There’s not a cloud in the sky, it’s scorching outside, you can see the sunlight streaming through the windows, hear the birds in the sky. What a waste to be sitting in a sweat box of an office when you could be lying with your feet in the grass soaking up the sun? Corona in one hand, good read in the other.

A survey by Peninsula Law consultancy firm recently found that 80% of businesses reported staff “pulling” a sickie over the period of nice weather. Out of the 7000 staff surveyed 7 out of 10 were tempted to pull a sickie and 8 out of 10 felt that there was nothing wrong with taking an unwarranted sick day.

As tempertaures in the capital reached 28 degrees, this week, the city boar a striking resemblance to Madrid or Rome - lots of alfresco lunching and scooters buzzing about, you would be forgiven for thinking that while no one was looking London had upped sticks and moved slap bang in the middle of the med!

With the usual soggy british summer having disappeared for the time being those who do decide to pull a sickie, could almost be forgiven…that’s only almost, mind.

I just wish I’d done it first!

Workers accused of theft or damage may soon find themselves on a black list that’s accessible by all potential employers according to a recent BBC article. The National Staff Dismissal Register (NSDR), will allow disgruntled ex-employers to post references online, will go ahead at the end of this month.

The article describes the national register as a development of the Criminal Records Bureau which was set up to provide stringent background checks on those working with society’s most vulnerable, like teachers, careworkers and social workers. Although personal details are deleted after 5 years the attempted theft of property, forgery of documents, money laundering and damaging company property will all get you on to the list.

It’s a tricky business providing a reference for an ex-employee who, simply, wasn’t up to the job. Many companies resort to the old staple of just providing the basics - the start/end dates and just state that they fulfilled their obligations, or in the worst case they provide no reference at all. Never before have records been available in such an open access format and with well established companies like Selfridges, Mothercare and Reed Management registering, there is an obvious demand for a collective database of some sort.

According to Hannah Reed of the Trade Union Congress (TUC),

the register could lead to a candidate not being given a job by an employer who holds nothing more than a personal grudge.

On the other hand who’s to say that a company would want to advertise the fact that they’d been the victim of theft or embezzelment at the hands of their unprofessional, (or even criminal) staff? Surely that’s potentially more damaging to a corporate image than anything an employee could actually do?

In such a setup where ex-employees can be blacklisted even before an official crime, in the legal sense, has taken place, the logical conclusion is that it’s solely the police who should have access to this information. We do live in a time when innocent people become blacklisted, every day, by credit companies for the wrong reasons

From an employers point of view, while they will want to know whether a new recruit has done anything underhand in their previous job, there’s a old fashioned way of finding out, by picking up the phone and calling their old boss to find out. Surely the refusal of a reference is enough to substantiate any sneaking suspisions without resorting to such a public airing of dirty laundry.

Tell me if this sounds familar….it’s just your run of the mill Tuesday evening. You go out for dinner with the best of intentions. Before you know it, that one glass of wine you promised yourself turns into two, two turns into three and then like magic it’s three in the morning and you’re knocking back the shots all over town like you don’t have to be awake in four hours time. 

According to a recent BBC article one in three people struggle to concentrate, make mistakes and have to go home early from work because they’ve over indulged the night before. The survey, carried out by Norwich Union, states that forty-one percent of people in media and the creative industries said they’d been to work still drunk from the night before.

In an unpredictable industry like media, where entertaining and smooshing clients is, often, part of the job the line between unwinding after hours and drinking at an unhealthy level can get clouded. Perhaps blame can be portioned to the drinking culture we have here, and the temptations on offer in the big cities or even the high number of people under 30 in these industries who are still, relatively, free of responsibility. Maybe that’s why the figures appear so startling.

Although there is something karmically rewarding about swapping a pain crushing headache for an all-out night assault on one’s liver. If the prospect of a raging headache and a day of the simplist of tasks becoming all but impossible then, frankly, better you than me. I could, however, recommend you a nice glass of red.

It’s not just Sir Alan Sugar, or ‘The Shug’ as we like to call him, who uses, arguable over-uses, this catch phrase. There’s unfortunate and not-so unfortunate employees up and down the country who face a career change with these immortal words.

Fortunately, the Internet provides a way for these newly-made job seekers to share their tales of woe. So, if you’re having a bad day at work, or you’re a boss whose team is giving you gip, check out Simply Fired, which gives readers a chance to rate the best firing stories submitted. There’s also the simpler, stream of fired bloggage at firedworkers.com.

It’s not all bad news though, sometimes getting fired can be just the push that’s needed to get a career started.

Got a funny story about getting the sack? Dropped a right clanger that saw you move to your next role? Leave a comment below and let us know your experiences. Feel free to be anonymous.

