Look after people, and the rest will take care of itself.
If there is a good takeaway from the Covid-19 pandemic is that humanity has been put back at the center of attention. It has regained its first place among our society's values and has been able to unite and tighten in an extraordinary embrace of solidarity and compassion. The pandemic has also reminded us of the profound interconnectedness of life on our planet: what happened in China drastically changed the lives of everyone in the world.
Acknowledging this, we must act accordingly: changes are never easy, but they are vital, and now, after these past years, times are different; they are more mature indeed. We are convinced that for several decades there has never been a better time than now to drive a change that many desire. New buzzwords are on everyone's lips: life-work balance, diversity, inclusion. To those, we add distributed workplaces and decentralization. Let's go and see why.
Based on recent research, purpose-driven companies are significantly more profitable than others, and the purpose comes with the people. Today, leaders need to take responsibility for building the proper mental environment for their teams - and we are not talking of just a once-a-year yoga retreat. These actions need to be consistent, engaging and foresighted. When people feel like they can express themselves without fear of being judged, a culture of kindness, empathy and energy spreads and influences results.
In this sense, the Ubuntu culture, the African philosophy of 'I am because we are', is inspiring. We borrow it from South Africa, from the Zulu people. umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu: literally "a person is a person through other people." The human being is a social animal that depends on connection, community, and caring. Simply, we cannot be without each other. As simple as it is accurate and effective for society, we think it is suitable and possible also in the workplace. The potential of human beings working collectively to accomplish objectives is infinitely more significant than any individual's potential.
Now is the right time to go from an EGO to ECO perspective, meaning a shift “from an ego-system awareness that cares about the well-being of oneself to an eco-system awareness that cares about the well-being of all, including oneself” as Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer of MIT wrote a few years ago. Humanity over efficiency is the key because profit and purpose should go hand in hand. Taking care of the people and putting the well-being of talent (employees and collaborators) ahead of the output (the work) will ultimately yield better results. How? You need to allow yourself to change the way you think about the business. Shifting your attention from the output to the team, from project delivery to the people working on it, will make you realize how better work results from happier, more fulfilled employees. Data shows this to be true, but let's take a step back and see why this happens.
Usually, those who love their work are few, a small circle of lucky ones who live by Confucius' phrase, "Do the work you love, and you will not work a single day in your life." This is because the professional eco-system is consumed and based on wrong assumptions, i.e. work first, to the disservice of the rest. On the contrary, the happier you are with your work, the better you do it, and the more productive and result-oriented you are. "Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful", wrote Albert Schweitzer, a German philanthropist of the late 19th century. Indeed, an extensive study (MIT, University of Oxford, Erasmus University Rotterdam) on happiness and productivity has found that workers are 13% more productive when happy, and, on top of that, comes the massive importance of self-efficacy, as the individual's confidence in his/her capacity to have what is necessary to produce specific performance. It was Bandura, a famous Canadian-American psychologist, who advised it as an essential element of raising motivation and performance. For this to happen, we need to re-structure the organizational model to serve employees and collaborators (as the primary customer) and not their output per se.
What people want: this is the key to human-centric cultures, which we believe to be the next fundamental step in the workplace. In the last decade or more, we have witnessed the establishment of the 'Silicon Valley' model, i.e. offices that resemble home, providing employees with food, daycare, school care, a bubble in which they can work and live most of the day. It was all about how we create an environment where people don't want to leave. Choosing to build a cozy, home-like environment where people feel at ease is certainly not wrong; it is proof that to work well, one has to feel good. To be happy and at ease. The transition, for us, is automatic: we need to focus on people and not places, and these past two years of pandemic and remote work are proving us right. The next stage of the work world is driven by people, their values and beliefs and not geographical locations. A focus on talent is the strategy, and the work will be the output. A distributed workforce and decentralization are an important part of achieving this for us as an organization.
And now the big question: how do we do that? How do we create an organization for people to ensure that work is built around their life, around what they want and not the other way around? From a creative agency point of view, such as ours, this means a shift from being an output-centric agency (built around the disciplines of Account Management, Creative & Planning to serve the Brand) to a human-centric agency (built around Operations, Culture and Talent) to better serve our employees and collaborators. They are our first customers. The change is quite fundamental when you start considering this.
We firmly believe that the better we serve our employees and collaborators - so we have happier people to work with us, people content with where they are and with what they are doing - the better we are serving the brands we work with.
(Photo by Noah Buscher / Unsplash)