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LettersHR practice

Personnel Today ought to know better than to call people names

by Personnel Today 27 Sep 2005
by Personnel Today 27 Sep 2005

As a strategic director with a project sponsor role in carrying out job evaluation at my council, I read with interest your news analysis entitled ‘Single-status straightjacket (Personnel Today, 13 September). That is, until I got to the paragraph referring to ‘public sector bean counters’.

As a Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy accountant, I find it exasperating to be dismissed as a ‘bean counter’ by a magazine that bangs on about diversity and inappropriate language in almost every issue.

When composing this missive I was desperately trying to come up with a witty rejoinder to ‘bean counter’ that would relate to HR, but was surprised by the lack of a standard. Is this perhaps a result of the HR (or personnel, or management services, or business partner) industry not being quite sure what to call itself at any one point in time over the past 20 years?

(My girlfriend will kill me for this – she is an HR manager, and it was her magazine that I was reading in the first place.)

Barry Scarr
Director of resources and property and deputy chief executive, Castle Morpeth Borough Council

Personnel Today
Personnel Today

Personnel Today articles are written by an expert team of award-winning journalists who have been covering HR and L&D for many years. Some of our content is attributed to "Personnel Today" for a number of reasons, including: when numerous authors are associated with writing or editing a piece; or when the author is unknown (particularly for older articles).

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Personnel Today
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