Photo Credit: Ben Ostrowsky, Flickr
Full disclosure, I don’t have scientific evidence, but if I look at the posts of my HR colleagues on Facebook in recent weeks, it seems abundantly clear that those in my profession are concerned about Trump’s election.
You would think that someone who promotes a platform of jobs creation would be favoured by the very people whose work is positively influenced by jobs creation, but it isn’t the case.
It is the concern about the repercussions of the double standard.
IMHO, he’s a bully. He promotes racism, sexism, and win-lose approaches to problem solving. That’s the art of the deal, his anyway.
Why would it be OK for the President to shoot off his mouth and send mean tweets but not OK for the regular folk to behave badly in the workplace?
Many of us have already had to work in environments with double standards, where it is OK for the boss and/or an elite group of employees to behave one way and the rest another. These environments are typically an HR professional’s worst nightmare. People complain; people are disengaged; there’s turnover and ugly legal separations. There isn’t enough empowerment. There’s a revolving door.
Many of us have had to deal with bosses who scream, fire people at whim, and behave terribly inconsistently. They fail to communicate; fail to unite teams; and get rich at the expense of others. They make HR the clean-up crew.
What I am worried about, and what I hear others in my profession worry about, is what kind of example Trump’s Presidency will be. Will those that bully, bully more? Will those who might’ve been able to keep it together before start lashing out? Will it just become standard practice to be downright rude to one another in the workplace? Or will people be able to accept the double standard and behave well on their own terms and for the right reasons.
Social justice, respect for the fellow man, the notion of being in it to win it, together. That’s the hallmark of good human resources. With every strength we can muster, we owe it to ourselves and to our people to fight to keep the right decorum.