Enhancing lives daily

But there are those who experience a different kind of pain. Those who remain wondering if they too will find themselves in this position. Even for those who keep their jobs, morale is low, while suspicion and hostility directed at the organisation is high.

Maxine Attong found herself downsized from her job last year. She admitted that even though she knew in advance her position was going to be made redundant, she still grieved its loss. She said many people’s identities were tied to their jobs, which is why they take retrenchments and the loss of lifestyle that the lack of income may bring so hard.

“When they can’t do what they are accustomed to anymore, they feel less of a person. To me, that is the scariest part. We have not been taught about self-value. We have a lot of unlearning to do,” said Attong.

This is one of the things that Organisational Development (OD) can bring to a company, she said. Attong explained to Business Day that OD training intervenes at the strategic level, hoping to shift a company’s internal and external procedures, its way of doing business over the long term, and she believed that in this time of recession and downsizing, organisations all over needed such an intervention.

“I think that if there was ever a time for OD in Trinidad and Tobago, it is now.”An OD consultant, this was not Attong’s first career choice. An accountant by training, she found that she could not impact organisations in the way that she wanted to.

“As an accountant, you could do process improvement, you could do consultancy, but in terms of working with the people in the organisation, I found that to be a little elusive,” she said.

Attong began to re-tool her skill set, becoming a trainer, a facilitator and eventually a coach.

“Because I was doing facilitation and coaching, I realised they were tentacles of some bigger body called Organisational Development. I worked backwards into OD saying I want to learn about this thing and it promises that I can intervene.” She recently hosted her first annual breakfast seminar, Maximising Human Capital in the New Economy. The event targeted HR personnel, who become especially important in times of uncertainty.

“I wanted to bring HR professionals together to begin a conversation.

Times are challenging, how do we deal with our human capital?” Attong asked. The first thing, she said, was to remember that an organisation was not a “thing”.

“Here is a table,” Attong illustrated, “You can pick it up and put it anywhere.

You could put it into the back of your car and the table will not resist. That is not an organisation. If I were to say to everyone here, pick up your chair, some people will say that is not what they are here for, some will move it.

That is what happens in an organisation when you have change.” The three pillars of OD are focusing on employee engagement, leadership development and team building, according to Attong.

“You can’t really have a team that is effective unless employees are engaged. For employees to be engaged the leaders are usually the conduit between the employees and the organisation.

Those three pieces go together.” Referring to today’s tough economic times she said, “If you look at the workforce, unless you have a really secure job and I believe that to be a thing of the past, everyone is walking around with a certain amount of tension, because they don’t know what will happen.” Attong said leadership development in particular was an important part of diffusing this tension.

“That is where the intervention comes in.

Leaders feel pressure too, but still have to find a way to motivate and encourage people to commit to what is left of the organisation.” “If your organisation hasn’t sent anybody home yet, people are wondering. If it has, you have a workforce that is reduced with increased workload. As a leader, you need to be able to work with this. How to deal with engaging employees at this time when all seems dark. How to have effective teams. How do I conduct myself as leader? How do I as a leader harness the energy of my team?” The OD consultant said organisations could not expect to treat employees the way they had in past recessions in the 80s and 90s.

“People do what they know or what worked in the past. There is a need to hold a mirror up to show them what they are and how they could change.” This is something Attong believes OD can do.

She has several sessions planned throughout the year targeting different functions within the organisation.