I want to talk about a photo.

A photo of feet.

Not just any feet, but working feet.

Specifically feet that seem, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, to illustrate issues like the gender pay gap, workplace sex based inequality and so on.

I know you have seen the photo (or one very similar to it).

There are a couple of versions around, but they have something in common besides the headlines.

There will be several pairs of feet. The  majority look to be male feet, suited and booted.

Then there will be some female feet. Always white.  Always appearing to be a professional or office type worker.  Always, and I mean always, wearing a skirt and with bare legs (or wearing some very womanly tights).  Heels are obligatory.

I have several problems with these photographs.

First of all – why and when did gender/sex related articles became associated with feet?

There’s a suggestion contained within that the only people (women) who experience gender and sex based problems in the workplace are professional, white and looking like a particular version of femininity.

Do women of colour, women working in retail, care or domestic work not experience the same challenges at work? Do women who wear boots and don’t conform to the old style idea of how women at work should dress also not experience discrimination, harassment, a lack of equal pay, career marginalisation?

Can we please find a better image to explain the systemic, structural and serious issues of sex based inequality in the workplace?

Say no to feet.

I’m currently working with a group of final year HR students at Liverpool John Moores University. Our module for this term is strategic HRM.  Last night we were looking at organisationl culture.

I always find culture a fascinating subject. There is plenty of theory and research available.  There too are many models to help us think about the types of culture that exist.  It is a highly relatable subject, as we have our own experiences of it.  It is something that we instinctively understand because we have lived it.  Everyone who has had a job can tell you something about organisational culture, even if they don’t use the official terminology.

Most of us have had our own experiences of a good culture or a bad one – whatever that really means. We know about people who fit in to the prevailing culture, and people who do not.  We understand instinctively the impact that culture can have upon us at work.

After we had talked about the proper, academic theories, we turned to discussing our own experiences. We talked about organisations that we know, either through working there or because they have a brand profile.  We discussed the extent to which we believe culture impacts behaviour and behaviour impacts culture and whether any of those models are ever really 100% accurate.  Our conclusions were that they were not or could not be.  Nothing is ever as clear cut, as simple as a theory might suggest.  They are just frameworks for understanding.  The context, the reality is always more complex.

This particular group of students are all working whilst studying. One student noted how much this helps put discussions like this in context and wondered how much harder it might be for those studying full time, straight from A Levels, with much less work experience.

And then the analogy of the night. One student reflected on her experience of ante natal classes.  The narrative she experienced there was linear, neat.  It will be like this.

Our conclusion? Practicing HR is like childbirth. It’s messier in real life.

This article landed in my Twitter timeline today.  A countdown of the UK’s coolest offices. Apparently (as I could only bring myself to read some of it), the list contains offices with rotating fairground rides, reggae rooms and living jungles (whatever they are).  I am betting that there is also a mix of zany colours, bean bags and maybe a football table or two in the mix.

I cant’ think of anywhere I would want to work less.

Cool is all too often style over substance. Personally, I’d rather work for somewhere that has inspirational leaders, a great organisational culture, decent tech for me to use.  I don’t need clouds painted on the ceiling (yes, I have seen this with my own eyes); I need somewhere that I can think.  I want to work somewhere that will help me to develop, cares about my wellbeing, allows me to be creative and contribute.

A fairground ride will not make any of these things happen.  It won’t impact productivity for the better, create employee engagement, inspire people to be their best or achieve their objectives. If you are lucky it might create a laugh or two in the workplace when it’s first launched.  It will no doubt provide for some fun Instagram shots for the social feeds.

But to me, it just feels like the modern day equivalent of putting up a sign that says ‘you don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps’.

If you have money to spare in your corporate budget, I’d suggest that there will always be a better, more impactful way to spend it than installing a slide or a drum kit in the office.  (Memo, you are not Google, and neither is anyone else but Google).

As my friend Neil Usher said, cool is dead.

We don’t need more gimmicks.  We need better workplaces for all.

The human workplace is getting a lot of interest of late. Let’s be honest,  I haven’t invented this term.  There is a risk that we are jumping on a bandwagon here.  You know what we mean.  Someone starts talking about something at some conference.  People ooooh about it a bit in the audience and on twitter.  People start to blog about it.  Consultancies start to charge for it.  It makes it from the niche to the mainstream and then we all get bored of it and show disdain for it and think that people who are still talking about it and implementing it while we have moved onto the next shiny thing are Just. Not. Cool.

But, all the same, there is something about the concept that sticks with me. That resonates and feels like just maybe, combined with a focus on employee experience, this is the place to put our focus right now.

The Human Workplace is an imprecise term. It is capable of interpretation in more than one way.  For me, a human workplace is one that has people at the centre of their focus.  It is one that does not buy the cliché that people are your greatest asset (said by many, proved by few) but does recognise that people that work for them, are affected by them, are a user of their services, matter.  The human organisation considers how the stuff that we do makes people feel.

