For me it was accepting that I can’t control the situation. I get stressed by life when it is out of my control, having two kids obviously causes me a lot of stress if I try to control things too much, so by making the mental connection that sometimes (most times) you just can’t control things has helped me to let go of a lot of the stress.

Exactly this Sammy – echoes something I printed out for my team at work when I banned moaning in the office. Told them I either want to hear a suggestion for a workable solution, or nothing at all.

As has been said, find a good agency who specialise in your field. Build a relationship with the consultant, set out the kind of places you do/don’t want to work, your salary expectations, benefits/package requirements etc.

99% of people don’t know how to sell themselves. How comfortable would you be hustling on the phone, cold calling loads of companies and trying to force your CV in and get them to see the benefit in interviewing you before their competition get the chance? This is where a good recruitment consultant comes in, they are the marketing agent for you as an individual. That’s how I viewed it while I worked in the industry – dependent on what sector you work in, I can probably recommend you some very good companies/individuals to speak to.

:-)

All about breaking the emotional attachment cycle.

When something happens that could get you wound up, stop. Break it down into facts not feelings – you will soon see that the initial reaction was unwarranted and unnecessary. After a while, this becomes second nature and you’ll find it helpful in all areas of life. Total objectivity and emotional detachment under pressure are hugely powerful tools to remain on top of a situation, whether it’s at work, driving or wherever. Although wives tend to hate it when spoiling for a row…….

I’d say Superstar red (Kevlar), go up a rotor size and also get your brakes bled. Oh and give the brakes a REALLY good bedding in….. :-)

From experience, generally used as a derisory term from people who can’t afford bikes as good as someone else’s. Standard British psychology to criticise something you secretly covet.

Found a website recently that allows you to pull all training data (inc heart rate, speed at point etc) from someone’s Strava ride, so you can pit yourself against them in real time:

http://cosmocatalano.com/strava/export/

What a beautiful build.

Glad you got it sorted too – my mate (the one who does Astons) read this thread and had a good chuckle – he said he’s had to do loads of little bits to his bikes over the years that are apparently “fine”, he’s been told in the past by a certain online store that he didn’t know what he was on about………hmmmmmmm

WTB Strykers – seriously light and strong. :-)

Companies aren’t not hiring because of employment legislation – rather the (global) economy is on it’s knees and no-one’s spending any money.

Nail. Head.

Tax breaks for manufacturing & skilled industries would make it easier for these companies to become competitive in a global marketplace again and so grow & in time, hire. The shift from “making” is a significant part of what went wrong here.

Well my opinions on this are censored pretty effectively then. Strangely they don’t seem to hold as much weight as those of someone who’s donated over half a million to the Tory party.

So I guess the challenge is working out how to put ideas like this to a workforce and then feeding it back to central government policymakers. Probably the way it should be done would be for the big employers to put together an independent working group, put proposals to their respective employees and then pitch back to government re: tax breaks in return for employee share schemes perhaps?

By definition, someone who donates will have greater influence than someone who doesn’t, so it’s a case of finding a way to represent those who don’t, so that all voices are heard.

Don’t kid yourself. No one is indispensible.

Note the word “pretty”. Although as highest revenue generator by a factor of 40%, with a £1.1Mpa revenue stream and a track record of developing teams with fast growth curves, I am as safe as safe can be in any industry. :-) Short of a massive direction change, which is extremely unlikely given the 5 year plan, things are pretty solid.

Are you really not getting this, incentive schemes already exist, this has nothing to do with incentive it is about trading away rights for promisses, that is the proposal, everything you are trying to sell as a positive already exists.

Again as I have said, maybe this proposal will serve to encourage discussion within organisations about how they can make something work. But I totally see that the “trading in” aspect is something people would be uncomfortable with to say the least.

Not when this is merely the least unpalatable part of numerous suggestions drawn up by someone who donates vast amounts to the Tory party, and made most of his fortune on a legal loan sharking company that preys on the desperate. Have you read any of his other suggestions?

Read a lot of things he suggests and to be honest, don’t like them. But to reach a proper conclusion, all sides need to be heard or else you are effectively censoring someone whose opinions you don’t like.

Again you are merely focusing on the supposed incentive side of the scheme, but as you point out with the JL scheme there is no problem or legal barrier to already doing something of this nature.

All that is new in this proposal is the trading of basic rights for promises of future carrots.