Far be it from us to encourage bad behaviour at work. Stop reading this now and get back to work…or maybe search Chinwag Jobs for something new and exciting?!

Update: From @mattalder (via Twitter) - not updated for ages but along the same lines www.iworkwithfools.com

Chinwag can be a tricky beast to define at the best of times. Having grown up from an email-based community, the company is evolving alongside and with the help of the community.

In February, I was invited to speak at Enhance Media’s annual conference, The Year Ahead in Online Recruitment looking at the lessons learnt, and still being learnt, from building Chinwag Jobs. As our team begun to think about transforming a basic email list into an all-singing, all-dancing jobs website, we aimed to keep the community at the heart of the development.

As always, these presentations fly by in the blink of an eye. Fortunately, the lovely Louise Triance from UK Recruiter managed to grab some notes, which she’s posted up her blog. If you want a bit of insight into the background to Chinwag Jobs and how we try and keep the community at the heart of our development, have a read.

Comments, as always, are welcome, as are suggestions for any of Chinwag’s activities: Chinwag Jobs, Chinwag.com and Chinwag Live.

The April showers seem to be echoing the current turbulance on the financial front, but is the general economic doom and gloom starting to effect the digital market place?

Digital Pulse  is a new feature from Chinwag that’s designed to provide a monthly confidence index for the digital industry. April’s Digital Pulse is now live and it will be very interesting to see if the current climate is having an impact on the confidence index for this month. The survey only takes a few minutes to fill out and we will donate 25p to charity for each survey completed so it really is worth a look.

The index for March’s Digital Pulse is on it’s way, so please watch this space!

Chinwag is going on a road trip. Next Tuesday (15th April), we will have our bags packed, (complete with a selection of crisp based snacks and various mixtapes) and will be piling into a van to drive up to Manchester for Chinwag Live: User Centered Advertising - Chinwag’s first event in Manchester!

As online content diversifies, new forms of advertising are emerging to keep in step with this ever changing landscape. The first Manchester event for Chinwag in association with Manchester Digital; Chinwag Live: User Centred Advertising asks if these technical innovations are enough in themselves to warrant the attention of ever more savvy consumers?

 The evening kicks off at CUBE, 113-115 Portland Street, Manchester at 6:30pm sharp so please get there about 5:30pm to get settled and grab yourselves a drink. With a diverse range of speakers, great venue, drinks and snacks and informal netwroking after the event - User Centered Advertising promises to be a cracking event. For more details please check out the website, tickets are on sale now and we look forward to seeing you there!

By Harry Fowler - Group Digital Recruiter for AMV Group

I think we can all agree that the finance markets around the world are not exactly stable at the moment and whatever happens in those markets will have an effect on the digital, advertising and communications sectors.

So with that in mind, where does this leave the digital market and more importantly where does this leave recruitment as we move forward?

I’m not wanting to talk us into a recession - but I remember the gaping holes that were left in the industry from the previous meltdown - very few people being hired, everyone struggling to keep their heads above water and PM’s working for £30k or less in some instances just to pay the mortgage! (I know, £30k for a PM - and a bloody good one at that!)

Now the knock on affect from that was felt sometime later when trying to find candidates with 1-2, 1-3 years experience. They were few and very far between and of course supply and demand drives the price.

So are we strong enough to ride out the storm? Yes, I believe we are - but be very wary.  If the market does take a wobble please don’t resort to the traditional tactics of cutting back on the service levels to your clients, getting rid of juniors and cutting out graduate hire. The industry continually needs new blood.

Keep feeding it please.

Digital Pulse is a new feature from Chinwag that’s designed to provide a monthly confidence index for the digital industry. Each month the results will be analysed to give us an up to date insight into the digital market - to check the pulse of it, if you will We will be able to gauge the ebb and flow of  career satisfaction and opportunities, salary views, and more, all based on your input.

It only takes a couple of minutes to fill in (honest!) and we’ll donate 25p to charity for each survey completed. Plus, we’ll send you the results and invites for further editions.

A recent piece of research by Bristol based Recruitment Consultancy Just Adlib has probed into our happiness levels at work with illuminating results. An interesting read, the research was conducted by people living in the west of England and working in the Digital, Marketing, Advertising and Creative Industries.

Just Adlib found that, 37% of participants said job satsifaction was the most important factor to ensure their happiness at work, closely followed by the people they worked with (17%) and a nice environment to work in (12%). Surprisingly being well paid only accounted for 5% of the responses and additional benefits only 1%.

I can’t help but wonder if the results would differ if respondants were asked the same thing in London or Manchester? I suppose there’s one way to find that out!