It is an organisation that can embrace technology and all that it brings us, whilst retaining what is inherently human. It is an organisation that doesn’t automate the heck out of everything just because it can.  Human organisations have heart.  Emotion isn’t a dirty word in the human organisation.  It is safe to be real.  It is safe to speak out.

From an HR perspective, if that is even a term that fits with the concept of a human workplace, is certainly focused more on people as people and not as resources.

Why is this stuff even important? Why does it matter?

There are plenty of reasons.

There are the traditional arguments to the people first approach. Retention, attraction, motivation, the war for talent (sorry). There is of course the never ending quest for employee engagement.

But it is more than that too.

When organisations aren’t human, when they don’t have heart, when they are not sufficiently people-focused, there are often found deeper and more troubling problems.

Sadly, there are organisations without much heart. We know that.  No matter what the careers website says, many – most – organisations are much more focused on profit and shareholders.  It’s that thing called capitalism.

We have all seen the examples on our news reports or in our Twitter timelines. Companies that are offering sweatshop-like working conditions. Others that still embrace the worst of scientific management principles.  Exploitation of workers remains an issue, today, in the UK.  There are plenty of organisations that are anything but human.

It is not, in my experience, that most organisations set out to be inhuman. Most HR teams don’t create their policies and processes with the aim in mind of forgetting the human touch, or simply not caring about how people feel about their work and experience their organisations.  Many organisations genuinely feel that they put people at the top of the agenda  – but this doesn’t stop them being no-so-human.

It happens not by design but by default or accident.

There is too much bureaucracy. Leaders lose sight of the small stuff.  The policies and the processes get bigger and more complex.

The people get lost along the way.

The way people feel gets lost too.

Let’s take that website cliché, people are our greatest asset – in much the same way that anyone can come up with a generic list of corporate values, anyone can say that their people are their greatest asset. Meaning it and proving it are two very different things.

If people really are your greatest asset, it will show up in everything that you do. It will show up in how people are recruited and inducted.  It will show up in the reward and recognition.  How people are led, the spaces in which people are expected to work in, the way the difficult stuff is dealt with (or not).

It will show up too in the performance review, the policies and procedures, the learning and development on offer. No one needs to be told whether they are valued by their company.  When it is true, they instinctively know that they are – or they are not.  It is cultural.

Not-so-human workplaces are everywhere. Perhaps you even work in one yourself.

So I’m thinking about this stuff. In the practical, not the abstract.  If we want workplaces in which we genuinely place how people feel at the top of the agenda, then there is much that HR can do in the everyday.   Blogs coming up…….

This is one of those ‘lessons you can learn from’ posts. I don’t write them very often, but I had such a pleasant customer experience recently, it got me thinking.

I love going to watch a film at the cinema. But it’s something though that I rarely do, as I don’t enjoy the experience that surrounds it.  Usually, there is queuing involved.  To buy tickets, to pick up pre-paid tickets, for the toilets, for popcorn, and then to get into the actual screening.  Then there is the bit that bugs me most of all.  The adverts.  I am a stickler for punctuality.  If I go to see a film that is starting at 7.30, I’d like it to actually do so.  But the time a film is supposed to begin is usually the start of multiple adverts, suggestions to go out and buy more junk food, and trailers for films of an entirely different genre that I don’t want to see.  The actual film probably begins a good 30 minutes after that.

I’m starting to moan. I’m sorry about that.

This weekend I went to a small, local, private cinema. There was no queue.  Just a wave of your phone with the tickets on it.  There was also no queue for the sweets – and you didn’t have to take a mortgage out to buy them.  Best of all was that the film began….. on time.  There were just a couple of trailers for similar films. And… there was an intermission.  Where someone came out and sold ice-cream.  If that wasn’t enough, individual bottles of Proscecco to drink during the screening.

I didn’t love the film all that much. I might, in fact, have had a small nap during it.

But I did love the experience.

First of all, it felt personal. They clearly understand what their customers want and value, they deliver it.  In the march of progress they had held on to the special touches, like the intermission and the ice cream seller.  The staff were friendly – and didn’t appear to have targets to upsell you a larger popcorn.

There wasn’t the range of sweet stuff you get in a big screen cinema. No fancy reclining seats. And no hot food either (because there’s nothing like sitting next to the guy with the highly odorous hot dog).

In much the same way that we have seen consumers begin to value once again the small, independent and local retailers over huge out of town supermarkets, what we want as customers and as employees has changed over time.

On one hand, we want speed and immediacy. Quick responses on Twitter. Products at our doors in ever decreasing time frames.  But at the same time we want something personal.  We don’t want to feel like a cog in a machine.  Processed.

