I am partial to the word awesome. There is even a warning in my Twitter bio to this effect. Yesterday I saw a postcard that said; be awesome or don’t bother. I’m not entirely sure about the don’t bother part, but I did get to thinking…… what is the people stuff version of this little statement?
Be awesome…. Be more HR awesome.
Some ideas from me on that……
Promise to never again use the phrase ‘it might set a precedent’.
Promise also never to introduce something because Google did. Or some place very similar.
Review all those standard letters that you send people with the eyes of a recipient. How would they make you feel and what do they say about your department? Change as appropriate.
Delete probation periods from your contracts of employments. You know they are kind of pointless so why bother?
Put the coffee machine on free vend for a while. What would it cost you anyway?
Apply for a job at your own company. Think about how the process made you feel. Change as appropriate.
Smile at people. (Try not to scare them).
Do a random act of kindness. Anything that takes your fancy.
Hold a Fika. Invite other teams to join you. It is, erm, awesome.
Let your team go home early.
Send a thank you card. Make thank you cards available for anyone to come and take and send.
Buy Crunchies on a Friday. Because, you know.
Go out and buy a load of plants for the office. Green it up.
Find out what websites you block on the corporate network for no good reason and go and talk to IT and see if they will change their minds.
Celebrate National Donut Week. Yes this is really a thing. And it is next week.
Find an employment policy that states the bleeding obvious and delete it. See if anyone notices.
Have your next meeting outside, or go for a walk while you are talking.
Talk to all of the people who have joined your organisation in the last six months. Ask them what it was like and what would have made it better for them. Amend as appropriate.
Go onto your internal social media network and share something useful or interesting that other people might learn from.
Do some wellbeing stuff. Anything. It doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Let your people know that you give a damn about them outside of whether or not they hit their KPI.
Little things add up to big awesome. Over to you……
What is the most awesome thing you can do today, at your place?
In other news, on Sunday I am running Leeds Half Marathon in aid of Retrak Charity – their mission is a world where no child has to live on the streets. If you fancy it, you can sponsor me here.
People Stuff 
Thanks for that Gem, Brightened my day
awesome post – loving your work
I clicked on the link to your blog post and it came up with a message warning me to proceed with caution 😉
Love it! And good luck for Sunday!
Gem thanks for sharing. Unfortunately, I’m not a fan of the word awesome — it’s too colloquial and chimes now with that oft-repeated expression: “I’m OK”. (No one is just OK; and neither are they up or down. They are just are…a full person in all their rich glory.) I’m a huge believer in the power of people to transform organisations. It would be wonderful to think we didn’t need a series of things to go after to make the place a better place to work, but the trouble is, as part of the human experience, we end up taking people and their well-being (or not…) for granted. I love all your ideas; but, better still, leaders need to lead. In short, they need look at the world through a different pair of eyes, i.e. those that serve the customer/client every day and understand what it’s like to be paid a de minimus amount but still be expected to deliver WOW at every turn without, often, so much as a slap on the back or hearty THANK YOU. Sorry if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick but this is how I see the world.