One of my first meetings as Bohemian HR was to meet Nada Chebib, an HR Consultant. We had a lovely walk and talk around Kew Green (this is how I prefer to meet my customers). We discussed what drives her now as an HR professional and she said 2 words, kindness and results. Music to my ears, as you know, so I asked her to share more on this and I thought it would be great to share some of our conversation in an article.
Nada, thank you for coming to meet me for a walk, tell us a little about you?
Thank you, how nice to walk around the scenic Kew Green. I started my HR career in Calgary, Canada working in the energy industry over 25 years ago. I was lucky enough to be one of the first HR Business Partners in our organisation when Dave Ulrich’s HR Business Partner model was new and innovative in 1997. It was really exciting to be partnering with the business to understand their needs and challenges and help build a people strategy to achieve the business’ goals. I was partnered with the International business unit which led me to a 3-year assignment in London in 2002. Once here, I fell in love with London and the UK and 5 years later made it my permanent home. I stayed in the energy industry, including providing investor relations for retail investors for 3 years and working with the trading side of the energy business for 10 years. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with great companies, great people and great leaders on very exciting business challenges over the years.
Nada walking in Surrey Hills with her dog Steffi
When we talk about kindness in the workplace what do we mean? How can we be kind and also ensure we get the results?.
Kindness is a core value of mine. It’s how I want to be treated and it’s how I feel we should treat others. But it’s also good business. We invest a lot of time and money into finding the right people and developing them, within a competitive marketplace, that we can’t afford not to treat them with kindness.
I’d also like to add that being kind does not mean being permissive or tolerating illegal or unethical behaviour. Being ethical and trustworthy in our actions goes hand in hand with being kind.
How can a business assess their level of engagement and culture of their organisation?
We need to start with having clarity about our business goals, our competitive environment, and what is our unique proposition to the market. Why would any stakeholder (customers, shareholders, suppliers, employees, communities) wish to invest their time and money in us over our competitors? What are our business challenges and what do we need to be successful?
Next, what are our core values? Values speak to what is important to us, on what we’re not willing to compromise and to how we are going to achieve our business objectives. These values must be true to founders and leaders – what we say is what we do. We can then attract and retain the employees and business relationships who match our values.
Formal engagement surveys conducted annually or bi-annually can be really helpful in gathering data on how well we’re doing in achieving our business goals and how we are living up to our values.
But it’s as important to have multiple informal means for leaders to understand what is working well and what is not working well. For example, do employees speak up and voice their concerns with each other and with leaders? Does everyone seek to find constructive solutions for obstacles or challenges? Do you see people going out of their way to help each other or to help customers? Are leaders listening and asking questions of employees and their stakeholders, not just talking at them?
The ultimate test, of course, is achieving results. If we’re not achieving the results we want, we need to ensure we’ve not placed unnecessary obstacles preventing our employees from working together to achieve those results.
What strategies can be put in place to achieve an environment where people feel they can be kind, be heard, be more than a number?
There’s been some good research on what kindness looks like in the workplace and you can find the theme of kindness woven into many leadership books. I particularly like how Haskins & Gill (2018) defined the role of kindness involving these actions:
- Fostering a sense of inclusion
- Accommodating personal issues
- Treating others respectfully
- Generosity in giving and receiving
- Caring and being responsive
- Communicating with a personal touch
- Being transparent
- Explaining information logically
- Giving time and active listening
- Valuing differing perspectives
- Giving honest and constructive feedback
- Counselling and mentoring
- Embracing diversity and tolerance
How each organisation implements these actions will vary. But you can see how these actions help employees understand what’s expected of them and how they’ll be supported in achieving the organisation’s goals.
[Gay Haskins is Associate Fellow, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. She is the co-editor, along with Professors Lalit Johri and Mike Thomas, of Kindness in Leadership, published by Routledge, 2018. Alison Gill is Co-Founder and Director of Bvalco, a Board Evaluation Consultancy and author of two Chapters of this book.]
Finally, if we were to achieve this goal, making the world a better place to live and work, what would organisations look and feel like? What would be the outcome?
You know when you walk into a workplace where people feel like they matter, you can feel it. There’s a great sense of pride in being a part of the organisation, people work together to solve problems and achieve greater results, people willingly give their commitment to go above and beyond, and even when they’re working hard, they are having fun.
The results will also be there: better problem solving, achieving results in challenging business environments, and retaining great talent.
If you are looking at how to incorporate a more kind, fair and inclusive culture while increasing performance and happiness, please reach out, we have excellent HR Consultants available to lead and support change programmes.