Orwell, HR departments and the curse of middle management

Have a read of this. It's a Guardian analysis of the terminology used by Human Resource departments.

What would Orwell make of the modern workplace? It's not just HR departments - the insidious layers of middle management that are routinely inflicted on staff are also guilty of misdirection, dissembly and excessive use of jargon and euphemism. The implied involvement of higher powers is also rife among the middle management strata - ask to do anything slightly threatening, like working from home and thus removing yourself from their gaze, and you may get a response like "There's no policy on that, I'm afraid". Trust in, and respect for, employees was replaced by this passive aggressive system of command and control long since.

Maybe we should just stop and think about the term "Human Resource". Not a nice way to describe the people actually making your stuff, is it? I'd laugh, but it's so sad.