Dear HR managers and business owners,

Summertime, and the living is easy. Or so goes the Gershwin tune. In the workplace, summer often takes on a very different, accelerated tempo: think "Flight of the Bumblebee" or the theme from Mission: Impossible. For many of us, this is the time of year when we have to cram a month's work into two weeks, if we don't want to spend our vacations worrying about what will be waiting for us when we get back behind the desk. And some of us have to do this while providing or coordinating coverage for staff who are already on vacation!

So, for those of you without time to spare for Bill Clinton's memoirs, some practical summer reading. In this installment of People Pulse, we have articles on how to deal with job candidates looking for more than you want to offer them, and on how to approach that most sensitive of workplace issues, office romance.

You'll also find the results to our last People Poll on computer viruses, and this month's question about improving communication between staff.

Cheers,

Bob Murray
Partner, People First Solutions