CAHRMA

  • Home
  • About
    • CAHRMA Advisors
    • Directors
    • Ambassadors
    • Purpose & Vision
    • History of CAHRMA
    • Our Partners
  • Conference & Resources
    • 2019 Conference and Registration
      • 2019 Conference Agenda
      • 2019 Conference Registration
      • CAHRMA Exhibitor’s Package
      • CAHRMA Conference Sponsorship Package
      • CAHRMA Involvement
    • 2018 Conference
      • 2018 Conference Agenda
      • Conference Presentations – 2018
    • CAHRMA Bylaws
    • Condensed HR Assessment Tool
  • Blog
  • Job Opportunities
  • Contact Us
  • Log In

Why Attend the Aboriginal HR Conference?

March 6, 2019 by David Wynne Leave a Comment

Here are some comments from participants at our last conference.

  • Was a great conference, I really enjoyed it.
  • It was a very good experience – a lot of networking.
  • Very well organized.
  • Speakers were good, some too short.
  • Marijuana in workplace was great, very practical, wish there was time for questions.
  • Enjoyed the conference!
  • Loved that it was Indigenous focused.
  • I appreciate that the workshops were informative, relaxed atmosphere, location was excellent.
  • The plenaries were great.
  • I love that there are different topics every year. Different perspectives.

Filed Under: Conferences, Education, Human Resources, Training Tagged With: Aboriginal, Conference, Training

The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer

February 2, 2019 by David Wynne Leave a Comment

This website (www.theauthoritarians.org ) places at your disposal a free ebook entitled The Authoritarians. I wrote this book in 2006 when a great deal seemed to be going wrong in America, and I thought the research on authoritarian personalities could explain a lot of it. (The book is set in that era, but you will have no trouble finding present-day examples of what the experiments found back then.)

Why Do Trump’s Supporters Stand by Him, No Matter What?

Many people, including I, have labeled Donald Trump an authoritarian leader. But they are honestly baffled by the loyalty of his followers. The decades of research on authoritarian followers provide some answers.

Donald Trump received 46.7 percent of the vote in the 2016 election. An aggregation of public opinion polls available at https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/ shows that he maintained this level of support until March of 2017, when his failure to repeal Obamacare produced a drop to 40%. Difficulties in fulfilling other campaign promises, such as building “the wall” and “locking up” Hillary Clinton may explain why the rating slid to a nadir of 36.4% in December 2017.

But since then Trump has regained about half of the ground he lost. He was back to 40% in February 2018 and since then about 41-42% of the public has approved of his performance. Considering all the things he has done in the past six months, that is astounding. But if you look at the poll results over this time and try to find some kind of reaction when (to cite recent examples) Trump began the trade wars with friend and foe alike, or absolved Putin in Helsinki of interfering in the 2016 election, or separated children from their parents at the Mexican border, you won’t find any! His base has been very loyal. I doubt he will lose more than a percent or two of his national support, and probably not even that, as a result of the August 21st “Tuesday Afternoon Massacre” (of Trump). And whatever he loses, he will soon get back.

In a sense, that shouldn’t surprise anyone. Has any president since Lyndon Johnson kept his campaign promises as energetically as Donald Trump has in his first 18 month in office? He has strenuously advanced his base’s causes, from all the executive orders he has signed to his nominations to the Supreme Court. And when he failed to achieve what he promised, he always blamed others for not supporting him, including the Democrats. And while economists warn it is too early to tell, Trump has received credit for the vibrant economy.

In another sense, however, the fidelity of Trump’s base remains astounding. He has made so many unforced errors because of his lack of understanding and low problem-solving intelligence, his vast ignorance, his enormous, never-ending dishonesty which seems as reflexive as his breathing, his explosive hostility, his uncontrollable vanity, his despicable demeaning of women, his squalid vulgarity, the stupidity of his stereotypes, the shabbiness of his thinking, the buffoonery of his parading, his attacks on the institutions he needs most to safeguard the country, his incredibly poor judgment about the character of those whom he has brought into his administration, his equally mind-numbing lack of judgment about foreign leaders, friend and foe, and  his willingness to inflame Americans’ disagreements and turn them into conflagrations which make us that deeply divided house which the Gospels and Abraham Lincoln warned against—how can his supporters have stood so solidly behind him? You’d think they’d be having some second thoughts at least.

