Morals vs Rules: Working With Your 'Wounds' and Doing What’s Right.

Career paths shaped by wounds, values, moral tension, and resilience.

Got a story or a view? Email letstalk@whynotwhatif.com
— we might do a follow-up episode with your takes.

Chapters

• 0:00 The Impact of Life Experiences on Career Choices
• 3:49 The Pull to Travel and Its Influences
• 9:00 Understanding Our Motivations in Helping Professions
• 14:19 Navigating Personal Wounds in Professional Roles
• 29:01 Coping Mechanisms for Professionals with Personal Trauma
• 44:10 Balancing Organizational Responsibility and Employee Self-Awareness

Transcript

Andy (00:00)
Okay, so we're back again. So this is another one from the Jasmine mini series of questions, our listener in Australia. Global audience, I can't believe it. So cool. And the one she's come up with is how our life experiences can impact our chosen career and the impact of working in

Siobhan (00:12)
I'm

Andy (00:22)
the helping professions when you have your own wounds and how you can manage this. So I got a question.

why do you do what you do?

Siobhan (00:31)
So in a nutshell, HR, I think, is the best way of just saying just HR, because it's such a broad profession, but the catch all is human resources.

Andy (00:41)
And why do you do it? How did you get into it? How did you end up where you are?

Siobhan (00:46)
So, I would say it's kind of by accident, but not really when I really challenged myself on that. Everyone always goes, oh, you just end up in HR, don't you? By accident. Nobody chooses it. But I did actually choose it when I think about it. So, to go back to school, I really wanted, when I was doing my A levels, I wanted to do psychology, because I was just fascinated by

brains and why people do certain things and why you know just trying to figure out what the hell are we on about anyway i was told i couldn't do psychology because it didn't fit in with the timetable and they pushed me into doing politics of all things history politics and economics i like no i know right

Andy (01:16)
people do weird stuff you mean?

Siobhan (01:33)
And as a result of that, I then threw my toys out the pram a little bit. I said, I'm done with education. I'm not going to uni. That's it. I want to get into the big wide world. Got a big telling off at school for that because they wanted me to go to uni. anyway, my parents were great. So I ended up just getting a job, any job, admin-y type job. That was fine. It gave me a good tester in terms of what work is and corporate life and all that jazz.

Um, and then went traveling for a year, um, went around the world. Um, and we'll talk a bit about why I have the travel bug later on probably. Um, but I always had itchy feet. So I went traveling, then came back to the UK and was, um, was like, Oh, you know, like you have holiday blues, but this was holiday blues times a thousand. What are you going to do now? I've got to grow up and live in the real world. This sucks. And I got a tempting job in HR.

And I really enjoyed it. And I was like, well, this is the first time I've ever done a job that I thought, do you know what, I could get on board with this. This is actually quite interesting. Even if I was just doing admin at that stage, at least the admin topic was interesting. I was dealing with people's lives. And I was like, this is cool. Maybe this could be the thing that I end up doing. So that's exactly what I did. I then signed up to do the CIPD, got a permanent job, and realized it didn't.

didn't join the docs immediately but realised a little while later that I'm using psychology here. So how ironic is that? only, and I do wonder if I hadn't done that psychology A level that I wanted to, where is that sliding doors thing? Would I have ended up in HR or doing something completely different? But I'm actually using that daily now, that psychology side of things.

Whereas if I'd done it as an A level, maybe it would have put me up, I don't know.

Andy (03:28)
Well, you see, is where so I think sliding doors is going to come up a lot in our podcasts because that's a thing I always have in my head is if I'd made a different decision, then where would I be now? Like there's so many things in life where I look back and think, wow, like if I'd taken that route, what would have happened next? I'm so the travel bug thing now, I'm curious because and I think

In the interest of transparency, you and I have already had this conversation, but we want to share it with people because it's quite funny. So we are both in our late 20s. And we both have a strong pull to travel. And this is contextually relevant because the influence has come from a lady that we're going to refer affectionately as Auntie Deb's.

Siobhan (03:55)
It's funny.

Absolutely.

Andy (04:18)
And it turns out that even though I've only known you for a little over a year, it's highly likely, although I've got no way of checking this, that your auntie and your mum knew my mum because all three of them worked for British Airways at the same time. Auntie Debz was a resource planner. My mum was a chief purser, which I don't know what that equates to these days. I don't know if they have the same job role, but it's basically the chief air stewardess.

and on the more prestigious stuff like, yeah, the big jumbo equivalents and the stuff that you have to work up to. And your dear mum, what was it she did? She was air cruiser.

Siobhan (04:55)
No, she was ground crew and she looked after the planes. So she a couple of planes in her fleet that she had to ensure were safe to fly basically. And that's how the conversation came up because she always tells a story about how she landed a plane in Amsterdam and replaced a brand new engine with a brand new engine and how she got really telling off about it. But kept her job because she was doing the right thing fundamentally in keeping everyone safe. And we believe that your mum

Andy (05:23)
Yeah, that's right. That's it. I now remember because that conversation we had a little while back. So, so there's for both of us, there's a lot. I mean, it could be anything, right. But it's probable that the pull to travel is probably related to our, my mum and your mum and your auntie. Yeah. Having some sort of influence in the early days. But, but, but the bit that I can't get my, the bit that I want to find out is what

Given your pull for travel, why didn't you go into that sector?

