Today's blog in the #BeTheRippleBlogs series is a positive piece from Marian Chaney. Marian and I have never met in person and connected as a result of the #BeTheRipple movement. She is an HR Operations Manager looking to make work a better place to be. You can find Marian on LinkedIn: Here and on Twitter as @M_EChaney. Over to Marian: Are we Being Heard at Work?Are you still listening? How many times have you said this in your personal life and how many times have you wished you would say it in your professional life? Most likely it’s been countless times, and why is this? Where does this feeling come from? Being heard is a key component to our happiness and it doesn’t happen enough in the workplace. Being truly listened to indicates that what you are saying has value, which heavily impacts your happiness. I believe the two places where organisations are still missing an opportunity to listen, is decision-making and colleague relationships. Too many decisions are made at the top. In most companies an idea from the administrator on living wage is not going to make it up to the managing director. Even if a company has put in a mechanism for elevating ideas to director level, by the time the idea has come into effect it’s morphed into something different which translates to less satisfaction and therefore less happiness for the person who thought of the idea. This is really important to remedy of course for operational reasons, as those who are doing the job are most likely going to be ones to know how to improve it, but by truly listening to employees’, the happiness of that company will increase exponentially. The more employees’ know they are being heard, the more ideas they will share, creating a healthy lifecycle of continuous improvement among other well known benefits such as reduced employee turnover and increased profitability. But most importantly, if everyone feels happy, it’s a better place to work and a place that everyone will want to be. The second opportunity for improvement is truly understanding who our colleagues are. Unkindness comes from fear, and fear comes from the unknown, so let’s start knowing our colleagues. Ask your teammate what would make their job easier, and really listen. When you can see someone has come into work in a bad mood, ask them how they are and listen to hear them, don’t listen to respond. How about we stop answering the phone with the same ‘Hi, how are you?, I’m fine thanks how are you?’ to the colleague you speak to every day, and instead sit with them at lunch and start to understand them as a person. This doesn’t mean everyone needs to be close friends, but I do feel organisations should encourage everyone to listen to everybody else. I think the goal is not to fix unkindness but to start an open conversation about it and discover and appreciate the unknown. From there, the happiness will shine through. Thank you to Marian for sharing this piece.
As Marian identifies, actively listening to others and taking time to understand other perspectives is important in developing a positive working environment and instilling kindness through open conversations. Thank you once again to Marian for sharing this positive piece to begin our week. If you would like to submit a blog for this series, please send your work via email to: hello@joannasuvarna.co.uk. See you all on Friday for the next blog post! Have a great week and stay safe! Jo
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
You can find PDFs of all blog pieces:
AuthorSThis is a collaborative blog which showcases many voices. Archives
February 2022
Categories |