Ghosts

Day 46 ( Friday 15th January 2016)

46 is sometimes used in Japan as a slang abbreviation for "yoroshiku" (よろしく) meaning "best regards".
The numbers 4669 is also used as the first 4 is pronounced "yo", the 6 "ro", the second 4 "shi" and the 9"ku".
4 can be "shi"or "yon", 6 is "roku" and 9 is "kyuu".

Today's post is by Gemma Reucroft, the UK HR Director of Tunstall Healthcare (UK) Ltd where she leads HR in the UK and Ireland. Prior to joining Tunstall, gemma has held a variety of HR roles, including leading teams in employee relations, resourcing, operations, service delivery and business partnering. Gemma is a fellow of the CIPD, has a Masters' Degree in Employment Law and Industrial Relations from Keele and is a qualified mediator and coach. Gemma is a celebrated Social Media expert, regular speaker and acclaimed writer. Amongst various publications, Gemma co-authored a book on Social Media with Tim Scott, Putting Social Media to Work – A Practical Guide, which was mentioned in Day 43's post. Her blog, People Stuff, is a great read and accurately named. Gemma is a great source of advice and inspiration and genuinely cares about making the world of work a win-win for all parties involved.

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Coal dust. 

A fine powder created from handling coal. 

Tiny but deadly. In the lungs, it causes the deadly disease pneumoconiosis, known as black lung. 

In the air, highly explosive.  Did you know that because of coal dust, a nearly empty coal store is actually more likely to explode than a full one? 

Many mining disasters, and many deaths of mine workers, have resulted from the presence of coal dust.  

Trepanner, miners and coal dust

In this universe, you don’t need to be big to be significant.

Mining is a tough, dirty, and often dangerous job.  But a job that many men fought hard to keep all the same.  A fight that they did not, perhaps could not win.  But as many miners will tell you, you may leave the employment of the mine and come back up top, but something about it stays with you still. 

In December, the last deep mine in the UK closed, with the loss of 450 jobs.  An industry that once employed a million men.  The once mighty National Union of Mineworkers now reportedly has less than 100 members. 

Those of us that are interested in the world of work often talk about this thing, this most elusive of things; meaningful work.  We talk too of the often fabled ‘employee engagement’.  Few of the theories and the books and the thought leaders seem to suggest that employee engagement is gained by crawling on your hands and knees through low coal seams, descending into the dark in a tightly packaged cage, getting filthy, risking injury and death every day.  But engaged these men were all the same, with their industry, their work, their colleagues.  A different kind of engagement, perhaps, than the one we talk of today. 

A Yorkshire miner

The mining industry in the UK, is mostly gone.  Mines abandoned.  Some, filled in with concrete.  Equipment left beneath the surface to slowly rust away to nothing.  Ghosts of an industry consigned to history. 

Port Mulgrave, North Yorkshire

But there, the coal dust remains still.  And so too the memories, of those that worked there and fought amongst it. 

Kellingley miner's boots

Where's your head?

Day 43 (Tuesday 12th January 2016)

43% of people in the UK aged 5 or over own or have access to a bicycle.
This compares to 52% in the USA, 85% in Holland and only 5% in Jordan. 
36.5% of the population are cyclists in Australia.

One of the things I love about the #Adventblog series is its global reach and the interest it inspires around the world. Today's post comes from Australia and is written by Con Sotidis a Learning and Performance specialist and Director of LearnKotch Consulting, as well as the founder of #ozlearn. He spent many years in senior roles within the public sector (mainly within the Australian Taxation Office) before taking the plunge and setting up his own business. Con is an engaging public speaker and an excellent event facilitator. You can follow him on Twitter, his handle is @LearnKotch

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Here we are again, "another year over, a new one just begun..." (thanks John for the words).

This year’s theme Comet Tails – Uh? What’s that?

Not to worry – just do what most of us do when we come across something we are not too familiar with - Google it.

See that was easy – how hard is it to discover, learn and share something new these days? We have so many resources at our disposal, and more that can be reached via a click through to our dear friend Google.

Well I know I am preaching to the converted, but it is scary to think about how many others in our profession, I am presuming that most of the AdventBlog readership are senior HR and L&D professionals, are shunning and ignoring the myriad of opportunities available to them.

Why this fear of Social Media?

If one is to be a leader in a business, steering and influencing the organisation's direction, especially around the human capital of the company and the new world of work, one thing that a great person in that role should be doing is tapping into the knowledge and expertise of others in the world that know how to get answers and provide solutions and who are continuing to do so.

The tools are plenty and one must be mindful of not being too focused on the tool, but my favourite social media app is Twitter – it's my go-to tool every morning and every night (and lots of times in between).  

Seeing, reading and sharing what I am receiving from my Personal Learning Network is an activity I enjoy and one that I actively participate in.  In fact, at times I also enjoy the curator role that I play - seeing others Re-Tweeting and sharing my tweets gives me a buzz, because I know, just like me, they too have found it useful and have enjoyed the subject matter.

Never before has the role of curator been more relevant and significant in our field than it is in today’s connected world. Content may be King but Curation will rule the world!

So why are some of our colleagues putting their Heads in the Sand? What is it about social media that they find hard to embrace?

