For most of history the term “working parent” was unknown.

It had the same resonance as “wet rain.”

Working parenthood was not even recognised as a tautology, as it was simply a condition of survival, which was expressed by saying the same thing twice in different words, generally considered to be a fault of style, eg: "They arrived one after the other in succession," or: "We will have to return back to the office," or telling people who are driving to "back back."

It is one of the most endearing things about Trini Creole, which has a grammar and a logic of its own and makes it distinctively ours.

At a recent celebratory anniversary function of the Human Resource Management Association of TT, I witnessed what I realised what was both a gender and a generational shift in the profession.

"Back in the day," as it is said in Trini parlance, human-resource management was a function normally carried out by male accounts managers, as it was considered to be something to do with wages and salaries and keeping track of the payment of benefits such as vacation and sick leave.

It was not a discipline on its own, nor was it something that required an academic background or training.

You were expected to learn “by the seat of your pants” as men who were promoted from a clerical position to one in personnel, as the discipline used to be called.

It was known as “sitting next to Nellie,” as some still refer to this training method for employees new to sales.

In “foreign" it was traditionally referred to as apprenticeship or initiation, during probation, and was characterised by having a recruit assigned to a more experienced senior employee who, as part of their job responsibilities, took on the training function.

It was a useful assignment for the senior person, who thereby learned the essential executive function of how to communicate, on a practical level, the knowledge and skills and the organisational culture those people assigned to them would need.

Those who did so effectively could gain the loyalty and trust, often for life, of people on their team, marking them as potential senior managers and possible long-term CEOs.

There used to be a function known as “potential assessment,” which I hear less often discussed these days. It is intended to forecast the direction in which an individual’s career ideally should go and often even the rate at which they should develop. It provides structured information on which an organisation can build its management succession plans.

Recruitment should never be intended to provide skills for a current function only, but potentially to fill future needs through promotion into more senior supervisory functions that will be needed as the organisation grows.

Potential assessment as a key function of HR slipped out of fashion in TT as it was sidetracked by foreign-owned companies which genuinely thought their methods were superior in structure to the HR functions developed by local managers for local people.

It was often a disaster when it came to potential asses