A round-up of other stories in brief.

Women earn fifth less than male directors

Britain's top businesswomen were paid nearly a fifth less than their male counterparts this year, even though they worked longer hours, a survey by a leading business group showed yesterday.

The annual pay survey by the Institute of Directors showed the average salary of a female company director was £60,000 this year, some 19 per cent less than the £74,028 earned by male directors.

That compares with a 24 per cent gap last year.

But even so, female managing directors worked longer hours than their male counterparts: 51.25 hours per week for those employed by small and medium sized firms compared with 50 hours put in by men.

In larger companies, women directors worked an average 57 hours a week, while their male colleagues clocked up just 55, the survey of 1,000 firms showed.

The IoD's findings echoed official data last week that showed there was still a 12.6 per cent discrepancy between women's and men's pay in the year to April, although it was the smallest since records began nearly 40 years ago. - (Reuters)

Meetings waste time, say staff

Eight out of 10 employees say at least half of their corporate meetings are unproductive and waste valuable working hours.

A new international survey of 2,000 workers in 13 countries by Robert Walters, the recruitment group, questions why so many meetings are set up.

While meetings have an "essential" role in business, with executives typically attending two or three a day, Susan Major, the company's human resources recruitment director, agrees they are pointless if "nothing comes out" of them. Cultural differences also emerge in employee attitudes. South Africans led the list of workers who found meetings the least productive, with 83 per cent stating they did not achieve work goals. They were closely followed by the US, Hong Kong and Singapore. In Japan, where doing business often involves large meetings, 61 per cent of employees found at least half their meetings ineffective. Ireland and Luxembourg were closest to the Japanese view. - (Financial Times service)

Some left deflated by title inflation

Title inflation happens all the time. Yet even the executives with the fancy new titles don't think it gets more work from them or keeps them from jumping ship. Of 279 executives recently queried by recruitment company Korn Ferry International, more than four in 10 said they had noticed an increase in the use of fancy titles as a way to retain the brass. More than a third said they had been promoted in the past two years. - (Washington Post service)