Josh Bersin is one of the foremost thinkers of HR in the contemporary world. Having followed him from his HR analyst days, through his firm's acquisition by Deloitte, and now to his newest avatar with the Bersin Academy, whatever Josh thinks about the future of HR, you can be sure that global CHROs will pay attention/
Which is why his article yesterday on "Our new role: Bringing Kindness to Work" made me sit up and take notice.
As Josh says:
Which is why his article yesterday on "Our new role: Bringing Kindness to Work" made me sit up and take notice.
As Josh says:
People want meaningful jobs, fair pay, transparency, and growth. But most of all, they want kindness. Kindness? What role does that play in a business? It turns out kindness at work has now become fundamental. While inclusion, fair pay, and development remain important, kindness and connection are now essential.
the most important things in our lives are compassion, empathy, forgiveness, gratitude, mindfulness, social connection, and awe. These are all human issues, and all revolve around kindness. For me, it was a wake-up call. After two decades of meeting with hundreds of companies, I realized I had never seen these words in company mission statements, competency models or leadership values.Josh then offers five questions for leaders and HR people to ask themselves to reflect if they are building kind and compassionate workplaces.
Here are my thoughts:
- "Kindness" is a function of organizational culture and is also shaped by external societal culture of the zeitgeist. The organizational culture is shaped by the personality of the founder/entrepreneur of the organization which translates into what behaviours which are role-modelled by others.
- A culture of kindness is also shaped by the culture of the industry. A sales driven competitive culture seeps across most of the companies in that industry as people switch roles within that industry
- As Josh mentions, looking at hiring people, assessing and then promoting people for how they treat others should be the cornerstone of HR systems and processes.
- The scary research is that organizational systems of focusing on the short term shareholder gains often reinforce psychopathic behaviors. A search for psychopathic behavior in the workplace will showcase how often senior executives and CEOs who rise up to the top exhibit psychopathtic behaviors. Read this 2004 HBR article, for example/
- While I am glad Josh is throwing light on this very important area, let is not be in the illusion that it is going to be easy to create more kindness in the organization. We have to create new cultures, new role models and new structures and processes to build a kinder and more compassionate workplaces of the future.
What do you think? Leave your thoughts in comments section below
