Changing culture of parenting and business

For most of history the term “working parent” was unknown.

It had the same resonance as “wet rain.”

Working parenthood was not even recognised as a tautology, as it was simply a condition of survival, which was expressed by saying the same thing twice in different words, generally considered to be a fault of style, eg: "They arrived one after the other in succession," or: "We will have to return back to the office," or telling people who are driving to "back back."

It is one of the most endearing things about Trini Creole, which has a grammar and a logic of its own and makes it distinctively ours.

At a recent celebratory anniversary function of the Human Resource Management Association of TT, I witnessed what I realised what was both a gender and a generational shift in the profession.

"Back in the day," as it is said in Trini parlance, human-resource management was a function normally carried out by male accounts managers, as it was considered to be something to do with wages and salaries and keeping track of the payment of benefits such as vacation and sick leave.

It was not a discipline on its own, nor was it something that required an academic background or training.

You were expected to learn “by the seat of your pants” as men who were promoted from a clerical position to one in personnel, as the discipline used to be called.

It was known as “sitting next to Nellie,” as some still refer to this training method for employees new to sales.

In “foreign" it was traditionally referred to as apprenticeship or initiation, during probation, and was characterised by having a recruit assigned to a more experienced senior employee who, as part of their job responsibilities, took on the training function.

It was a useful assignment for the senior person, who thereby learned the essential executive function of how to communicate, on a practical level, the knowledge and skills and the organisational culture those people assigned to them would need.

Those who did so effectively could gain the loyalty and trust, often for life, of people on their team, marking them as potential senior managers and possible long-term CEOs.

There used to be a function known as “potential assessment,” which I hear less often discussed these days. It is intended to forecast the direction in which an individual’s career ideally should go and often even the rate at which they should develop. It provides structured information on which an organisation can build its management succession plans.

Recruitment should never be intended to provide skills for a current function only, but potentially to fill future needs through promotion into more senior supervisory functions that will be needed as the organisation grows.

Potential assessment as a key function of HR slipped out of fashion in TT as it was sidetracked by foreign-owned companies which genuinely thought their methods were superior in structure to the HR functions developed by local managers for local people.

It was often a disaster when it came to potential assessment, and even more so when dealing with negotiations and grievance-handling.

I remember one local HR manager, whose last name was Singh, who came for help for advice on his difficulty in dealing with a management team brought over from India, saying to me, "Diana, they are just not like us,” and who forced me to recognise that background and culture made a larger difference than my HR training on the importance of diversity had led me to understand.

Looking around the room at the HRMATT function , I saw a plethora of young women, most of whom I knew to be parents, as my AFETT-assigned companion had said earlier: "How on earth do those women manage work and family?”

Was he making the Trump-like assumption that women should leave complicated executive functions to men?

The business culture has changed. Only the most insensitive organisations have breakfast meetings which employees who are parents are mandated to attend. Someone has to dress and get the children to school. Mothers work, too.

I remembered one occasion decades ago when I had negotiations going on in my office.

They were not going well – neither side was willing to compromise, and I was afraid that they were going to break down – when the phone rang.

That was a long time ago, before we had cellphones, and I had two landline phones on my desk.

My children and foster children were all in primary school. They were young, and needed a lot of parenting guidance.

My way of coping with them was to have had an ironclad rule that no matter what was happening in the office, a call from my children took precedence – but my work was vital to me, and I didn’t know what to do.

By the second or third ring, I realised that a rule was a rule was a rule. My children came first.

So I looked up and said: “Excuse me, gentlemen, this may be an emergency , it is from my children,” and I took the call .

When I said “Hello,” I heard a tearful little voice saying: “Mommy, I am ugly!”

I looked at the table in front of me, surrounded by hostile men waiting to get back to battle, and I had to make a choice.

So, embarrassed, I turned my back to them and said into the phone : “No, darling, You are not ugly. I promise you. You are a beautiful little girl.”

And a rumble of laughter started up around the table.

By the time I had persuaded her, several minutes later, and managed to hang up I turned around to find a table full of grinning men exchanging experiences of their children's interrupting professional moments.

The negotiations proceeded to a more or less satisfactory conclusion, amicably, even jovially, and I learned a valuable lesson that day.