Category: Inspiring

Heroes – Emily’s Brother

Emily Stevenson got in touch with a lovely post for our Heroes series. Around this time of year we choose to remember those who have fallen. For those in direct contact with the armed forces, remembrance day can be, and all too often is, every day. Take it away Emily.

When somebody asks me who my hero is, the answer is easy. My big brother, Tom, is a Surgeon Lieutenant in the Navy and has just returned from a 6 month tour in Afghanistan, following a 6 month tour of the Arabian Gulf last year. When I think about how brave he is, how many lives he’s saved and how much he risked, I can’t describe how proud and happy I am to be his sister. But I also think about the things he’s seen, how scared he’s been and how many people he’s seen that he couldn’t save.

And this asks a much bigger question. I think about the soldiers who are still out there, the families who are still waiting and the people who will be forever waiting for those who won’t come home. I’m one of the lucky ones who had their hero return home to them – and I know, there are many who aren’t so lucky.

So, I say to all the soldiers, medics and animals fighting for their country, you are my heroes. To all the wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, girlfriends, boyfriends and friends– the ones who support these people through everything and are there to help put them back together at the end of it, as my family will do with my brother, you are my heroes.  To all who have lost someone and still have the strength to carry on, proud of everything their loved one accomplished, you are my heroes.

To everybody fighting out there to save lives, everybody fighting at home to save the lives of those returning and everybody fighting to carry on with their lives, you are all my heroes. But as this is my story, I have to say to a big brother who kept his promise and came back safely, you are and always will be my hero.

 

Tools, Trust and Toilets

I and many others attended Neil Morrison and Matthew Hanwell’s social media session at #cipd11 this morning. Loads of good stuff being shared and a healthy dash of British toilet humour thrown in for good measure. Here’s a summary of what I heard and learned. I’ll focus on Neil’s thoughts for now and cover Matthew’s later today.

Numbers: Neil started showing us some huge numbers, in the hour to follow 5,000 blogs would be written, millions of tweets sent. These numbers show us that social media is not a passing trend.

Control: Can you control what goes on social media? No more than you can control what people think and say, so don’t try to.

Fear: maybe around loss of reputation? So an employee tweets a ‘bad day’ message and gets sacked for it. The story ends up in the Metro and the company are embarrassed. Who made the bigger mistake? Ever seen an acceptable newspaper use policy? No – so why do you need one for social media?

Fear: what about loss of productivity. To suggest this shows contempt for your employees. If you have a productivity issue, social media is not your problem.

Fear: IT security perhaps? Emails spread viruses much more than social media, perhaps you should ban email instead?

HR as the Sheriff: Your first job as sheriff is to make sure HR don’t write a stupid policy on social media. Your second job is to make sure IT don’t write an even stupider social media policy. Done that? Good – now throw away the badge.

Lead the way: HR best placed to lead a connected conversation between employees, customers and others.

Learning: Neil told us that social media is an invaluable part of his continuous professional development. It gives him ideas, a place to share concerns, do more thinking and learning, helps with business leads and recruitment.

Easy: Social media is easy and those who tell you otherwise are resitaint or trying to sell you consultancy. At Random House where Neil is Group HRD, their approach to social media is organic, or as Neil put it, ‘slightly disorganised’.

Tools Trust and Toilets: Random House allow staff access to all social tools. If they didn’t, staff would just disappear into the toilet and tweet from there! We’d rather trust our people, foster adult to adult relationships – trust beats control every time.

Courage: courage is knowing what not to fear. Social media can help you empower, educate, encourage and experiment.

Thought provoking stuff from a bright HR Director. I hope many in attendance at this busy session go on and follow Neil’s lead.

Heroes – that lady is my hero

Today’s superb guest post is by my good Twitter buddy Chris Fields. Chris is an HR professional, with a Master’s from The Ohio State University. He consults and blogs at Cost of Work and you can reach him on Twitter and LinkedIn too. Chris – it’s a pleasure to have you here all the way from the US of A – the floor is yours:

That Lady Is My Hero

While online, I saw bits of a conversation from my friend Doug Shaw, he mentioned something about an open invitation to guest post on his blog and the subject matter is heroes. I’m always down to contribute to a blog, especially if I like the person and the blog. Doug has been swell to me for a long time. Now it was just a matter of doing something interesting.

I like to stir the pot a bit but this time the only hero that I could think of was a relative. That’s been done to death. Relatives are easy targets because you learn from them since you’re around them and so on and so forth.  But my mind would not shake this one and here’s why.

Not only is one of my biggest heroes a blood relative, she’s an inspiration of growth and sustainability. She dropped out of school in the 6th grade to work and help her mom & dad. Then she became a teenage parent. Her parents didn’t approve at all. She didn’t give up though. Turns out she was a really good cook. She would cook and clean the homes of the rich and wealthy. She made a decent living. One day someone she worked for asked her to cook for a dinner party. She did, and they loved it.

She continued to cook for families, parties and events and that blossomed into a small catering company. Armed with a 6th grade education, she began to carve out a nice little niche for herself but she knew in order to get better and be competitive she had to learn how to cook and bake more sophisticated dishes. So she went to cooking school. Her expertise spread throughout the city of Memphis. At her busiest time, the holiday season, she’d have 2-3 events a day; she’d cook anything from a full Kosher menu to a simple Christmas cake. As young kids and teens, we would help her prepare food, load the car and clean.

I remember looking out the window all night waiting for the headlights of her car to pull up in the driveway. And when she finally arrived well after midnight, she would be dog tired. Her white serving dress would be strained with sauces, drinks and other foods. We’d unload the car, look for any good left overs and do it all again. She worked hard for the money and she did well. She would always tell me “You have to work harder for yourself than you do when for someone else.” This from a lady that didn’t make it to high school. I keep mentioning that because I have 2 degrees (B.S. &Master’s) and she is still smarter than I am and more business savvy. The things she did instinctively, I had to learn in a university.

Did I mention she was my grandmother?  She passed away Oct. 2004. She’s always been my hero not ONLY because she’s was an awesome granny but the example of leadership, and wisdom she gave me. She taught me how to be a professional. That’s why that lady’s my hero.