Kentish Express Ashford & District
Key stakeholders hiding behind jargon
Nonsense corporate jargon seems to be spreading everywhere in public life these days.
Last week we revealed a family’s battle to uncover the truth about the death of a cyclist.
Richard Jordan was found injured at Long Hill in Old Wives Lees in November 2011. He had a skull fracture and several of his ribs were broken.
Paramedics treated him that day but police were only told about it a day later, by which time the scene was clear and Mr Jordan had died in hospital.
His family said they had been “fobbed off at every opportunity” by the authorities, as they believe the investigation was flawed.
Six years on, the family are still asking why it took so long for the crash to be flagged up to the police by the ambulance service.
While the Independent Police Complaints Commission cleared any individual officers of misconduct, it did criticise the investigation. In its official response, Kent Police described the “unexploited opportunities” no less than three times.
‘Unexploited opportunities’? It sounds more like the force is going in search of oil in the Arctic.
By no means is this corporate nonsense limited to Kent Police. It is used across the public and private sector and it is our job as journalists to translate it into plain English.
What worries us is that there may be senior officers in a boardroom right now saying something like: “Moving forward, we need some blue sky thinking for our key stakeholders, to make sure we really push the envelope so we have no unexploited opportunities.”
A frightening vision.
We recently received a press release from a training firm cataloguing the nightmare of workforce training.
It conjures visions of the BBC comedy series The Office where a training instructor looks on bewildered as a team-building exercise descends into chaos.
It’s a scene most of us are familiar with and a survey suggests the cringeworthy scenes of The Office are common in real life too.
The press release stated some of the nightmare scenarios including: “Falling asleep, splitting trousers and being in a training session led by your new boyfriend’s ex-wife were all memorable moments for some training participants.”
In all, it meant that the vast majority of workers didn’t want to attend the extra training sessions, particularly if those leading them were talking outdated nonsense and jargon.