October 7, 2009
HR departments: I've never seen the point of them. That's the not-at-all inflammatory headline of an article in the Times by columnist Sathnam Sanghera.
His opinion piece featured the tired old argument of excessive navel-gazing, and lines such as: "You'll find more neurosis between the covers of your average edition of Personnel Today than your average edition of Cosmopolitan."
Thanks very much for the mention Sathnam... but if anyone's going to have a pop at HR, it's Guru, OK?
No doubt Sathnam has been crossed off many Christmas card lists and people will cancel their subscriptions to the Times in disgust. All this from a guy who has previously been crowned 'HR journalist of the year' in the Watson Wyatt Awards. No votes for him next year, then.
The piece got the HR blogosphere buzzing with, literally, a handful of people queing up to defend their profession, but what really tickled Guru was some of the comments about the article on the paper's website. Here is his favourite:
Guru would encourage disciples who disagree with Sathnam's views to drop him a line with particularly large file attachments at sathnam@thetimes.co.uk.
Alternatively, drop Yours Truly an email with ideas for an article entitled: Newspaper columnists: Why they write rabble-rousing tosh.
His opinion piece featured the tired old argument of excessive navel-gazing, and lines such as: "You'll find more neurosis between the covers of your average edition of Personnel Today than your average edition of Cosmopolitan."
Thanks very much for the mention Sathnam... but if anyone's going to have a pop at HR, it's Guru, OK?
No doubt Sathnam has been crossed off many Christmas card lists and people will cancel their subscriptions to the Times in disgust. All this from a guy who has previously been crowned 'HR journalist of the year' in the Watson Wyatt Awards. No votes for him next year, then.
The piece got the HR blogosphere buzzing with, literally, a handful of people queing up to defend their profession, but what really tickled Guru was some of the comments about the article on the paper's website. Here is his favourite:
"HR: Human Remains, parasitical, non-productive, except for producing endless and meaningless "management-speak euphemisms". Bloated sense of importance."That's someone with a really bad experience of HR.
Guru would encourage disciples who disagree with Sathnam's views to drop him a line with particularly large file attachments at sathnam@thetimes.co.uk.
Alternatively, drop Yours Truly an email with ideas for an article entitled: Newspaper columnists: Why they write rabble-rousing tosh.
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