Siobhan (05:53)
So that was my first conscious thought actually when leaving school is I will go and work at the airport because actually that's my dad did as well because that's where my mum and dad met. And I spent a lot of my childhood at the airport because what we would do is we'd rock up and say where's flying and where's their seats available and they'd say Florida or whatever and we'd hop on the plane and go to Florida and I'd turn up at the airport not knowing where we were going.

time hanging around airports, sleeping on airport floors, it was kind of a home from home. So my first point was, I want to be in travel. I like the buzz of the airport. And I originally wanted to do cabin crew, but was told I was too short because I can't reach the overhead compartment.

Andy (06:40)
Your dear husband must get backache whenever you fly having to put bags and stuff in the...

Siobhan (06:45)
Well,

it's my son now because he's taller than both of us. Oh, wow. recently and they literally had a queue of old ladies saying, oh, dear, can you have a backpack? was hilarious.

Andy (06:55)
Sarah, I say there's an irony there because I went, so I know I left college, I went straight to the airport to get work at the airport applying for air crew and told I was too tall. Because I'm six foot six. So I ended up on the ground.

Siobhan (07:08)
So at you followed it through. didn't, I kind of gave up at that point. You ended up on the ground. That is funny though. Imagine if we'd known each other back then. You'd have donated me some of your height, we'd have been there. ⁓

Andy (07:19)
Yeah.

That's

it. But you know, it's that that world's incestuous because I've gone through life meeting people our age that were either aircrew or other ground crew at Gatwick back when I was working there.

But it's just weird how, because it's the same with us, because obviously your travel background here, turns out, are...

mums stroke auntie knew each other or could highly likely to have done and my mum's name is quite rare so and I think you spoke to your ⁓ didn't you she said she knew a couple of pennies so yeah probability is that but then the odds of her being on that flight that your auntie and your mum grounded in Amsterdam so anyways

Siobhan (08:01)
It

happens every day, right? So it's one of those stories. both remember our mum telling that story because it was quite traumatic at the time, I imagine.

Andy (08:08)
Yeah, but you know what I find really exciting is probably the wrong word about it. But we're talking the 1970s, 1980s, right? So male dominated misogyny everywhere. this and I'm using air quotes people can't see. So I'm intentionally putting this tone of voice on this woman's made a decision to change an engine out on an aircraft and has caused all kinds of problems. She got told off for it, but it was the right decision, right?

pioneering stuff because a lot of women back then wouldn't have dared to step out and challenge the status quo. They'd have just gone with whatever process or procedure or whatever. My mum was the same. She wouldn't take crap from anybody. She used to get quite, she'd get in quite a lot of trouble over the years doing various things that made sense and were right for safety or passenger comfort or whatever.

So we go back to Jasmine's question. So why do we do what we do?

Siobhan (09:00)
The moment.

Andy (09:02)
Yeah, I knew I wasn't going to get away with this. ⁓ So.

I've done a number of different things in the last 25 years of working life, but my current and hopefully final, my swan song is as a marketing and communications consultant. there's always been this sense of, and it could be like anything, whether it's friendships, relationships, family, I'm the middle one of three boys and grew up.

wanting to make sure everyone had a voice. So anyway, there's this inherent thing in me where it's about people being seen and being heard.

Go on.

Siobhan (09:43)
So

is there an element of you being a middle child that plays? I know you wanted your brothers to have a voice, but we know what they say, what psychologists say about middle children, don't we?

Andy (09:54)
Yeah, so absolutely, because the middle child is neither the older nor the youngest, they have an identity crisis. Yeah. So they seek a unique position within the family unit that that allows them to feel like they have value and purpose. But quite often in doing that, their own that they're busy facilitating everyone else and not actually being heard or seen themselves. So that that

Siobhan (10:18)
Yeah.

Andy (10:18)
If

you want to get really deep into psychology, that's basically where I'm coming from. I never felt heard or seen as a kid. that wasn't, that's not a negative reflection on my parents it was always from school life where I didn't feel heard or seen. That was where the damage was done. It was just, it was just exacerbated because I was the middle one.

It just created a bit of a bit of an issue anyway. So so in 2015, which is, I mean, that's 10 years ago now, I started up a communications consultancy called B scene media. So my dear wife,

who was already established as a marketing consultant, her business was Be Heard Media So we have sister companies, We're technically competitors, but we tend to work together on stuff. And there's all kinds of stereotypes around you should never work for your wife or never work for your husband. Yeah, we crowbar separate that.

that part of our lives. So if we're serving the same client, view it independently of each other, even though we're working together, because we can't work together really. just doesn't work.

but yeah, it's a tricky one to navigate. But I think the point being is that, and there's an irony there, is that we're both working in the fields we're working in because of this need to be seen and be heard, but that's transposed onto our clients.

