HUMANISM IN TIMES OF COVID19

Nobel Prize awardee, Gabriel García Márquez, considered “Love in Times of Cholera” as his “ópera prima”. Interesting how we all seem to believe that his masterpiece was “One Hundred Years of Solitude”; the combination of both titles, a pandemic, solitude, and love, seem to blend together on what humanity is obsessed about these days and for many more to come.

Like the tragic events, and the aftermath, of 9/11, the COVID19 epidemic will also change the world and how we behave and interact going forward.

But back to Garcia Márquez, the story seems to have no end. Two elderly lovers, stuck at will in a boat sailing the Magdalena River, decide to live enclosed and away from society. They declare the ship in permanent self-imposed quarantine, to foster the long waited for love between themselves. The epic ending of the novel is inconclusive... they remain navigating around the river and practicing a perennial social distancing that will allow them to enjoy their lives and love in the privacy of a boat secluded by an epidemic, without any regard with what happens in the real world without using the port of return.

Of all the tragedies I’ve lived and heard of in my life, this one is the first one that seems to have no clear end. A story that started, and that for sure have an end, but we do not know when and we cannot yet understand the consequences and implications of what will happen when we get there.

While the real lessons are far from being learned, I do believe that some learnings can be extracted from the point we are in now, just want to share what my thoughts are on what I have experienced and what has changed my thinking process thus far in this story without a clear ending.

Indeed we have not even understood the lessons that this will bring us on the day after, however, I do believe that what we easily call the “new normal” will at some point not be either new and much less normal.

While the real lessons are far from being learned, I do believe that some learnings can be extracted from the point we are in now, just want to share what my thoughts are on what I have experienced and what has changed my thinking process thus far in this story without a clear ending.

THE REVALUATION OF OCCUPATIONS

I have said and written before that the main challenge of the digital transformation of business is the impossibility of artificially recreating the deep human traits.

Compassion, empathy, kindness, tenderness, care are purely human characteristics that cannot be replicated.

Today, we accelerate our vision towards the real jobs of the future, most of them typically embedded in caregiving. It is a time where governments and politicians have failed. A time where we reach out to doctors, healthcare specialists, meditation gurus, progressive thinkers, people who really care.

These are our new heroes, the only ones we rely on to save our lives while scientists accelerate their knowledge to find a cure or a vaccine.

We are skeptical about numbers, numerical progressions or the calculation of actuarial experts that sometimes have such diverse theories that they seem as accurate as tarot readers.

Society now thinks about our soldiers in the front line, the infantry if I may, that will heal and console our bodies and souls in a desperate need to save ourselves and to stop the nightmare.

Caregiving is the new valued trait, not digital, not traditional leadership, not artificial intelligence solutions. They are people who put their lives at risk every day, to provide compassion, empathy, and kindness to heal a world in pain. Mothers and fathers who guard their children, daughters and sons that keep their elders safe and out of harm's way.

The big demand towards governments and corporations is no longer trains, airports or dividends. The expectation is simply that they care of what they are made of or what they represent: people.

Caregiving is the new valued trait, not digital, not traditional leadership, not artificial intelligence solutions. They are people who put their lives at risk every day, to provide compassion, empathy, and kindness to heal a world in pain. Mothers and fathers who guard their children, daughters and sons that keep their elders safe and out of harm's way.

Our heroes have changed, our expectations are all now set on some jobs and occupations that we took as a given and that now we desperately need.

THE DEPENDABILITY ON OTHERS

From one moment to another, we now depend on others that we do not even know. Enclosed in our homes, the basic hope is that the rest follow us and stay away from each other. That an individual that has an illness will take care of her or himself so that others can be safe.

It is a unique vantage point to see the basics of humankind re flourishing in a genuine collective way. We care for infected that we do not know and mourn for the dead whose names remain undisclosed.

From one moment to another, we now depend on others that we do not even know.

Our health and our safety, while being a personal responsibility, depends on the world. Depends on people we do not know, demands are shifted from politicians and executives to our neighbors, co-citizens and unknown individuals that can put us in danger.

Today, more than ever, we depend on each other.

WE HAVE DROPPED OUR BARRIERS AROUND DIVERSITY

What I believe is one of the most compelling consequences of this tragedy, is that we have forgotten the labeling.

Yes, reports show female and male statistics, but nobody talks about race, sexual expression, religion, single or married, poor or rich. We talk about humans, we count bodies, hearts, and souls — without borders or silos, without culturally imposed categories.

Suddenly, the world came back to counting people and the number of beds. Not anything else, and we returned to the Ancient Greek culture of taking care of our elders.

Very different than with the AIDS and other discriminating pandemics, we now have our eyes in the sick and vulnerable. We have understood that we are at risk for the mere reason of being alive.

THE RETURN TO PEOPLE

Finally, I want to mention what has impacted me the most as a Human Resources professional.

For many, many years we have cared about TALENT, putting people in the right jobs, finding the right experience in the market, developing new skills in our organization and, why not, office politics around the bigger workplace or the better perks.

Just for a moment, perhaps, we now focus on people. We have forgotten the levels, we have put aside the payslips, we have postponed career paths.

Now we are thinking of the welfare of our PEOPLE, generically and without barriers. We have shifted to understand the needs of our lowest-paid frontlines and back-officers. We rely on janitors to keep the spaces clean and guards to keep facilities safe. We think of premiums for people who have to stay on ground keeping the services running as much as we can. We rely on their resilience and on their bravery.

A very important shift has happened in evaluating our leaders at this time. After years and years of thinking around the development of opportunity areas and blind spots, we now rely on the strength of individuals. Choices are made on what people are good for and not on what they miss or need to learn. We now rely on aptitude, on experience, on empathy and look for the soldiers that have won battles rather than preparing people for future endeavors.

We have in a natural way shifted to humanity. We choose those who CAN rather than those who eventually COULD.

In a magnificent way, we have become EMPLOYEE CENTRIC in order to be CLIENT CENTRIC and not the other way round. We are indeed in times of what some time ago I described as ECcentricHR — Employee and Client-centric HR, in that order. No surprise, as it is the natural order.

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS

No, we are not Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza stuck on a boat forever as in the García Márquez novel. We will reach a port and come back to the reality that we need and long for.

But it will be different, what was great in December 2019 may not be so whenever this is over. But we will have learned, and these lessons will guide our path ahead.

The value lies in that silver lining... the value of people, humankind at its best.