To strike or not to strike, that is the question.

Is it ever ok to strike? To be honest I'm not sure about it, but it seems like these days individuals are doing it willy nilly, tube drivers all the time, fire fighters, BA cabin crew and now these airport workers.

The UK, like any other democracy has a long history of trade union's standing up for the common working man, demanding better pay,  conditions and trying to make work fairer for all. A proposed BAA strike that has thankfully been resolved threatened to hamper Britain's main airports. Workers in one of the worlds busiest airport (London Heathrow) and many others in the UK were facing the possibility of wild cat strikes which may have forced them to close and face possible losses of millions of pounds.

This to me was extremely ridiculous, they rejected their 1% pay increase and wanted more, in the time where we are in the wake of a vast global recession, where thousands have people have got pay freezes and millions more have been tossed onto the 'dole' heap? You must be having a laugh, however, the workers had themselves in a very unique position, due to the freak of the ash cloud earlier on in the year and the subsequent mass loss of money for airports, the airport simply could not risk any more potential losses of money.

 Now everyone's happy, the BAA workers now have 2% pay deal and the airports are kept open. Obviously the talks paid off. Its all right for some who have the luxury of even considering strike action, I am sure there are plenty of nursing staff that would love a pay increase too...

B:Has any one seen Dave? G: Yeah he's sick, bedbound even. B: thats funny, ive just seen him at the post office

Have you ever taken an extra sneaky half an hour at lunch, pulled a few sickies to have a slob day, accidentally borrowed a pen and forgot to give it back or written down your hours wrong on a time sheet? Do you think ah,  everyone does it, Jane was late all last week and no one said any thing, or the boss has been getting on my nerves all week, so i'm going to pull a sickie even though he's short staffed.

The "scientific" term for this is counter productive workplace behaviour, in other words doing bad stuff which doesn't help the organisation. This includes: thieving, taking unauthorised absences; extending you half an hour lunch to 2 hours for a shopping spree; and being just a meany that doesn't contribute to any thing. Figures from  1985 show that apparently 50 hours per employee per year are lost to unauthorised extensions of break, 50 hours! Apparently also $50 million is lost to businesses who thieve, so next time you steal that pen or take a sneaky extra 20 minutes at lunch, think twice about it, the next thing you know you could be out of a job.

How to reduce career barriers

What stops you from changing jobs or applying and getting that promotion? Is it the abusive, irritating boss who won't take you seriously? The skills that you don't think you have,  the fear of rejection or the fear of potential perceived discrimination? These are what career counsellors call career barriers and originally they were used to try to explain barriers to women's career progression. Now  research around barriers has centred around barriers to ethnic minority career progression mainly in America.

So what should you do if  you feel that you are stuck in a dead end job? Here are some quick tips to smash those career barriers, in order to reach your goals.

• Write a plan of your career goals and what you want to achieve in immediately, in the next 2 and 5 years. Visualising this and putting it some where you will see it, will help make the goals more real and increase your chances of actually making things happen. 
• Find a career role model/ a mentor,  someone who has succeeded in the area that you want to go into. If you can find someone who you think can and will help you,  approach them. Literally go to networking events, google organisations or people, find people on Facebook or Linkedin.  That's what I did and it  does work, you will find someone who takes you under their wing. What is hard is keeping in touch with your mentor and not expecting them to hand you a job on a plate. 
• To increase the confidence in your ability to succeed, take part in as much work as possible, for free,  put your self forward for additional projects, ask for a secondment at work,  voice your opinions and get your views heard. Make sure people know who you are in your organisation or the organisation that you want to get into and work hard and eventually people will accommodate you. The bottom line is, when people know you can make them money, they will pretty much tolerate most things. 

• Network, Network, Network, this I know sounds a bit vague, but believe me it works. Have you heard of the saying, "its not what you know, its who you know."- its true, nepotism is rife in every industry especially ones like law, consulting and media. Have you ever wondered how some wierdos get their jobs when they have poor qualifications, no social skills and no job knowledge- networking is how. There are many professional networks who run dinners, marketing and recruitment events,  in specific industries. Find out, google them, you never know who you might meet and believe me CEOs and MDs do go to these events so they are worth a try.

 So I hope this has given you an insight as to how to over come career barriers, and remember to stay positive. I just realised I sound like rev run or something.

This is such an inconvenience!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/aug/05/naomi-campbell-liberia

Ok, I can't help this so I have to talk about Naomi Campbell and her ridiculous show at the Charles Taylor war crimes trail at the Hague. I was handed some DIRTY looking stones, and I didn't know where Liberia was till I spoke to him? I struggle to believe this is true and she is actually this stupid. Just because she is a model it doesn't mean she has to live up to the stereotype, what happened to being all right looking and not being a bit thick? Come on love, do yourself a favour and sort yourself out. There  I said it!

A portfolio career?

Whether we like it or not, a career, a job, or just a way to make money is what most of us will have to do for a large proportion of our lives. There have been lots of theories and ideas which try and explain why and how people chose their chosen career paths.  So what is a portfolio career? I'm just going to find out...


So the main idea of portfolio working is that people tend to concentrate on a range of different working arrangements that are termed: wage work, fee work, homework, gift work  and study work (Mallon 1998).  Basically, due to an increase of temporary workers and less traditional formal careers some people think that there has been more emphasis on the self employed, and those who charge for services and outputs. 


What does this actually mean? It means that you can chose to carve out a living which is entirely of your own making, you can consult on your expert area, such as design or I.T. whilst charging by the hour, you can work for free for charities at the same time also. You are in effect in charge of your own career, not tied down to any one organisation or any one profession and not bound by any career hierarchies. Therefore you can  go in do your stuff and leave in a few weeks, months or years. You can be a plumber,  a hairdresser and an IT professional if you so wish. 


Now let me put in a disclaimer, this kind of career is NOT for everyone, if the thought of not knowing where you are going to work tomorrow, fills you with dread and you have a set career such as a doctor or a nurse, this may not be for you. However, if you want to be savvy in the post recession world, a portfolio career offers many interesting benefits, such as: being your own boss, concentrating on you skills, increasing your networks and giving you variety in life. However, you need to be careful in how you do this and not just jump into the deep end expecting other people to just understand. If you think this is really the career path for you, make sure you plan  and have many contingencies, friends, money to fall back on and a vision!

Occupational psychology and other stories...

Right, after being successfully annoyed after any one asks me what I do, I have decided to set up this blog to try and explain my chosen profession, talk in a hopefully humorous way about by career escapades, and interesting things that I come across in every day life. I have worked everywhere, from retail to a gym, to a council to a student union, to hotels, I've practically worked in every industry for free and for money. 

Occupational Psychology, is what I like to call, glorified HR, and includes many of the things that HR functions in organisations  have.  For example: selection and assessment, producing selling and administering psychometric tests for selection purposes; career counselling, advising organisations on training and organisational change, and advising people on reducing stress in the work place. The occupational psychologists role is to help people in the work place to become more productive and happier. Lets face it, we all have to work and  people are spending more and more time in the work place every day so we might as well make sure people have a good time there.