The main reason, I submit, is that most of Trump’s backers are authoritarian followers—people who submit too much to the leaders they consider legitimate, trust them too much, and give them too much leeway to do whatever they want. “Well yeah,” you might say. “But that’s like saying an apple is an apple because it’s an apple.” And it would be golden delicious example of a rhetorical tautology except social scientists have had a good, independent way of measuring this kind of authoritarianism since the 1970s. And it was clear from the first studies that political “conservatives”—from ordinary voters to elected officials—tended to score highly on this personality test (Chapter 6 of The Authoritarians, the book on this website). We can gain considerable insight into Donald Trump’s supporters from the research on authoritarianism.

Why Authoritarian Followers Believe What They Believe

Compared to most people, studies have shown that authoritarian followers get their beliefs and opinions from the authorities in their lives, and hardly at all by making up their own minds. They memorize rather than reason. Religion provides a good example of this: authoritarians tend to believe strongly in whatever religion they were raised, the result of having had their religion strongly emphasized to them while they were growing up. But at some point in their youth—typically in early to mid-adolescence—they usually have doubts about what they have been taught. When this happens they typically go to their parents for guidance, or clerics, or scriptures, or friends who profess strong belief. They are mainly seeking reassurance, and not surprisingly, they keep their beliefs.1

Persons who grew up in homes where religion was not stressed as much also develop doubts about the things they had been taught when they reached adolescence. But they are much more likely to do a two-sided search for the answers, such as reading Genesis and learning about the theory of evolution, talking to believers and nonbelievers, and so on. Some then keep their faith, but others become “weak believers” or even apostates.)

By the way, the failure to do a two-sided search for the truth of their beliefs leaves scar tissue on the psyches of authoritarian followers. A “very safe survey” revealed that most of the followers in a large sample of university students had doubts about their religious beliefs, which you would never have guessed from their answers to normal surveys. And most of these doubters said that no one whatsoever knew they had these doubts. They were a deep secret.2

Consensual Validation and Ethnocentrism

When your beliefs are memorized copies of other people’s opinions, you don’t really know why they are right. That means you don’t know IF your professed truths really are true. So how do you maintain your beliefs should events and discoveries contradict them?

Researchers discovered decades ago that people validate their social opinions socially to a certain extent by selecting news outlets, friends, and so on that will tell them they are right. This produces an illusion of consensus, at least among all the “right” people like themselves. Almost everybody does this, but authoritarian followers do it much more because they don’t have many ideas of their own, beliefs they have worked out for themselves and can defend. And they are much more likely to expose themselves only to sources of information that tell them what they want to believe. Getting only one side of a story raises the chances you will get it wrong, but as Ralph Peters, formerly the military analyst at Fox News, said recently, “People that only listen to Fox have an utterly skewed view of reality.”

The creation of an in-group in the lives of “right-thinkers” goes back to followers’ early childhood. The earliest such example most of them can recall involved the family religion (as opposed to say their gender, or race, or nationality). Their parents divided the world for them into people of their own faith, and an out-group consisting of everybody else. This “Us vs. Them” ethnocentrism appears to lay the foundation for many later prejudices and xenophobia.

Ethnocentrism comes naturally when we identify with a group, but authoritarian followers are profoundly ethnocentric. Whereas some people will deliberately expose themselves to different ideas, experiences, cultures to avoid living in an “echo chamber,” followers want to live smack dab in the middle of one and are glad to do their part of the echoing. Surrounding themselves with people who agree with them, clapping together, chanting together, cheering together, and marching together is convincing evidence for them that their beliefs are right.

Susceptibility to Liars

One consequence of the followers’ strong need for consensual validation, experiments have found, is that they will trust someone who says things they believe, even if there is a lot of evidence that the person does not really believe what he says. They’re just so glad to hear their views coming back to them, they ignore solid reasons why the person might be insincere or outright lying. Relatively UNauthoritarian people, on the other hand, are downright suspicious of someone who might have ulterior motives for reinforcing their beliefs.

It is therefore much easier to “con” authoritarian followers, as many a TV evangelist, radio shock-jockey and flag-waving politician knows. It’s no accident that Donald Trump, who had only loosely organized and not particularly right-wing political beliefs, became a Republican politician when he decided to declare war on both the Democrats and Republicans. That’s where the “suckers” are most concentrated,  the people you can fool all of the time. (It’s another story, but the GOP largely brought this on itself by deliberately courting these folks.)

