Blog Page – Dean Royles

Dean Royles, OD Academy Member and Ambassador, blogs on the important subject of tolerance………………….

Tolerance in an Intolerant World

Deep breath. I have thought long and hard about putting these thoughts on paper, but here goes…..

Despite all the advances made over the last few decades in areas of equality and diversity and an apparently more liberal, egalitarian society, it seems we live in a less, not a more tolerant society. ‘Delete your tweet’, ‘Shut the f*ck up’. ‘Blocked’…. these responses will be familiar to many people on social media. Cancel culture is hotly debated and contested – is it preventing hate speech or an attack on freedom of speech?

 For many, this new cultural norm means tiptoeing around some complex issues for fear of offending or being cancelled. We have apparently all been divided up into tribes in a new form of identity politics. You are either leave or remain, an ally or an enemy, Corbyn or Blair, a one nation tory or a libertarian, pro or anti-vaccine… And it seems, in any of these choices of world-views, you are either wrong or you are right, there is no grey, no middle ground and no nuance. Disagreement with one set of values or beliefs is automatically associated with disloyalty, disrespect and discrimination. It seems that anyone who can’t immediately be convinced of the validity of someone else’s argument, opinion or values is disregarded and excluded. In more extreme cases, this is followed with threats and in some cases incidents of violence. If someone disagrees, they are portrayed as intolerant.  Intolerant because they disagree, intolerant because disagreement is seen as a lack of empathy or understanding. This intolerance is driving friends, families and colleagues apart. It is hurtful and damaging. And, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what tolerance means. Tolerance isn’t about agreeing or disagreeing or about accepting and rejecting. Tolerance is about the ability or willingness to appreciate the existence of opinions or behaviours that one disagrees with or dislikes – in other words,  tolerance means that we can respect each other’s right to be wrong.

This last year, we have seen significant societal change as movements like Black Lives Matter following the murder of George Floyd and increased focus on violence against women following the murder of Sarah Everard, that has featured heavily in media and in our conversations as we develop our understanding and deepen our awareness and it seems the discourse on these issues has moved forward for the better. So, what has this got to do with organisational culture and values? Well, we know that these societal changes and new norms impact on the workplace, affecting our leadership, our cultures and our policies and procedures. Equality, Diversity and inclusion (EDI) is at the core of great people management. EDI is an organisational issue that is becoming ever more important and increasingly complex as we encounter conflict and differing views in concepts like privilege, the growing argument amongst some on an apparent conflict between the rights of transgendered people who have fought so hard for recognition and sex-based rights, between gender and the role of women in religion and between visible and non-visible disability including a growing understanding and appreciation of neurodiversity.

By way of an example, there is a substantial discussion on whether we should use the term BAME. Does the acronym help or hinder the debate on racial equality? The use of the term BAME has essentially been about describing social and economic disadvantage – such as BAME staff are under represented in senior positions or addressing the ethnicity pay gap. However according to statistics, British Chinese have the highest income of all ethnic groups followed by Indians and whites. By contrast, British Bangladeshi, Pakistani’s and black British are least represented in the top 20% of all income earners (ONS). By categorising all ethnic minority groups together we miss out crucial information about specific vulnerabilities. This is replicated in health equalities where different ethnic groups have differing needs. We could also debate about how we position white privilege with the experience of Traveller communities or the challenges faced by lesbians and gay men and historic discrimination or what are the issues if you are Muslim and gay or white and disabled? Or where the rights of transgendered men and women intersect with sex based rights. These are tough issues and can lead to challenging conversations, but we have to ensure a proper open conversation in our organisations that is free from the polemicism of social media and increasingly societal intolerance. If we don’t, we deny opportunities, reduce productivity and deteriorating service standards if colleagues are intolerant of different views and believes and how to understand the impact in the workplace. We do no one any favours, least of all those disadvantaged through protected characteristics if we avoid these challenging debates. Whilst we avoid the debate, we still see glass ceilings for women, under representation of people of colour in senor positions, lack of access to service for people with disabilities and ongoing discrimination of people in the LBGT community.

