Conference break out
They announced a "break out" session at the human resources conference I'm attending, so I've broken out.
Attending HR conferences is like visiting a parallel universe where everyone looks fairly normal until they open their mouths. I listened to someone speaking for an hour yesterday and did not understand one word. He was speaking in HR, a language that shares a common ancestry with the one that I speak but which diverged on a labyrinthine path of its own in the dim and distant past.
I try to keep up and most of my columns are undertaken as a translation, but it gets more difficult every year.
I like to watch conference audiences and the kind of postures and behaviours that people adopt. Here are a few:
* The arm folder, sitting back, legs outstretched. This means: "OK, impress me."
* The secret squirrel BlackBerry user, fiddling with hands under the table.
* The in-out listener, adopting a studious appearance but constantly switching off to think of more interesting things.
* The reader - more interested in the power point slides than anything the speaker has to say.
* The note-taker, working on next week's shopping list.
* The mobile phone numpty who didn't switch it off, doesn't know where it is, and has no idea that his daughter has changed his ring tone to the latest hip hop hit.
* The enthusiast - thin on the ground - the odd member of the audience who is genuinely interested in what the speaker has to say.
* The conference junkie - focused entirely on lunch.
* The tick box king - starts filling out the "happy sheet" in the first five minutes of the conference.
* The networker - dishing out calling cards with all the dexterity of a Mississippi gambler playing black jack.
I can hear the sniffer dogs outside my room so it looks like my bid for freedom has failed. Now, where were we? Something about compensation and benefit trends in EMEA (the management bundle for Europe, the Middle East and Africa). Compensation, which normal people know as something they might get if a waiter spills soup down their frock, is the HR term for pay which is also referred to as "reward" or, even worse, "remuneration." Riveting stuff.
Attending HR conferences is like visiting a parallel universe where everyone looks fairly normal until they open their mouths. I listened to someone speaking for an hour yesterday and did not understand one word. He was speaking in HR, a language that shares a common ancestry with the one that I speak but which diverged on a labyrinthine path of its own in the dim and distant past.
I try to keep up and most of my columns are undertaken as a translation, but it gets more difficult every year.
I like to watch conference audiences and the kind of postures and behaviours that people adopt. Here are a few:
* The arm folder, sitting back, legs outstretched. This means: "OK, impress me."
* The secret squirrel BlackBerry user, fiddling with hands under the table.
* The in-out listener, adopting a studious appearance but constantly switching off to think of more interesting things.
* The reader - more interested in the power point slides than anything the speaker has to say.
* The note-taker, working on next week's shopping list.
* The mobile phone numpty who didn't switch it off, doesn't know where it is, and has no idea that his daughter has changed his ring tone to the latest hip hop hit.
* The enthusiast - thin on the ground - the odd member of the audience who is genuinely interested in what the speaker has to say.
* The conference junkie - focused entirely on lunch.
* The tick box king - starts filling out the "happy sheet" in the first five minutes of the conference.
* The networker - dishing out calling cards with all the dexterity of a Mississippi gambler playing black jack.
I can hear the sniffer dogs outside my room so it looks like my bid for freedom has failed. Now, where were we? Something about compensation and benefit trends in EMEA (the management bundle for Europe, the Middle East and Africa). Compensation, which normal people know as something they might get if a waiter spills soup down their frock, is the HR term for pay which is also referred to as "reward" or, even worse, "remuneration." Riveting stuff.
Labels: black jack, compensation, conference, EMEA, hip hop, HR, Human Resources, Mississippi, pay, remuneration, reward
posted by Richard Donkin at
11:54 AM
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