Cleaning an Elderly Couples Home - Essay Example

ID Cleaning an elderly couple’s home I chose to volunteer to clean an old couple’s home- the house and the yard. The activity happened last weekend. I decided to work with an elderly couple for various reasons. Most importantly, I was looking for a cross-generational experience to assess my ability to work with people who are both within and without my age group. I also wanted to evaluate my perceptions and attitudes towards the elderly. In the business and entrepreneurial world, young people are slowly taking over from the old. In most cases, an ambitious, tactful and skilled young manager takes over the responsibility of running a firm from an old person. Therefore the workplace if full of aged workers who believe that they should be the ones in leadership positions since they have many years of experience. As a result, young managers get a difficult time supervising employees who are unhappy with the leadership structures in the firm. Hence, by choosing to clean an old person’s home, I expected I would learn a few skills on how to work with the aged. The day of the volunteering experience was quite eventful. We were a small group of five students. At first, I thought we were too many for a simple task. However, the house was quite big with a sizable yard. We assembled outside the house until everyone had arrived. When everyone was present, we knocked on the door and an elderly woman, Natalie, welcomed us in. The couple took us round the house and orientated us to the place after exchanging pleasantries. Even though they were specific about the areas to clean, we ended up identifying many other dirty places to clean. After the orientation, we sat down and planned the activities of the day. We divided ourselves into three groups of two members each. Some of us would clean the roof and repair the fence. Some would mow the lawn and help the first group when done. The remaining two would work in the house with Natalie, to clean the shelves, counters, sinks, and the washroom. Peter, one of the other volunteers, and I remained indoors to clean the house. We took a half an hour break after cleaning for three hours nonstop. During the break, Natalie was kind enough and served us coffee. After the break, we embarked on cleaning the house. Peter and I started by cleaning the sinks. Later, we moved to the shelves, and lastly we worked on the counters. We also dusted the chairs though it was not on the schedule. By the time we were finishing, the yard group had also completed their work. I managed to meet all my three learning objectives for the project. The first was to appreciate and learn how to work for and with the aged. Second, I wanted to apply the principles of social responsibility learned in class in the field. The third objective was to practice the leadership skills, skills of analysis and evaluation to a real life scenario. The volunteering experience was very successful mostly because I was able to meet all my objectives and partly because I enjoyed working with the old couple, contrary to my previous expectation. I was able to achieve my goals because of two reasons. First, the group members appointed me the one in charge of cleaning the house. Second, I also worked directly under the supervision of Natalie. The experience at Natalie’s home was a perfect example of socially responsible behavior. It is the responsibility of every organization to make sure that its external publics benefit from the presence of the firm in their community (Lee and Philip 3). Businesses should strive to be of value in the communities they operate by helping those who are incapable of doing much for themselves. In all societies in the world, the old are a vulnerable lot. People tend to forget about them and their needs. When a firm takes up the responsibility of meeting the needs of such a population, they gain the trust, support of the community in general (Lee and Philip 2). That way the community can see that, the firm is not only interested in getting profits but also cares for the community’s welfare. During the event, I contributed to cleaning the house and supervising the others. With the guidance of Natalie, we came up with a short list of activities, outcomes, resources to use and the time required for each activity. I was also the intermediary to pass information to the people I was working with from Natalie. She was unable to move around all the time. Therefore, she expected me to communicate to the others whenever she needed to pass some information to others. It was a little bit challenging to work as the intermediary because the woman was partially deaf. Therefore, communication was slow, and I had to repeat words severally before she could understand. I realized that both upward and downward communication is crucial to the success of any activity. At one point, I misunderstood Natalie and went ahead to transmit the wrong information to the rest of my group members. The result was a series of mistakes that took us an extra one hour to correct. After that, I had to repeat any message twice to ensure that I had the correct information. Working with new people was not any different from working with my classmates. Once we had shared our roles and responsibilities, our interaction with each other went smoothly with fewer difficulties. I knew that the experience would be of great benefit to my career. However, I did not anticipate that it would as enlightening as it turned out. The most fulfilling experience was our ability to work together even though we had never met. It is possible to work with complete strangers as long there is an effective leader. Moreover, there has to be a proper channel of communication and equal sharing of responsibilities. Lastly, everyone needs to work towards achieving the stipulated objectives. In fact, the volunteer experience was the most constructive group experience I have had since joining college. To sum up, the volunteer experience was a success. Perhaps the most important lesson from the experience is that as a business manager, leader or entrepreneur, one has to learn how to work with different generations. An effective leader strives to understand his employees and their needs. Hence, makes provision for whatever they need to be able to work well. Regardless of the age, every person in an organization could make significant contributions if given the right resources, direction, and information. Work Cited Lee, N. and K. Philip. Corporate Social Responsibility: Doing good for Your Company and Your Cause. Hoboken, New Jersey.: Wiley, 2013. Web. Read More