So wouldn’t it be good if someone from JL now came forward proactively, to show examples of how schemes like this can be done well, and in turn grow business & create wealth?

Yes the potential incentive side of this is very good – it’s the other side of the coin that’s not so great. And that is hopefully something that can be worked out if the right people are brought to the table to consult further.

MSP – While the current proposal is without doubt flawed (the whole trading of rights thing isn’t good, the aim should be to create an engaged workforce who work harder out of loyalty, rather than a disengaged workforce who fall back on legal “rights”), but it has to be a good thing that this is being put out in public to be discussed.

Only by putting a proposal forward can others then contribute ideas, thoughts and suggestions. Who knows – maybe by this announcement we will see a working group of good business leaders coming together and in time advising this and future governments.

Engaging, discussing and suggesting ideas has to be a good thing, even if at early stages the ideas are flawed.

Ernie – interesting to see Justin King’s take on this – thanks for posting up.

But you really should try and see past the generalisations and prejudgements you’ve made about my thinking.

My “distrust” of the media as you put it comes from time working in the news media while I still lived in London and saw the dark side of it all, from “editorial support” for advertisers to close annual contracts (you all know the whole Future Publishing thing, that’s a drop in the ocean), and you only have to watch the news at 10 on BBC, Sky and ITV to see that each will report the same political stories with a different bias to meet their target demographic’s preferences. So it’s not a blind mistrust but an understanding of how it works and a conscious decision to research & make my own judgements. :-)

Trekster – interesting about your bonus scheme at your old employer. That’s exactly the challenge that needs to be faced head on in performance based schemes – setting KPIs and realistic targets, but at the same time ensuring quality standards aren’t compromised. It’s something that interests me greatly as we work to increase employee share option and performance schemes at my place. Done right (as at John Lewis) it can be great for morale, done wrong it’s a fast track to declining standards and “box ticking” to hit basic targets.

That was a really good read Zulu – very interesting insight into how it can be done effectively. Trust those analytical, logical, clear thinking Germans to come up with a solution!! :lol:

make all accountable, have dialogue with workers

So very true there! We’ve seen productivity grow massively by improving communications processes between different parts of the business, but sadly that is something that is sorely lacking in the UK as a rule. I’ve seen plenty of companies over the years where a simple thing like a monthly meeting with an open forum would fix things.

You’re a sensitive little soul aren’t you ? You don’t like being told that you’re all over the place ? Personally I don’t like being told that my insults are “cheap”. But since this is a political thread I expect to get some stick. Perhaps you should do too ?

Far from it Ernie – but I’m able to enter into discussion without it getting all a bit angry and descending to the level of insults.

Out of interest, what are your thoughts on these proposals? Do you have an opinion on the principle of employee share options and performance related pay as a workforce motivator? What do you see as the key stumbling blocks and what are the workarounds?

Biggest problem with this idea is that the people at the top in say a company with worldwide interests who make the executive decisions on what products, what direction and markets the company sells to gets that wrong

Good point – and I don’t know what to suggest there, as ultimately in the largest organisations, the top tier decision makers are very much “protected” aren’t they? The only real way to improve that is to devolve at least some decision making power on a more local basis to a management team who see the real issues as they happen in real time, rather than a distanced exec board, who might be in a different country. Spent last week abroad fixing something that happened because of exactly this kind of thing, but luckily, concerns have been taken on board with regards future country launches and running more localised decisions.

ernie_lynch – shame you feel the need to resort to cheap insults.

I’ve said that I would make my own judgements on what has been reported in the media, because we know the primary purpose of the media is to sell papers or gain viewer ratings rather than report the facts.

I’ve also said that the idea of an employee share scheme which serves as a reward to the best workers and gives some form of profit related bonus is a good one.

I’ve also said that the current proposal doesn’t appear very well thought out and there are better people to have consulted who could have provided a good model to put it in place.

Can’t see the problem here?

The idea comes from a venture capitalist.

And clearly has been put past the politicians who now are putting it forward. But we’re talking semantics here. The fact is that some form of employee performance related profit share scheme with a resultant tax break for the employer could be a good idea to stimulate growth, but it’s been worked badly in this case. Had the right people been consulted, a better proposal would probably been forthcoming.

A householder lay in wait for a burglar who tried to burgle his shed. The householder shot him in the back (South Yorkshire).

Schoolboy error. Should have shouted “you dropped your wallet”, waited till he turned and then shot him in the chest.

