We’re no longer in a world where work defines workers. Employees today want their work to align with their existing identity, values and experiences. This shift in perspective means you must try to better understand your people – not just as employees, but as humans. To create a more human-centric work experience, focus on the four key areas that shape employee perspectives – time, risk, humanity and relevance.
Time
What matters to us as humans has changed. People are reprioritizing how much time they are willing to devote to work and how much to “everything else.”
Questions to consider:
- Is time the best measure of value?
- Are there ways to give people more control over when and how they work? Have we asked the people doing the work if there is a better approach?
- Do we reward making a difference or mostly efficiency and productivity?
Risk
People no longer see having a job as a way to reduce risk and increase security. Instead, they value agency, autonomy and freedom.
Questions to consider:
- Do our actions reflect our promises to employees and their expectations of us?
- What assumptions do we have about loyalty and retention? How are those assumptions reflected in how we do things?
- Do we reward our great makers and doers with jobs in management? Is management the only option for advancement or more money?
Humanity
People are trying to make sense of their place within larger social structures and examining the structures
themselves. This, in turn, invites new interpretations of our existing models of work, jobs, companies, power and leadership.
Questions to consider:
- Do we evaluate whether we are doing the right thing as a required part of our decision making?
- Do we understand what could possibly go wrong and how that would affect people?
- Have we asked for diverse perspectives to see beyond our own world view and identify issues and questions we might not have considered?
Relevance
Technology changes faster than people do. While the goal of most tech companies is to make things easier and better for people, the relentless focus on efficiency and productivity in tech sometimes loses sight of the humans who use it.
Questions to consider:
- What is it like to use the technology we ask people to use at work?
- How often does technology change and how are the users and work affected?
- Do we trust technology over humans? Why and under what circumstances does that make sense?
