For many people 2011 was a year to forget, rather than dwell on the past I thought we’d focus on the future. So no end of year “you’ve all done very well” nor even a “whoopee! It’s New Year!” blog post. I thought I’d focus on the themes of back to business, building on our strengths, focusing on the future.
For anyone who does need an end of year reflection, this was done in part before the fireworks went up at Midnight on 31st December, we were invited to contribute in the Summer to the XpertHR series on “My year in HR so far” (link) the blog focused on the impact of the significant rate of change in the Public Sector since the comprehensive spending review and it has to be said, the year continued from the Summer onward in the same vein, fast, deep organisational change which was demonstrably having an impact on engagement, attitudes and behaviours as the year progressed. I am still of the view that this extensive organisational change will continue long into 2012.
This leads me rather neatly to the subject that I believe will form the focus for many businesses in 2012. Stress. Actually it’s broader than that – Employee Wellbeing in all its various shapes and forms.
In October the CIPD and Simply Health caused quite a stir with a timely but unsurprising report that told us that stress is at epidemic levels amongst workers (link) . If businesses and public organisations are to truly dust themselves down and start to focus on the future, it is my opinion that there is a huge amount of work to be done in addressing the feelings about work and organisations of the embattled survivors, the nervous new staff who would perhaps rather forget 2011 having lost jobs, been made redundant, in change processes received feedback that didn’t match at all with their own perceptions of themselves.
With little money to throw around, 2012 should in my view be about building bridges. Our own outrage and demand for action came in December (Link ). 2012 will see us working on our own piece of original research and the development of specific tools and interventions to better prevent, detect and manage employee wellbeing risks.
Some social commentators have suggested that whilst we’re all feeling the pain of recession and it really isn’t very nice, it is good for us and makes us better human beings. Will these times of austerity help us to become less materialistic, more thoughtful or caring as a society? I really don’t have an answer to that, but what I do know is that in tough times, people who perhaps would not normally behave “badly”, pushed to extremes find themselves falling into categories that they previously only referred to as groups they only read about in the newspapers, alcoholics, drug users, homeless, people with Mental Health conditions, Prisoners.
Anyone who reads our blogs regularly will know that our background is in the Criminal Justice Sector. We care deeply about these so called marginalised groups. My hope for 2012 is that policy makers will wake up to the fact that there is no marginalisation, these issues affect us all in one way or another, either directly or through friends and family, colleagues or as the manager of people affected by such issues. I would really like to see the concept of Big Society take real form, step away from the bureaucracy of Whitehall and give some of the amazing projects that are out there, currently running on little but a wing and a prayer , to take flight. We’ve blogged at various times in the past about these issues, Criminal Justice, Prison and will continue to do so. In 2012 we will also be focusing some of our energy on helping two projects that we consider to be the very essence of Big Society to come to fruition. Veteran’s Change Partnership (link) with increasing numbers of Service Men and Women return from various conflicts the problems of disengagement, helplessness in the context of a recession means that the needs of this group are only going to become greater. Without the support and intensive input that they need, we will lose ever more of these valuable people and their talents to the pointless revolving door of the prison system.
No Offence is a project that seeks to support reform in the criminal justice sector. One area of interest for them is supporting prisoners back into work (link). Extensive research and evidence shows that the key to maintaining a stable life, free from crime is regular work.
To us these projects make absolute sense, the strain on the various public services who manage and support these “marginalised” groups have always been under immense strain, in tough economic times even more so as demand grows. We think its about time we all thought differently about this and focussed attention on reducing demand by addressing route causes. We don’t in any way profess to have all the answers, but in 2012 we’re certainly going to try to do our bit.
There is a lot to do.
Jane Pound.