Oooh Errr, it has been a long time since I have awarded one of my prestigious and internationally renowned "Prats of The Week" Awards.Therefore I will not beat about the bush any longer.
This week I am happy to award it to the NHS West Midlands Strategic Health Authority, for their remarkably wasteful and inept staff survey circulated to 3,300 workers at the West Midlands Ambulance Service.
Staff surveys are known for asking somewhat inept and "odd" questions. However, one question in this survey left everyone with rather an unpleasant taste in their mouths.
The theory behind the survey was to identify characteristics of good leadership, as part of a £10K project to allegedly help the NHS West Midlands Strategic Health Authority devise a new leadership strategy.
Why not just buy a book about leadership, for approx £10, and read it?
Anyhoo, amongst the questions about leadership was one that asked staff to rate how "cool" Adolf Hitler was, on a scale of one to five.
The ambulance employees were then asked to rate Hitler in comparison with their own chief executive.
They were also asked if being gay, funny or black made a leader cool.
Quite what "coolness" has to do with being a good leader I don't know?
Maybe the people who designed the survey were a tad muddled, and actually meant to ask how cool was Ron Mael (keyboard player of Sparks)?
Anyhoo well done the NHS West Midlands Strategic Health Authority, well deserving "Prats of The Week"!
Visit The Orifice of Government Commerce and buy a collector's item.
Visit The Joy of Lard and indulge your lard fantasies.
Show your contempt for Nanny by buying a T shirt or thong from Nanny's Store.
www.nannyknowsbest.com is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"
Celebrate the joy of living with booze. Click and drink!
Visit Oh So Swedish Swedish arts and handicrafts
Why not really indulge yourself, by doing all the things that Nanny really hates? Click on the relevant link to indulge yourselves; Food, Bonking, Toys, Gifts and Flowers, Groceries
Sounds like a series of questions appropriate to a popularity contest among middle school students.
ReplyDeleteBTW Ken, welocme back to the blogosphere. I thought for a day or two that you might have been tapped by the Queen to lend a hand in forming the new government, but apparently not.
It's a shame your name didn't pop up on her rolodex!
This type of survey is exactly what you get if you dumb down your education system....We have seen another example recently....The whole of the "X Factor" political debates/election process.
ReplyDeleteI rather suspect that most 'responses' will contian a high proportion of misleading information, and the proponents will be faced with a dilemma - either to scrap the whole thing, or 'cherry-pick' the answers to get the result they wanted.(= those that said their own CEO is uber-cool)
ReplyDeleteI would have thought that even in today’s unenlightened society a dodgy looking Austrian/German with a side parting, greasy hair, Groucho Marx moustache who was also a fanatical vegetarian and non-smoker could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered ‘cool’.
ReplyDeleteOh!......And he only had one bollock.
Well said, Anonymous! In my opinion, there are far too many executives/managers with too little to do, and clueless aabout patient needs within the health service. This survey is probably an attempt by one such to justify their exisyence, along with theirinflated salary and pension, and may well be an accurate reflection of the calibre of their leadership 'skills'.
ReplyDeleteWell, it looks as though the seat-polishers' days may be numbered under our new coalition Government. I for one won't be shedding any tears.
ReplyDeleteMy lovely wife used to work for the NHS as a nurse. At the end of one financial year the nurses asked for some of what was left in the budget to be used to get some new incubators for the maternity wards in her hospital, knowing the managers would want to spend the budget so that it wasn't cut the following year.
ReplyDeleteResult? No incubators, but nice new carpets and desks etc in the admin block.
I too hope the new government can finally get to grips with how NHS money should really be spent - on health care, not pen-pushers.
It is quite possible that 'Hitler','Chaireman mao', 'Attila the hun' might have become trendy and daring. At the envelopes edge - and such like.
ReplyDeleteIt is quite likely that they know little of Adolf.
Ken, thanks for the Sparks vid. Back to the days of flares, Party 7s, Cortinas - not that I am old enough to remember such things first hand of course.
ReplyDeleteYes, Ron and Russell Mael were and still are (ahem) cool. Good to see the old LA nutters are still making music in these days of Simon Cowell mass produced pap.