I think the best thing we can do now is to find a way to stop the endless conveyor belt full of career politicians with little or no real world experience from being allowed to hold office.

Agreed. If you look at modern politics, it’s incredibly polarised – on one hand you have the Eton crowd coming in and heading up all the main parties, but at the other end of the scale, you have the likes of Bob Crow acting as frontmen for the unions, whose lack of ability to communicate and discuss like a normal human being preys into the hands of the politicians.

Some way of ensuring a more representative middle ground when it comes to who gets into power would make sense.

But then who saw anyone who had sensible ideas get in power?!?!

So does anyone on here actually employ people?
If so is the current employment legislation stopping you employing more or is it something else?
Would this proposal be workable for you and would it make you employ more staff?

Regulation change wouldn’t encourage me to hire more. We’re at a point in the business’s development where we now need to grow market share to then be able to sell more and so grow again in phase 3.

I suspect that this proposed scheme wouldn’t encourage anyone to hire more as it doesn’t address the fact that to hire more you need budget to do it, and budget comes from more sales, and we’re in a recession so more sales are hard to come by – but then did we really expect your average politician to have a workable real life solution?

The fact that companies could do this without taking away employment rights? I think good companies (seemingly like John Lewis) recognise that incentivising their staff isn’t done best by only giving them the bare minimum of rights that they can get away with providing.

Maybe working it differently – instead of tax breaks for the employee, give the tax break to the company if they offer and successfully implement an employee share and profit share scheme?

Obviously it would need working on to protect against abuse, but contrary to what many on here might like to believe, there’s a hell of a lot of bosses who do want to see their company do well and be staffed with engaged, motivated staff as ultimately that’s the kind of workforce that works hardest and makes the most profit.

Is that Charlie Chaplin at the front with the flag?

I’m fairly sure that John Lewis haven’t traded their employees employment rights.

Exactly – hence my statement that I am surprised they weren’t consulted, given the fact they run a very successful scheme along these lines.

But such a system already exists; I believe it’s called….. Money. It doesn’t mean hard fought employment rights should be waived, just be wise it wouldn’t affect you, in your situation.

But if we had a system in place whereby hard workers could be rewarded with something related to financial growth of the organisation (in other words incentivising them to add value), wouldn’t that be a good thing? Lots of jobs don’t have a performance related remuneration scheme, and unless an employee is constantly upskilling and then able to get promoted to go up a pay band (unlikely in current times), then a performance related bonus, linked to overall fiscal growth would be a good thing.

Or am I missing something?

I think someone said on here earlier that it’s a great idea in principle but in this case, probably pretty badly communicated and executed. There should absolutely be some kind of performance related reward for people prepared to work harder than their peers – otherwise it’s easy for people to become disengaged and you end up with workforces full of people who just go through the motions, clock their hours and leave, but never really contribute.

John Lewis is a great example of an employee share scheme system that not only rewards everyone working to achieve growth, but also serves as an attractive proposition to draw the cream of the crop to them, whatever sector of the business that is in.

In all honesty, I am a bit surprised they weren’t consulted on the whole thing as it would have made quite a bit of sense to do so.

The guy’s had quite a battle with alcohol by all accounts – which while not excusing, does go some way to explain the disparity between the private and public personalities. Seen him round Bristol in a few proper states and know people who’ve succumbed to drink problems holding it together externally but when they get home, are all manner of trouble.

As I say, not excusing it, but it does explain it a bit. Hope he gets the help he obviously needs.

Interesting……..

Speaking from personal experience, I can say 100% there is definitely a place for employee share schemes to reward the hardest and most committed workers. Not sure about the whole “trading in rights” thing yet, but as it’s the British media reporting it, I will await proof rather than take their word for it. We all know how inflammatory reporting is at the moment, as they battle to fight falling circulation numbers with outrageous emotionally charged headlines.

To give you some insight – as part of my first performance review I was given some shares in the company as well as renegotiating my commission and bonus structure. As a sales manager, I have spent the last 10+ years of my life working to get the job done, rather than thinking of my “rights” so to speak. Not out of being forced to by any employer, but because that’s the mindset of someone in my profession. So the “trading in” bit isn’t really of a concern to me IF it proves to be true.

Not long ago, we were bought my a major multinational and share values have quadrupled. Those of us with share options have varying “lock in” periods, mine is 4 years from issue, but right now, that stands me as £19k up already and the values are protected. I’ve got no intention of leaving, and by working hard & smart I have positioned myself as pretty indispensible to the overall organisation.

