Visiting my mum post hip op and looking through some old photo albums. So this is a shot taken from an old disposable Kodak camera in 1994 on my first visit to NYC. Who could have known what would happen in this very spot 7 years later, a tragedy that shocked the world.
On a day where 2,977 people lost their lives across several US locations, there have been a number of thesis written about the impact 9-11 had on human capital planning and policy. Topics include office locations & remote working, recruitment and pre-employment vetting, diversity and inclusion, succession planning & emergency management to name but a few. The economic impact, according to CNN, was estimated to be around US $246bn dollars - excluding the impact on trade and consequent job losses.
We live in a world exposed to significant unpredictable risk - and governments, society and organisations need to play their part in managing this. But so to do HR. The reality is one of the main hats HR wears is about how we mitigate organisational risk (versus how we add organisational value) - and in my experience, Company Boards are in general more concerned with risk than value.
The implications are just massive in so many aspects of how we manage the workforce - and I suspect, if we take a moment to reflect on the events of September 11th 2001, we would still find many organisations questioning whether the plan they have in place would be able to cope with a crisis on the scale we all witnessed that day?
Comments