All Blog Posts Tagged 'office' (28)

Have you ever been struck by Cupid's arrow at work?

If so, a bit of common sense, good manners and politeness will go a long way towards keeping you out of big…

Do you ever feel like your workplace is being sabotaged? Well, it just might if any of your colleagues are adhering to a formerly classified Office of Strategic Services document, the “Simple Sabotage Field Manual.” 



America’s enemies will always innovate and the intelligence apparatus has always sought…

Ok, I admit it, I bought an iPad.

It's a third generation, or "new iPad", as Apple insist on referring to…

Before you think this article is one you perhaps shouldn’t be reading as a government professional, let me define office mushrooms for you. I’m not talking about the fungus, but rather the saying about how some companies treat their employees – keeping them in the dark and feeding them garbage.



It’s a good way to grow mushrooms both in and out of the office and it…

It’s that magical time of year, when lights are strewn, carols sang and way too many sugary treats are eaten. For most offices, it also means that some kind holiday party will be held. With cash short on hand in most government offices today, that means even more parties will be taking place right there in the office – many of them during the normal work day. And while skipping out on doing work for a few hours might seem like fun and games, mixing fun with the office setting can present its…

Even when the inevitable stares us in the face, our natural inclination is to want things to stay the same. It is safe. We understand the rules and in the routine we find security. Nothing conjures up a sense of stability, reliability, and community more than the US Postal Service.

And nothing is more in need of change than our mail delivery system.

For generations, we have forged part of our national identity around the idea that our country built and…

The following is the original version of a shorter post originally published on GPO's Government BookTalk blog on October 11, 2011.

On October 5, 2011, we lost one of America’s great geniuses of innovation, Apple’s founder and CEO, Steve Jobs.

From the beginning, Steve Jobs seemed to “Think Different” than everyone…

Office space isn't what it used to be - many offices and most government agencies are tearing down the walls - literally - and placing workers in increasingly small, and less private, cube space. Is this the trend in your office? Do smaller offices make it easier to collaborate, or just make you more annoyed with your coworkers?

Occasionally, I’m asked to do presentations and discuss what the Foreign Office does, digitally speaking. The fact I never get asked twice by the same people is something I prefer to gloss over. 

What I try and get across in these explanations of strategy is that if we’re trying to communicate, we have to take the message to market, not…

The Foreign Officehas been around for a long time, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. Organisations that have survived for over 200 years (and there aren’t many of them) tend to create their own culture and language. In our case, those linguistic habits seem, to me at any rate, to be mostly initials and acronyms. I’ve had to stop conversations and refer back to a colleague’s statement seemingly made wholly out of letters, not…

The Federal Times posted an article online yesterday about the emerging trend of 'tightsizing' in the federal government.  Agencies are looking to reduce the office space of employees to accommodate more feds. The idea is that by fitting more workers into an already existing work space it prevents an agency form leasing additional real estate to accommodate it's growing staff.  The article also mentions other ideas in optimizing office space while staying on budget.  Read over the article…

Talk of government departments as ‘brands’ makes many civil servants uneasy. If they wanted that sort of talk, they’d go to Hoxton, not Whitehall. Yet when the concept of, for example, the FCO as a brand comes under some threat, then there’s a different kind of uneasiness.

That uneasiness includes me – earlier this week, I was in an email discussion with some people in touch about using our travel advice in a…

The regular reader of these chunterings will have noticed a pattern. How you decipher that pattern is up to you. Where I see the ‘dissemination of relevant content through all available channels to established audiences across the digital sphere’, you might see ‘obsessive bandwagon jumping, ticking off social media trying to look trendy’. Either way, you won’t be surprised to see the…

I wrote about some of my favorite around the office acronyms for ClearanceJobs.com - but I figure the folks in this community could probably teach me a few new ones! I'd love to hear your favorite around-the-office acronyms. Funny anecdotes also appreciated!

Military acronyms – love ‘em or hate ‘em if you work in defense or homeland security, you’re probably pretty familiar with them. Whether you’re in the active duty service or not, military acronyms are a hard…

One of the joys of sudden web trends is the speed at which the too-cool-for-school types start to affect disdain and boredom for something that’s been popular for all of a week or so.



Take …

Quite possibly, if left unchecked this may become the focal point of workplace complaints, grievances and charges! I’m talking about Bedbugs. Employers and their HR teams now have to worry about their responsibilities to maintain a bedbug-free workplace.…