Taking my usual journey into town (London) I sat next to an individual who was quite obviously distressed. Over the phone and despite knowing he was on a train, his employer gave him the news that he had to make a choice there and then about a relocation package.
It transpired later that the company had just merged with another and he was offered several jobs, all of which were a fair way from his home, meaning that he needed to relocate his family. As he has two teenage children aged 15 and 17, he felt that he would have to decline all such offers in order to prioritise the needs of his children.
This was a dreadful conversation to overhear and I apologise for not tuning out. But it was a distressing demonstration of how not to deal with a situation in the right way; firstly that the HR department chose to talk to him on a train with no privacy and, secondly, that it insisted that he made a decision there and then. I and another passenger agreed after he’d left the train that the company’s behavior was totally unacceptable. What made the situation considerably worse was that, from his responses and his body language, it was clear that this individual was made to feel inadequate for choosing to put his family needs first.
In reading Roger Steare’s book, Ethicability: How to Decide What’s Right and Find the Courage to Do it, I realised that we can lose some basis caring fundamentals in the way we deal with situations. What would have been the right thing to do in this situation?
I put myself in the train passenger’s shoes and immediately felt his distress and then put myself in the employer’s shoes. I rummaged around to find a rational justification for this behavior, but couldn’t find an element where the employer would be in the right. The lack of care in dealing with this situation would put me off ever working for the firm. Lucky for them I didn’t find out who they were.
But it did illustrate that some businesses need to change the way they see their employees, not as a commodity they can deploy wherever they like but a human resource that needs to be valued and nurtured in order to be able to thrive in the home and then at work. A happy family man or woman is often a happy worker, so surely the potential for a better system should be reviewed. Perhaps said company needs a workshop with Roger Steare!
(later)
I’m on my way home now to appreciate the times that my husband and I put our boys first. A good lesson to be reminded of!
I think I can trump that. I was recently in a hotel lobby enjoying the coffee and WiFi while a pair of arrogant, patronising HR types lectured a middle manager on his poor management style. They did so in great detail, outlining not only his failings but also the problems he was having with a particular (named) subordinate – and HIS failings. To do all of this in public – in a hotel lobby – would have been poor management in any context, but when you add in the fact that he was a middle manage at the hotel, on duty, with other members of staff working in the lobby…
Thank you for your story, Guy. It’s quite astonishing how insensitive some people can be. And it’s particularly galling when they come from HR. Roger Stears’ MoralDNA test at https://profile.moraldna.org/user/register.php might give them a clue as to their suitability.
The caveat that accompanies the test says, “the test results and report are for personal education purposes only. They are not designed to be relied on as a methodology for assessing the character of any individual and should not be used as such in any circumstances.”
Perhaps you or other readers of this comment might like to learn their character type, and “who they are” and “who they are at work”. The test takes about ten minutes and you get a six page report. Our own small team includes an Angel, a Philosopher, a Guardian and Teacher. We only need a Judge and an Enforcer and we have the full set.
You do have to provide a few personal details but you can dodge the politics and religion one.
Why not have a bash? And let us know what you think.
It couldn’t make its mind up about me. I’m probably a Judge, but possibly and Philosopher and definitely a Skeptic of half-baked psychometric horoscopes…
(Actually, what I found disturbing about this sort of thing when I studied them for my MBA was not so much the flimsy science behind most of them – or the fact that you can do them three times in a row and get different results – it was the fact that our friends in HR make decisions that affect peoples’ lives based on stuff like this even – and I’ve had this conversation with a couple of them – the survey results apparently contradict what they thought they knew about people they’d worked closely with for years!)
I suspect that Judge and Skeptic are natural bedfellows
It’s probably worth pointing out that the version mentioned in this blog is the ‘public’ version. A professional version for use by employers is at http://www.moraldna.org/employer-offering/
To help draw your own conclusions about Professor Roger Steare, you can learn more here: http://www.thecorporatephilosopher.org/about-roger-steare/
And, if anyone wants to dig deeper into Moral DNA, you can get “Who’s doing the right thing? – ethicability® Moral DNA Report” at http://www.citizenrenaissance.com/wp-content/uploads/ethicability-moral-dna-report-2008.pdf
This report was promoted by Times Online, supported by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and Cass Business School (where Steare is Visiting Professor of Organisational Ethics, and Corporate Philosopher in Residence).