There’s a hidden danger to authoritarian leaders in all this. When they discover their followers will believe anything they say, even things that contradict something they said earlier, they get sloppy with their lies. Maybe Donald Trump always was careless with the truth. But it seems that over the past two years he has become downright reckless. His base will swallow anything, he has learned, so he just says the first thing that comes to mind.

The trouble is, for him and the future of his presidency, Truth happens. Constantly. It may be seen differently by various folks, but things did happen as they happened, not something else. You can only ignore the truth so long, and then reality will inevitably catch up with you. It will destroy you if you have been massively denying it.

Dogmatism

Dogmatism comes rather naturally to people who have copied other people’s beliefs rather than figure things out for themselves. When you don’t know why your beliefs are true, you can’t defend them very well when other people or events confront them. Once you’ve run out of whatever counter-arguments your authorities have loaded into you, you’re done. But being flabbergasted doesn’t mean you change your beliefs. You can keep on believing as much as before if you want. You can even pat yourself on the back for believing when it seems clear you are wrong. Some people do this, and you know who taught them to.

That is dogmatism, and experiments show that authoritarian followers have two or three times the normal amount of it because they believe many things strongly, but don’t know why. When the evidence and arguments against their beliefs becomes irrefutable, they simply shut down. If patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, as Samuel Johnson said, dogmatism is the last resort of overwhelmed followers. Thus they agree with the statement, “There are no discoveries of facts that could possibly make me change my mind about the things that matter most in life.” That says it all.

The Role of Fear

In case you haven’t noticed it, authoritarian followers are more fearful, in general, than most people. (And wannabe dictators have known that for a long time.) There may be a genetic basis for being extra scared, since thresholds for emotional responses might be set, in part, by some snippets of DNA. But there certainly is an “environmental” source of the fear. Followers report that they were taught the world is a dangerous place much more strenuously than most people are taught—a fact confirmed by the parents. Some of this is quite predictable, such as fear of attacks by racial minorities. But the fearing parents super-sized their children’s fear of being hit by a car, or kidnapped as well.

Accordingly Donald Trump was well-placed to gain the support of authoritarian followers as he was a large and seemingly fearless, powerful man. All he had to do was say he saw the dangers the followers felt and he would fight to protect them. So he did. He would build a wall over 1000 miles long to keep Mexican rapists out. He would stop immigration from certain countries to keep terrorists from getting in and killing everyone. He promised to protect people who feared their jobs were going overseas to countries that he said were stealing America blind. “I am your voice,” he said. He would fight for them with all of his great might. And that was just what threatened people who felt powerless wanted.

Donald Trump grew some of his positions as he went along. He discovered he was once again anti- abortion, although he had to be told he was against punishing women who had one. He assured the Libertarians he would defend the Constitution as the Founding Fathers wrote it, even though it became clear he had very little idea what was in it. He pretended for the economic conservatives to be greatly concerned about the national debt, although he learned he couldn’t make it go away by declaring the United States bankrupt. And so on.

But the core connection between himself and his followers was their great fear of the future. As Ann Coulter, his strong promoter during the campaign and reputed source of his anti-immigration rhetoric, said “He had me with ‘Mexican rapists.’” Trump’s MAGA slogan resonated with masses of “forgotten Americans” who indeed felt America wasn’t great anymore. Everything was changing. All the old standards were being trashed.  The things that gave them whatever precarious advantage they had in life, being white (and for most of them) being male counted for less and less. Instead the United States was filling up with bad people who would blow up your church, steal your jobs and get your kids hooked on drugs.

Trump’s Rallies

You can see all these forces coming together when the authoritarian leader and his followers come together at Trump rallies. Political parties hold rallies primarily to energize the faithful, and Trump supporters leave the arenas highly motivated to work for him. But they also get something from the event that (say) Hillary Clinton’s supporters did not need as much: reassurance that their beliefs are valid. Being in a crowd of True Believers and finding themselves reacting the same way as everybody else to whatever is happening tells them individually that they are right. And they do the same thing for the other people in the room with their contribution to the echo chamber.

Two powerful bonds are on display at Trump’s rallies: the followers’ bonds with the leader, and their bonds with each other. They feel they owe Trump big-time. He gave up his very glamorous, satisfying life, they believe, to fight for them. The least they can do is be grateful and supremely loyal to their “Voice.” It is their part of the deal, and in the early days of the 2016 campaign, until unfavorable comparisons with Hitler and other dictators made Trump stop it, the crowds insisted on taking a loyalty oath to him at the rallies.

