A for effort

My section of the stationery room on the 4th floor at City Hall has been declared beautifully tidy by our co-ordinator, after Melissa and I spent a happy half hour this afternoon rationalising the Good Jobs campaign materials. I can't post a photo (for legal reasons and to protect the guilty) but perhaps I should host a little sherry reception by my shelf in honour of the newly and neatly labelled boxes.

A bit of a tidy up at work is a marvellous thing.

Lunch in an urban orchard

What nicer place to spend a lunch break than at an urban orchard and community garden? Just opposite the London Fire Brigade on Union Street, SE1, you can wander round paths made of tyre chippings admiring plants, young trees, apple presses and jars and jars of seeds. You can play table tennis on a table made from a converted skip (unfortunately firmly occupied when I visited) and there's a poetry corner.


I know that not everyone's lucky enough to work on Union Street but there's so much free stuff on offer all over London, why not encourage your employees to take a lunch break and make the most of the local area? Evidence shows they'll have a more productive afternoon as a result...

Undercover Boss

I loved last night's episode of Undercover Boss featuring Kevan Collins, Chief Executive of Tower Hamlets council, as he worked alongside his employees incognito (as 'Colin') to find out how things really went down on the frontline.

I know the programme skipped over the £50 million cuts the council will be making over the coming months. I know that this type of reality TV is cleverly edited to present people and facts in a certain light and to generate an emotional response from viewers. And I know that the council's headquarters were awfully grand.

But I loved it when Cathy, the kindly meals-on-wheels lady, saw a suited and booted Kevan in his office and said "Ooh look at you Colin, don't you look lovely?"

I loved the way Kevan/Colin floundered when he tried to both deal calmly and professionally with a homeless person at the council's Homeless and Housing Advice Service whilst entering data into an overly complicated computer system.

And I loved the look on the street market officer's face when the person whom he now knew to be his boss asked him to join an expert planning group to use the 2012 Olympics to showcase Tower Hamlets to the world.

To me it demonstrated some of the messages we're promoting through the London Health Commission's Good Jobs campaign: take a back seat; share the big picture; and perhaps most importantly pause for applause.

I loved it.