When it comes to people stuff, big isn’t necessarily better. One size only fits one.  Targets, as we know, have unintended consequences. What is valued, is highly variable for different people. For all I love technology, it is possible to lose the human touch along the way.  We don’t have to automate the heck out of everything.

While fast and fancy is good, we don’t necessarily want to trade experience and feeling for it.

Less, can most definitely be more.

There’s probably also a HR lesson in the price of pic n mix…. but I’m still working on that.

It’s 4am.

An unfamiliar city. A lonely, identikit hotel room.

All around is still and dark.

Wondering if I am the only one awake.

Looking out of the window, the city sleeps, even if I don’t.

Feeling disconnected and far from home.

But of course I’m not disconnected at all. Literally.  An internet connection is all that I need.

And there they are. My friends, my tribe. My cheerleading squad.  In my timeline.  Via DM.  On that inspirational Slack channel.

The geography and the time zone don’t matter.  Everyone and everything that I need is just a tweet or a gif away.

And I’m loving social media just a little bit more today.

I’ve had a couple of YOLO conversations lately.  Both virtual and IRL.

It might be an annoying acronym, but it is a familiar script for me.

It is my default position when I apply for a fitness event. That along with my favourite coaching question ‘what is the worst thing that than can happen?’

There’s a reason for this. For much of my childhood my mother was ill with a condition that remained stubbornly undiagnosed.  Years and years of doctors and consultations and hospitals and treatments – of the traditional and distinctly alternative kind.  Five long miserable years.  And then, diagnosis, treatment, recovery.

And a new mind-set.

You only come this way once. My mother said this almost every day.  Often as a precursor to opening a bottle of wine or buying some expensive shoes if I am honest.  It imprinted upon me.

Cliché it may be. But true all the same.  All we really have is this moment.  Tomorrow is another day, but it is by no means guaranteed.  Too many recent events have taught us so.

On Saturday, I am taking part in an endurance event that, in truth, I’m not fit enough for. I’ll be one of the weakest and slowest in the field.  It involves water, something that I am frightened of.  Plenty of reasons to stay at home. But that direction leads to a life that is less than it really could be.

Live, laugh, love. Take risks.  Do all of the things that you always wanted to. Don’t wait.  Carpe that diem. Just do it.

Because, you know…. YOLO.

The title of this blog post was prompted by a collision of conversations. Some with friends, some at work.

And I got to thinking….. how often do we do this?

How often do we believe in our own awesomeness, how often do we shout about what makes us special and different and unique? Your very own individual contribution. With confidence and belief.

We show appreciation for our colleagues and our teams and our friends. As leaders, we know the value of building up and encouraging others. Of providing positive feedback and recognition.

But how often do we articulate our own awesome?  To ourselves and to others?  More often we spend time worrying. If we are good enough, if we belong on this course or in this job or this particular place right now.  We think about what people think about us.

Self-limiting beliefs.

Imposter syndrome.

Lack of confidence.

Embarrassment.

Fear.

Constantly questioning.

Not wanting to seem arrogant or boastful.

The voice in our head that gives us doubt.

We’ve all been here, sometime or other.

But what if you just decided to park the head stuff?  Just for a moment. Right  now. And instead of focusing on the maybes and the negatives, to believe instead that you got this. Take that one moment to articulate your own awesome.  To you, to everyone else.

Just do it.

I ran the Leeds 10K yesterday.  It was my first run at this distance; usually I just stick to a much easier 5.  I wasn’t very fast, compared to many in the field.  But I was good for me.

The term ‘run the race you are in’ is often quoted.  It applies to running, to organisations, to HR, to life. It is a phrase that I often say to myself when I get frustrated, when I’m slower than I want to be.

The term has two meanings for me.  Firstly, it is about this race.  It is about now.  Not the next one or the last one but simply this run, right here, right now.  The second meaning is about context; good is different everywhere, and for everybody.

When you are running, your real competitor is only yourself.  You care about your performance, your time.  That is why runner crave the elusive Personal Best.  You might know that you can’t compete with the elite runner, but you can be good for you, in your context and with your resources.  There is no point in comparing my time to the time of the fittest, fastest runner in the race. Just like there is no point in comparing what HR I’m delivering against some of the alleged best.

Look to others for inspiration.  But at the same time, don’t worry too much about what they are doing.  They are running their race.

Good running form also means running with your head up.  Work stuff is like that too.  Look up and out. This is what gives you ideas and helps you learn.   But ultimately do what is right for you, at your place and in your race.  My friend Tim Scott is fond of saying that there is no such thing as best practice.  Striving for it is akin to trying to run someone elses race.  Good practice for the context is a much better goal.  The HR PB.

There is another running quote that I like that is as equally applicable to work in general and people stuff too.  Slow is better than did not finish, which is better than did not start.

Run the race you are in.

Everyone needs someone to help them get to the finish line. Thank you to Mark, for getting me to mine.

Image by Graham Smith @AATImage