Background

Recently, I mentioned on Twitter that we are teaming up with a Health & Safety consultant to offer those services to our clients.  After all, HR and Health and Safety are intrinsically linked.  I had a response from someone I tweet with quite ofthen who said something along the lines of "don't mistake Health and Safety for moral fortitude."  Intrigued, I asked him to explain and then asked if he'd consider writing a guest blog post on the subject.  This is the result (my twitter buddy has asked to remain anonymous).

Some of you will know that Jason and I were meant to be at home in Ireland right about now.  In fact, we were supposed to fly on Monday but our flight was cancelled and the next available seats aren’t until Boxing Day.  Christmas plans thwarted.  I was bitterly disappointed as you can imagine but I’ve been forced to see past the disappointment because of the generosity and kindness of others.  No sooner did the news filter through to friends and family but we started receiving offers of drinks and Christmas dinners.  Genuine offers from people who would have made the turkey stretch that little bit further to make sure we weren’t on our own and feeling miserable on Christmas Day. 

It never ceases to amaze me that people can be so kind and generous and I think it’s a sad reflection on society that the majority of stories we hear are about man’s inhumanity to man.  Working in HR, some of the saddest cases we deal with are to do with bullying and the desperation and unhappiness of the person being bullied always saddens me immensely.  It’s one of the reasons why I encourage bosses never to tolerate such behaviour and to ensure that they themselves are above reproach as far as their own behaviour is concerned.

Like most of us, I’ve worked for a number of people over the years and I’ve enjoyed great working relationships with some of them.  A couple of months ago, I met up with someone I used to work for.  We hadn’t seen each other in ten years but that didn’t matter as we nattered away over lunch and generally caught up on each other’s lives.  This person was great to work for – respected everyone on the workforce and fostered an excellent working environment. 

Today, 5th August, is the first birthday of our company. As the proud owners, Jason and I are happy to see our business safely through it’s first year in business. It’s been a tough year, especially since we didn’t really get going properly until February. I’ve learnt a lot in the past year and I thought I might share some of what I’ve learnt with you.

Twitter rocks. That’s only my opinion of course but if you “get it” and if you like it then you can make it work for your business. I get a thrill every time someone chooses to re-tweet me, especially if it’s a link to my blog. I am grateful to each and every person who has decided that something I said was worthy of repeating. Thank you.

Blogging rocks too. I love to write – it’s “my” way of expressing myself. I’m not a visual person; I don’t do mind maps and all that stuff. I like to write and I’m able to get a point across so for me, blogging has been a revelation. I write about a variety of things. Sometimes I write about HR related topics, especially if a story in the news has caught my eye. Other times I write about what’s been happening lately. I’ve even posted a recipe for gazpacho because I mentioned it on Twitter and someone wanted to know how it’s made. Again, thank you to all those people who take the trouble to comment on what I’ve written. Not everyone agrees with me (how very dare you?!) but that’s part of the joy of blogging.

I was on Twitter this morning and I happened to mention that I sometimes have to stop myself from putting a kiss after my name on an email, due to the fact that it’s inappropriate in a business environment. I do find it quite hard sometimes. In the last 6 months I have been honoured to know some truly fantastic people, people who go out of their way to help me and to help our business. I want to show them how much I appreciate them and how my life has been enriched through knowing them. Except I don’t want to freak them out by putting kisses on my emails all the time!

I got lots of comments in response, mostly people saying that they’re glad they’re not the only ones who do that! Jackie Cameron who is a coach and trainer (@jackiecameron1 on Twitter) tweeted that there’s “not enough love in the workplace”.

That got me thinking. Not about workplace romances (an entirely different subject or can of worms, depending on how you look at it) but about affection between colleagues. After all, if you work in an office, chances are you spend more time with your colleagues than you do with your other half. It stands to reason that you will form close friendships with them (or at least some of them).

This post has been inspired by my good friend Matt Askham (tweet with him on Twitter @MattAskham) and his graphic design business. If you visit Matt’s website (and I strongly suggest you do), you’ll see that there’s one client testimonial. Just the one. It happens to be a testimonial written by me but that’s not the point.

When Jason and I started Keeping HR Simple, we had one client testimonial. I wouldn’t put it on our website until we had more testimonials to go with it. My feeling was that having just one testimonial was worse than having none.

Looking at Matt’s website though has been a complete revelation. Yes, it would be nice to have more than one testimonial on there and I’m confident that in time, that will happen for Matt. Clearly, the core message is that Matt has a customer who’s happy with his work – the epitome of what a testimonial should be. However, that one testimonial also says that Matt is proud of his work. He’s so proud he put it on his website.  And that's enough. 

Recently, I’ve heard lots of people advising others about using Twitter, especially for business purposes. I’ve done it myself and encouraged others to get involved, join the conversation, etc etc.

During one conversation, I was told that the person would “do” Twitter but only because he’d been strongly encouraged to do so. There was no curiosity, no interest in finding out more. He was going to tweet because he’d been told to. End of.

Twitter, or LinkedIn or Facebook or any other social media you care to mention, done without heart, are just pointless. I told the person who felt obligated to tweet not to bother unless he could find and see the point to it. That he had to see the point for himself, not do it because it’s the done thing or because other people expect it. There are lots of other ways to communicate with people and to market your business.  Other ways you might feel more comfortable and might actually suit you and your business better.