As workplace psychological exams, role-playing exercises and drug tests become increasingly popular, Marius Benson argues that it's time to draw the line.

A few years ago a consultant was flown to South Africa to lead the staff of a western world embassy in a "team-building" exercise.

The consultant had been hired at vast expense to carry out this operation in South Africa and elsewhere.

His programme involved dividing the embassy members into "teams" and giving them tasks.

They were required variously to paint their faces and to go to the local park to count the number of garbage bins.

Another task was to sit with another staff member and stare into each other's eyes for several minutes without looking away.

Now it is my experience that people in the work place, from time to time, develop a taste for staring into the eyes of another, favoured staff member.

Some staff members even go as far as staring into each other's underwear.

But this is a spontaneous process, not done at the urging of a highly paid, imported consultant.

The business of counting bins and painting faces is just silly, and it's not just silly it is pernicious, wrong and increasingly popular.

The business of trying to look into the soul of people who are employed or might be hired has been one of the growth industries of the past couple of decades.

Applying for a job used to involved putting in an application, a CV and then, with luck, being interviewed.

Today, that is just part of a process that will see prospective employees subjected to psychological assessments of no scientific worth, role playing exercises and, increasingly, drug tests.

This adds up to not just an unacceptable intrusion on personal privacy, it is also bunkum, codswallop, flim-flam and snake oil of the worst kind.

If someone is hiring me, they are hiring my professional skills.

They should sensibly make every endeavour to assess my work abilities and record, but they are not entitled to employ various forms of hokum to look into my soul.

Nor, unless I'm applying to drive a Jumbo, is my use or non-use of drugs an issue, unless it affects my work.

All kinds of work related discrimination have been outlawed in recent years - you can't reject me on the grounds of sex, disability, age, race, religion etc.

But some new form of intolerance has now emerged with employers claiming that by virtue of paying us we can be told not only how to work, but how to live.

I was reminded of this creeping tyranny by reading an excerpt in Time magazine of what looks to be a very interesting new book - Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich.

It is an account of the life of the working poor in America, based on research carried out by Barbara Ehrenreich.

To write the book she, for a time, lived the life of workers earning around $6 an hour.

And even on the lowest rung of the job ladder she found psychological testing of applicants is all the go.

People hoping to work as cleaners or similar jobs faced questionnaires that were in part just plain silly - "In the past year I have stolen from my employer...." - the applicant was invited to tick an amount.

Others asked would be's to agree or disagree with propositions including: "I tend to get into fist fights more than other people...." or - "It's easier to work when you're a little bit high."

Barbara Ehrenreich was told by one tester at a Wal-Mart in Minnesota that she had lost credit because when asked if: "...rules had to be followed to the letter at all times" - she had agreed 'strongly', rather than 'totally.'

It is very silly, but we all have to work. This involves compromise and some loss of autonomy, but it does not have to involve humiliation and intrusion.

The flim-flam men, with their quizzes and dope tests and rubbish bin counts, have had their day.

It is time to redress the balance between personal and professional life.

Marius Benson