We are in era where the intersectionality of different protected characteristics is both at the heart of what individuals are and who they represent, and at the same time, hidden from view because it raises so many difficult questions. Difficult questions and issues that we as HR and OD professionals and our organisations must confront. Confront to understand and confront to ensure we and our organisations change to maintain and enhance individual and team relationships, to be tolerant of different views in the true sense of the word to ensure we grow and develop as organisations, teams and individuals.

It can feel uncomfortable for many and I know it can feel easier to take a step back or be silent, but EDI is core to what we do and at the core of who we are. It is a space HR and OD professionals must confidently occupy. It is our duty to immerse ourselves in the debate, to challenge ourselves and to continue learning and developing – enhancing our knowledge and understanding. I believe there are three areas we can explore to help address this:

Leadership – Good leadership requires us to surround ourselves with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with us without fear or favour. Organisation leaders need to recognise the importance of tolerance in organisations. A failure to address this will lead to more tension, disputes and fractured workplace relationships. Leaders can ensure those charged with leading culture change have safe spaces where the issues can be discussed openly so these leaders can navigate their way around and through these issues with more confidence. Constructive challenge, debate and tolerance should be highlighted as key leadership attributes.

Values– most organisation of size have a set of explicit Values to help employees fit into organisational norms and expectations. Huge benefit is derived from actively working on these values to help employees sense-make and understand. Many have a value such as ‘Respect’, in working through these values tolerance should be highlighted and emphasised.

Training –as issues of equality, diversity and identity have become more complex, there has been a tendency, often derived through fear, of abdicating the embedding of Equality and Diversity and promoting inclusion to EDI professionals. Much or the training of managers and leaders is still in the space of avoiding discrimination and focusing on crude, often simplistic, protected characteristics. We need a fundamental overall of the training of managers to quip them to lead and to ‘feel comfortable being uncomfortable’. There needs to be a focus in intersectionality and an appreciation of neurodiversity in the workplace.

We are fortunate to live in a time with unprecedented access to knowledge, information and intelligence. We live and work in diverse communities and workplaces. This diversity can be a source of conflict and tension but channelled and appreciated it can also bring new ideas and approaches and this can be maximised in organisations where we can respect each other’s right to be wrong and still enjoy a laugh and a coffee together.

I would really appreciate your views on the blog and other ways in which we can address or approach these issues in our organisations.

Dean Royles

Dean Royles, OD Academy Member & Ambassador, blogs in recognition of marking one year on from the start of Lockdown #1.

The Myths About Work that Lockdown has Put to Rest

Today marks one year since the lockdown era began.  One whole year. Wind back the clock and I doubt that very few of us anticipated a death toll of 125000+ people in the UK and that the pandemic as we now know it, wasn’t  just some bad dream but was, in fact, to become a devastating reality.  A devastating reality that, sadly, isn’t going to leave us any time soon.

Over these last 12 months, I think most of us will have learned things about ourselves that we never really knew, our level of resilience (or tolerance), our level of mental fitness and ability to cope, what really matters to us and various other skills we simply didn’t know we even had or had within us.

But what have the 3 lockdowns taught us about our national workforce, in particular those key workers in our NHS and social care? How has our understanding of the nature of workforce, the nature of the workplace and the nature of work itself changed? What does it mean for OD? What myths has the lockdown era slayed?

Lockdown #1. The Churchillian-esq address from Number 10. A national call to arms as each of our 4 nations succumbed to a disease that one year on has claimed over 120,000 lives.  We were told 20,000 deaths would be a ‘good outcome’. In what world would we ever have thought, or even accepted, that we would cling on to the hope of such a devasting statistic?

