Dr. King penned so many of my favorite quotes, “the ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people” and “everybody can be great because everybody can serve.” By far my favorite of all of his quotes though would be, “All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”
I think as HR professionals we often get into a bad rhythm of onboarding, performance reviews, employee relations issues, and termination discussions—rinse and repeat, over and over and over. We do things so naturally, so automatically it can start to feel like we are on autopilot. We forget the potential impact we can have on our employees’ lives and the future of the organizations we support.
MLK day is intended to be a day of service. Let us take this day and all do one HR act of service. Reach out just to chat with a remote worker, take an extra 5 minutes to make a complaining employee feel heard, and hold your tongue when you want to tell leaders, “Well I told you this would happen!” Let Dr. King be a model for us all to be a more patient, more loving, more peaceful version of ourselves.
