Cost of wellness

SIR – I am so relieved to read that Jacob Rees-Mogg is banning all the absurd wellness and diversity courses for civil servants and others (report, July 2).

I was once ordered to attend a day’s Civil Service diversity training at a cost of £3,000. The opening two-hour session was devoted to what sort of animal I would like to be and what sort of animal people associated me with.

I pleaded a work crisis and left after the session and received a rebate for the taxpayer.

Thank heavens that common sense has prevailed. Mr Rees-Mogg is saving the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Graham White

Cambridge

SIR – I spent most of my working life in management positions in human resources (what was once known as “personnel”).

In most organisations, public or private, personnel used to provide a useful service to line management in matters of recruitment, health, welfare, disciplinary procedures and so on. Its role was advisory, and it was there to act in the organisation’s interests (as determined by senior line management).

In recent years, however, HR has changed out of all recognition – especially in the public sector. Very often it appears to think that its role is to lecture others, sometimes in a rather arrogant, patronising tone, on how they should behave in areas which HR itself – not the organisation’s line managers – deem to be important (for example, on gender and green issues).

Irrespective of whether their expressed thoughts have merit or not in a social context, HR has no business in lecturing management, customers or patients on how society should change its ways. HR staff should act in the interests of those they are paid to serve, and keep their didactic virtue-signalling thoughts away from their place of work.

Senior line management in turn should ensure that HR does this, but too frequently they are too afraid to put their heads above the parapet and intervene. Richard Stott

Hexham, Northumberland