The second bond, with one another, sustains their beliefs and enthusiasm afterwards. When they hear bad news about Trump, they tell each other the explanation that the president gave, and that is good enough. It doesn’t matter that it makes no sense or contradicts earlier things he said or promised. The important thing is they are hearing it from a fellow believer and it is their job to believe it and say it too. Research shows that authoritarian followers value group cohesiveness much more than other people do, and strongly condemn persons who stop believing what the group believes.

Beyond these bonds, while Trump supporters feel exposed and vulnerable on their own, they feel safe, strong, even powerful when they are members of a large, determined movement. They gain strength from the crowd, as surely as Trump himself does.

So What?

It seems clear that Donald Trump believes his best chance at remaining in power is to keep his base fired up. They are a minority in the country, by roughly 42% to 52%. But if they all vote, and enough of the majority does not, he will win.

So he doesn’t care what most of the voters think. He doesn’t care that critics can tear his positions and statements to shreds. He isn’t talking to them. He’s talking to his base.

Unfortunately for him, his devotion to his base, coupled with some abysmal choices of advisors and his own overwhelming hubris, have alienated a lot of Americans. Polls find that Democratic supporters are more enthusiastic about voting in the midterm election than Republican voters—the opposite of what he wants. Various by-elections show that while he has great influence over Republican primaries, he brings a sizeable anti-Trump reaction to the general election. So as he goes on feeding red meat to the masses that made him great again, he is infuriating a large group of electors who increasingly can’t stand him.

The very sizeable number of authoritarian followers in the United States have, in my view,  joined together three times in recent history to endanger our democracy. They supported the war in Vietnam as it tore the country apart long after it was clearly lost. They supported Richard Nixon to the very end of Watergate and beyond. They will support Donald Trump long after it becomes indisputable that he is a felon and should be removed from office.

The good news is the Republic has survived the past crises, thanks largely to the honest reporting of the press that would not be intimidated, the division of powers enshrined in the Constitution, especially the independence of the judiciary, and the good judgment of most of the American people. And it can survive this latest threat for the same reasons. But the bad news is the authoritarian followers will remain, unwitting carriers of a cancer upon the nation that the next authoritarian leader will arouse and set marching.

I am not suggesting that people should exclude in any sense the most authoritarian elements in American society. With few exceptions, they are law-abiding citizens exercising their rights, and that should be respected and protected. But I do think their influence needs to be contained by outvoting them. And Donald Trump is betting that won’t happen.

The long run prospects encourage one. Trump has solid support among my generation of Americans, for example, especially men, but we are not going to last forever. Some suppose that people become more authoritarian as they age, and so one batch of old white men will just be replaced by another. But studies show that political opinions tend to be set in early adulthood and endure. Today’s youth, better educated and wonderfully less ethnocentric than their predecessors, give one great hope for the future of American democracy in the long run.

But this is like climate change. We were warned plenty that we were creating a disaster in the only atmosphere we’ve got, and we kept on doing it. Now we are facing the consequences. Whether American democracy endures could well depend on what happens at the polls in 2018 and 2020. Authoritarian leaders and authoritarian followers have no great love of freedom and equality. Those who do had better organize and get out the vote, or they will make Donald Trump look like the super-genius he believes he is.

Endnotes

1 Altemeyer, Bob and Bruce E. Hunsberger (1997). Amazing Apostates. Why Some Turn to Faith, and Others Abandon Religion. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Press, pp. 17-20, 32.

This is a good place for me to mention three limitations about the research I shall report. First, the results are always generalizations, i.e., overall differences between groups. So in this study some people who had a rigorous religious upbringing did make a two-sided search. (Most did not, however.) Second, the difference between “high” authoritarian followers and those whom I’ll call “low authoritarians” is relative, not absolute. The low authoritarians still have some inclinations to follow authorities, which can be ratcheted up by situational pressures. But it will be a much weaker inclination than that found in persons who have extra helpings of this trait. Finally, this study like most of the others I shall bring up was done in Canada. But there has been a very solid record of replication of Canadian findings about authoritarians when repeated in the USA, and vice-versa.

