Archive for the ‘Responsibility’ Category
- In: Development | HR | Responsibility
- 11 Comments
Day 3 of my blogging experiment and this is a topic that has got me thinking. I find to hard to disagree with the overall statement that this blog is based on: to my mind, an individual should always be accountable for their own career development and make the decisions that are right for them. Who looks after your career if not yourself?
But it’s also true that none of us operate in isolation. And if we examine this more closely, we may find that there are other stakeholders involved for each of us. These may be family or friends, colleagues or mentors…individuals whose opinions we trust and listen to. Charlie Judy (@HRFishbowl) wrote a great article on ensuring that you develop your own personal board of directors – a hand-selected group of trusted advisors with diverse perspectives dedicated to furthering your career. So, just because we take personal accountability for our own careers, it does not mean that others will not help you look after and nurture it.
What of an organisation’s responsibility towards its staff? How much of a role does it and should it play in helping individuals to further and develop their careers? Succession planning, skills development and employee retention are all good reasons why companies should take an active stakeholder role in the careers of their staff, however I suspect that whether the individual feels invested in, valued and listened to in this way varies enormously by organisation and also potentially by sector.
The only person that really looks after your career is yourself? On face-value perhaps, but there is much food for thought here in how we manage our own careers and also how our organisations provide a supportive environment for learning and development.
I would love to hear what you think.
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This post is the third of my blogging experiment, where all of the post topics have been generated by others and there has been voting taking place on which topic I should blog on each day. If you haven’t voted for a topic yet, please do – I will be tackling the topic with the most votes every day for the remainder of this week. In the event of tie-break votes, I will make the final choice between the two most popular myself 
My Summer Homework
Posted on: August 28, 2011
- In: Development | Family | Feedback | Flexible Working | HR | Leadership | Responsibility
- 6 Comments
- Autonomy
Towards the end of our camping holiday, once of my daughters told me how much she had enjoyed being more independent and doing more things for herself whilst we had been away. Just little activities like going to the playground within the campsite on her own, doing small jobs and walking from the bathroom back to the tent on her own. She asked me about how she could be more independent within our home environment and between us we came up with some suggestions which we have been putting into practice since. My point is simply this; that we all love and need some degree of autonomy to feel valued and to create a sense of achievement, whatever age we are.
- Delegation
Very easy to talk about, harder sometimes to do and maintain. I have found that getting my children to do things that I have usually done for them generally takes many times longer (at least at first) and requires no small degree of patience on my part. I am determined to stick with it though and have been encouraging them to do a task for themself, checking it over once they confirm that they think it is done and then giving them feedback about what is right and what still needs to be improved. And then the hard bit (when you’re as impatient as I can sometimes be!) – giving them the opportunity to complete the rest of the activity and starting the whole feedback loop again. It’s actually working quite well and they are definitely improving and learning new skills already…and I know I am putting into practice something that I undoubtedly need to do more of at work.
- Doing things that scare you moves you forwards
Swimming lessons have always been a challenge, given that my children hate getting their faces wet or splashed at all. Last week during their regular weekly lesson, the instructor encouraged all of the children individually to dip their heads completely under the water. I was amazed when she gained agreement from each of my daughters in turn that she would fully immerse them in the water and that both of them allowed her to do this. Not only this, but that they didn’t cry or wail afterwards…even though they did look a bit shocked at themselves and the whole experience! They trusted her, as I did; she understood their progress well enough to perceive that they were perhaps ready for a step forward in their development. And in doing something that they had been truly scared of, my daughters gained a new confidence and took a huge step forwards in their development.
- Learning
Two lessons here really. The first is that when we stop learning, we can forget things very quickly – when one of my daughters told me after a couple of weeks of the school holiday that she couldn’t remember how to spell our surname, I realised quite why the teacher had asked the parents to continue with some reading, writing and number work over the holidays!
We all learn better when we are doing something in an enjoyable way and when there are rewards and recognition associated with it. I have been doing some mathletics work with both my children over the summer, essentially fun maths-based games and activities that you complete on the computer. For every set of ten questions a child completes, they earn credits which they can either save up or spend on ‘buying’ a wide range accessories for their online avatar. This, plus a number of other ingenious ways of providing reward and recognition within the work, is amazingly effective in increasing motivation and interest. Now I just need to work out how we can implement some of this in the workplace!
- Feedback and praise
Feedback is fairly meaningless unless it is linked to a specific achievement. But having two children of the same age can make this quite tricky when they achieve things at different rates and particularly when one twin seems to be ahead of the other in many situations, albeit temporarily. When one of my daughters managed to swim backstroke on her own (with the aid of a float) for the first time, I really praised her….and then had to deal with the tears of my other daughter, who felt I was being unfair in praising her sister more than her. Cue much explanation and reassurance, more tears and finally a smile, when I promised I would be just as proud of her when she managed to do it (which she did the very next day!).
As far as I can see, although it can be tough at times, we have to be honest about achievements, praise appropriately and specifically for them, but also make sure we give positive feedback for progress and effort across a wide range of different scenarios, so that everyone has the chance to be included in praise and recognition…we all need some positive feedback on the things that we are good at, at home or at work.
- The constant of leadership
Regardless of how relaxed we are over the holidays, how much fun we have and whether we are at home or away, I’m always (rightly!) in a position of responsibility for my children. In the same way, regardless of the strength of relationships with my colleagues and any ongoing internal or external factors, I remain accountable for the HR activity in my division. Leadership is a constant and consistent part of the role…both when we do and when we don’t feel like it ;).
