I was reminded today of the joke about an American lost somewhere in Ireland stopping a local and asking for directions to Dublin.
"Well" said the local thoughtfully, "I would not start from here!"
It is true in most walks of life that our journey to where we want to go never starts from the ideal place. How many of us have had career paths more akin to crazy paving than some simple linear progression? It inevitably involves grinding it out somewhere and putting in some hard time to get back on track. But when it comes to doing your best for your family, it has to be done.
So it is in any major organisational change project. Sometimes the task seems so big or so difficult that the easy response is to say why bother, leave it to someone else.
"The overriding message was that a policy of employment that did not have respect for people at the heart of it was bad for business never mind the moral aspects."
A lot of the gains made in the industry since the late 1990s would not have happened if people had said that and left it to someone else. The reduction in death rates has been significant, as has been the focus on worker welfare.
I write this travelling back from Qatar, having attended a round table discussion on the working conditions of migrant workers. The overriding message that kept being repeated was that a policy of employment that did not have respect for people at the heart of it was bad for business never mind the moral aspects.
It will take some doing, especially in a country where compliance with the law is patchy at best and where the law, when complied with, is often used to protect vested interests.
It goes back to that joke at the start – they are not starting from the ideal position, but you have to start from somewhere. What is interesting, though, is the understanding coming from some of the major clients in that they see what happens on their projects as reflecting on them as an organisation no matter how far down the chain it happens. The new framework for mandatory standards as relating to migrant workers developed by the Qatar Foundation is a good example of what’s starting to happen.
For UK companies the challenges in this area are similar to those posed by the Bribery Act: get it wrong and the reputational damage could be severe. But having been through this ourselves we do have a lot to offer in this respect.
But the stand out moment for me was seeing conscientious construction managers working collaboratively and driving the agenda for change and prepared for the hard graft.