Lockdown #1. All 4 of our nations isolated in our homes as the sun shone brighter than it had done in years and yet despite this, our social interactions took a gargantuan shift into the sun-deprived world of online communications.  Countless hours were (and continue to be) spent with work colleagues on Zoom, TEAMS, Skype, Google Meet and any others I have perhaps yet to discover. 

Lockdown #1.  A surreal period in our history that saw our United Kingdom learning each and every day how to live with a new normal that would protect its many and diverse, established ways of life. 

Lockdown #1. A paradigm of oxymorons that also saw the meteoric rise of our previously unsung ‘key worker’ heroes.  And rightly so. It also shone the brightest of lights on the massively high prevalence of health inequalities across our country as the pandemic took its differentiated toll on each of our communities.   

Lockdown #1. When the stark reality hit that, above all else, our NHS needed our help more than ever. Our new and long-awaited national mantra? ‘Treat the NHS well to allow the NHS to treat us all well.’

So what workforce myths did Lockdown #1 slay?

Workforce Myth 1 : Change takes time.

It doesn’t. 

As many thousands of our NHS staff were redeployed to work directly with Covid patients on wards, in ITU and in the community, with many thousands more deployed to directly support them, we discovered, almost in a heartbeat, that change could happen far quicker than we could ever have imagined. With a clear vison and deep sense of local, national and global purpose, where every single member of our NHS workforce knew they were both needed and valued, they were both content and proud to play their part with sheer dedication, commitment and selflessness, with far too many paying the ultimate price.

Workforce Myth 2 : Workforce is only an enabler of transformation.

It isn’t.

The same is often also said of our digital technologies and our estates.

It has long been an accepted wisdom that our clinicians can, on their own, change and transform our patient services and care pathways. Lockdown #1 well and truly slayed this ill-informed myth and for our clinicians, this likely came as a huge relief.  Lockdown #1 showed us time and time again that real, ‘transformational change’ can only come about when we engage, reskill and/or upskill our wider workforce, when we have the right digital technologies in place to support them and when we make bold changes to the layout and accessibility of our wide-ranging and vast estates.

And so the truth to this particular, so-called ‘workforce’ myth? When our workforce, digital technologies and estates come together as one with the same, shared purpose, there automatically becomes a ‘global buy-in’ to the need for transformational change that, in turn, is rapidly enacted. And for this, we must all be eternally grateful.  This time last year, who would ever have thought that ‘the show would go on’ when thousands upon thousands of our colleagues were sent to work at home as buildings were emptied by GP practices, outpatient, radiology and corporate functions such as HR and finance, to name but a few. That ‘show’, that formidable ‘show’ right across our country did indeed (and continues to) go on.

Lockdown #2. Nothing much more to learn here. Just a few weeks of what came before to make sure we could celebrate the long-awaited Christmas holidays with our loved ones, in person.

Lockdown #2.  The ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ sprint, despite the palpable deterioration of our national mood. Better days, we hoped, were just around the corner. 

Lockdown #2.  Winter pressures were now hurtling at break-neck speed towards the already battered down doors of our NHS and yet the media volume somehow just didn’t seem to be as loud? Or loud enough?

Tiers and tears then followed. Tears of sorrow as more and more lives were claimed to this vicious disease and tears of joy as the news of a vaccine broke across the globe.  The ‘Great British Stand Off Against COVID’ kicked in within days with the rollout of a vaccination programme that would go on to be our greatest, national public health effort of all time. And yet again, despite being in the eye of a storm like no other, our NHS and its huge army of volunteers stood up, dusted themselves down and began to jab our way out of this national tragedy.

Lockdown #2.  The usual winter pressures coupled with soaring rates of COVID infection had now begun to take hold of our NHS.  Our Christmas Holiday promises and dreams were completely shattered.  The national mood of the ‘here and now’ had deteriorated even further.

Workforce Myth 3 : The introduction of new ways of working and new technology requires a massive upfront cost on training and the development of new skills.