The whole purpose of marketing is to get an organization seen and heard. The whole purpose of communications, specifically internal communications, is about getting the right message to the organization in the right tone, in the right way, yada, yada, yada. So we also work quite closely with HR departments and HR consultants in terms of delivering messages, especially in change programs and restructures. And I did a restructure a couple of years ago with a very large national.

⁓ public sector body who needed a clarification around their internal comms and marketing. Anyway, so we get inside right there.

Siobhan (12:19)
But it's

important stuff because the sense to be where these programs fall down is around how it's communicated.

Andy (12:26)
Exactly. But the big thing here, and this plays back into why we do what we do, is when I get to the end of a programme, a communications programme or a marketing programme or this other stuff I do with around men's mental health and neurodiversity and everything else, whatever it might be, is when I get the reaction from the client or from the audience or whoever it is I'm dealing with that the messaging I've given has had a positive impact, I don't just...

tick a box, send an invoice and walk away, I get quite emotional about it. can, there are periods of time where I've been held in euphoria around the reaction I've had from a team or from an organization or from a client where without wanting to sound too cocky, I've done a bloody good job. And they're telling me that I've done a really good job because, and,

The fact that I've enabled an organization or a brand or an individual or a team or a group or a department or a policy or a process or whatever to be heard and be seen. It's primal. That sense is primal within me. It triggers something that's far more than, yeah, I've done a good day's work. I'll take the invoice and that's it.

Siobhan (13:31)
Yeah,

deep in it.

Andy (13:32)
But it's taken me a long time to get to this career. But then I think looking back, I've always had that focus on making sure people are heard and seen. I'd spent five years in the police and that was all focused around what the police term as IP, but layman know as victims of crime. There was always a big sense of, we need to make sure their voices are heard, especially when it comes to the justice system, when you think about.

impact statements, so victim impact statements where somebody's committed a crime against someone else and then in the court case they talk about, well actually your actions had this impact on me. Those were big, big things in my career that really had that impact. So I've followed the same thread right the way through my life. It's just sort of done it in different ways and different careers. But then it brings the question around

So if we take the focus off us now, because I...

Siobhan (14:22)
Before you do that, you've made me think though, you both, when you think about your police and my HR, there's two sides to the coin, right? We've both gone into those professions because we want to give, I also want to give people a voice. I want to be that balance between the organisation and the employee and work with them together to create this culture that everyone has heard and seen, to use your words.

and you have the same analysis in the police, but then there's other people who go into it because they want the authority or they want to be able to control a situation or, and there's a lot of HR professionals and in certain industries especially where it is more about the policing side. You you follow the policies and procedures and not break the law. Whereas for me, I tend to work with organizations that will, yeah, obviously you're going to break the law.

deeper than that. more of that kind of more values based of it's more than just legally what the right thing to do is. It goes a lot deeper. that's to both achieving the same thing fundamentally, but the motivations are very different. But they're both the professions, I can see that similarity, that almost that policing thing.

Andy (15:39)
That's a really interesting observation. And I'm now fearful that we could end up in a five hour podcast because you should.

Siobhan (15:47)
I was going to bring you in and now you're going to bring me in.

Andy (15:51)
Because, so I, this is going to sound a little, this is a bit risky me saying this without the context around it, but I'm not the best employee because, so I'm a creative problem solver, I'm a strategic thinker. And so I quite often challenge the status quo and within limits I'll break rules and I'll do whatever.

the general consensus is or whatever I believe is right for the greater good. And when we talk about the greater good, we're talking about the success of the client, the success of our colleagues, promoting others, making sure that people are heard and seen. So it's all driven by that inherent desire to make sure that people have a voice and that they're succeeding. don't believe in this thing around stepping on people or leaving your colleagues stagnant or any, can't, it just doesn't truck with me. It doesn't work. I can't exist like that.

So the reason for me giving that explanation is that I've always seen HR as the organisation police and I've never, well up until 10 years ago, never, I used to live in fear of HR just have a real anxiety around HR.

Siobhan (16:53)
Yeah, and I think you're certainly not alone there and I think historically that is what HR were.

Andy (16:59)
But I think what excites me about, and I've learned this having worked in specifically the comm sector in relation to what in with that relationship with HR is that actually there are, I'm gonna say something really controversial now. There are some really good people in that profession like you who are not there to act as police, who use morality and common sense. And common sense is a big thing.

Siobhan (17:23)
Maybe.

Andy (17:23)
I've had my ass handed to me on a plate so many times by an HR professional who is not using common sense and can't see that what I did was actually beneficial. Not to me, it wasn't personal gain. It was beneficial to people stroke bottom line stroke brand stroke, everything else. Now, I've built a name on that as a communications consultant, and that's why people use me because they want to see a different way of thinking and have the status quo challenge. So we'll just square that box.

with that sentence because I'm not the pain in the arse or the person who's obtuse or difficult to work with that I'm painting out. I was, I'm just trying to put into context. But the point here is that the thing that bothers me with HR and with the police and we're going to go into some.

