Forgiveness in Personal life

Forgiveness is a superior moral trait and has great reward for the one who forgives. Forgiveness is one of the moral traits recommended in the Quran: Hold to forgiveness, command what is right, and turn away from the ignorant. (Qur’an, 7: 199). In another verse Allah commands: “They should rather pardon and overlook. Would you not love Allah to forgive you? Allah is Ever-Forgiving, Most Merciful. ” (Qur’an, 24:22) Those who do not abide by the moral values God has commanded find it very difficult to forgive others.

Because, they are easily angered by any error committed. God knows that forgiveness is not a very easy thing to do and sometimes it is very hard, that is why HE has declared it as a very superior deed. “The repayment of a bad action is one equivalent to it. But if someone pardons and puts things right, his reward is with Allah” (Qur’an, 42:40). Even though many people may say they have forgiven someone who has offended them, it nevertheless takes a long time to free themselves of the hatred and anger in their hearts.

Their behavior tends to betray that anger and it destroys relationships. I believe if forgiveness isn’t granted from heart in good faith, its not complete forgiveness. Words are worthless if actions don’t follow. Forgiveness in Workplace: At the organization level forgiveness is associated with higher morale and satisfaction, greater social capital, trust, and caring relationships. Forgiveness does not require abandoning anger or resentment, nor does it require pardoning or dismissing the offense. It involves acknowledging and reframing negative feelings and attitudes.

Forgiving organizations experience more trusting alliances, productivity, quality, customer care, and a sense of calling among employees. Forgiveness is active not passive. It involves not only the cancellation of negative emotions and attitudes, but also the development of positive emotions and attitudes. Forgiveness is not very common in corporate world. If an employee commits a mistake, it’s not taken as mistake keeping in view of history of employee’s performance; rather employee is being fired or demoted depending on the severity of mistake. I believe the reason of non-tolerance of the mistakes nd lack of forgiveness culture in organizations is the flow of the talent that is available in the market. Organizations that are short sighted and do not consider their employees as their human capital, doesn’t promote forgiveness in the workplace. Such organizations face huge employee performance issues due to lack of employee morale and employee retention issues as employees always stay insecure about their jobs. When managers and leaders in an organization fail to forgive employees, there is a lack of personal and team productivity that leads to aggressive behavior of employees.

An organizational culture that does not promote forgiveness will be engaged in negative and destructive politics which will eventually decrease the organization’s effectiveness. Each of us can help create a greater sense of forgiveness in the culture of our organizations by (1) honestly evaluating ourselves and (2) seeking forgiveness for our mistakes. Based on my personal experience, there are two examples in one case where forgiveness was granted and the other where it wasn’t.

First example involves one of the recruiter in our department, who took an initiative and prepared a report that included an analysis of different resource pools & sites the company was using, the success level of each sourcing pool and how many employees were hired from that source. She sent the report to head of the HR department. HR head received her report well, but her manager was angry about her apparent lack of respect and disregard for the chain of command. Their working relationship became strained in the weeks that followed.

The second involved myself, at one of my startup jobs, I was responsible for recruiting and on boarding. My job responsibilities included recruiting, sending offer letter, informing IT about the employee date so that the new hire computer is ready on the start date. One time I forgot to notify the IT department about the start date. The first day of the new hire, who was a director level candidate, office wasn’t ready. He had to wait for an hour before IT had to set up everything on the short notice and urgent basis.

Although my manager was very angry, but he supported me and was able to see past my mistake, considered my performance to date, and recognized my potential of the person. Although I was held accountable but my manager did not hold the incident against me. In fact, manager suggested that I devise a solution to the problem so that such an occurrence would not happen again. I documented the whole onboarding procedure with all the steps that ensured the all steps are followed properly in the future.