I’m currently struggling through a nasty gastric flu bug, which meant yesterday I had time to lie in bed and watch the Six Nations Rugby Union Internationals on TV. And I realised a strange thing about modern rugby: it’s the only game I know where the referee spends the whole match telling the players how to play the game while play is in progress. In all other sports I can think of the players are assumed to know how to play the game and the referee penalises them when they transgress. In rugby the referee tells the players what to do then penalises them if they ignore him. Listening to the referee’s radio mic there is a continual chat of things like: “[ref waving arm] Offside line. Eight white your feet are behind it … [blast on whistle] … Penalty blue. Eight white, offside.” The forwards even have to be told every time how to scrummage: “Crouch … Touch … Hold … Engage”, or form a line-out: “Lads I want one metre between the lines. Three blue, that’s one meter not half a meter.”

Its a good thing rugby is a relatively slow and even-paced game of set-piece plays, little heaps of big men fighting for the ball, someone kicking the ball and occasionally a bit of open running. Can you imaging how interesting it would be for cricket umpires to run their game the same way as a rugby referee? Or the confusion that would ensue if the zebras tried telling American Football players how to play while play was in progress?

BBC News reports that according to a recent survey almost a half of UK senior bosses would like to sack 5% of their employees to improve competitiveness and efficiency. The report makes this sound like the old Roman Legion’s trick of decimation: eliminate one in ten to encourage the others. However 75% of bosses said they wouldn’t bring in such a policy because they are afraid of creating a “climate of fear”.

Well I hate to tell them something … there already is a climate of fear, because this is exactly what many employees think their employers do actually do.

Indeed I have heard HR people openly and seriously saying that they give managers an annual target of having 5-10% of employees in the lowest “unsatisfactory” level of annual appraisal. Such a rating leads to a programme of “corrective action” which if performance doesn’t improve results in dismissal. If these people are not replaced (which generally they aren’t: “they weren’t doing anything useful so we can live without them”) then this automatically raises the performance bar for everyone next year when the manager has to find another 5-10% of unsatisfactory employees.

Hands up all those who think their employer doesn’t do this? …

Yes, I thought so. Now, senior managers, why is morale amongst your staff so low?

From a trailer for BBC TV’s recent programme on climate change:

We are standing on the precipice of a runaway train.