Dreams of White Tiles . . .

10/12/2004

以人 。 。 。

Filed under: Uncategorized — Roddy @ 8:46 pm

为体现“以人为本”的文化精神,保障职工身心健康,结合公司实际情况,公司决定每个工作日下午3:30-4:00为“茶歇”(休息)时间,在会议室备有茶水、咖啡。

I’m always interested to see just how many grand and lofty concepts can be called on to justify the simplest of endeavours.

This starts off with ‘yi ren wei ben’ which is a soundbite from Chinese President Hu Jintao, a literal translation would be something like ‘with people as root’ – basically, put people first, or if you want an adjective, people-centered. I’ve seen it translated as ‘humanism’ and ‘personalism’ among others. I don’t think it amounts to much more than ‘think about people when you do stuff’ which is a hard thing to argue with. At any rate it’s better than the important three whatevers and is our first justification.

The next makes reference to the mental and physical health of employees. This is, of course, something I am all in favour of. The mentally and physically healthier I am, the better. I start to wonder how they will help me in this respect. Massages? Therapy?

Finally, we ‘take into consideration the company’s actual situation’. This is, also, hard to take issue with. After all, we don’t want to overstretch ourselves and send the HR department off to eliminate global conflict, or house the city’s entire homeless population in the storage room – after all, where would we keep the photocopier paper? We must work within our limitations.

So what people-centered, mentally and physically beneficial activity does the company’s actual situation permit?

Tea and coffee will be served in the meeting room between 3.30 and 4pm daily.

I’m not unused to reading Chinese officialese, but I have to admit, after all that build-up, I was hoping for a little more . . .

2 Comments »

  1. 這已經很好了。And is nobody going to use the conference room during 3:30 pm and 4:00 pm? Everyday?

    Comment by skylee — 10/12/2004 @ 9:14 pm

  2. Skylee, what are you planning to do in the conference room??? I’d skip a cup of free coffee to find out…

    Comment by Jamie — 10/13/2004 @ 4:16 am

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