How Human Can It Be?

I was in the class talking about the oil and gas industry to a group of new executives. And as I usually and normally practice, I intersperse my talk with some of my past working experience. Sharing experiences is one way of spurring people on and I hope my experience would encourage the listeners to do better than me.

One topic that I always shared with my listeners was the fact on treating others as human beings. This was my dad’s advise to me when I was about to start work. Treat everyone as a human being, he said. Do not treat them as Managers or as clerks or as workers etc. Respect them for the position they are in irrespective. They are all human, with feelings, with emotions, having ups and downs, positive and negative feelings and these must be acknowledged. I have held close to this advise ever since and I find that people open up to me easily. So, this was my advice to the young executives every time.

An example of the above was when I was asked to do a situational study of an organization that had many human problems. Many initiatives introduced were not well received by the staff and indeed participations were low. Staff view them as intruding into their well being or whatever is left of it at that point in time. There was a lot of negativity around. They tried ‘team building’ exercises but failed to achieve the desired results. Money was spent but the return in terms of positive human attitude was very much to be desired. The management wanted to get to the root of the problem and put it right. That was a positive start, I thought. I started talking to almost everyone, at all levels, starting from the ‘Head Honcho’ right down to the cleaners. I spent a few weeks doing this and I discovered many things wrong in the way things were managed, especially on HR issues, but the most glaring ones were the way people were treated. There were no personal touches and everything centered on work output and the company’s ‘bottom-line’ such that people, relevant staff I mean, felt that they were just like the machines that they operate, such that they do not need to use their brains and just do what they have to do and nothing more. I called it ‘workers leaving their brains at the entrance gate or at home’ when they go to work. There was a need then to have a behavioral change across the board. Amongst the recommendations I made were for such changes to be made. Management made concerted efforts to do so, and recognition of the staff, personal and group wise, was initiated. Several new initiatives, an example was improvement teams, involving all levels of staff were formed with specific targeted objectives and regular review of progress. Personal criticisms were minimized or avoided but constructive criticism were encouraged. Slowly attitudes changed and they were back on track not too long after that.

The best of friends remain the best for the simple reason that there is respect for each other. They will drift apart once this respect wanes or is lost. It is the same in the work place. Staff will put high values on personal respect, with which goes along positive responses. Personal respects equate with human recognition and being human is what people naturally do everyday of their lives. Recognizing this will ease person to person relationships. Life should be lived pleasantly throughout and for that I seek guidance from the Almighty always.


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Petaling Jaya