So that’s my learning over the summer, or my homework. I’d love to know what yours has been!
The Blank CV
Posted on: May 18, 2011
- In: Community | HR | Recruitment | Responsibility | Values
- 2 Comments
Last week the Prince’s Trust came to give a presentation to Informa’s divisional HR directors and corporate social responsibility committee, as we have recently become a patron of their organisation. It was an inspiring and interactive discussion with lots of ideas of how individuals and companies can get involved and make a difference.
Let us never become immune to the shocking statistics –
- around 2 million young people (16-24 year olds) in the UK are growing up in unemployed households, in many cases second, third or even fourth generation unemployed
- 10% of young people leave school in the UK with absolutely nothing: no qualifications, no work experience, little if anything in the way of interests, hobbies or skills…their CV is blank and their self-worth and sense of value negligible at best
- Youth unemployment costs the UK £22m every week
The Prince’s Trust has helped over 600,000 young people since it was set up in 1976 and focuses on providing real support to those who have under-achieved at school, are long-term unemployed, have been in trouble with the law or have grown up in care.
They have a huge range of initiatives for companies and individuals to get involved with…if you want to learn more please do check out their website.
I can only imagine how inaccessible the world of work must seem when your CV is truly blank…with our collective HR, business and recruitment expertise, I would sincerely hope we can start to make a tangible difference.
- In: Confidence | Flexible Working | Gender | Responsibility | Values
- 2 Comments
Today’s post was going to be all about the Unconference. And there definitely will be a post about that soon, once I have reflected a little more on it.
Today though, something else happened which really made me think.
I am very lucky in that I don’t feel guilty about being a working mum. I don’t judge anyone for their working arrangements, as life is more than tough enough already balancing home, work, life and children. It struck me today though how precarious the guilt-free state is and how it can quite easily be wobbled by very minor things.
Until my children went to school, I worked three days a week. Once they had completed their first term and my role at work increased, I started doing four days during term-time, in effect when they are at school. From a purely selfish point of view it would be easier for me to have four full days at work and one day completely off, but I like the fact that my extra hours don’t really affect my children and that they don’t notice I am now working more. They would most certainly mind if I started doing four full days, so the current arrangement works well and enables me to balance both, albeit that I have to do a quick switch from one ‘mode’ to the other when I dash out to pick them up at home time.
Two things have come up today that have shaken my belief in my convenient working pattern and my guilt-free balancing act. Firstly the fact that due to the various bank holidays, I dropped my children off this morning for the first time in over a week and because of the Easter holidays, its only the second time in about a month. Many of the mums who don’t work were delighted to see me, but also made it clear that we hadn’t seen each other for ages, because I hadn’t been around. Ouch – that was a pang of guilt you just heard, however illogical I know it to be.
The second thing that is testing my lack of working mums’ guilt is a school trip that has come up: one of my daughters is going on Monday next week, the other on Friday and they are after quite a lot of parent helpers. I have previously helped (pre-Christmas) in my Friday daughter’s class, so if I went with either of them, it ought to be on the Monday. But I am working then, so I have said as it currently stands that I can’t help. And I feel bad.
None of this matters much at the end of the day. I’ll assuage the temporary pang of guilt by asking at the end of today whether the Monday trip has sufficient parent helpers: if they don’t then I’ll take the day off and do my bit. But it has reminded me that all working mums and perhaps all working parents who have the main duty of childcare are very prone to an attack of working parent guilt, usually when we least expect it.
Flexible working, balancing home, work, life and kids is not easy. I’d love to hear about your experiences and how and whether you keep those pangs of guilt at bay, or if you just learn to live with them ;).
Push The Button!
Posted on: March 6, 2011
- In: Motivation | Responsibility | Values
- 11 Comments
How many ways do you make things hard on yourself? What pushes your buttons to make you feel that the responsibility for certain things is yours and yours alone?
So, this may be the most blindingly obvious post I’ve ever written, but I’m not sure I mind much ;). Since writing about my ‘bloggers rut’ on Thursday, I have received so many supportive and genuinely helpful comments, that my heart feels about ten times lighter and creative inspiration is flowing once again. All of the comments have been hugely helpful and the ones that have resonated with me most deeply are the advice that I write for me alone and that I should not feel compelled to blog without inspiration or set myself ‘rules’ to stick to. Without realising it, I had been making things very hard on myself!
I have had a number of other realisations over this weekend about the fact that I tend to insist on taking sole responsibility for things, thereby making myself rather hard to help when I am under pressure. Both at home and work this can be equally true.
So this afternoon, when Mr C offered to help with the housework, instead of saying no, I accepted (I would love to say gracefully but it wasn’t really!). And we tried something different – he and our girls tidied, I cleaned. I am now the sum total of 40p poorer, as small bribes have a transformational effect on a 5 year olds efforts, but wow! – what a difference! So much quicker, more fun and much more achievable – a clean and tidy house, ready to start the new week. It won’t stay that way for long, but that really isn’t the point.
Also our daughters are starting swimming lessons next week and Mr C will be regularly taking them…the little things make a huge difference to creating more time.
I am my own worst enemy as I know I can be hard to help and thereby put extra pressure on myself. But I am quite inspired to explore this more in a work context and accept help and support when offered there too…and push that ‘stop’ button, when I need to!
What do you make hard on yourself? What buttons do you need to push to change things for the better? I’d love to know!
The HR Juggler 