Siobhan (17:52)
Yes

Andy (18:08)
touchy areas now. Look at everything that happened around Sarah Everard and all of the other women that were exposed to violence from police officers and everything else. this is to your point around people that go into those professions that want control and power. There is, and I can't remember off the top of my head what the statistic is, but there was some analysis done around personality disorders and

and other psychological conditions in relation to people that work in various professions. So I'm talking about every profession, but they looked at leadership styles within HR and within the police. And what they were saying was, was that there is a fairly high percentage, so they're the minority, but it's a high percentage than one would hope, of people that go into those professions.

and are self-motivated to lead with this power trip. Now, again, I don't want to, because that's an incredibly touchy subject to go into and you know me with stuff like this. I like to think about it before I start talking about it to make sure I get my head square on where it is. But it's an interesting point you made because...

Siobhan (18:59)
Yeah.

Andy (19:18)
Yes, effectively what you're saying is that you and I have gone into the jobs we've gone into to help others be seen and be heard. Yeah. Whereas others go into those professions to stifle So is it iron fist? Yeah, rule with an iron fist to make sure that people follow the rules and do what they're told. Life is not like that. We're human beings.

It's human success on a fundamental level, going back to when we lived in caves, our survival was based on the fact that people came up with ideas, the invention of the wheel, right? The invention of the spear, the invention of any of those things. So there is a purpose and there is a valid place for

rules and enforcement rules and following processes and everything. I 100 % respect that. I will never break those processes. I will never do anything to contravene that where they make sense. But I think this is where the beautiful contrast of people like you versus people like them in the HR profession. And it's important that there's both there, 100%. I'm not degrading any one or other. But this is where people like you add so much value because you can point out

very clearly and very quickly, actually that what you think is a positive rule is contradictory to what you actually want because of your organisational culture or because of...

Siobhan (20:34)
It's

all about what output you want and all of those things. Yeah. And I remember the guy who mentored me when I was up quite early on in my career. And he said to me, goes, guardrails, guardrails are good. Guardrails not rules. And then you figure out, once you've figured out where the guardrails are, you figured out how to work in the fringes of them. And it's always stuck with me because to your point, it's about being pragmatic, it's about being practical, it's about being

you know, kind of common sense, the common sense stuff is really, really important. Following the rules to the letter when it's going to have a counter outcome that you actually want makes no sense at all.

Andy (21:15)
Yes, I'm going to sidetrack on this one. So there's an amazing there's an amazing French film called Wolf's Call WOLF apostrophe S and then call C-A-L-L. And it's about a French submarine crew who are off of Tartus and they've gone in to pick up a group of French special operatives. They get detected by an Iranian frigate.

Siobhan (21:26)
Okay.

Andy (21:41)
come out of there, get away, basically survive. the French believe that Russia have just launched a nuclear missile at them. They send out their French nuclear submarine that's crewed by the captain of the original submarine in the film with a brand new crew.

But after the submarine goes silent, so this is when they go into that state where you can't contact them and you can't cancel the order to launch because there's a security process in place with most modern day naval organizations where if that nuclear submarine has been told to launch, it doesn't matter who tells them not to, they still launch it because there's a risk of compromise. The other submarine goes after them because they realize that there's been a mistake and both submarines end up getting destroyed.

So the reason I'm highlighting that story is because that is a great example of where a rule is in place for obvious reasons. But in the context of this situation, it was the worst thing to happen because they were launching a nuclear missile

a country that had nothing to do with the reason the missile was being launched in the first place. I know that's a bit extreme, but if you translate that back into HR, it goes back to your point. Yes, there's a rule in place, but actually we can find or see a situation where that has a detrimental effect on our people, on our processes, or our organization, on our bottom line, on our whatever it is. They have to be flexible. What was the term you used that you said your mentor working in the fringes of what?

Siobhan (23:05)
Working the fringes of policy with his phrase, but it's understanding the guardrails. know where, you know where that, that's your fundamental line you do not cross from a moral values, whatever it might be. You do not cross this line, that's your guardrail. But within that guardrail, that's when you can be a bit disruptive perhaps, working the fringes of, rather than blindly following the rules.

Andy (23:11)
God rest his

Siobhan (23:32)
And your story there reminded me of a great, it's a great book and there's a little YouTube video on it of a guy called David Marquette, who was a captain of a nuclear submarine in the US. And he was put in charge of a sub. He had the best performing submarine and then he was moved on to the best performing one and he had to turn it around. And what he realized pretty quickly was everyone just did as they were told.

So you'd be like, Bob do this, Dave do that. And they go, okay. And they do it, not questioning anything. And he was like, I don't know this submarine. You guys know it better than I do. Why are you just blindly listening to everything I say? And they're like, we're following orders. And he was like, do you not think for yourself? And they're like, no, because we've been trained not to. And it was all about actually bringing in some of the coaching style of, you guys know this stuff. You've got to tell me some of these things. And that goes against.

the training in those sort of environments where it's just you blindly follow rules and knowing and trust that those rules are right when actually his point is, don't know.

Andy (24:37)
Slight sidetrack here again and then we've got to get back onto the topic because we're going way off topic. So this is going to sound very cliched. So I went out with a rear Admiral's daughter once.

Siobhan (24:47)
You coming up with these stories.

Andy (24:49)
it was a long, long time ago but I remember her dad, saying that one of the challenges that they face in the military is that most people are trained to do what they're told.

