Business Clinic
HR & RECRUITMENT
LISA GILLESPIE Head of Learning and Development Make UK Lisa has been in the HR industry for 25 years in a number of roles. She holds qualifications in law, a post-graduate diploma in HRM, philosophy, psychology and creative writing. In addition she qualified as a practitioner in PRINCE 2 and neurolinguistic programming.
www.MakeUK.org |
lgillespie@makeuk.org
And now for something completely different
AS I write we are (probably) about to be thrown into lockdown. I have been saying for days that this period in our lives will be a leveller; a time when nothing else is ever quite going to be the same going forward.
From an HR point of view I am being asked questions which, even for a seasoned veteran like myself, are new territory and I am suddenly missing the mentor I had in my early days as an employment law and HR adviser. He died three years ago but his calm and intelligent way of unpicking new laws and legal conundrums lives on in the people he mentored.
So over the past few days, as I have pulled with my colleagues to support and advise companies affected by this new global challenge, I have constantly drawn on what I learned from him, mainly that I won’t always have the answers straightaway, but must keep riding the storm, be creative and have the endgame in sight. And, above anything else, be compassionate and fair. Thanks Tony.
For all of us, we need to ask what is the core, over-arching problem? For most businesses it will be their fundamental existence, their ability to get through this, to keep going and to try to protect their biggest investment – their people- so we can emerge slightly battered, a bit bruised but able to pick up and carry on.
52
I’ve also been leading the charge on ‘what about after coronavirus?’ We aren’t likely to get it at the same time. Current figures suggest that over 90,000 have already recovered and afterwards are not expected to get it again or carry it. So I’m thinking about what we do in a few weeks’ time when we can mobilise these people and start re-cranking the economy.
I’m also thinking about people who have had lives, families, careers and homes lost in conflict in the many years leading up to this and may be in refugee camps with the virus raging through and how just staying in for a month is nothing at all compared to what some others have already lost.
And then I think how lucky we are that almost none of us will go through this alone. Because we won’t be alone. We have social media, our work and social networks, family and oodles of digital diversions from the present challenges our own company may present.
Then also I think we have our histories. I have been renovating my loft which meant sorting through boxes of stuff I put up there 20 years ago; boxes which have probably followed me for a good 10 years before they even managed to get put in my loft. In sorting through them I have found letters, my cartoon drawings, notebooks and photographs, and realised that whilst the world is on pause and I
I will appreciate that for around 30 years, life didn’t give me much time to nurture all those relationships and dust off those stories."
may have little physical contact with my nearest and dearest, I have hundreds of folks living in the pages of those notebooks, letters, photographs and everything else that is now crammed into one single box. And what shall I do? I shall read them, I shall reconnect with some of them (online) and I will appreciate that for around 30 years, life didn’t give me much time to nurture all those relationships and dust off those stories.
When we emerge (and I’m imagining it will be like some Monty Python ‘The Bug’-style animated butterflies) we will be stronger, slightly stir-crazy but also ready for something completely different, and very much better.
We’ll get through this.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68
