Bulletin board

Count on some jobs

Coopers & Lybrand, the accountancy and management consultancy firm that is merging with rival Price Waterhouse, says it is looking to recruit 1,400 graduates a year in the UK alone in an attempt to keep pace with a growth rate that is expected to top 20 per cent a year. The firm has always maintained that the link-up with Price Waterhouse was largely motivated by an acute shortage of staff. Although it will be reckoned to be the world's 61st largest employer, with 135,000 partners and staff, when it comes into being in the summer, the combined firm says it will need to attract 1,000 people a week worldwide.

Don't worry, be happy

One in five managers say they have no motivational skills when it comes to keeping employees happy, according to a survey by financial recruitment specialists Robert Half International. Though the report found that "employee motivation and leadership" was rated by just over half of respondents as the most important role for the modern manager, only 12 per cent of managers felt they excelled in the area, while more than two-thirds admitted to having limited skills.

Forget-me-not

The flexible labour market is ensuring that companies are forfeiting their individual know-how faster than they can retain it, according to a book to be published shortly. Arnold Kransdorff, author of Corporate Amnesia, to be published by Butterworth-Heinemann in June, adds to the growing literature on "knowledge management", and claims "organisational memory" is an intellectual asset that is unique to every firm and is probably the most important constituent of any institution's durability.

Roger Trapp