Equality: consultant culture

I stumbled across This Telegraph story when having a coffee at everyone's least favourite coffee-shop (that we dare not speak its name).

The story is shocking and salacious, but I was shocked for more reasons than obvious grossily inappropriate behaviour the Telegraph journalist focused on...

Let's start with the smut:

Rachel Kelly, 38, said that she was bullied into taking a client to a Spearmint Rhino lap-dancing club by her line manager Danny Whelan.

After a dinner at London's Oxo Tower restaurant, Mr Whelan allegedly told the £100,000-a-year Miss Kelly that it was "unacceptable" for her to go home, she said.

...

She claimed that he told her that her job with IDPP Consulting, a leading IT recruitment agency, required her to entertain clients at lap-dancing clubs to "get a competitive advantage" over rivals.

Miss Kelly told London South employment tribunal how another "overly flirtatious" client groped her in the back of a taxi after she warned Mr Whelan not to leave her alone with him.

This is really gross and rather shocking, I'm no prude and whilst I think in private, as long as peoples sex lives are constentual and do not cause harm then to me, it is a private matter.

However this story isn't just shocking because of the obviously inappropriate and very nasty behaviour at work, it also highlights how excessive the "consultant culture" has become. It is not just that they are mixing a macho culture of exploitive sex and work , it that huge sums of money and being thrown at the "business consultants" - people of dubious morals.

I don't believe that the consultants have skills the rest of the workforce don't, I perceive a very worrying increasing degree of nepotism - it is who you know and fad business fashions which is driving this greedy industry. The constant need to justify the extract added-value... unfortunately the way businesses work, is that no one is around 5, 10 or 15 years later to see the real long term value-added.

Now everything has been outsourced and slice and diced into multiple contracts, we live in a world where spin and contract management dominate, so if you are well connected then you can name your price.. this is the culture which has lead to lap-dancing being a common business expense.

The Telegraph article focuses on the huge sums of money at stake here:

Miss Kelly, of Isleworth, Middlesex, is suing IDPP Consulting and Mr Whelan for sexual harassment as well as claiming victimisation and constructive dismissal.

She is believed to be demanding in the region of £175,000 in compensation for lost earnings and hurt feelings.

IDPP has over 400 staff at offices throughout Europe and a turnover of £40 million from around 100 clients, including the likes of IBM and Accenture.

This all reminds of funny Radio 2 phone in I heard last year, it was on the theme of whether city financiers should be able to use corporate expense accounts for lap-dancing? One classic public-school type, pipe up that we has to accept this sort of behaviour to compete in an international market, apparently the oriental clients expect to be entertained in this way. The inference being that English public schoolboys don't really enjoy lap-dancing and are only going along for the sake of the company.. lol

macho |ˈmä ch ō|

adjective

showing aggressive pride in one's masculinity : the big macho tough guy.

noun ( pl. -chos)

a man who is aggressively proud of his masculinity.

• machismo.

ORIGIN 1920s: Mexican Spanish, ‘masculine or vigorous,’ from Latin masculus.

nepotism |ˈnepəˌtizəm|

noun

the practice among those with power or influence of favoring relatives or friends, esp. by giving them jobs.

DERIVATIVES

nepotist |ˈnɛpətəst| noun

nepotistic |ˌnepəˈtistik| |ˈnɛpəˈtɪstɪk| |-ˈtɪstɪk| adjective

ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: from French népotisme, from Italian nepotismo, from nipote ‘nephew’ (with reference to privileges bestowed on the “nephews” of popes, who were in many cases their illegitimate sons).