career literacy
The Thinking Rethink
INCREASING DEMANDS ON HR PROFESSIONALS MEANS IT’S MORE IMPORTANT
THAN EVER TO SET ASIDE SOME TIME TO DISCONNECT AND REFLECT
It is getting worse and worse. It’s become a modern day form of
insanity. The freneticism. The peripatetic state of HR.
You run from one meeting to the next without a nanosecond
to spare. There’s a compensation review, followed by hashing
out a performance improvement plan with a director. Then there
is a sub-committee meeting that is assessing vendors for your
organization’s new recognition platform that morphs into one of
fifteen bi-weekly one-on-one team member sessions. Phew! What
a morning.
Now it’s lunch.
Instead of going for a relaxing walk, catching up with col-leagues
over a nice meal or hitting the gym to get those endorphins
pumping, you bury yourself in emails, texts, direct messages and
aimlessly perusing your social media streams. “Oh look, there are
fifty Instagram photos I haven’t seen yet,” you murmur to yourself.
You’re now back from being sidetracked by “Cats of Instagram”
and whatever it is the Kardashian’s do for a living. Suddenly you
recognize that there are so many emails, it’s impossible to reply to
them all over lunch. You promise yourself to finish them during the
evening. You’re supposed to be at yoga with a friend, but it’s just
going to have to wait. Again. Downward dog pose; who needs it.
The afternoon begins, and there are four more meetings.
Thankfully the first two are conference calls. You put your head-set
on, hit the mute button on the phone and start working on that
report due two days from now. There is no other time in which to
analyze and then write your response, so it’s best to multitask. No
one will ever know.
Except for about 20 minutes into the first conference call
meeting, you think you hear your name. “Oh no,” you think to
yourself. “Was that a question directed at me about next quarter’s
hiring plan?”
There is dead silence on the phone. Giving in to the guilt, you
fess up. “Umm, sorry everyone, I didn’t hear the question. Bad con-nection.”
You tell another white fib. “There must be a dead spot
with my mobile phone. Can you repeat the question please?”
You make it through the rest of the day without causing injury
to yourself. After the commute home, making dinner and plop-ping
yourself in front of the television, you open up your laptop.
By Dan Pontefract
SETTING ASIDE TIME TO
REFLECT WILL ALLOW
HR PROFESSIONALS
NOT ONLY TO GET
ORGANIZED, BUT TO
PONDER, TO DREAM
AND TO IDEATE.
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HRPROFESSIONALNOW.CA ❚ SEPTEMBER 2018 ❚ 47
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