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by Dr Marianne Trent, Clinical Psychologist & Author
On Sunday afternoon I made a LinkedIn post about a lovely gesture made by a company in Hull. This company, Seytons Electrical had been working in a family home for a period of time and the family’s very inquisitive young child had taken a special interest in the work going on in his home. At the end of their work they dropped £15 cash and an itemised payslip round to the child and that gesture has melted hearts across the globe. After I made the post I forgot all about it until the time I was getting ready to put my kids to bed I picked up my phone again and spotted it had 7 thousand view. An hour later it was up to 14 thousand. At the time of writing this on Tuesday it’s up to 229 thousand interactions, 4 thousand comments and getting on for 8 million views! My LinkedIn has even crashed a few times.
So, why exactly has it resonated with the LinkedIn community in the way it has?
LinkedIn is a business networking community and it was about a business. It’s a post about company values, business sense of humour, integrity and so much more.
It has reminded people of their own experiences having tradespeople in their homes, for anyone who has ever raised a toddler you’ll know the weekly gratitude a parent feels when it’s bin day and you get 5 minutes free entertainment out the living room window. So when tradespeople actually come into the home and start doing fascinating things like banging hammers, drilling walls and testing things with fancy gadgets it’s like child entertainment gold! So a company who are happy for little helpers to safely observe really do pay their weight in parenting gold!
It’s resonated with tradespeople past and present who can connect with how interesting their work is to children and how many questions they get asked from pretty much every young child they’ve ever ‘worked with!’
It’s made people reflect on their own key experiences with businesses or supportive people along their own journeys and how their own work ethic was sparked by similar levels of someone ‘taking a supportive interest’ in them. It’s made people wonder whether long after Theo has spent his cash whether the value of this act will linger and propel him to have a great work ethic.
It’s made people realise what a difference it might have made to them to be so warmly regarded by people in their lives growing up and what a difference this type of gesture can make to people. It’s also evoked people discussing their experiences of parenting their own children and of being parented.
The accountants who have engaged have of course observed that there’s been no tax deducted! However, of course he’s using up his tax-free allowance!
It’s just so heartwarming, that someone took time to sit down and type and invoice and think up the valued jobs like catering (providing yummy cookies), counting up number of sockets and quality assurance (asking lots of questions!) It’s genuinely just melting people all over the globe.
Lastly of course, LinkedIn being about business and networking and advertising it has of course resonated with people because of the savvy potential for this turning out to be Seytons best PR ever for the worthy sum of £15!
What do you think? Can you think of any other reasons why this has struck a chord in the way it has? I’d love to know!
Update....... The LinkedIn post has now been seen by over 10 million people worldwide! Wow! Mind Blown!
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To see the original post on LinkedIn click here.
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