The word ‘disruption’ has reached saturation point. The bandwagon effect is in full flow.  But we do like a new idea in HR to run with, whether there is evidence to support it or not.

I just don’t think it is a helpful dialogue.

Personally, I don’t want to disrupt stuff.

I want to do stuff better. Wherever I work, I want to make it better for the people that work there.  Whatever that looks like.

Just what does disruption in this context even mean anyway? It isn’t disruptive to say ‘performance management doesn’t work’ or ‘get rid of your employee handbook’, or to argue that the way most organisations recruit is broken. It isn’t disruptive to say that we need to think differently about leadership, about people policy, about reward… about all of this people stuff that we do.

Being open to new approaches, changing what doesn’t work, continuous improvement, rejecting the stuff that is no longer fit for purpose, making what you work for your own context. Challenging the same old……

Yes to all of these things.

Few people are truly disrupting work or Human Resources at their place, nor I would argue do they need to.

Consider for a moment the synonyms for the word ‘disruption’: disturbance, disordering, disarrangement, interference, upset, upsetting, unsettling, confusion, confusing, division, turmoil.

Who needs more of any of this at work?

I don’t want disruption. I want Better.  I want Human.

We can do more. But we can also choose to do it gently, calmly, constructively.