2 Altemeyer, Bob (1987). Enemies of Freedom. San Francisco, CA: Josey-Bass, pp. 151-154.

Download the book in Epub or PDF format at www.theauthoritarians.org

Filed Under: Education, Human Resources, Training

CAHRMA Involvement

June 6, 2016 by David Wynne Leave a Comment

IMG_2062

The Canadian Aboriginal Human Resource Management Association was created to help Aboriginal communities (which includes Metis and Inuit) with establishing and developing their Human Resource processes and procedures in order to strengthen their communities and businesses.  We have done this predominantly through our conferences but we are also working to build up our membership for networking and referral and to establish a regular social network across Canada.

 At present, CAHRMA is predominantly a volunteer organization but would like to grow into an established presence with regular staff to provide regular and consistent service to our members.  In the meantime, perhaps you can help.  We need to know what is important to you.  What type of information are you looking for?  What kind of HR assistance to you need?  By telling us your needs and interests, we can focus on those areas while we continue to grow.

 You can also help us by becoming involved.  Check out our Twitter feeds and you will find that we are creating some meetings and chats to talk about what’s important.  Join one of the groups and share your story.

 Something else you can do is share your success stories.  We would love to feature your story on our website so that other communities can learn from what you have done and we can help one another.  Let’s start growing together.

Filed Under: Education, Endorsement, Human Resources

The Power of Personal Leadership

February 3, 2016 by David Wynne Leave a Comment

 The Power of Personal Leadership

By Diane (Diana) Wiesenthal, FCHRP

Corporate People Responsibility® (CPR) Ltd.

Power-1

Have you ever stopped to think about what you want your legacy to be? More than likely, it’s a thought that rarely comes to mind because we are so preoccupied just trying to survive in the working world; looking after our families and managing the home-front; contributing to society by doing some volunteer work; spending time learning and in formal education; spending time with family; and even carving out just a bit of time to stay connected with friends.

No matter the busy lives we lead, having a vision and plan for ourselves is a critical exercise to undertake throughout our entire lives. If we don’t have a personal plan, we could be running in circles just doing “things” and handling “stuff”, but getting nowhere. One of the most profound statements to illustrate this goes like this – “vision without action is a dream, action without vision is a nightmare!”

When we think about vision, we should be reminded that every single person has the ability to take a leadership role and to be a leader – despite conventional perception you don’t need a formal title or job to be one. It starts with our own personal accountability and core values and what we believe, and then consistently demonstrating actions so every person regardless of their role or position experience the same things on a consistent basis.

Having a personal leadership vision is critical in achieving both personal, organizational and community success.

Learning & Leadership – it’s in you to give!  Learning is a life long journey and we all learn in the following manner: first we are “Unconsciously Incompetent” that just means we “don’t know what we don’t know, until we know it”. Then we move to “Consciously Incompetent” meaning now at least we know what we have to learn. The next phase is “Unconsciously Competent” meaning we are starting to master the work we are doing without even knowing it. And finally we become “Consciously Competent” meaning we are confident in our abilities and our performance consistently exceeds expectations. But don’t get too comfortable there. The minute you take on a new job or role the whole process starts all over again. But as we take on more and more new tasks, at least the process is more understandable and it becomes easier.

Power - 2

In setting our leadership goals, start by:

  • Establishing a vision for yourself – What are your dreams for your self, your family, your job and career, your community?
  • Observe leaders who are successful and admired by others – talk to them about their journey and lessons they learned along the way.
  • Look at the characteristics of what makes them successful – write them down and ask these leaders why these traits are important to them.
  • Assess your own strengths – what are you great at, what are you good at, what are you not so good at? (We can’t be good at everything!)
  • Ask for feedback from trusted colleagues and friends – but be prepared to just listen and don’t argue or debate the information they give to you.
  • Be aware of how people respond to you when you interact with them – what do their facial expressions tell you, their body language, and their words? Are they supportive or argumentative?
  • Identify the top three skills that you want to work on – what are they?
  • Make a five-year plan of specific actions and activities you can take on to help you increase and improve these skills. Volunteering is an excellent way to build skills, whether on the job by taking on additional projects, helping colleagues, or in community organizations.
  • Think about success factors and write these down in your plan – I will be successful if?