But actually, they don't want them to do what they're told. They want people to challenge and push back and do what they think is right. That was reinforced by my cousin,

one of the conversations I have with him when I was way back early on in, my career, I was getting frustrated because I was breaking rules and people were telling me off for it. I couldn't understand why he said to me, if you're breaking a rule, because you can see that the end result is for the greater good, then break the bloody rules.

I think that conversation that's why I got so bloody minded about life, because I knew that I could justify it in my head, because I could see the end result, the impact, the output, whatever the terminology is you want to use.

I was getting told off for doing it and it's like what kind of a moron have you got to be to sit there and tell me off for breaking a rule when you can see the end result has not had a negative impact at all it's had a positive impact but it's a rule that's been broken so we've got to put you over our knee and smack your bum

Siobhan (25:52)
But that's what we need now. We need those disruptors. We need the people to bend the rules or relook at the rules at the very least and go, is this serving us anymore? Those traditional methods just aren't going to survive for very much longer, honestly.

Andy (26:07)
And I think this is where the lack of evolution or the lack of strategic thinking in HR creates the problem You've got the people who

90%, 95, even 99 % of the time are right to say follow the rules. But that 1%, 5%, whatever percentage of the time when it's right to break the rules, respectfully, they can't get their heads around it. And that's where I bang heads with people because I just because I can see those things where they need to be broke.

Siobhan (26:21)
Hmm.

But it's relevant because it's motivations for getting into maybe industries you wouldn't necessarily immediately think we should have gone into on face value because like you were saying your history of HR would have been of it been policing, getting an abolishing all of those kind of things. ⁓ And that's very much not me. So if you're back without knowing me like you know me, but you might look at me go why she got into HR she's not

stereotypical HR. mean a lot of HR has evolved since then thankfully but our motivations for going into those spaces is relevant though isn't it?

Andy (27:16)
But I think it also highlights the point around this subconscious bias or unconscious bias because I've met people in HR I'm trying to remember if I thought felt the same before I met you because I knew you were because we met at this event yeah 18 months ago

and I knew you were going and I knew you were HR and I'm trying to remember what my preconceived or my preconception of you was going to be because we all do it. I'm sorry but if anybody out there sits and thinks no I can meet someone without preforming a judgment on them when I know stuff about them is absolute BS because you can't it's not how we... I'm sorry you just can't.

Siobhan (28:00)
I've arranged that design that way. Yeah, absolutely.

Andy (28:03)
I think I would be lying if I said I wasn't slightly apprehensive as to the kind of person you might be because HR has had such a negative impact on me. So this is this preconditioning. But I like to think that I.

acknowledge what I'm thinking, but put it to one side and give everybody a, and this makes me sound like I'm so up myself, but you see what I mean? I acknowledge that I'm thinking that, but then I just take an open-minded approach.

Siobhan (28:30)
That's what self-awareness is all about, isn't it? You identify that you are going to have biases and you might be proved wrong, you might be proved right.

Andy (28:39)
and I was happily proved wrong.

Siobhan (28:41)
Yeah.

Andy (28:42)
But, you know, I think that's an important point to acknowledge as well, because, you know, the world of HR is that there's a lot of focus on conscious and unconscious bias for obvious reasons, but we're not going to go into that one now. So it's this question then around. Well, actually, that's an interesting link segue through to the other point of the question is, is.

So the second part of our observation or question is, is the impact of working in the helping professions when you have your own wound and how you would manage this. Now, so I think actually in the last half long we've been talking, we've highlighted a fair number of our own wounds when it comes to kind of the jobs we've ended up in and why we've ended up doing them or not necessarily.

why we've ended up in them because that would suggest a pre-planning which isn't necessarily always the case but quite often and I think you touched on this at beginning you can fall into something and then retrospectively realize that actually this is my calling this is my raising debtor right. Nursing is another one that's close to my heart I've never worked in nursing as such but I worked with the NHS and the thing that I

profoundly struggled with in the first week. this was back in 2023, I worked with that particular organization. So this is post COVID. And I was talking to people in that area who had been profoundly affected by what happened over COVID and stuff that was going on that...

you know, we as the general public, you know, we were all stood on our doorsteps clapping for the NHS as a sign of solidarity and respect. But I think we underestimate exactly how much pain they felt during that period, because a lot of it isn't spoken about because it can't be. I was privileged, I think is the right word enough to be told some of the stories as to what happened from an NHS perspective during that time. So.

And these were all people that went into that job. There were eight people specifically I'm thinking of who had all had experiences of the NHS prior to working for them. And because of those experiences, wanted to work within the NHS. It was a calling for them. But the experiences that they had were traumatic. So this kind of goes to Jasmine's point around if you enter a profession with a wound, I like her terminology there.

how you manage that while you're working in that role.

For me, so working in the police, I struggled a lot in that role and it massively affected my mental health because of the injustices and everything else that was going on that I could see.