It really doesn’t.

In hindsight, it is perhaps almost surprising (if not quite shocking) that we didn’t realise this earlier. In our lives away from our ‘world of work’ we have, almost by default (or osmosis) and without any ‘formal’ training, accepted technology progression as a pre-requisite to our everyday ways of banking and paying our bills, booking our holidays, tracking our fitness and, perhaps bizarrely for some, seeing our toddlers ‘pinching’ screens to expand images that once upon a time could only ever have been ‘printed out’ or shown via a cine-cam. And yet despite our, some would say, forced ability (or not) to adapt to ‘consumer’ technologies, we seem to have consistently held the view that, in the world of work, we need to subject our colleagues to endless hours of training so as to make sure that the roll out of digital technologies and/or re-designed estates, go as smoothly as possible. And yet, within hours of sending certain staff members to work from home following Boris’ national address, these staff members were immediately required to engage with MSTEAMs, Zoom, SKYPE etc. and to learn ‘as they went along’, whilst at the same time utilising (or complying with) a vast range of IT software tools to demonstrate task completion, productivity, efficiency and progress. 

Time spent on the required completion of ‘compliance’ tasks justifies a whole different commentary and therefore, is something I won’t attempt to comment on here. 

Workforce Myth 4 : You can’t trust staff to work from home.

Oh yes you can.

Nothing much more to say here other than ‘The show actually does go on’.  Yes, there will always be a select few who take advantage of changing times, but this happen whether or not they work from home. This is just part and parcel of working with and managing people in the world of work.

And yet, on the flip side as a co-worker or people manager, there will also be those who you trust implicitly to deliver time and time again.

Lockdown #3. The final (?) push. The recognition that the pandemic is going to be with us in some form or another for some considerable time to come.

Lockdown #3. Deaths peaked at 1000+ per day. As a nation we stood and continue to stand together, collectively and commemorating the 125000+ lives lost in our United Kingdom.

Lockdown #3.  Social care eventually gets a look in as visits to our care homes to finally hold the hands of our loved ones  are allowed. The roadmap out of the pandemic is set out as the NHS holds its own whilst the PMs  gradual removal of restrictions begin to play out. Most of our kids, at long last, are back in the classroom, at school!  

Lockdown #3.  A ‘no going back’ strategy and one way street out of lockdown. We shall see. Should we hold our breath…?

Workforce Myth 5 : Being in work is stressful and bad for our mental health.

For many, it is quite the opposite.

It is certainly true that for some, particularly those with controlling or ineffective managers, being in work can have a negative impact on mental health. But there are so, so many of us who have missed being in work, we have missed the team camaraderie, our social interaction with patients and customers and just the sheer comfort that comes with working as part of a team, in the same place. ‘Working away from work’ has had a hugely negative impact on the mental wellness of swathes of our workforce and therefore it is absolutely vital that we continue to strive to find new ways to lead, and be led, that support all of us to positively maintain our mental fitness.  The importance of taking time out to pay attention to our own mental and physical health needs must never, ever be underestimated. Taking time out for self-care is, and will continue to be, key for all of us.  Doing this authentically well will, without doubt as we move forward, be the single most differentiating factor between good and bad employers, between low and high levels of sickness absence, between high turnover and retention and between developing and losing talent.

The COVID pandemic has and continues to be deadly. Many of us have lost loved ones, friends and colleagues and the lockdown era has affected each and every one of us – be this for good or ill. But, in addition to the many personal lessons we have learnt about ourselves, we have also learnt many lessons about the world of work that is the workplace and the workforce. What we now choose to do with this learning could herald a whole new relationship between employers and employees that will demonstrate whether we see our colleagues as an asset or a resource. A new era for OD?

With deepest sympathies to those that have lost friend and family during the pandemic.

Dean Royles, Director and OD Academy Ambassador (with grateful thanks to those that shaped and have contributed to this piece. You know who you are……)