Refining your leadership skills. The right balance of a leadership “attitude” is critical to effectiveness. As a smart general rule to follow for success, “take your job seriously, but take yourself lightly”! That goes for every position – from front line service people to executives. Often when people assume leadership roles, they let the power of the role go to their head. Command and control leadership only works for a short time and these people are rarely, if ever, successful in a sustainable manner. At the root of the “power” issue is that people become overconfident and that is not an endearing quality in anyone, especially in a leader. The credibility of those individuals suffer because people do not respect the person in the role.

Power - 3

Examining the characteristics of great leadership.  People who are successful leaders are people who know humility and who treat people with the utmost respect at all times. Generally these individuals will be respected and well regarded at all levels – by employees, managers, leaders, Board of Directors, Councils, and communities at large. The key is, they never abuse, misuse or misappropriate the power of their role and they make decisions in a consistent and fair manner – no biases.

These leaders will be:

  • Genuine by truly caring about people, taking an interest in individuals around them and what’s happening their lives.
  • Fair by treating all people as equals, regardless of roles or their temperament.
  • Calm under pressure and don’t add more anxiety into tense situations by blaming or pointing fingers.
  • Respectful with their words and remove all negative emotions such as anger and frustration from their communications with others.
  • Helpers by assisting others to be successful.
  • Keen listeners and collaborators to leverage the ideas of many.
  • Analytical with good judgment by asking the right questions and not jumping to conclusions.
  • Inspiring to rally positive actions to support work places, families and communities.
  • Humorous by leading with laughter and building fun environments where people work hard and play hard.

Power - 4

Leadership action needs a good dose of courage!  As a leader, I’ve had to make a lot of unpopular and politically sensitive decisions. As a result, I’ve lost some friends and made a few enemies along the way. But by doing so, it also created a strong path of credibility for doing the right thing for the right reasons – irrespective of the political fallout.

As leaders, when you are faced with tough choices the moral compass is your greatest guide. If you become afraid, ask yourself “what’s the worst that can happen” by making the right decision? Then ask yourself “what’s the worst that can happen if I make the wrong decision for the wrong reason, or do nothing?” Generally you will find yourself in a heap more trouble in the latter situation, maybe not immediately, but it will find you even in the cleverest hiding spots. Stand up for the right reasons, at the right times.

The power of “I-magine” – imagination, thinking, believing and igniting action are the keys to success.

Imagine your entire team as a “life line” and inspire everyone to support each other and be kind to one another. Remove all negative emotions and replace with respect, compassion and care. Remove “revenge” from the equation – and always take the high road.

Think beyond your immediate line of sight and uncover barriers then take action to go the extra mile. Work proactively where possible to avoid reacting to situations. And when all else fails remember “YCFS” (You Can’t Fix Stupid!). Pick your timing to take the right actions.

Believe that a person, who never does more, never gets paid for more. Invest in your long-term career growth and don’t focus on immediate paybacks. Remember doing something over doing nothing is a step in the right direction. Don’t sweat the small stuff or worry about the things you can’t control.

Ignite Action and have FUN along the way. At the end of the day, our work places, our homes and communities are like giant sandboxes. Sometimes someone throws sand in our face, accidently or deliberately. Sometimes we don’t get the toys that we wanted or we have to wait our turn. Focus on your leadership legacy and along the way remember to:

Laugh to release tension;

Laugh at ridiculous situations;

Laugh with people, and inspire everyone to build a better world.

About the Author

Diana Wiesenthal

Diana (Diane) Wiesenthal, FCHRP created and leads a company called Corporate People Responsibility® Ltd. (CPRinc). Previously she was a member of the executive for the Canadian Wheat Board as Vice President, People & Organizational Services. She is a past President of NAHRMA, CCHRA, and HRMAM. Based on her international leadership experience, Diana was selected by the United States, People to People Ambassadors organization to lead senior international HR delegations to various parts of the world. Her academic training in HR management was completed at Queen’s University (executive program), the University of Manitoba and Red River College. She obtained her professional human resource designation, CHRP, in 1993, and was awarded the Fellow designation in 2012. Diane was a Governance Advisor to CAHRMA for several years during its creation.

Filed Under: Education, Human Resources Tagged With: engagement, Human Resources, Support

Corporate Well-Being

May 13, 2015 by David Wynne Leave a Comment

Well-being : create a long-term model for corporate responsibility

 

There is a ghostly toxin that lives in some form or another in most organizations today. What’s more alarming is that it is multiplying and lurking into our homes, families, and communities. The impacts are as devastating as a hazardous killer oil spill on the environment.

