From Volunteering to HR Consulting in Red Cross
My exposure to the working life has started as a Red Cross volunteer at a time when my native Armenia was experiencing enormous political, economic, humanitarian crises brought by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent war with Azerbaijan over the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. I truly value the fact that my experience spans from being a volunteer and working in projects targeting a wide range of issues from democracy and human rights, reforms of civil service through to that of socio-economic development. Therefore, moving away from being an implementer of projects to expertise in HR/people management has been my conscious choice due to the recognition of the role of human capability in organizational success!
And here I am, more than 25 years later in my capacity as an HR expert providing consulting services to the same Armenian Red Cross Society, where I used to distribute parcels to refugees and participate in First Aid and other humanitarian projects. One can imagine my excitement which comes with highest sense of responsibility given my past affiliation with that organization. At the same time, it is a unique opportunity for an expert to make use of the whole plethora of HR theory and practice and tailor them to meet the needs of rapidly changing environment for nonprofit organizations. While having been approached with the request to review organizational capacities and provide solutions to people practices, my goal has been to come up with actions linking development of human capability with organizational success to create value in the long run for a range of stakeholders, including donors, beneficiaries, and partner organizations. The formula has been clear to me from the beginning, i.e. a 
highly professional project staff can help achieve desired results that will be reflected in improved cooperation and collaboration with local communities and other stakeholders making the latter more informed and capable to effectively channel financial and other resources to various humanitarian assistance projects and causes. On the other hand, the cooperation with Red Cross would help the businesses position themselves as socially responsible companies that would benefit from becoming an employer of choice, attracting more investments, and simply gaining a wider recognition and raising profile. Sounds fancy, doesn’t it? Yes, easier said than done. How can one maintain a staff that is professional, motivated and engaged in terms of frequent emotional exhaustion, increased workload and not very- highly competitive salaries, to say the least? As it appears, these and many other challenges can be effectively tackled through people management solutions, primarily through creating conditions conducive to changes in the organizational culture. Among many interventions proposed so far has been the creation of a system of learning and growth inside the organization aimed at attracting more qualified job applicants and volunteers thus putting in place the concept of employer branding, which should be nested on the shared values of humanity, assistance, help, sympathy. My task all along has been to combine and embed those values in people practices in a way that would make a real difference. A newly designed comprehensive competency framework mirrors the principles and values of the Red Cross Movement and the ARCS strategy, while providing standards of performance for all categories of positions in the organization. These and other activities go hand in hand with improving leadership and managerial capacities for middle management.
For that purpose, a seminar (snapshots are below) was conducted in November last year for the heads of regional offices of the Armenian Red Cross. Participants were conveyed a range of tools for creating positive and engaging environment at work and stimulating teamwork (“Toss the Ball” game was used to cover the Vroom Expectancy Theory- in the picture)
There you go! A fascinating agenda of development of human capability in Armenian Red Cross, which includes HR, leadership, talent, and organization!