Thank you to Simon Parkin, Joe Minaudo and Gord MacDonald for sharing their insights in to HR trends, best practices and priorities. I think we can all agree that we have some good work to do in 2015.
Can we also all agree to have fun in 2015? I know that HR is called upon to address complex and sensitive issues on a daily basis but if we stay serious all the time people will start avoiding us.
As an HR leader ensuring that your HR team has fun through activities like team building events and community days is a great start; it will allow your team to get their minds away from the serious work of HR and build that team cohesiveness we’re all striving for.
But let’s take it further and identify ways to have fun on a daily basis. Fun is a subjective and personal definition but I’m confident that each of us can figure out what constitutes fun for us. If you’re having trouble, go spend some time with a child and they’ll remind you.
Fun can be a profound influencer. It builds relationship. It relieves stress. It motivates us to work harder and better. It gets our creative juices flowing. It makes us better at our jobs.
A colleague in the hospitality industry (arguably one of the harder industries to work in) had this to say:
“Having fun at work is a great way to release negative energy. The laughter and fun replaces the stress with positive energy and in turn creates a better working environment. We are always laughing and having fun at work. It helps us not have to pretend to be happy for our clients and guests. We genuinely are happy.”
It also facilitates learning. My friend, Stephen Wei, who amongst his many responsibilities advises teachers on incorporating the principals of drama in to other educational subjects had this to say about using fun to aid learning:
“In teaching we talk a lot about ‘learning through play’. Children and adults learn better through experimentation and exploration, generated by curiosity and a sense of fun. Adults are no different. Artists will ‘play’ with ideas, concepts, materials, phrases, designs, etc. It is through playing that they explore and experiment. Every pursuit that is not mechanical, repetitive or done by rote requires flexibility and problem solving. Fun to me is that engagement with our work that is about exploration, problem solving and creativity. ‘Fun’ is deep engagement with a job as opposed to simply fulfilment of a task. Without that fun, we are but drones in an assembly line. With it, we are explorers, devisers, developers, creators and problem solvers.”
Have fun and we’ll see you in 2015.
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Kathleen Jinkerson is the Director of HR & Talent Solutions with The Talent Company (www.thetalent.co), a human resources consulting firm that works closely with clients to develop, optimize and innovate their Recruitment and Talent practices. Kathleen possesses almost 10 years of experience in partnering with organizations to help them build their talent capacity as well as their HR and leadership teams. Kathleen is very active on both LinkedIn and Twitter.
For more information on The Talent Company and our 12 Days of Talent project, visit www.thetalent.co
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