Humanity Set

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Kindness is one of the most important and fascinating qualities of our human experience.

It is gratifying to watch as humans share their love, generosity and good nature. It is sad that this quality seems to be most evident on our planet only when there is a crisis. That is when people easily reach out to one another with no barriers to race or color or religion. It is interesting that this quality lies dormant for much of our humanity other than at those times. It is as if kindness is to be used on certain occasions like an outfit that you wear on Sunday only. During the crisis it emerges in full force. As soon as the crisis is over many of these same people go back to being a person that is full of prejudice, anger and resentment.

How and why humanity can activate kindness at will and then conveniently put it away is a mystery. What is it about a crisis situation that awakens the kindness and compassion within us? It may be that when the crisis occurs whether it is physical, mental, emotional, financial or some universal catastrophe, it is an opportunity for humanity to awaken to its true nature which has kindness and compassion fully integrated. It is after the crisis is over that humanity must continue to pay attention and be aware of the importance of human kindness.

Tolerance, acceptance and understanding of each other are all primary factors for living together on our very fragile Earth planet. Centuries of culture has created many different facets of civilization. We can be living next door to someone whose cultural background is completely opposite of our own. Every person has an obligation to be kind and to accept that we are all diverse with a different set of values and a different cultural background. All we are being asked to do is respect the differences and go from there. Most of humanity does strive to live peacefully with others and are drawn to areas where they can feel comfortable with their neighbors. As much as it is natural for people to want to live with kindred spirits and create a safe and peaceful home base for themselves and their family, this will not always be possible going forward. As the world's population continues to escalate and we become more globally connected, humanity will be living much closer and with different cultures and nationalities. First, second and third world countries are coming together and all of them wanting freedom and the good life. Because of this phenomenon, compassion and human kindness are becoming very necessary qualities for our planet to continue to exist with peace and harmony. Each person must take that spiritual aspect of themselves that emerges when they join hands in a religious service on Sunday and bring that into their lives Monday through Saturday. It is not enough to sing out "let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me" at our church service and then be opinionated, angry and resentful for the rest of the week. It is not enough to be kind only when our planet is experiencing a crisis. Every day there is a crisis somewhere and human kindness is the antidote. Let our compassion and human kindness show through in all that we think, say and do.

Strategic Human Resource Management

Calling in the Professionals
When the National Care Standards Commission (NCSC) was set up in 2002 it called in a number of human resource specialists to help. The NCSC is part of the Government's modernisation agenda to promote and protect the well-being of users of regulated services such as residential nursing homes, private hospitals and boarding schools. It also covers services that weren't previously regulated, including laser clinics and private and voluntary hospitals. In the past these institutions were regulated by different local and health authorities.

The NCSC essentially brought together some 1800 staff from 230 employers into one umbrella organisation. One of these Human Resources specialists was 37-year old Charlotte Grover, a human resources professional with a background in blue chip companies including Unilever, Toyota and Xerox. In 2001 Grover set up her own HR consultancy, wishing for more job flexibility and to be able to make use of the experience gained from working in a range of HR roles during her 15 years in the profession. The NCSC was her first assignment.

Working to establish the NCSC certainly provided a substantial challenge, but Grover has never been fazed by a blank sheet of paper. She was initially going to be employed for a six-week interim assignment, but this soon turned into a year-long exercise, with Grover reporting directly to the East Midlands regional director Tony Frayer and with a professional reporting line through to Clare Curran, the HR Director based in the head office in Newcastle. For the first six months Grover was responsible for developing all the HR services within the Trent Region, helping to establish all new services covering Northampton, Nottingham, Leicester and Derby. Once a permanent HR manager was appointed to this post, Grover was asked to take on the exciting challenge of helping to develop a new reward structure, competency framework, and performance management scheme.

Because the NCSC was new, everything was in start-up mode. There were some draft methodologies covering, for instance, the way to inspect a residential home, but everything was incomplete: even the Newcastle headquarters had a skeletal staff - and HR was the last function to be established. HR support was crucial as many staff had moved across from their former local and health authority employers, so at a regional level the HR support provided by Grover had to be 'spot on'. She was responsible for supporting seven area managers in the East Midlands region, each with around 40 professional and administrative staff, so she had to set up HR systems based upon national policy. "The critical bit was getting the manpower plan sorted out early on, as that gave us a framework and structure," she says. "When we started we didn't even know the names of everyone who worked in the region and many of them didn't have contracts."

She embarked on a major recruitment drive early on: one of the first challenges was to hire 20 healthcare professionals as inspectors - and they don't grow on trees. She also spent many hours managing the uncertainty of staff, many of whom came from very structured backgrounds. The balance of her time was spent handling adhoc HR issues like maternity, grievances, discipline, absence and capability - with no policies and procedures to guide her. "I drew on my knowledge and experience and managed every new situation by adopting best practice," she says. "Not only did we have to comply with the law, we also had to keep the unions involved and satisfied that we were proceeding correctly in the absence of policies and procedures."

Once the permanent regional HR manager was in place, Grover took on her next challenge: to assist in the development of a new pay structure for NCSC that was linked to performance in the job and a competency framework. She researched other public and private sector organisations, ran focus groups with staff and trade unions to understand their expectations and experiences, met regularly with Clare Curran and her team, to discuss progress and possible options, and drafted papers and recommendations.

At the end of the three-month process the organisation decided not to implement the recommendations on the grounds that the NCSC is going to be replaced by two new organisations in April 2004 and it was felt the structural overhaul required to implement the proposed new reward structure would merely add to the sense of uncertainty and confusion. "It was a pragmatic solution," says Grover, "but we needed to do the research to arrive at that decision." The work did importantly highlight the need for a new appraisal and development system, and she and Curran spent the next few weeks developing the 'Individual Contribution Review Scheme' - or ICR - which sets short-term objectives and assesses individuals' contribution in the job and identifies their training and development needs.

In turn, this work led to the realisation that staff weren't actually sure what their jobs were, and so Grover spent the next three months - to April This Year - redrafting all the job descriptions too. The ICR and job descriptions were presented to management for consultation in May this year, and as Grover comments: "Once they are agreed, and people know what their jobs are and how they will be measured, the way they are managed will improve enormously."

Previously published on the Impact Executives website – read the original article about Strategic Human Resource Management.

About the Author

I am currently a Director of Impact Executives which is a Global Interim Management provider (part of the Harvey Nash Group) and in this role I am at the frontline of dealing with senior clients and candidates across a wide range of change, HR and resourcing issues. I have extensive commercial experience gained through general management and board roles within both Plc's and also through running my own businesses. I have over 18 years international experience of providing cross-functional resourcing solutions to both global businesses and start-ups. I specialise in the following sectors: Technology, Media, Telecommunications, Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology, and Local Authorities. Visit my blog at http://www.impactexecutives.com/journal/clivesexton or the Impact Executives website at www.impactexecutives.com.

What has this endeavour set out to acheive?

Is it set out to further humanity in general? If so what are the guide lines if any?

Read Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand really does a good job in explaining how anyone who sets his life goal and improving something in ways for the betterment of humanity almost always fails.

If my world goal is to set up a social entrepreneurship which helps others, then my life goal is to be happy since I'm confident that I've done something for the world and cannot be blamed for being a lazy bum nor as someone who did not fulfill his potential. If my world goal is to make people happy as a clown or comedian, then my life goal is to be successful since I need to be realistically secure before I can go out and entertain people for a living.

Changes in Habitat
Plenty of new things are happening at Habitat for Humanity Telluride Region, not the least of which is the board now has enough money to complete the second and third of six homes in Norwood.

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