So for me, this new scheme would just be a formalisation of something that works very well already. I imagine for a lot of others who share a similar drive, it would also be welcomed.

All depends how you view things. I believe that just as much as an employer has obligations to the employee, so too does the employee have an obligation to the employer to give 100% at all times. Maybe this scheme would do something to foster more thinking like that if they had a financial interest in the success of the organisation they worked for?

I’ve used oven cleaner a few times when brake cleaner’s not been man enough. Just do it outside as the fumes are vicious……..

All depends where you work and what you do (asides from bike riding innit)

I’m 35 and work in sales for a tech startup, so I need to strike a pretty difficult balance between being not too corporate but also not to like the tech guys.

Banana Republic has been one of my fave brands since discovering them a few years back while in the USA, think they pretty much nail it for us gents of a certain age: http://www.bananarepublic.co.uk

After all, I’d hate to be the male equivalent of one of those mutton dressed as lamb “just divorced” women you always see out on a weekend!!

Wow – great job on the Vito there!

I’ve got this one:

http://www.gooutdoors.co.uk/hi-gear-lugga-cargo-65-travel-pack-p143462

Very similar to the North Face one but a whole load cheaper. Have had it for 2 seasons now and it’s been on around 10 international trips as bold baggage (holidays as well as biking trips), as well as being slung in the back of the van a good few times a month.

Highly recommended, and ridiculously god value at under £30.

Had mine (Alex Supra 30 on Switch Evo) since Feb, have done about 2.5k on them, including a whole load of enduro races and uplift days.

Still running true and tight, had to do a bearing swap recently but this cost me under a fiver from a bearing supplier, and I expect to swap out cartridges every 9-12 months anyway, especially from new.

I bought a ’99 Vito for a measly £700 earlier this year to set up as a bike van, using Hannah Barnes’ van as an inspiration. Now almost finished the final bits of interior and all in, the project has cost me less than £1500.

One thing to watch with the Merc as opposed to a VW is that earlier models (like mine) seem to be made of some mad steel that starts to rust & scab if you give it a bit of a stern look for too long. Done all the prep and repairs on that myself, so all good, but something to be aware of.

Record before doing the conversion was 10(!) bikes in the back, loaded acrossways with front wheels off. Pretty comical as we worked it out to be a 40:1 bike:van value ratio, that has yet to be beaten!

With the conversion, it will now still take 7 big full sus bikes and kit too.

Average mpg is around 40-45, but get above 70 and the brick-like aerodynamics see that tail off horribly. Engines and running gear are bombproof, just panels are a bit rubbish.

I’ll get some photos over the next few days…….

:-)

I know a man who can help with this, based in Essex.

Not a bike specialist but an Aston Martin tuner. Makes very expensive bits out of various metals including Ti for outrageously expensive and very fast playthings. He’s spun up several bike parts for mates that would disgrace anything you see in the bike world.

Pretty confident he could help – my email address is on my profile, send me some pics and I can put you in touch.

:-)

But there’s always 2 sides to a story. I work for a tech startup that has Vodafone as it’s major investor and has created 60+ jobs this year, not to mention the multiple incubators around Europe (I’m out at one at the moment, where there are 10+ startups, all being funded by VF and there’s 6 in major European cities). Of course many would moan about Vodafone’s tax “management”, but the flipside of it is the funds being freed to reinvest and generate wealth.

No doubt the same with Virgin group – savings on one thing such as tax to fund a bloated welfare system fund jobs instead. That has to be a good thing.

Personally I would rather see someone with a bit of entrepreneurial flair running things profitably than the usual old boys network of ex-public sector bosses with their closed door deals & funny handshakes that maintain the bad old public sector ways.

Fact is, Virgin ran a better service than the one First were proposing, and it was economically more viable.

Too often in this country we have seen government agencies sign off stupid decisions that then need bailing out or serious remedial action to counter institutional incompetence. Overpriced hospital lightbulbs anyone?

Most of my meetings are a good use – but that’s because I hit them from the outset with a clear 4 step “elevator pitch”:

– Why I am here
– This is where we are
– This is where we need to be
– We need to agree a solution to get from where we are now to where we need to be, and we need to do it today.

Too often meetings aren’t focused, nobody takes control and forces the issue to a defined conclusion. They rapidly slide into little more than counselling sessions where people get to vent their opinions and discuss reasons why stuff can’t happen, rather than ways it can.