THIS time last week I was shouting down a borrowed telephone at some poor BT employee, wanting to know why my own line didn’t work, and why it had taken me 30 minutes to find a human to talk to.

“Is this the complaints department?” I ask. “No, this is the Conflict Resolution Team,” she replies. “Does that mean you deal with complaints,” I persist. “We have responsibility for conflicts within the repair function.”

The Change People had been at work. Now, being willing to embrace change is a healthy thing — people who don’t tend to become embittered and alienated.

So why are more of us reporting stress, conflict and harassment caused by change at work? A new survey of 600 managers by the executive educators, Roffey Park, reports soaring levels of change-related frustration. It concludes that firms are very good at starting off the changes needed to stay competitive. Hooray for British industry. Sadly, they are rotten at keeping it under control and learning from the results.

If you work for BT, this means that some top-level management programme to review and improve work has deteriorated on its journey down the hierarchy to the point where some poor functionary has to parrot empty words such as team, resolution and function. Rather than deal with complaints (negative, dull) the Change People’s cheap linguistic rebranding has created a world where conflicts get resolved (engaged, positive) even if the service doesn’t improve. Sadly customers are seldom convinced, and people start shouting.

This morning, while trying to board my train I had to skirt round a shamble of idling Train Environment Teamworkers. Yes, we should all give innovation a hug, be dynamic, stick with the programme. But this is turning me into the man who sighs: “I wish they still had cleaners on the railway.”

Wrong sort of change.

JOHN NAISH

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