Jargon takes centre stage at forum

The Human Resources Forum, which took place last week, was an enormous jamboree that combined hours of speeches of varying quality with business meetings and not a little wining and dining. More than 400 HR executives from leading companies took over the ship for the three-day annual event. Financial services groups represented included UBS, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, HSBC and Schroders.

A talk on safety procedures at the beginning bizarrely urged those on board to "avoid sitting on the rails on the side of the ship" and to "only jump into the sea as a last resort".

The organisers may have been worried about how people would react to the speeches. Some were relevant to their audience (see story below). Others rarely rose above inane generalities.

There was much talk of "energising staff through communicating core values", as well as "celebrating community achievements" and "living in a visionary culture".

The keynote speaker at a sister US event held earlier in the same week was General Norman Schwarzkopf, who led US forces in the first Gulf War in 1991. The UK event enlisted Paul Gratton, chief executive of the internet bank Egg, and Andy Craggs, its "chief people officer".

Gratton and Craggs produced so many diagrams and flow charts, showing how creative their employees are and how well they relate to each other, that listeners could have been forgiven for thinking they were listening to Schwarzkopf demonstrating how his forces had destroyed Saddam's army. They also showed a video of members of their staff singing a pop song.

Chris Hayward, project manager of Richmond Events, which organised the conference, acknowledged it was held on board a ship every year partly so that no one could leave. He said: "If you held it in a hotel people could walk down the street to a bar. Here, everyone has to concentrate on the conference."

Some seminars provided welcome light relief. An image consultant told people of different complexions which colours suited them best, before recommending that HR executives of every complexion should wear black when they are sacking people. A manager at Shell, discussing how seriously staff take company mission statements, recalled seeing one signed in blood in the foyer of an office in the Philippines.

Anyone exhausted by it all could relax on deck in the sunshine, or go for a foot massage from a reflexologist laid on by the conference. Reflexology works on the principle that each part of the foot affects a different part of the body, as in "I'm working in your spleen now, the seat of male emotions". Whether or not this is true, the effect is strangely relaxing.

However, the point of the event, for most of those on board, was not to listen to speeches or even to have a massage. Many were there to do business. Hundreds of suppliers to HR departments - such as outplacement firms, headhunters, career coaches and IT firms - paid a minimum of 11,500 (€16,000) to attend, in return for meetings with dozens of executives who might buy their services and who could not leave the ship. The suppliers paid for the entire event, as the HR executives were invited for free.

Sarah Mortimer, a director of the outplacement firm RightCoutts, said the conference was an effective venue to talk to senior HR executives. "It's a congenial atmosphere. You have people's attention. Everyone is relaxed and there are no e-mails arriving or phones going off."

One HR executive at a financial services firm said his main motive for being there was to network, to advance his own career.

So plenty of people on board seemed satisfied. Shame about some of the speeches.