Integrity like trees

Personal integrity though talked about, is under appreciated until the chips are down. The interesting thing about personal integrity is that it grows with a persons creations. If you run a company, the people you hire and maintain in your company, in some way reflect your own personal integrity. If yours is weak, then often, those that you attract to your business will also be weak. Those with strong integrity who come to work for you, will not stay long. They will go find a place to work where stronger values are appreciated and practiced. If yours is strong, you will systematically drive away employees with weak integrity and hang on to the ones who's integrity reflects yours.

I work in a business where personal integrity is essential. We care for disabled people and ensure the quality of their lives. The agency I work for is meticulous to the point of driving you mad. But they put the quality of care of the people in our service as well as the accountability for that care in such great importance, that mistakes are few, and dealt with swiftly. Sometimes the agency has to contract the services of other agencies to help with services. That's where the disparity really shows. Right now one of my clients gets the majority of his care from the high integrity agency. But his day program services are with a different agency that has the opposite practice of integrity. It's absolutely appalling how the incompetence and attempts to cover for it are evident at every level of the organization. furthermore, they constantly try to cover for it by shifting blame. But they lose in the blame shifting because the meticulous agency is well, meticulous about record keeping. So any accusations are dispelled quickly based on documentation of care given, problems addressed and so on. So it's like starting a fight with someone bigger than you and then realizing your outmatched and ducking out, only to try again another day in the same manner. What is surprising is the agency with the problems doesn't get it. No one there takes it upon the company to improve themselves, because these problems go up to the highest levels. I worked for this company for a short time and left because of the ways they cheat both the people they serve and the people they employ. I work for the company with integrity now, and in spite of the headaches of all their requirements, it's so worth it to be doing the right thing and have proof of it.

Integrity is like a tree. If the trunk is strong, the whole tree will thrive, producing strong, healthy branches. The weak tree will produce weak branches and not thrive.