Me again, two days in a row. Don’t think I’ve done that before. I’d say it was drawing towards the end of a busy week but for a lot of people here there’ll be a lot of extra hours being put in over the weekend as work continues on the VAT changes. It really is amazing how many different prices we actually charge for all the different services we offer and all the things that go with them.

Just take something like Home Phone, there’s four different account types on Plusnet alone and hundreds of different call charges depending on what type of call you are making, where you are calling and when. Then there’s the call features like caller display, new line installation fee, house move fees, regrade charges, call barring fees and so on and so on. The list is almost endless, but we’ve looked through them all. At least there’s 13 months before it changes again…

But enough of VAT, let’s start off the submissions with two End of Weeks and first our Community Moderators:

It’s been a interesting week in Team Moderator.

The lounge has been surprisingly empty, with a notable absence from Assos – which may explain why no threads have been locked or moved without any explanation this week.

However, the rest of the team has been quite busy moving lots of posts around, fixing broken forum permissions and learning how to win friends and influence people, or rather Chemical Brother has contracted thread locking twitch.

This phenomenom occurs occasionally, but generally when it is a full moon, or other such celestial event takes place.

Chilly has been in and out all week, generally leaving the door open letting all the cold air in.

Floating Head has been doing what he does best – floating and trying his hardest not to contract the thread locking twitch, and generally being a Geek. – Every team needs a geek!

Moderator elections will be drawing to a close on Monday, 1st December, at 5.09pm so we need your votes to help bring this to a good conclusion, remember to vote here to make it count.

Well that’s it from us for this week, it’s now back to you in Plusnet towers.

Chemical Brother

And with the second End of Week it’s Jen from our HR Team:

Well, it seems like the rest of the business has been all-systems-go with the VAT change this week. As for us in HR – well, we’ve been issuing a little discount of our own – in the form of a Lealta benefits card.

We’ve been trying to get role profiles for the whole business updated for sometime now and we’re still ploughing our way through them, while trying not to pester VAT-change-busy-people with it too much.

The next Management Development and Leadership module is happening next week, so we’ve been making sure we’re ready for that, too.

Facilitating Ask Anthony sessions for cross-sections of staff gave them a chance to see what our new CEO is all about.

Meanwhile, getting as many employees as we can protected from the ‘flu meant setting up our own little surgery for vaccines. (Well, a nurse did it, but we were on hand to ensure it all went as smoothly as possible.)

We’re starting to look at building a competencies framework of core skills across the business and with luck it will feature on People Place – a new section on Workplace, coming soon. Speaking of which, there’s been work on succession planning for departments going on, making sure our rising talent is getting opportunities where they arise. We’ve also finished our own 121s, making sure we’re progressing in the right direction as a team and as individuals.

And, even though the cold, dark nights are drawing in, and December is just 3 sleeps away, we’re also looking into a cycle to work scheme. It appears some of you quite fancy the idea of tackling Sheffield’s hills on your way to work and aren’t put off by cold, dark, wet, windy weather. (Ed: Stop trying to put me off Jen, it’s a great plan, just need to get some gloves that’s all…)

Anyways, I’ll stop rattling on now, and rattle off instead. (Not on my bike, I hasten to add).

Next up is Adam from our Retentions and Sales team:

Retentions and Sales have been having plenty of fun today, We have been running incentives all week with the big game being played today!

We ran a game called “Bobby The Bottle” Which consisted of a Wine bottle with a spoon in it, a smiley face drawn on the spoon and a ribbon tied around the top.

The idea was to pick up the bottle for every customer that decided to stay with us or for a signup over the phone. The incentive ran fom this morning up until 4pm this afternoon where the last person to retain or make a sale would have the bottle and win the prize (think pass the parcel without the black lace CD on repeat…Thank God!).

By the end of the day we had 2 agents on calls waiting to seal the deal and take the bottle to their desk. Heather Walter managed to offer the customer on the line an offer to stay with us and took the bottle while Laura Chadburn was still in the process of selling a customer broadband and Home Phone.

It came down to the wire but the signup never came to fruition and so Heather managed to steal the win and take home some lovely HMV vouchers!!

All in all its been a good day here on Retentions and Sales and we are looking forward to the start of a new incentive next week which will see us playing mine sweeper for prizes!

Last but one today is Jim from the Comms Team:

Today, we seem to have lost our “Parr”ity with Chris having been taken by the dreaded lurge.

Mand and me have been mainly working on the VAT changes. I’ve been training the CSC and Mand’s been preparing for some emails to be sent. Bob’s been working on ‘Port again!

I’m going to be rebellious tonight and not post a random link, just to irritate Chris, but I will leave you with an amusing excerpt from the b3ta newsletter:

If you are doing rather little at work but surf the Internet make sure you print off a page of
something resembling work every now and again.

Leave this on the printer so when a colleague
prints something they’ll see your stuff and ask
who’s it is and you can claim it and pretend
you were so busy you forgot to collect it.

[note to readers: we don't do this.]

And last today it’s Gavin from Marketing:

Here in Marketing…

Chris has been letting Madasafish customers know about the benefit of the referrals scheme, Amy has been busy doing…affiliate stuff I think, and Spencer and I have been looking at the Plus.net order journey (planning an overhaul).

Have a good weekend all.

And that’s it for another week. I said earlier I would leave on time today and guess what, I haven’t. But won’t be too late fortunately. Have a great weekend everyone. Could be a bumper shopping weekend online with the last monthly payday before Christmas. And it’s a big game as Everton travel to James’s team Spurs on Sunday. Whatever you do, have fun. We’ll be back on Monday and opening the first door on our advent calendar (Products get the best freebies)…

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This entry was posted by Dave Tomlinson on Friday, November 28th, 2008 at 6:17 pm and is tagged with and is posted in the category EOD. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.