Ground Floor: If the Prince of Wales was a businessman, he'd probably be Gerald Ratner. He seems to have Ratner's ability to open his mouth and insert his foot in it, thus portraying himself as a complete idiot when you know he can't really be that stupid.

Ratner, of course, was trying to make a joke when he talked about his jewellery products being crap; Charles wasn't joking when he ranted on about people having aspirations to do things "far beyond their actual capabilities". While supporters rush to his defence and say his words were badly portrayed, detractors use the private note to highlight how out of touch he is with modern society.

The problem stemmed from a memo sent by a former personal assistant, Elaine Day, who suggested that suitably qualified PAs could be trained up to become assistant private secretaries. Hardly earth-shattering, I would have thought.

Until some time in the mid-1970s or early-1980s, most people started off at the bottom of the corporate hierarchy, learned the business and moved up through the ranks. It was only when people increasingly began to avail of third-level education that the bar was raised and suddenly you needed a degree to lick stamps. Graduates wanted something better after the years of study and companies began to provide it, recruiting suitably qualified candidates at higher levels than those with a more basic education. It did lead to different hierarchical structures within big companies and wasn't always easy - either for the graduates or for the people who knew more about how the firm worked than they did, yet who were supposed to be reporting to them.

But that's the way it went.

I can't help thinking that Prince Charles must have caught an episode of Pop Idol or one of its hybrid spin-offs which made him blow a gasket. Or maybe he picked up a copy of OK or Heat and decided that the world had gone mad. Without a doubt, old certainties have changed. My parents told me that, to succeed in life, I needed to have a good education and to work hard. Many of today's young people might well think that having a good pair of implants and a decent agent would yield greater dividends.

Providentially, I was at a human resources workshop during the week in which the whole area of reward and recognition for employees was under discussion. Steers & Porter's 1991 model of human motivation was handed out, which says that there are five steps on the motivation road, and that only when your needs on one particular step are satisfied are you able to advance and be motivated by the next step up.

The ladder starts off with physiological needs which are met by pay and working conditions. Then they move up to safety, which covers company benefits and job security. Next is a social need of working colleagues; then esteem, which includes social recognition and status for our employment. And finally we arrive at the level of self-actualisation, where our challenging job is enhanced by our creativity and achievement and progress to further advancement.

The key to being a good employer is to be able to identify where on the ladder your employees seems to be and what motivates then to the next step.

Prince Charles probably doesn't have a whole lot of time for models of people's needs - at least not as they see them. He seems to want people to fit in with his own idea of what their needs are or what they should be. Which is probably what makes him a difficult employer.

For most bosses receiving a memo in the vein of Elaine Day's, the response is simple. You thank the employee for taking the time to bring something to your attention. You consider whether or not it is actually an idea of merit. If it is, you congratulate them and ask them to suggest ways in which it could be implemented. If not, you suggest that it isn't currently workable but may be considered in the future. And then you get on with things.

The Prince of Wales, in having to fight his PR corner yet again, makes much of his charitable works and his efforts to give opportunities to disadvantaged young people. Yet as an employer he does not seem to have grasped the very simple fact that most people like to get a sense of achievement from their jobs and want to have the opportunity to advance.

I don't know what skills you need to move from being a PA in the Prince's household to an assistant private secretary, but I don't see why they can't be learned on the job. And if they can't, then they can be sent on a training course. After all, the Prince himself learned everything on the job.

And in the end, Elaine Day will find that she has achieved much much more outside the Prince's employ than as a PA in his office. She is already being courted by the newspapers for her story and will undoubtedly get promises of more money for a few hours' revelations than she ever could have made with the House of Wales - either as a PA or an assistant private secretary. She'll have her 15 minutes of fame plus a whole heap of money and - if she's not careful - an appearance on the Z-list show I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here to look forward to. None of which needs any particular skills or great education.

It's all a matter of being in the right place at the right time and using it to your advantage - rather like Prince Charles in fact.