But it is difficult to work in an environment when you have a wound or a trauma in your life that is constant. It is a constant reminder day in and day out where you see things. And the one for me, and we'll try and keep this lighthearted, anything around infant death,

struggle with, can't deal with just because I lost my first born when he was nine weeks old. But then going into the police, that's something police officers deal with quite frequently. the predominant one is children and babies and toddlers and everything killed in cars. But dealing with that.

fairly frequently within the job that would always bring up. So the final point that Jasmine raises is how do we cope with those wounds? So we're in that job because we really want to be there. We're really passionate about it, but it's having a detrimental effect on us because of a wound potentially. What are the coping mechanisms in place now for the record? And I will shut up in about 30 seconds. I had and I have absolutely no qualms in saying this zero support.

and zero understanding around what was going on in my head in that role when these particular things came up. I've spoken to...

easily 70, 80 police officers who felt the same way. And I'm not hammering the police. That's not what this is about. What I'm saying is, is that actually people will give their, in some instances, give their lives for their careers, as in they'll dedicate themselves for life to a career. And every now and again, they just need a little bit of help on the way. So as an HR, I'm going to call you what you are, an HR guru, right?

Siobhan (32:41)
Yes.

Andy (32:47)
What's your, what's your steer on this because there's got to be that balance of commercials, right? You can't have a different cap that fits everybody's problems and everybody's traumas and everything else. how do people like me get the support or what should be in place when you can see that that employee is so passionate about what they do, the brand they work for, the organization, the people they work with, the people they're serving.

Siobhan (33:00)
Yeah.

Andy (33:11)
what needs to be in place and where's the cutoff point.

Siobhan (33:14)
Well, think a lot of organisations across the board now have certain wellbeing support of different levels, depending on the size and the amount of money they've got, you know. So there's always the opportunity to signpost people. But for me, it comes down to management. And that's why middle managers have such a tough job, because they're wedged between the employees and the senior people and whatever profession it is, it's the same.

and they having to deal with their team who have, they'll have 10 team members with 10 different issues. And it's that whole thing about understanding those issues, what it's all about. And it's helping them and empowering them to have these conversations. So creating that, the term said a lot, but the psychological safety so that people can speak up and say, actually I'm having this issue.

I work with one of my clients actually, who are really good at this. And they employ quite a lot of young people. And these young people do tend to have stuff going on outside of work that's impacting their work. Now, very rarely it might get to the point where this person just can't do that job. But usually, building up before that is like, okay, well, let's find out what brought them into this role in the first place. What are they good at? Is this playing to their strengths? Are they going to enjoy it?

you know, okay, what's going on at home that's impacting them, or what can we do to help? It could just be a conversation. It could be signposting them to resources. It could be changing the management style. It could be flexibility, whatever it is. And I still come across individuals and managers and organizations that say, you're opening a can of worms. You give that to that person. They're all going to ask for it. And my answer is always the same. like, you take it on a case-by-case basis. Every individual has their own individual needs.

But if you create that environment where we can talk about these things, you're not a charity though. You're not there to, unless you are a counsellor and that is your actual job, you can't expect managers to be counsellors. I think that's so unfair, too much responsibility for them. But opening that dialogue to then get the resources and help they need, whether that's a HR consultant like me or a doctor or a psychologist or whatever it might be.

they can get that support, but they know what to ask for fundamentally.

Andy (35:37)
Yeah, and I think there's, it's all about the happy balance, right, but I think there's another key thing here, and that's self-awareness. mean, anyone who knows anything of me will...

Siobhan (35:46)
Yes.

Andy (35:51)
know that I'm quite open about my own background and mental health history and everything else because I think it's important that people understand that everybody has challenges at some point in their life and everybody has different ways of dealing with it. there's an expression my dad used to use, I might beep it out, okay, but he used to say to me,

I'm not here to wipe your ass.

Siobhan (36:13)
Yeah.

Andy (36:13)
I'm here to give you the toilet paper and tell you how to do it so you can do it yourself, right?

Siobhan (36:18)
Absolutely. I agree with you.

Andy (36:20)
And that for me is I think how you establish the happy medium. if we're looking at, yeah, if we're looking at people that work in nursing, policing, fire, emergency services, any, know, it doesn't even need to be those careers. It could be HR, it could be marketing, comms, it could be sales, could be whatever, right, IT. There is, so this is the Andy view on it, right? So we spend, what is it, a third of our life in the office.

Siobhan (36:42)
Yeah.

Andy (36:42)
Okay. And that is a hell of a commitment to make to an organization. So to say to somebody, don't bring your personal stuff into work. That's that I think that's unreasonable. You can't become an autonomous bot who isn't emotionally affected by things in the workplace. You can't just rock up and be 100 % all of the time, right?

Siobhan (36:56)
Yeah. ⁓

Andy (37:06)
But at the same time, it's not the company's responsibility, it's not the manager's responsibility, it's not the HR department's responsibility to sort all your problems out. And ultimately there has to be a level of tolerance for all of these things. So for me, it's about finding a way for organizations to equip their people to function as adults, newly adults. So we're talking youngsters.

Siobhan (37:17)
Yeah.

Andy (37:32)
Or I don't know what else.

Siobhan (37:34)
They are adults, they're grown people, they can't spoon feed them and do it for them either.

Andy (37:39)
Exactly.

