One of my standard jokes is that IT people are very bad at HR, but not as bad as the HR department. In search of further home truths, then, why not compare the HR practices of two IT suppliers with two non-IT companies? A cursory glance at four web sites uncovers much.

Go to the About Microsoft section of the software giant's site, and you'll find the company is into diversity, corporate citizenship, corporate mission and corporate values - but much less concerned with how Microsoft uses IT in Microsoft offices.

In its use of portrait photos, the company's Careers section is in many ways exemplary. Yet Microsoft's careers newsletters, like entries on its laboratory-like Centre for Information Work, are out of date. I like Microsoft. These defects are a pity, for it and other IT firms are pretty good at keeping very different kinds of skilled people reasonably happy.

Still, the public face of Microsoft's HR practice confirms that IT companies could do a much better job explaining the benefits of IT at work.

Nokia's site also reveals much. It cares a lot about work-life balance, health, and the Nokia Way of working. Still, there is a useful public discussion of what Nokia copywriters delightfully call "performance-based rewarding".

Nokia's internal communications really impress. Nokia News Service is its daily internet bulletin on global, business and local news. Nokies can customise news to suit their interests and needs by business area, function or geographical location.

The firm also takes printed communications seriously. To reach employees, it publishes more than 50,000 copies of its Nokia People magazine - eight times a year, in English, Finnish, Chinese and German.

Now take Scottish distiller Glenmorangie. It set up a centre for e-learning in August 2002, and by last summer had put about 250 of its 340 employees through compulsory, one-hour-a-week courses, conducted in work time, on topics such as customer care. Cost: about £25 a completed course, courtesy of provider Thompson NetG, as against perhaps £50 for a course completed through conventional, non-electronic methods.

Accidents at work dropped by 38 percent. Productivity rose. Then, last October, LVMH Mo‰t Hennessy Louis Vuitton paid £300m for Glenmorangie - nearly £1m per employee. Yet the company's site says little about this. It simply pays lavish tribute to the Glenmorangie mashmen, stillmen and warehousemen.

Last: Adecco, a French employment services agency. Its site does not so much sing the praises of Adecco, as contribute genuinely educational, third-party analysis of employment issues. Here Adecco uses IT to establish thought leadership.

Altogether, the HR part of your organisation's web site deserves special attention. After all, it not only addresses potential recruits, but also the intelligent public. It needs to be bang up to date, to entice, to intrigue, and - where they exist - to celebrate real successes in e-learning.

A web site holds a mirror to the real face of an organisation. In its HR section, then, using a bit of wart removal cream can prove handy.