What with the recession and all, the Institute of Directors have found themselves with a little extra time on their hands, so they’ve decided to have a chat with 1,000 business leaders.  My invitation must have been lost in the post.  This chat, probably over brandy and Hob Nobs by an open fire, revealed that over the last 6 months 80% of the directors either maintained or increased their organisations training budgets.  But as one hand gives and the other hand takes, as 47% declared that their training focused on short courses that directly addressed their businesses needs, rather than long term universal training.  I now have a flurry of stats, so prepare yourself: 76% believe training increases employee morale, 69% believe it enhances customer satisfaction, 62% think it aids staff retention, 21% believe training improves recruitment and 43% believe in the Easter Bunny.  For more training information check out these videos

If you work for Kellogg’s I’d guess that the last thing you’d want more of is Tony the Tiger, Snap, Crackle, Pop or the unimaginatively named Cocoa the Cocoa Pop Monkey, but apparently I’m wrong.  Kellogg’s have decided to reinvent their staff reward system, abandoning jargon and buzzwords and instead use their ‘popular’ mascots to make their staff reward statements easier to understand and beautiful.  Within the staff reward scheme is the company’s pension system, so if you managed to land yourself a job at Kellogg’s you to could open up a pension statement delivered by Tony the Tiger with Snap Crackle and Pop sat in the background.  There is a serious reason behind their choice (although it’s completely lost on me!), which my good friend David Lowe will attempt to explain: “Now, more than ever, we want our people to know they matter to us so we made a conscious decision to ‘sell’ our reward offering a lot more proactively than we have done in the past.  Our trademark characters are fun, and features such as our ‘Corn-flex’ section are backed up with a serious agenda. The statements are a new way of talking about reward for us - they do more than communicate the facts and figures relating to an employee’s pay and benefits; they embed our company culture, inspire employees and demonstrate we value them enough to put serious consideration into communicating their reward.”