Meaningless jargon

Watch this space: “remap” to become new HR buzzword

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How the BBC would like you to see how it imagines its new bright young things. 

I read about this concept first in Private Eye (No 1450) but the only online mention I could find is this post on Bill Rogers’s blog. Private Eye has a long history of picking up what it calls “Birtspeak” phrases used by BBC management, but this was a new one on me. The idea of “remapping” BBC journalists was announced in an email to local radio staff from Chris Burns, head of Audio and Digital, BBC England.

“In our new structure we plan that all existing Senior News Editors will be remapped to the role of Executive Editor from the Content Job Family … We have also looked at the roles and responsibilities of the rest of the management team  and are planning the following:
Assistant Editors to be remapped to the Content Job Family and become Executive Producers;
Every station will also have a Senior Journalist Team manager;
Our plan is to remap the Senior Journalists, Community to the Content Job Family.”

I predict a great future for the concept of remapping people, before it joins “talent acquisition”, “creative pool” and “onboarding” on a list of HR Buzzwords you really need to ditch.

 

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An end to end view

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Reader Larry Marotta has kindly sent me a link to a job currently being advertised working for Police Scotland, thinking I might be impressed with its contents. Indeed I am. The job is for the Head of the force’s new ‘Design Authority’. In case we don’t know what that might be (or why a police force might need one) it is defined as ‘the custodian of the Target Operating Model ensuring alignment to the strategic vision for the organisation taking an end to end view using a business value focused perspective.’ Not surprisingly, the ad has attracted much derision, ably reported here in the Courier and the Sun.
Meanwhile, another Police Scotland recruitment campaign, this time for new police officers, has also been rightly criticised.

It shows a trio of what would once have been called ‘sonsie lasses’, encouraging more women to join the force with the caption ‘These Ladies are more than just Pretty Faces’. This campaign prompted the Daily Record to dub it with a nice piece of alliteration a ‘Female Force Farce’.
When the new Design Authority head is appointed, one of the first things she or he should do is to insist on clear, concise language being used throughout the organisation. Design is all about communicating effectively, and the words used are just as important as the way in which they are displayed. In order to earn that £80K a year, the new person is going to need a heavy-duty broom to sweep away the mountains of HR crap jargon that has obviously built up in the force’s corridors. Good luck to them!