Bolton-based insurance firm Keoghs has unveiled an exciting policy of investing in youth, and here chief executive Paul Smith is pictured (below) at lunch with his new senior management team, who were able to find time for a meeting in between double maths and PE.

If only.

Actually, Mr Smith was taking part in an interesting job-shadow experiment with the headmaster of Bury Church of England High School, which also saw the headmaster spend a day at Keoghs learning about how the firm deals with recruitment, communication, meetings, budget management and so on.

Mr Smith could have learned all sorts of potentially interesting things: giving detention to those who fail to maintain client care standards, for example, allowing staff to take their toys into work before the summer holidays, and bringing back the cane for solicitors who miss their billing targets, being three that immediately spring to mind.

All he would tell us, however, was that 'going to school gave me the opportunity to see things from a different perspective and think about some of our issues in a different way'.

(This article refers to images that appear in the printed edition, see [2004] Gazette, 5 February, 11)