The number of long term unemployed – those who have been looking for more than a year– remains so far relatively stable: there were roughly 16,000 in March 2008 and there are roughly 16,000 now.

The SECO is planning for an unemployment rate of 3.8% for 2009 and 5.2% for 2010.

At the moment, the sectors hemorrhaging the most jobs are banking/finance and luxury industries. However other industries heavily export-oriented have also been affected, like machine tools. In the luxury watch industry, the number of jobs lost over the past few months has been striking.

Unemployment is also becoming a serious problem among youth, with the number of unemployed among 16-24 year olds rising to 4% from 2.9% last year.

Reductions in working hours – so called ‘partial unemployment’ – in which workers work fewer hours and are paid proportionally less, has continued to progress as well. For many months the banks have been letting go employees each month in drips of 10 or 20 at a time. The luxury watch sector is the most recent casualty of the global downturn, in terms of its impact on the local economy.

Sectors such as pharmaceuticals and agroalimentary industries are doing very well, despite the terrible economy, with Nestle recently announcing its intention to hire several hundred new employees over the next 12 months.

This book is a therapeutic guide to making yourself and others happy and sane at work. Because loving what you do is crucial, more productive and therefore even profitable for your maybe sick company…

Then, you may ask, why do people actively resist positive change? You shall read Change by Paul Watzlawick studying the paradoxical nature of personal change.

On the contrary, you might be a lucky and cheerful worker, which is unusual nowadays.

Your organization is based on the following advantages:
- Employees set their own working hours
- Staff decides on their own salaries
- All meetings are voluntary and open to everyone
- Employees hire their own bosses and rate them twice a year
- HR has been almost abolished

Installation avec Explorer:

Clic droit sur image, sélectionner “choisir comme image d’arrière-plan”, “étirer”.

Qual bouge même sur votre écran immobile!

Installation with Firefox:

Right click on the image, select “set as desktop background”, “stretch”.

Qual your computer!

Installation:

Downloader l’image en local (clic droit souris au-dessus de l’image) puis menu démarrer, panneau de configuration, affichage, bureau, parcourir, uploader l’image, sous menu déroulant “mosaïque”.

Nouveau fond d’écran corporate haute résolution:

Pour Windows XP, Internet Explorer :
1) Placez la souris sur l’image;
2) Cliquez avec le bouton droit de la souris ;
3) choisissez l’option « choisir comme image d’arrière-plan ».
4) L’image est alors installée comme fond d’écran.

Pour Mac (OS X), Safari :
1)Placez la souris sur l’image;
2)Cliquez avec le bouton droit de la souris ;
3)Cliquez avec la touche « ctrl » et choisissez l’option « Charger l’image sur le volume »;
L’image est enregistrée dans le répertoire qui a été défini dans les préréglages du browser pour le téléchargement de données à partir d’Internet (par défaut, c’est celui du bureau du Mac);
4)Passez maintenant sur le bureau du Mac et positionnez le pointeur de souris sur la zone vide de l’arrière-plan;
5)Cliquez avec la touche « ctrl » et choisissez l’option « modifier fond d’écran »;
6)Choisissez, dans le menu « Collections » l’option « Choose folder » (sélectionner un dossier) et recherchez l’image qui a été téléchargée;
7)Cliquez sur « sélectionner».
8)L’image est alors installée en fond d’écran.

Pour la netteté des images, les moniteurs dont la résolution est d’au moins 1024×768 pixels sont les plus performants.

Evadez-vous depuis votre écran Qual!

Installation:

Enregistrez l’image localement (clic droit sur souris) puis allez dans le menu démarrer, panneau de configuration, affichage, onglet bureau, parcourir, chargez l’image, précisez dans sous menu déroulant mosaïque afin de répéter le motif.

Qualez votre ordinateur!