Tuesday, April 22, 2008

More ridiculous buzzing

The buzzwords are back, this time in an article in EmBiz247.

It's in an article on the movement of people around the world- note that I use the word people.

The paper thought one phrase was worthy of highlighting as a feature sub-heading:

"Mobility contributes to national human capital development..."

More confirmation that we aren't thought of as people any more, but as human capital.

11 comments:

Alexander said...

Gigglesome. At least you're not a human capital solution!

And yes, I have seen that phrase used!

The Last Ephor said...

Don't read too much into it. Human capital is used in strategic terms. You don't get to be a person until we're on the tactical level. And yes, mobility of labor is critical to market success.

Seabee said...

Duffy, you're making excuses for it. Whether it's used strategically or tactically it's nothing but a trendy buzzword that unnecessarily replaces 'people' or 'human'.

Mobility of labour can indeed be critical to market success, but we don't need to refer to people as 'human capital' for that to be true.

Anonymous said...

Just another example of bad journalism/editing to allow that phrase in at all, let alone highlight it as a sub heading

Grumpy Goat said...

Yet another example of what I disaffectionately refer to as Business Boh-lux. As in "I lack resources" when what I mean is "Get more people on to my team."

Perhaps the rot started when "Personnel" was renamed "Human Resources".

caz said...

What a stupid phrase.

Perhaps these idiots who think up these phrases should be 'culled', as we do animals who are ruining our flora fauna.

Our beautiful language has really lhits the pits over the last few years, half the time I don'tg know what people are talking about.

Examples

She was like, he was like, I was like,
What in the middle of l sentence, like 'what' I am doing now!.

Different to instead of different from.
Choon, instaead of tune.

Sadly,the list is almost endless.

Caz

Anonymous said...

This is the World Banks Definition of Human capital as per their website.......Human capital. People’s innate abilities and talents plus their knowledge, skills, and experience that make them economically productive. Human capital can be increased by investing in health care, education, and job training.

Seabee said...

Dave, employers have always meant exactly that when they've talked about their staff. The people plus their talents, abiities, productivity, experience, personalities and all the rest of it.

It didn't need a prat with nothing better to do to come up with a new trendy phrase for it.

Seabee said...

Mr Goat, Mrs Seabee used to be a personnel manager, then she became a human resources manager.

The two jobs were identical.

Anonymous said...

"Solutions" is another business-speak buzzword I detest. There was a billboard on SZR that read "end-to-end global supply chain solutions". I still have no idea what it means. Our office photocopier paper comes in a package saying "Navigator - office paper solutions". No, it's just paper.

Seabee said...

Anon, back in November in an earlier rant about buzzwords I said I thought of solutions as the daddy of them all.