So it's I quite like the there was one organisation I worked for where they had a really good benefits package, which was around EAP and psych support and various other bits and pieces. But they were always the stepping stone into right ego. We'll help you identify what the problem is and we'll help you identify why you're behaving, feeling, whatever, in a certain way. If it's a problem, if it's a problem.

then HR policy applies, you've gross misconduct, you go, if not, and it's something we can help you become aware of, then it's on you to proactively push to develop yourself to handle it or whatever. So there's two examples. One is putting somebody who's got no leadership experience into their first leadership role. They are going to cock it up, right? They're gonna get it wrong.

They're going to offend people. They're going to say the wrong thing. They're going to be accused of all kinds of stuff. I was there in my first leadership role. I cocked it up so bad. I had a seat booked in HR every Friday afternoon. It was so bad. But yeah, so it's about making sure in that kind of a situation that you have the right career progression support in terms of developing the individual so that they can take control of their own actions.

whether it's what's coming out their mouth or whatever it might be.

The bit where the challenge comes in is that for me is the up to the point of where the organization should be involved is just to facilitate that understanding of what's going on, but putting it back on the employee to sort the problem out because it's not the business's responsibility to sort out the fact that, I'm not going to give any examples, but you know what I mean? You can't.

You can't they're not there to get involved in your personal life. They're not allowed to get involved in your personal life because that has legal ramifications. for me, if you're in a job with a wound, as Jasmine puts it, and I love the way she's put it because it resonates with me so strongly, it was always my responsibility to deal with my emotions and learn the coping mechanisms to avoid being triggered or, you the

The classic, well, classic's the wrong word to use. The example I would give was there was a road collision and two young children were killed and the driver was the mother who was three or four times the legal drink drive limit. Now, there's two things that triggered me there. One, two very small people died in the accident. The other one is the fact that she was drunk when she was driving. So there's...

real conflict in my head. Now that really triggered me and I couldn't operate. I just couldn't function. It completely knocked the wind out of me. But by that point, I'd learned the coping mechanisms that meant I could pull myself back. I had to leave the office for half an hour and just go and walk around, chat and swear and do some other stuff. But the point is, that I got to that point because I'd had support in a previous organization that helped me identify when I was being triggered and what to do with it.

Siobhan (40:32)
100%.

Andy (40:33)
It's not the organization's responsibility to sit there and say to me, Andy, take a week off. And when you feel better, just, you know, let us know and we'll see how it goes. No, because it creates a culture where people fall into this. well, it's all right, because I know they'll give me a week off.

Siobhan (40:47)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it's also good parent and child as well, isn't it? And that zone way can be quite toxic. It can end up being quite toxic. So yeah, you absolutely right that self awareness bit and knowing when you when you're triggered. So you might not be able to preempt this is going to trigger me. But I know what's happening when you are triggered. then you've lived through that once before, I kind of know the tools that are going to help me to get out of this now. And yeah, that's absolutely key.

Good point.

Andy (41:17)
But I think, but then playing there was advocate.

And I'm thinking of people that work in the caring profession. I mean, let's just lay it out as it is, right? You could be a nurse in a hospital and you get a patient come in who's really ill and you spend two weeks, six months, a year with that patient, getting them back, nursing them back to health. It would be inhumane for you not to develop some sort of emotion towards that patient.

positive or negative, whatever it might be. The reality is, is you're going to develop a bond with that patient. You can't avoid that because we're human beings. And you're living their world with them because they're going through something traumatic. They're ill, they've got disease and illness, whatever it might be, an injury that's meant that they're in hospital for so long. And I suppose the best analogy is who counsels the counselors?

psychothera... psychothera...psys I was going to say. Who's the psychotherapist for the psychotherapist? So it's... and this is a great actually this hits her point. So if you're in the caring sector where you're exposed to more trauma And there's a statistic that says that dentistry has the highest level of suicide in any profession.

Siobhan (42:29)
history.

Andy (42:30)
Yeah, because a dentist causes physical trauma to people on a daily basis. ⁓ That hasn't and that's the other reason farmers are so high up there with suicide as well, apart from the fact that government are treating them the way they are, but that's politics and we don't get into that on this part.

Siobhan (42:37)
Yeah, that's true.

No, it's an interesting point because even though I am not in a caring profession, you say you could say the same about HR, there is no HR for HR. So we're the ones who quite often, we don't practice what we preach. We're the ones that aren't following processes properly. We're the ones that were treating our own team really poorly because there's nobody there for us. We're also the ones that having to make people redundant or

sacking people or dealing with an employee whose parent has just died or their child has just died or bullying and harassment going on. We're dealing with all of that and there's nobody there for us. And that sounds very pathetic there, but it's true. It's like if you're, when I do coaching, so when I my coaching qualification and I coach people, coaches get supervision and where we get together,

with our supervisor and we'll talk through, I don't know, a case we're stuck on or certain things that might have triggered us, for example. We need that in HR as well because there is no safe space for us. And I think that you can say that the same for people in the caring profession. Our drive is to help everybody else or deal with all these other things. But while you're busy doing that, there's nobody looking out for you.