 

By Diane Wiesenthal

President & CEO of Corporate People Responsibility (CPR) Ltd.

 

But the human toll is far more difficult to detect and tabulate, which would explain why we are not jumping up in arms to protest this injustice.

This toxic waste manifests itself in polluted work environments and it lives and breeds where inefficient business practices, ineffective bosses and toxic employee attitudes are allowed to roam and run free. Make no mistake about it, where it lives and  grows it is a force to be reckoned with and trying to contain and stop the poison from spreading is a tricky challenge.

This phenomenon is also nothing less than a company killer – even if it is a death by a thousand cuts – and that of course affects people. As strategic HR practitioners, how can we influence organizational effectiveness when confronted by such a devastating hidden organizational force? It begins simply by systematically and methodologically identifying the toxic sources (business process and people alike) and neutralizing or eliminating them from the workplace. There are lots of elimination methods like education, accountability for actions and consequences, or helping unchangeable (by choice or capacity) toxic people and bad business process right out the door.

It is still the eternal mystery why we would subject people who are our top talent and our “steady Eddies” required to deliver on the business plan to this churn and dysfunction. Yet we allow it to continue. The reason is of course quite complex. Often it’s the system itself that protects and enables this dysfunction primarily because people tend to prefer to ignore the issues and hope that “it” will “just go away.” It’s also hard to detect and pinpoint precisely what the issues are and we tend to have inherent biases to make exceptions to the rules – oh it’s just Joe or it’s just Sally, and they are really quite brilliant, and they really don’t mean to act that way, and we really can’t live without them. Well guess what – you can live without them, and in most cases, live even better without them. If the rules don’t apply to everyone, and if we as leaders don’t uphold the rules and policies, toss them out because they are meaningless. In fact, rules and policies that are just “paper based” create a significant risk and liability issues for any organization.

In today’s rapidly moving and everchanging world, traditional HR methods are no longer effective. Even today, the HR profession has its roots firmly planted in the industrial relations era and most core HR programs were designed primarily in the  1950s. We’ve renovated these programs with new paint and duck tape, but with the realities of the business world today, these programs are no longer efficient and effective.  That is also the source of strong criticism of the HR profession as it is perceived to be a block that slows down business operations and transformation. HR programs and services have to be re-engineered to accommodate the speed of business change and further, to get ahead of the curve to enable business sustainability and provide the support to an organization that it was designed to deliver.

Human transformation and business transformation are both equally difficult to achieve, but are remarkably inter-related.  If you  improve business processes and the work environment, people respond remarkably well. If we improve our personal health, we have more energy to benefit organizational work productivity. The fundamental principles are so simple, it’s stupid. Yet while the principles are incredibly simple, executing them is remarkably hard.

As an example, everyone knows that following the Canada Food Guide and introducing an active lifestyle are the keys to improved health. But there are a million and one reasons and excuses why we don’t do it. The same can be said for organizational health. We all know what needs to be done, but it’s just too hard and time-consuming to do it – and there are a million and two reasons and excuses why we don’t do it.

The hidden cost bleeds in organizational budgets are staggering. Lost productivity, lost engagement, inefficient work flow and duplication of effort, and the laundry list goes on and on while the dollars continue to fly off the clothes line. The laundry list of personal health issues is also as exhaustive.  At the root of this, both for organizational and for personal health issues, stress manifests itself as a symptom. Typically we react and find quick-fix programs to address the symptoms versus identifying and investing in the cure of root causes.

Traditionally, we’ve focused a lot of our wellness efforts on stress management, but that’s just the symptom. We need to dig deeper to identify and solve the causes of stress. Often this means identifying who is accountable for what, and placing that squarely on the employer’s or employees’ shoulders to address. That is difficult and sure we all squawk about it and try to rally  and employers alike blame everyone else for their problems refusing to take ownership and be accountable for their own actions and decisions.

For instance, there is a tendency for some employees to bring their personal problems into the workplace and try to off-load them as employer problems. Often the “walk-in” style medical community will add to this complex situation by validating employee perceptions (after all, it’s a one-sided story). To compound this even further we add complex legal systems that are geared to  giving “air time” to these often lopsided complaints, and that often have competing regulations. Conversely, employers can also tend to blame employees for missed deadlines, productivity shortfalls and impose unrealistic expectations. Dysfunctional work flows and processes in a complex environment compound these problems even further. No one is working together to address the real issues, so it’s no wonder that this is a recipe for disaster and costly recoveries.

