4.26 Bulletin Board

• 1) Have you ever sent a message to a bulletin board? What kind of message was it? Do you read messages left by other people? Is it of any use to you or only a waste of time?

• 2) Look at the heading and the subheadings in the text and say what questions they are devoted to.

Information for Bulletin Board should be sent to Diane Summers, Management Page Editor, FT, Number One Southwark Bridge, London SE1 9HL,

Chief executives join club class

It’s lonely at the top but chief executives can now meet each other and continue their professional development at a lab specially designed for their needs.

The club, in London, is a British offshoot of the Association for Progress in Management, an organization which has ISO clubs around Prance. The London Club, which opened in 1995 and has 15 members, is chaired by James Watson, who until recently chaired the Institute of Management.

There are plans to set up similar clubs in the North-West, the Midlands, East Anglia and Bath/Bristol. A second club may be established in London, plus one for French ex-pats.

Members (no two are in competing businesses) pay £2,500 a year for 10 half-day meetings, each of which is led by an expert and examines a topic in depth.

Recent meetings have examined media power and ways to assess the board’s non-financial competence. In October members will look at company loyalty.

Plenty of pay without perks

Only 40 per cent of UK companies recognize the term “flexible benefits”, while just 12 per cent have either implemented or are intending to implement a flexible benefits scheme, according to KPMG, the consultants.

A total of 252 telephone interviews were carried out with financial/managing directors of companies with a minimum turnover of film.

Pensions, private medical insurance, professional education and training, company car, additional holiday and life insurance were the most common elements of existing programs. The most common reason given for rejecting flexible benefits was “our pay schemes are sufficient.”

Sarah Kling, tax partner, human resource solutions group, says companies “can no longer afford to compete for high-calibre staff on the basis of salary alone - the whole remuneration package is becoming increasingly vital.”

Boardroom briefings

The Institute of Management, in conjunction with local Training and Enterprise Councils and Business Links, is launching a series of autumn seminars on best management practice. Subjects to be covered include developing creativity, gaining competitive advantage, and dealing with stress in the workplace.

The “boardroom briefings” will be held in London, Cambridge, Leicester and Dudley, among other venues, from late September until December.

Glitches that swallow up time

Three weeks of working time can be lost by every employee who uses a personal computer each year as a result of problems with the technology on their desks, according to a survey published by SCO, the software company, and Harris Research.

The survey was carried out among 400 users of personal computers in medium and large companies in Europe. The lost time included problems in implementing new systems and PC or network malfunction. According to European Communication Survey European countries are falling behind the rest of the world in the process of adaptation to computer and communications technology. As for Ireland more detailed figures were obtained from Forfas.