ALEX TURNER is the general manager of financial training firm Ambitious Minds

THE world’s most overhyped sporting event continues to set new records in absurdity.

This week has seen a resolution presented to the United Nations, signed by all of its 193 member states, supporting a truce during the period of the Olympic Games next year. Perhaps we should take it as a positive sign that the UN wasn’t busy.

The truce resolution was once a practical requirement, to enable the athletes to safely travel and compete in the original, Greek, Olympics.

The idea was resurrected in the 1990s and now involves a complete waste of time and money as diplomats struggled to track down the ambassadors from Kiribati and Central African Republic, among others, in a silly, symbolic desire to beat the 191 co-sponsors that signed the resolution ahead of the 2004 Olympics held in Athens.

Wars and border skirmishes are rarely prevented by UN resolutions, and certainly never by one created as a tokenistic display of sporting harmony. For proof of that, we only have to look back to 2008, when the Georgia War took no heed of the athletes assembled in Beijing.

Sport has a wonderful ability to break down barriers and engender a spirit of togetherness and unity. But it can’t be forced, it needs to be genuine.

The Olympics naturally achieves that, regardless of bureaucratic exercises such as the truce resolution.

While it would be impossible for any of us to be guilty of such grandstanding – United Nations resolutions are beyond even the most ambitious marketing and PR plans in this city – it is worth reflecting on whether we are seeking a pointless paper-based solution to problems that are more intractable. For example, if each of our staff signed a declaration as they walked in every morning that said they were going to spend the working day in happy, successful collaboration with colleagues and customers alike, do you think it would make any difference at all? There would be one – you’d have to put someone in charge of the process, who would produce reports on those people who refused to sign or those who were later spotted being anything other than happy, collaborative or successful.

Petty bureaucracy has a habit of creeping in under the door, however watchful we are. Olympic athletes don’t have to jump through hoops. We should make sure that we’re not forcing our staff to do the same.