A new study suggests that this is the best possible time to be an employee. Apparently, with the pandemic, a small exodus of some EU workers and demands for more flexible working, employees are speaking from a position of strength. So they can pick and choose.
My eye was caught this week by a list of the most desirable and highest paid professions. One of these is – wait for it – “HR manager”. According to the website Glassdoor, HR managers have a median base salary of nearly £50,000 a year, with a job satisfaction score of 4.4 out of 5.
HR managers are credited with being able to hire, interview and “shape the culture” of a company. They are also credited with being able to excel in “conflict resolution”, as though they were overseeing the Ukrainian border, and demonstrating “a high level of emotional intelligence”.
Personally, I have never met anyone in HR who is not a presumptuous dullard. The principal qualifications for this overpaid role in my experience are stupidity, lack of curiosity, misguided self-worth and odious self-importance. No great company was ever created by HR managers. But many have been held back by them.
The news that the role is among the best paid in the country is not a surprise. HR chiefs in the NHS can be paid up to a quarter of a million pounds a year. But the news that young people might aspire to become such restricting dullards is bad news indeed.
A country should encourage people to excel and be great at things that are important. A country whose youth aspire to be bureaucratic middle meddlers is a country in trouble.
Nobody asked for their ice-cream to lecture them on geopolitics
I’m not a great fan of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. But if there is one thing I like less than eating their ice cream, it is having them shout at me. That is what the company keeps doing. And it’s not just me.
In the past, the company has distinguished itself by announcing that it will not allow the sale of its sickly product within the West Bank. They presumably see this as making a statement about where the ice cream company believes the final status borders agreement of the Israel-Palestinian conflict should lie. When in fact all it means is that they are saving Palestinians from getting high cholesterol.
Besides, you might well wonder about the priorities of a company willing to expend time and effort on such political disputes but which has in the past proved incapable of ensuring that its product does not contain traces of weedkiller.
Two years ago the company started shouting at our Home Secretary, Priti Patel, and her borders policies. Weirdly, the ice cream company’s social media accounts attacked Patel for a “lack of humanity” and said, presumptuously, that they had “pulled together a thread for you”. The sanctimonious thread that resulted included such morsels as “Let’s remember we’re all human” and “people cannot be illegal”. Gosh.
This week Ben and Jerry’s were back at it again. The company lectured President Biden, calling for him to “de-escalate tensions” with Russia “and work for peace rather than prepare for war”. They went on: “Sending thousands more US troops to Europe in response to Russia’s threats against Ukraine only fans the flame of war.”
Perhaps Ben and Jerry’s imagine themselves to be masters of statecraft. Certainly, they seem eager to unburden themselves of plenty of opinions.
Personally, I would rather they piped down. For a whole host of reasons, the taste that Ben and Jerry’s now leaves in the mouth is remarkably sour.
