Friday 29th May

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Greetings readers!  It looks like the summer is finally here (again) as it's been beaming it down almost all day, with a lovely breeze and temperatures into the low 20's!  Fortunately, we still have the air conditioning units of doom to keep us cool in the office. We can always rely on Jennifer from HR for their weekly update: It's been a busy ol' week in HR. No change there then. But we've felt it a bit this week with Barbs trotting off to the south of France...lucky her! Monday was a particularly good day for us....we all had a lovely day due to the BH!! On Tuesday Amanda was offsite at the Leadership team meeting. While she was off Gem and I had a meeting with a healthcare provider to discuss options. In terms of starters and leavers, we've been reviewing the new application form and Gem and I have both been working through recruitment for a number of roles. Also, Amanda and I had a working session on exit interviews and Gemma finalised the turnover tracker for this year. We've been reviewing our priorities for the next 3 months and I've popped these into a spreadsheet. I've continued to monitor the input of performance reviews to get the remaining few mopped up with help from Laura. Amanda's been looking at developing a job families for Plusnet and looking at a number of resourcing and reward strategies. Gem's been supporting managers with employee relations matters and I've assisted on the admin side. I could go on...in fact, I already have. Thank goodness it's the weekend AND the sun is shining. Bring it on... Thanks Jen.  It is rather lovely isn't it?  Here's Mandy from Comms: It's Friday. W00t and yay and stuff. Today we've been CParr-less as he's enjoying a rather lengthy weekend, which is nice. Matt went home at 3'o'clock to see if the BT man could fix stuff for him, but prior to that he was working on, erm, I'm not sure. If he'd done a Start of Day I might've had a clue. Tut at you Matt, tut at you. James has been in the forums as usual, along with some internal reporting stuff, supporting our CSC colleagues and editing this very EOD (though technically he hasn't done that yet).  (Ed. I have now!) Bob has been, well, surprisingly cheery given that usually he hates everything, and has stopped smoking this week. I'd blame it on the sun but we all know he hates sun, don't we? On a more work-related note, he supplied this list when I asked him what he'd been upto: - Thomson Firmware stuff - Usenet post-consolidation - Service Status/Problems updates - Networks CC approval - Twitter/Usenet support - POMS work/Email backlog I have been writing training for our colleagues in SA, along with continuing to work on the sekrit projekt. I also got down to single figures on my task list, which is always an achievement. As usual we have a commic for you: On that note, I'm off to enjoy a nice sunny weekend hopefully. See ya next week. Luckily Mand's gone home now.  Otherwise I may have been killed.  So we'll leave my pending death until Monday. Next up, we have James from Business Support: Well its going to be a scorcher this weekend and to celebrate that instead of an end of day, this is our start of wekeend posting. I fully intend on making the most of it. tomorrow is all about working on my golf swing then hopefully watching Everton beat Chelsea (as a Wednesday supporter I dream of Cup Finals) then helping celebrate my Grandmas birthday on Sunday, 85 years young. Happy Birthday Grandma!! Adam W is going to be mainly helping his girlfriend with her college work, although I suspect he will have a bit of guitar play in that too. Ian is doing nothing exciting. wow what a life. Joe is going into the country, might even catch a train to go somewhere random. Hope he makes it back for Monday. Martin is one of the unlucky ones working, so if you do call him offer him an ice-cream. John is off to Manchester and I think I should leave it at that. Dan is going to be spending his money at the shops, you can tell its payday Chris C has some liquid plans. Mick is going to try and tickle a trout or something along those lines. Chris D is also going to be stuck in the office tomorrow, but hes dreaming of a bike ride. Adam W is another office honnit this weekend. Phil is busy on a call so I have no idea about him but hes probably going to be largin' it somewhere knowing him and our faults manager Kelly has let me know she has having her hair coloured - so we wait for the disaster (ouch - shes just punched me!) So whatever your upto have a great one, and pray for the scorcher we are hoping for. Which seems like a perfect way to wrap things up.  Wherever you may be, have a lovely weekend basking in the sun. James