ONE of the interesting themes of the last International Shipping Federation manning and training conference was the family approach to shipping.

A TIMELY accolade for hostage negotiator Sue Williams, who was named Personality of the Year by the Women's International Shipping & Trading Association…

JUST as a high salary is not always enough to keep someone in a job that makes them unhappy, so economic measurements alone don't tell the whole story about the success of a nation…

Normal people believe that if it ain't broke don't fix it…

WHILE arranging interviews recently for one individual who was particularly hard to pin down, we were reminded of a joke by the late great Tommy Cooper…

RECESSIONS have a funny way of teaching us a lot about business. At Spinnaker our thirteenth year in business has just come to a close so for us it is time to take stock. We look back on the last year, the last two years in fact, with a sense of some disbelief and not a small amount of relief…

ANOTHER humbling lesson for Spinnaker and for many other employers out there, thanks to the recession, has been learning to improve the recruitment process. When the focus is on costs and performance no-one wants to make a mistake. And when companies have seized the opportunity to “clear out the dead wood” having expanded perhaps a touch too rapidly, recruitment mistakes are fresh in their minds…

In the UK, the tax authorities are warning employers not to use their official CD Rom to run their payroll systems. They must get an updated disc. This follows hot on the heels of the admission that 1.4 million people have been charged the wrong amount of tax under the UK's pay as you earn system…

AS we know, times are tight as far as getting into universities is concerned and getting a first job after you graduate is no picnic. The Graduate Recruitment Bureau has asked graduates how they would select the best candidates from among a group of graduates…