Solving the “blame game” syndrome is a challenge, but it’s not impossible. If we are to help employees who are plagued by this disease, the cure is most often a good dose of reality and to stop enabling the dysfunctional behaviour. Some think this harsh, but in actual fact, doing exactly that means we are finally treating these people with respect. Have the honest conversations so that  these individuals are not the only ones who don’t know that their behaviour stinks. If we can achieve the rehabilitation of these  people to engage in more productive activity, isn’t that the ultimate goal?

If we are to help employers with this challenge, we can start by establishing a blueprint plan for building and integrating a  sustainable model of workplace wellness. This can be daunting because it covers the realm of culture change, fostering employee and manager accountability and defining the workplace as a competitive advantage. This begins to pave the road and build a framework for Corporate “People” Responsibility which delivers hard profits that are worth achieving.

Corporate People Responsibility means investing in the protection of our work environments to enhance engagement, productivity, reduce costs, and add hard dollars to the bottom line. It’s ensuring that we design and create people programs that engage the mind and spirit to leverage the vast human potential and talent that exists in our organizations, and measuring the  ROI.

People are complex with complex needs. There is no longer a “one-size fits all solution.” In our desire to create “equity or equality” we’ve actually designed workplaces that generate apathy and complacency. Creativity has been squashed and people have been led to believe that they have no control over their work and therefore have become completely disinterested and disengaged. Just check the stats on how many North Americans said they “hate their job.” It’s alarming, disheartening, and unhealthy for people, organizations, families and communities.

Even in positions of authority we find the “decision making by committee” syndrome – who’s accountable? Who takes responsibility? All we are left with is a lot of finger-pointing and the system encourages that to occur. That type of environment is an early death sentence for both employees and organizations.

It’s time to change the world of work environments to ignite passion, re-engage brains and leverage human potential. Just as it is time to pioneer a new course for the HR profession to help organizations:

  • eliminate or minimize poisonous behaviours and dysfunctional work processes and organizational structures;
  • hold people accountable and drive accountability throughout the organization;
  • increase leadership and management accountability;
  • design jobs around people’s strengths to leverage talent;
  • design systems and programs for employee ownership;
  • invest in learning to teach people how to be self sufficient and give people the right tools; to contribute and add value;
  • create fun, healthy and challenging learning environments.

By “integrating” HR solutions to meet business requirements, and when applied in collaboration with business leaders, we have  the power to transform both people and business. The concept of wellness can been “branded” into the heart of organizational development to increase productivity, foster engagement, and generate a culture of innovation and sustainability.

This is the new frontier of strategic and value-added HR.

Filed Under: Education, Human Resources Tagged With: engagement, growth, Human Resources, resolution

  • 1
  • 2
  • Next Page »
Share this page...
Share on Facebook
Facebook
Tweet about this on Twitter
Twitter
Share on LinkedIn
Linkedin
Email this to someone
email
Print this page
Print

Log In

Follow us on Twitter

Tweets by @CAHRMA_inc

Recent Posts

  • A National Association Focused on Human Resources in Indian Country Has Big Plans to Expand
  • Why Attend the Aboriginal HR Conference?
  • The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer
  • The Issue of Leadership
  • CAHRMA Involvement

CAHRMA is…

Vision Our vision is to be a driving force to build better work environments for the Aboriginal communities to facilitate profitable and sustainable companies and offer a source – the association, to Aboriginal peoples across Canada, providing HR practitioners with similar … Read More

History of CAHRMA

A History of CAHRMA in Canada The creation of CAHRMA started back in the mid 1990’s when Diane Carriere was recognized for her work with Aboriginal engagement within corporations. She was asked to create an Aboriginal Initiative within the Human Resource Management Association … Read More

Follow us…

  • Email
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Membership

Explore Membership Options

  • About
  • Purpose & Vision
  • Directors
  • CAHRMA Advisors
  • History of CAHRMA
  • Our Partners
  • 2019 Conference and Registration
  • CAHRMA Involvement
  • 2019 Conference Registration

Copyright © 2021 · CAHRMA · All Rights Reserved · Built on the Genesis Framework · By Lunchbox Design · Admin