Deep expertise

It's going to be small but good. That seems to be the message from the BBC's HR Director Valerie Hughes D'Aeth, as she seeks to cajole her extremely-reluctant London staff to new horizons in Birmingham. With all the plain-speaking of industry experience, the work of this new Centre of Expertise, in the wide open spaces of The Mailbox, is described thus, in a series of new job ads

The COE function provides deep expertise and thought leadership in order to develop pan BBC frameworks and policies that enable the achievement of our organisational strategy and objectives. Using internal and external insight, they will develop leading edge tools that can be deployed that increase engagement, performance and ultimately, value for our audiences.

The three vacancies are for HR Director Talent Management, HR Director Total Reward & Employee Relations, and Senior HR Business Partner, Resourcing - so insiders can probably work out who's turned down a move to Brum.

The last job is graded not-quite-Senior-Management Band 11, which is confusing. The first two are quoted as Band 4/GSM, which may excite union negotiators and nerds like me, because it looks brand new.  Has Val got a revised pay and grading structure in her grab-bag ?

Wiki offers a range of possibilities for the GSM acronym. Global System for Mobile Communications makes no sense; Garrison Sergeant Major is possible; Game Set and Match is appealing.  Further contributions welcome...