Simon English: Group drumming is only a part of the grim soundtrack of HR gobbledegook

Last week the Financial Conduct Authority took 400 of its top staff for an awayday. Among other activities, they practised drumming to help learn “the power of group energy”.

They got some mockery for this, including from their own staff, which was reported here and elsewhere.

On one level, there’s no particular problem with the FCA wasting a relatively small amount of money in this way. It wastes money in worse ways than this, we can be sure.

And we can assume no regulators were harmed during the proceedings. The problem is that it is very hard to see what they can have gained from them, at least in relation to their work.

The other, bigger, problem is what this signifies, which is the capture of organisations large and small by Human Resources departments and the bizarre thinking that bedevils an industry that is rightly regarded as mostly total bull-shit.

The “useful” work of HR is to help companies build cases against staff they want to fire, so they can do it legally and with the least expense. The role is to keep the company out of court — to stop it being sued by its own employees.

This isn’t a very nice job and no one remotely normal would want to do it, so they have to arrange group drumming sessions. This is therapy for them, not us.

The HR sickness extends way beyond the City. A teacher I know says her new head took staff for a day at a bowling alley, where they “know something about teamwork”.

It was a harmless afternoon’s tenpin bowling. But no students were taught anything that day and the supposed lesson was lost on the teachers.

HR gobbledegook is notorious and hard to parody. Since HR is supposed to be about communicating, it should surely use the simplest language possible. That it does the opposite tells you most of what you need to know.

I’ve had mercifully few dealings with HR professionals, but every single one left me feeling uncomfortable. They are living on a different planet.

They ask you to have an open mind about whatever daft thing they want you to do, or ridiculous form they want you to fill in, the mere questions to which indicate they have no idea how work occurs, or what that work is.

You try to keep an open mind for a bit. Then before you know it you’re imaginary water-skiing behind a boat that is being driven by your colleagues, or something equally ridiculous.

Once, I was asked to describe my feelings for my employer, as if they were a person. Like the group drumming, it is hard to see what the purpose is of this beyond embarrassment, and it shows that the HR folk are removed from the daily grind of office life. If my employer were a person then it would, on the basis of this meeting alone, be certifiably insane.

I asked a City professional who works closely with a large HR department to make the case for the defence. He mumbled a bit, then came up with this: there is a big push in large organisations to make sure that irrespective of people’s gender or sexual preferences they feel comfortable. That’s a good thing.

Many large institutions need significant cultural change, and if you are trying to get a company to do basic things right, you need professional people to make that journey. Busy managers don’t necessarily have the time or inclination to do these things — that’s where HR comes in.

OK, fair enough. It still seems to me that the HR list of lessons for management need be no longer than “try to be sympathetic, don’t shout, don’t insist on group drumming circles”.

From the outside, the biggest gain of HR seems to be its own proliferation. HR professionals are at least successful here, since whenever there is a corporate downsizing, HR departments always seem to be spared.

Back at the FCA, they have had a rethink. While the drumming sessions were cheap, says the watchdogs of corporate Britain, “we will be reviewing all such future events”.

A small mercy, but a mercy nonetheless.