Talk Talk

It’s all very well for companies to malign those of us hanging around in office kitchens as malingerers and office gossips. But the truth of the matter is that most of us have no choice: how else are we going to find out in plenty of time that our company is moving to a brownfield site in Slovakia or that the girl buying our leaving present was last seen fingering rayon kilts in Marks & Spencer?

There’s no question that so-called official channels of communication just aren’t working for us ...

· Internal Communications Team
Er, their idea of effective communication is editing a staff newspaper that makes the North Korean Information Department seem a fountain of truth in comparison. We all know that any internal communications strategy is basically to inform staff how caring, unique and deeply wonderful your company is. The hope is that if this is repeated enough times it will stick somewhere, even if it is mainly in people’s gullets.

· The Intranet
Ditto, only with fewer exclamation marks.

· The Consultant’s Report
Sorry, they earn a lot more than you, can afford Ozwald Boateng suits and make recommendations that colleagues have been talking about for years in the office kitchen, but no one could be bothered to ask them.

· Team Meeting
With most people concerned about who’s been secretly stealing their banana-flavoured Complan from the office fridge there isn’t a lot of time for much else. But when this mainly consists of new management initiatives ranging from Giving Birth Under the IT Help Desk and Work Life Strategies: Getting Married in the Atrium to Managing Your Personal Development Because Frankly No One Else is Going To, it may be a blessing in disguise.

· Your Boss
How can you seriously trust someone who wants to empower you (they feel sorry for you not being stressed enough), delegate (there’s no one else they’d rather give their lousy jobs to) and facilitate (making it easy for all their work to go straight in your direction)?

· The Men in Black and Your P.45
Obviously too late.

But everyone knows that for a really juicy piece of news most of us can rely on the Chief Executive’s PA (knows who’s had sex on blotters in the boardroom) or the receptionist (can describe the Fatal Attraction moment in detail with frequent action replays). At least there’s something to get us into the office on Monday mornings.

What is it about the public sector and meetings?

Managing Change. Change Management. Change Innovation. During my brief sojourn in the public sector we were always being encouraged to do this. In fact hardly a day went by when a perky file headed with lots of capital letters wasn’t being delivered that would transform us all into corporate team players. Except nothing much ever changed and all senior management’s missives ever did was to move a lot of anxious and slightly autistic people up to a new level of existential anxiety.

As part of the programme our Chief Executive let us know that we were all having too many meetings. Instructions went around insisting we ask ourselves if our meeting was really necessary and if it was might we try, for example, standing up and finishing off any malingerers with some deep vein thrombosis. This was all very well in theory but in practice it was the stuff of nightmare to public sector workers. Without setting up and attending meetings what exactly was our purpose on earth? What else were we supposed to do? It didn’t take long for the anti-meeting mission to find itself lost in the deep landfills of unimportant looking paperwork. We weren’t stupid. We weren’t talking ourselves out of a job.

My colleagues knew that their purpose in life was to say something at the beginning of a meeting even if it was just their name and then earn the right to a Mars Bar-fuelled glutinous snooze. As for the impertinent suggestion that they could ever do without meetings, this could only come from twenty-three year-old consultants in Prada suits.

If there ever was a vacuum it could be quickly abhorred by endless meetings about Health and Safety, fire drill procedures and an investigation into who put purple tinsel up covering the architect’s nineteen seventies hessian statement. In fact it would be entirely possible for a public service worker to spend their entire lives having meetings about policies and procedures and never actually have to do any proper work. It’s not really surprising that we remained suspicious of anyone from outside the sector telling us what we should be doing. Because if they did, er, we could always have a meeting about it.

Send in the Clones

How spooky is it when you find your department rapidly filling up with clones – of your boss? It’s all very well expecting us to imitate their body language during the interview but we didn’t know we needed the identical DNA before we got the job.

Bosses all know that teams are meant to be a ‘diversity of skills and personality types’ (er, you don’t want everyone crying behind their work station at the same time as there aren’t enough toilet rolls to go round). Except many managers don’t feel capable of making these subtle distinctions. They’d much rather employ staff with the same psychopathic tendencies as themselves. After all with the long hours culture wouldn’t you rather share evening meetings with someone like yourself who's quite happy to practise urinary retention and share half a Wagon Wheel?

In one recent job my line manager saw it as her mission to clone herself lest a tragic accident made her incapable of holding any of her eighty-six ring binders. Admittedly no one quite shared her dress sense, although a tendency to look as if you were attending a wedding reception circa 1987 was slowly becoming de-rigeur. But when it came to being perfectly humourless and to facing off colleagues with meaningless processes and procedures she must have felt great pride in her recruits. And many of them, I slowly became aware, had developed a penchant for cat calendars and soft toy kittens and would often be found together enjoying the latest cat diary. Needless to say those of us not of a feline inclination were glad to feel ostracised and soon found ourselves working elsewhere.

On the other hand I once worked with a colleague I had a great deal – too much – in common with. We would spend whole afternoons rapping about films and literature rather than devising ad campaigns for Southern Gas. It wasn’t good for either of us and he was sacked shortly afterwards.
Just another lose-lose corporate situation. Though, quite honestly, are any of us still counting?

Do You Really Want to Work from Home Part 3?

Umbilical Cord

It's exhausting being the repository of all your ex-colleagues' hopes, fears and dreams - don't even get them started on your dreadful pension situation - and keeping up the required level of perkiness. But don't worry, many of them will have a chance to experience your exciting new lifestyle firsthand at the next takeoever.


Vision

It's funny, you might have acquired a cottage in Suffolk, a vegetable plot and a bad broadband connection so that no one can get at you, but they still find ways of suggesting that you should be attending Investors in People networking sessions until you're sixty-five. Don't listen to them.


Workaholic

See how your work-rate will soar, without interruptions. Can you actually be 'over-productive' and are you getting paid for it?


'X' Files, The

Reserved for all the boring administration you'll keep putting off.


Yuletide

A lonely time for the home-aloner - even the dreaded office Christmas party takes on a Pickwickensian glamour. All you can do is display the card from the dog shampooist and hope he doesn't want to 'touch base' in the New Year.


Zing

The highs and lows are like nothing you'll ever experience working 9-to-5. But will you ever really want to go back to five-hour 'brainstorming' (sic) sessions called 'Making the Most of Meeting Situations' - only to decide that 'communication is the key to success'? Think about it carefully.