Gemma Reucroft and Tim Scott considered this very issue in their great book Putting Social Media to Work – A Practical Guide:

Gemma and Tim have identified the myths very well, but even with these myths busted we still have little acceptance within our professions of Social Media as an effective means of learning and sharing.

I regularly follow conferences and create personal back channels via the creation of an Eventifier page. I do it for two reasons one to capture and review the tweets emanating from the conference as a learning tool, but the other is for social experiment purposes. I don't retain raw data but it is sad to see conferences of a few hundred L&D delegates attending and only a handful tweeting.  I know it is not an exact science and yes there are “lurkers” and others who follow via other means, but notwithstanding this, it is still sad to see how many have not yet embraced this “new world” or taken up the opportunity to seek and find out how they can. There are so many resources and people willing to help.

I use the hash tag #headinthesand often as a wake up call to the profession whenever I see things that disappoint me about learning. 

Recently though I had an interesting interaction on Twitter with one of my followers. They understood what I was trying to do and appreciated it, but they also wanted to see if we can take a positive outlook on learning by highlighting and recognising those that are already embracing and moving towards the new world of learning. She suggested we adopt the hash tag  #headinthegame.

What a wonderful idea, which I have embraced and will use during 2016. But more importantly one that was born out of interaction and sharing via Twitter !

Franklin D. Roosevelt once famously said:

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is...fear itself”

Let’s shine a light on the new world of Social Media and how it can help us learn share and connect. Don't bury your head in the sand – come join me and countless other HR / L&D professionals as we together embark on this learning journey.

We will fall over, we will laugh, we shall rejoice in our success and we shall reflect on our experiences – we have so much we can share with each other  - let’s not let fear impede our opportunity to reach out.

I leave you with this great reflection from Marcia Connor and Tony Bingham from The New Social Learning 2nd Edition:

I wish you all a Happy and Joyous 2016 filled with tweets, likes, shares, follows and mentions!

Καλη Χρονια 2016 !

Treading a Better Path - Day 35

Day 35 (4th January 2015)

Today is my "silver plate" wedding anniversary - we had a wonderful winter wedding in the Temple Church, London - a beautiful building, created by the Knights Templar in the 12th century (you might have seen it in Harry Potter or The Da Vinci Code).


35 years, if we had been married that long, would be my "coral" wedding anniversary
This stunning macro photography shows dragon-eye zoanthid coral.
Reef making corals use up 2.5 times more energy per hour than a resting human

The popular Gemma Reucroft is responsible for today's post. Gemma, an HR Director within the healthcare sector, writer and speaker, is a much loved personality within the HR social media community - encouraging, supportive and knowledgeable. A great person to contact for advice or suggestions. She writes a couple of  a well followed blogs - hrgemblog.com and careergem-blog.com. She lives and works in Yorkshire. On Twitter she is aptly known as @HR_Gem.

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When I saw that the theme for this year’s advent blog was Paths and Perspectives, there was really only one thing that I could write about.  I have written about it before, for my first contribution to an advent blog, but it feels like it is time to revisit those thoughts. 

Three years ago, I was morbidly obese. 

When you are overweight, the perspectives come built in and held fast.  And every single one  of them starts with the words ‘I can’t’.  I can’t lose weight.  I can’t stick to a diet.  I can’t do any exercise.  I can’t find time to go to the gym. 

But can’t is only a perspective, no matter how tightly held. 

I’d walked the path to obesity very slowly.  Taking such small steps that I barely noticed it. Being overweight takes a lot from you, big things and small.  But like the fabled boiling frog, so incrementally as not to alarm.  Being able to wear high heels.  Being able to walk up a flight of stairs without pausing for breath.  Being able to find pleasure in shopping for clothes.  And then one day comes a realisation.  This path is leading to no place good.  This path leads to the sofa.  To spending more time with my special friends Ben and Jerry.  To ill health and sadness. 

Aptly named!

So I changed my perspective and got the hell off it.  Weight loss and fitness doesn’t start in the gym.  They don’t start in the kitchen.  It starts inside your own head. 

As I stand on my path today, I can turn and look back over the last three years.  Behind me I can see every milestone. One stone, two stone, three stone, four.  The piles of discarded clothes.  The bins stuffed full off food that I used to love but was doing me harm.  The first 5K that I ran with my team, that I didn’t think I could do but instead beat the time that I had secretly set for myself.  But I turn back around, because I am not going that way.   In front of me on my chosen path is the next milestone to stomp all over.  The big one.  Target Weight.  Not to mention running the 10K that I promised myself I would get fit enough for.

Yorkshire milestone

I have learned much walking this path over the last three years.  That I am capable of more than I thought I was.  That there are some people who will cheer you on every step of the way, and some who will not. That you can fall off the path or temporarily get diverted, but find your way again just the same.  I have learned that there will be plenty of people with an opinion they are happy to impart, but what matters most is your own opinion and feelings about what is right for you. 

When celebrating a recent milestone, someone asked me ‘when are you going to stop?’. 

For me, there is no stop.  I am walking a path to better health, to fitness, to strength.  This path is my life.

Whilst we cannot choose everything that happens to us or the path that life takes us on, I firmly believe that you are entirely in control of your perspective.  And to anyone who is thinking about making a change like this in their life I will say only this.  If I can do it, anyone can. 

Gemma - fit and fabulous

You Can Get it if You Really Want by Jimmy Cliff

The Harder they Come, Island Records, 1972