HOW much do you like your job? More than the idea of winning the lottery and retiring to live with George Clooney in a villa on Lake Como? Me neither, though it is apparently true for some. One person in five questioned for a Coventry University study said that work was an exciting part of their lives – meaning, of course, that most of us spend most of our days at least a little bit bored.

If you want to get better at what you do, try wearing compression socks and exceedingly tight undergarments. While body-hugging Lycra might not be the usual corporate costume, it’s the latest trick for athletes wanting to improve performance, reports BusinessWeek (March 24). The claim is that the high-pres-sure kit helps to reduce fatigue; if this is true, such outfits could revolutionise board meetings as well as long-dis-tance cycling races.

A slightly more traditional way of improving performance comes in the form of a checklist, says Fast Company (March). Methodically ticking off tasks may sound like a dull way to get the job done, but it can make a huge difference to the bottom line. When hospitals in Michigan gave doctors checklists to follow when inserting intravenous lines – nothing fancy, simply basic instructions such as: 1. Wash hands, 2. Use antiseptic on patients’ skin – they saved $175 million (£86 million) and about 1,500 lives in 18 months.

Taking efficiency one step farther are the organisations that are doing their best to remove human workers totally. Supermarkets, hotels, air-lines and sushi restaurants are among those cutting out the middleman by getting people to check out their own shopping, check in their own bags and order their own fish straight from the kitchen, Time (March 24) reports.

How to get a new job

In the words of a once-popular reggae song: You can get it if you really want it, so step up to the challenge

Related Internet Links

• Snakes & Ladders

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But it’s not just customer service workers who have to look to their CVs in these economically shaky days. CareerJournal.com lists financial services, real estate and the car industry as places where employees should be readying themselves to jump ship.

In China, however, the arrival of the year of the rat has already meant that several employers have been deserted by staff. The Economist (March 15) reports that more than 10 per cent of factory workers in Guangdong province didn’t return to work after the new year holiday. Some dream it, but these people did it.

WHAT ELSE HAPPENED

Need a holiday from the office grind but feel too guilty to fly somewhere and can’t face a weekend in Skegness? Assuage your guilt by building a village well in a Third World country. There are 800 organisations in the UK to help people to volunteer, says Management Today (March). But “voluntourism” is nothing new. Working holidays have existed since the 1700s, when families from London would work the hopfields in Kent.

There’s no point having a laptop if you don’t whip it out at every opportunity to pay bills and update your Facebook status. Just watch it though, says BusinessWeek (March 24). Public wi-fi networks aren’t very secure. Don’t link to any old network you find, it advises. Look for networks with protected access and use websites with secure connections.

Perhaps you would have kept up French at school if you thought it could get you a job as a video games tester. Euro London Appointments, a recruitment company, has undertaken a project with a school to make a list of professions other than teaching and translating open to linguists. Pop-band tour organisers and private-jet sales executives also make it.

A slow, complex website will not only annoy your customers, it might also cost you a packet. According to analysts at NetCallidus, an internet marketing company, Google is thinking of increasing its advertising prices for websites that take forever to load.

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