Thursday 2 February 2017

What's in a slogan?


I saw this sign visiting a relative's care home recently:


It shows the 5 key questions posed by the Care Quality Commission, the regulator for health and social care in England. I entirely understand why the CQC think that these 5 factors are key to performance: Safe, Caring, Responsive, Effective, Well-Led. But, while the CQC is the responsible body, it clearly isn't a sensible body. Choosing the acronym SCREW? Really? I'll bet that went down a storm when they briefed the employees..... "We're going to SCREW our residents and other stakeholders...."    Mind, given that care home fees aren't cheap.....   Though to be fair, I don't know how they keep the prices down to what they are.

It reminded me of a story I was told about the launch of a quality assurance campaign in British Rail before privatisation. This would be in the early 1990s as British industry tried to catch up with Japanese levels of delivery in terms of quality, bringing with it, in classic British style, gold plating and lever arch files full of paper. BR adopted the slogan "Operating For Quality". But to make it catchier they abbreviated it. "O" for Operating, "4" for, well er for (wasn't that cutting edge?) and "Q" for Quality. Posters were displayed in offices and workshops around the whole organisation saying "O4Q". Really, O4Q? Yes. No-one in management saw that one, or was prepared to speak up and the posters duly became a laughing matter.

Mind, in one of its many re-organisations, British Nuclear Fuels called the people in charge of its newly designated "business units" Business Unit Managers. Yes BUMs.

You couldn't make it up.

And they pay these people with real money.....

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