CAREER CLINIC

The workplace is often full of office politics. Many of us at some point in our careers have been personally affected by a colleague or manager's hidden agenda. Do you feel stressed and frustrated but you can't bring yourself to confide in anyone else at work or just looking for general guidance?

Personnel Today's Work Clinic blog allows you to gather advice to help you progress in your career or raise hidden workplace issues which are not openly talked about in the office. Share your knowledge, bounce off ideas and even exchange best practice tips by posting your own comments. Treat it as your comfort zone. It's your workplace counsel.

If you have a specific workplace dilemma that you want addressed in confidence by our resident panel of top experts, send an e-mail to Tara Craig.

Meet the Work Clinic's resident experts below:

 Steve Miller

Steve Miller is one of the UK's top management, business, and personal development trainers. Starting out in holiday entertainment he later moved into sales where he eventually landed his dream job as a sales and customer service director. He then went on to head the training and development function at Trader Media Group. He set up Steve Miller Training in 2002.

His unique style is closely followed by the media and he has been featured by BBC television and radio, GMTV, GQ magazine, Personnel Today, and Director to name a few. He is also an author and columnist for award-winning magazine Start Your Business. He has most recently been signed up by one of the UK's top TV production companies and will release his next book in early 2008.

A working-class council-house kid, Steve has a passion for business and is described as straight talking, inspirational, and practical. He makes no apologies for putting the needs of the business first and claims the most essential competence required by the human resources profession is commercial awareness.

Asking him about the work clinic he explains “some of my comments may be seen as a bit direct but I make no apology for that. It’s about time business got a fair hearing and I am going to be doing just that”.

 Ros Taylor 

Ros is a leading UK psychologist, successful businesswoman, an accomplished author and a TV and radio presenter.

She travels the world developing the potential of employees through Transform! which she formulated. A creative academic, Ros is also a top coach, trainer and regular speaker on the conference circuit.

Ros broadcasts regularly on radio and was a presenter for five years on a nightly television news programme. She was one of the three key presenters in Confidence Lab for BBC2, a six-part documentary broadcast in January 2001. Her Transform programme provided the basis for Confidence Lab and her book Transform Yourself! (Kogan Page 2000) outlines these principles. The book of the programme is called Confidence in Just Seven Days, (Vermillion 2001) and topped Amazon's best seller list.

She recently filmed a new series for the BBC called Confidence Zone which was televised in December. She also featured on BBC1’s Scambusters series televised earlier this year.

Other TV and radio work include the BBC, BBC Scotland, BBC Radio 5, BBC Radio Scotland, Scottish Television, GMTV, LWT, ITN News, Sky News, Channel 4 and E4.

 Jo Causon

Jo brings her knowledge of strategic marketing and business principles to the Chartered Management Institute with over 15 years experience in both the commercial and not for profit arenas, as well as her experience in managing and co-ordinating complex change management projects.

In her role as director of business strategy at Brandsmiths (a strategic brand and business consultancy), Jo helped client partners focus on the key strengths of their business and brand to enable them to deliver superior performance.

Prior to this, Jo was head of group marketing at City & Guilds where she managed a team who were responsible for marketing intelligence, environmental scanning and research, marketing consultancy, communications both internal and external and corporate planning. Jo developed the five-year corporate plan for the City & Guilds Group. She delivered a strategy to reposition the corporate brand and their diverse portfolio of products and services.

Before her three years at City & Guilds, Jo was head of brand at Norwich Union where she was responsible for developing both the corporate brand and supporting sub brands. Jo was also head of marketing consultancy where she managed a diverse number of strategic marketing projects.

  Illustrations by Katie Mac 

Katie Mac is an established UK-based freelance illustrator producing contemporary illustrations for a wide range of national and international clients in advertising, publishing, web media and business and has also created her own range of designs for posters, stationary, T-shirts and CD sleeves. Clients include Nat West Bank, Hodder Headline Publishing, MacMillan Publishers, Toshiba, Sunday Times, BBC Good Food, Woman’s Health Magazine, Health & Fitness, Zest and Sugar.

To connect with other members of the HR community in relation to your workplace issues, visit the following networking streams:

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