In whose eyes is something right or something wrong?
Who has the moral high ground?
This has always been the debate over millennia about what the ethics of society are, or what the rules are, or what guardrails we live by in order to create the society we want.
One of the difficulties we seem to be encountering now is the pool of hyper-consumerism, characterised by quick fixes and everything as fast as possible; nobody waits for anything.
As a result, we live our lives at this breakneck speed, where we’re unable to slow down to discern what we believe is right from what we believe is wrong, and when it's necessary to call out the things that are simply not correct.
This is offset by the fact that people shout at each other all the time and so on social media, one person gives an opinion, the other person shouts as loud as they can, and the other person, where it comes back to now, has to be more sensational than before to get any sense of attention or traction.
Although I saw something the other day that wasn't right, at least I think it wasn't right to do with a job application that someone had made when they were just brushed aside (not in our place).
I decided it was worth the time to bring this to the attention of the public body that had initially dismissed the individual, possibly due to their disability.
It's one thing to have a policy that says if you meet all the essential requirements for this job, we will guarantee you an interview due to your disability; it's another thing to not give you the interview when you know that the person who has applied ticks all the essential requirements.
I understand that applications for jobs in public services are busy; I get that. I understand you may have to shortlist 60 candidates; I get that, too. It doesn't mean, though, that you can overlook the rules that you've already set for people who are exceptional candidates, but who may be hampered by the fact that they find it difficult to fill in an application form.
Filling in the form for the job in question is absolutely no indication of the ability to do the job whatsoever.
Don't have the rules and then not follow them.
I always go back to the principle of ‘bad things happen when good people do nothing.’ I understand that the bad is someone's perception and the good is someone's perception, but sometimes it's so blatantly obvious that it needs to be called out.
We can gloss over situations like this as we want, but this is a marginal gain. What happens when we don't bother, when we're too busy, or when we're running too fast, is that it's a drip, drip, drip, and then it becomes normal, and the culture shifts and changes.
It's totally normal to receive feedback from an application process. It's also normal to allow someone to improve their application to have a better chance the next time. However, it's not normal to cast people aside because you're busy, particularly when you put rules in place to prevent that from happening.
Blog Post Number - 4238