Andy (44:10)
To your point, think there is this thing around, it's really important about making sure that you have the right mechanisms in place to support people that are dedicating their working lives to your organization. And that is about enabling self-awareness and having the right policies and processes in place to start off the process of self-awareness so that they can act on it themselves. But then there's also this challenge around

Siobhan (44:32)
Yeah.

Andy (44:36)
who's there to HR HR or who's there to police the police or who's there to see the counsellors and coach the coaches and all this kind of stuff. That's an interesting point.

Siobhan (44:50)
I mean, think therapists get supervision like coaches do, don't they? I don't know. I've not been in that profession. So I don't know how helpful that is, but it seems like a very good idea because you are. I'll tell you another story is, so my dad, when he retired, were his second family. ⁓ we were still young. I was still at school, I think. My mum was still working. She was really bored. So he got another job as a porter at our local hospital because was walking distance.

and it really, really, really affected him. fact, it affected him really badly because he ended up drinking too much because he got really upset because one of his jobs was to will people around and he took this child into the mortuary and he just didn't recover from it, honestly.

Andy (45:34)
Go.

which is...

Yeah, I mean that kind of thing is this is the other thing because I was talking earlier on about my experience now I've got that self-awareness because I've experienced a trauma and now if I get triggered because of it I know what to do but what do we do for people like your dad who there must have been a reason for him being triggered by it we may never know what that is but he was triggered by it but there was no way he could predict that

if the mechanisms in place where there's a proactive intervention by the employer to say, this has really messed you up, let's help you find out why. Now, he may not have been receptive to that. I don't know the story with you, dad, but I'm just saying he may not have even told them that he was affected by it. But if the employer becomes aware that that's been a problem.

That's where a proactive intervention is needed for that self-awareness piece. But actually, I thought it might contradict it, but it doesn't. reinforces the point around the responsibility of recovering self-awareness.

Siobhan (46:33)
And then it was my adult head on looking back at that of being in HR for the last 20 years. What I didn't think about at the time is, it's another level because if you think of the caring professions like the nurses and the doctors and the stuff that they see and do, we can all see that. I think the likes of the porters get forgotten. The cleaners even, know, the cleaners in hospital where they have to deal with all that, all the bio waste and stuff. mean, God knows what they see.

And they're, again, even more invisible, I think, sometimes.

Andy (47:07)
Maybe that's the, so.

You see, that's interesting because I'm now recalling a conversation I had with somebody a while back who works in a hospital.

saw various body parts that really affected them. And even things from surgeries where you've injured your hand and as a result you end up losing your hand, right? Where does that go? Who handles it? What impact is that going to have? So maybe that's the other point, is it self-awareness for the employee and facilitating self-awareness, but actually

we as organisations or HR departments or occupational health need to make sure that they're fully aware of the potential impact of every job psychologically. Now there's going to be risk assessments and various other bits and pieces done, but has that been done to the level that will preempt and you can't preempt everything, but preempt the majority of reactions. This one with your dad, you know,

You and I sit in talking about this. It's common sense that's going to mess someone up if they're a child into a mortuary, right? But did anybody actually think about that? And are the porters checked in on or are they just left to their own devices? I suspect it's that they're left to their own devices and that they only ever really get any intervention if they jump up and down and go sick or start drinking too much or whatever.

Quite often the way that alcoholism comes up in employment is that a manager will detect that their employee is drunk in work. And what happens then? It goes down the disciplinary route for gross misconduct and someone's fired. doesn't, that's an, so where's the responsibility there?

Siobhan (48:27)
Yeah.

Well, I do actually have a real life case of that. I thought I won't go into too much detail, but that was a, the first portal call was, let's get them help. Let's help them. Let's fix this. But to your point earlier is we can't do it for them. They have to do it. So you get to the point where actually we can't help you anymore. We've done everything in our power to fix this situation and it's not going to get fixed. And sometimes in that situation, it was like, almost you got hit bottom to get back up again.

But I think for me, as long as my conscience is clear to the extent that I did everything in my power to do and it still didn't work, it's down to them. And I'm okay with that. If I just dismissed it straight away, been like, well, it's not a company issue I'm going to sack them, that doesn't sit well with me.

Andy (49:30)
And you made the comment just now about you've got to hit rock bottom. He lived, he was homeless for about 18 months and that's what did it. He went up onto, ⁓ for those of you that know Bristol, there's Bristol suspension bridge and then next to it there's Ashton Court, which is a great big estate. He went and lived in the woods up there for 18 months, no money, nothing. He was begging in Bristol and it was something, because he didn't have money then he couldn't gamble. So he went to Turkey and then he woke up one morning,

and realised that he had to do something to change his life. Now he's now married with kids, he's got his own house, he's in a successful career, he actually works for the NHS. that's a real, that highlights everything we've spoken about in terms of intervention and where the rules say you can't do something but morally you should and everything else. And then the point of self-awareness, how much help do you give and everything else.

That's a hell of a turbulent topic to talk about because it's morals versus rules and you're always going to get...

Siobhan (50:32)
A

good summary though to close it off, morals versus rules, that's very good.

Andy (50:37)
Well I think we've done that one so hopefully I think we covered that off pretty nicely. So yeah we'll be back next week for another one and I have yet to work out which one we're gonna hit next.

Just wing it.