I don’t typically watch Action category movies, but years back I watched the Rambo movies and although I can’t remember much of the story lines there is a particular scene from Rambo II that I have never forgotten. It’s a scene where Sylvester Stallone a.k.a. Rambo is in a boat with a young Vietnamese lady.
The lady asked Rambo why he was sent on the mission that he was on. He replied – “because I’m expendable.” The lady not understanding asked him what expendable means to which he responded – “it’s like someone invites you to a party and you don’t show up, but it doesn’t really matter”. During a later stage in the film, Rambo was about to embark on a dangerous part of his mission. As he sets of the lady called out to him and told him “Rambo, you’re not expendable”
The truth is no one should be seen as expendable as every human being is of intrinsic value. Whether at work, home or play there is a need to understand what individuals unique talents are in order to tap into them. However, there is additional a more general value that everyone offers that can be tapped into with minimal effort. I was reminded of this recently when I bumped into an old friend that I hadn’t seen for quite some time. She told me that she hadn’t been very well and had therefore been compelled to take some time off work. On the first day that she went back to work she still felt quite drained and so her manager sent her off to see the organisation’s Occupational Psychologist. It was agreed that in order to accommodate her, that she should leave work a couple of hours early over the subsequent few weeks (with full pay) in order to enable her to fully recover.
I also had a conversation with a manager in a school who had an employee in a similar situation. He allowed her to work from home one day a week in order to prevent her from relapsing. In many ways these employers were making pragmatic decisions to prevent a situation whereby they ended up with employees who were not able to work to full capacity over extended periods. After all an employee whose health is not 100% is unlikely to be able to work to 100% capacity anyway. Besides if an employee under such circumstances is to push himself/herself to hard, he/she could end up going of sick again. Some employers in a similar situations would however, not want to provide their employees with such support for fear that things would be taken for granted.
The truth, however is that for most people just as for my friend, such actions by employers make people feel valued and when they feel that they are valuable to their employers they tend to want to work that much harder to add value to the organisations. Besides which they become the biggest advocates for the organisation.
Susan Popoola Conning Towers HR Transformation & Talent Management Leveraging the Power of People
Copyright 2011 This document is the specific intellectual property of the Conning Towers Consultancy. Content may not be reused or reproduced without the specific permission of the owner or a reference to the source. Opinions may be generated from content obtained from other sources and such content is referenced as appropriate.