Introduction

The workplace of today is composed of human beings, technology, and (office) space with some amenities like kitchen area, resting area, free coffee or even “free” lunch (if you are lucky), and so forth… However, is our workplace today a HumanE Workplace?

In short, at a HumanE Workplace you see human beings who are not perfect but who are accepted and integrated despite their (and our all) imperfections. At the HumanE Workplace, human beings are allowed to be imperfect, to make mistakes, to learn from mistakes, to ask for help, to be supported to grow, to build trustworthy relationships, and to be encouraged to lean in and share in their pursuit to work for the common company (workplace) goals and objectives.

There is good literature out there about the humane workplace. And if you ask ChatGPT to define “humane workplace” you will receive in less than a minute a one-pager with a list of 10 key characteristics that it summarizes with the following paragraph:

“A humane workplace prioritizes the well-being, dignity, and respect of employees, fostering an environment of fairness, safety, and inclusivity. It supports work-life balance, open communication, and professional development while ensuring ethical practices and supportive leadership. Employees are treated with respect, provided with healthy working conditions, and recognized for their contributions, creating a culture of trust and collaboration that enhances both employee satisfaction and organizational success.”

I can live with the suggested definition and summary by ChatGPT. However, I would like to expand on this topic by discussing the following “key characteristics” (my version) of a HumanE Workplace and what tools you can use at the workplace to make this happen. So, what makes a workplace a HumanE Workplace? Here is what I would like to see and experience:

• Manageable Workload; or, the absence of over-burdening of employees.
• Trustworthiness and ethical practices.
• Open communication.
• Authentic employees, colleagues, managers fostering equity and inclusiveness.
• Courage to ask for help, to fail and learn from failure.
• Collaboration over Competition.

Story

How can you nurture the listed five characteristics to form and sustain a HumanE Workplace? In the past, I have used the following approaches:

Manageable Workload

Or better: avoid over-burdening your employees.

Some proponents of the humane workplace claim that “accountability” is a key factor. I disagree. The issue or goal is not “accountability” but “empowerment” or “enablement” of employees to get the work done. In my experience, people want to be productive, get their work done, and contribute to the team’s or organization’s successes. The challenge is that in most environments team members and managers are “overloaded” with work requests, emails, meetings, and do not have the space and time to focus on getting work done. I recommend to start with the basics and make it possible for people to get the work done without having them getting burned out on the fast track.

We have tools for efficient work (item) management that have proven to be working. I prefer the Kanban Method as taught by the Kanban University and its founder David J. Anderson. Start with (1)  visualizing work and (2) limiting Work in Progress (WIP). Then continue to (3) manage flow, (4) create and communicate your work fulfillment policies, (5) implement feedback loops, and (6) improve through collaboration and evolve experimentally. It just takes some practice and discipline in introducing and executing the Kanban approach.

Trustworthiness and Ethical Practices

The workplace is usually a highly social place. Human beings with different roles, backgrounds, status in the hierarchy, subject matter expertise, and so forth, interact with each other and have some sort of a working relationship. For that social construct to work and deliver outcomes, team members, colleagues, managers, and business partners, need to build some sort of trustworthy relationships. A trustworthy workplace environment will lead to a more HumanE Workplace.

Ken Blanchard, Cynthia Olmstead, and Martha Lawrence published a book in 2013 with the title Trust Works: Four Keys to Building Lasting Relationships. The authors propose the “ABCD Trust Model^TM” that provides the language and tools to build trust and resolve trust issues.

The premise is the following: At the workplace we enter into relationships with our co-workers and colleagues. A key factor of successful relationship is building a relationship that is based on trust or being trustworthy. Relationship and trust are based on behavior. So, Blanchard et al identified with the ABCD Trust Model^TM four elements of trust – Able (= demonstrate competence), Believable (= act with integrity), Connected (= care about others), and Dependable (= maintain reliability). Each element comes with seven behaviors that help us to “identify” how trustworthy we are related to each element.

With trustworthiness come ethical practices. A HumanE Workplace community commits to ethical behavior in all business practices, ensuring integrity and responsibility in dealing with employees, customers, and stakeholders. Organizations must have controls in place that allow employees, customers, stakeholders to report unethical behavior and practices that is being addressed appropriately by management.

I discussed the “trustworthiness” aspect of a HumanE Workplace in a separate blog titled “Trust at the Workplace!?!”. Read that blog for a more detailed discussion. If you want to learn more about how to work with the ABCD Trust Model^TM at the work place and how to tailor the Trust Works framework to meet the specific cultural and diversity composition of your team(s), contact me at Riesling Consulting for more information.

Open Communication

A HumanE Workplace encourages open, honest, and transparent communication among employees and with management. Employees need to feel safe to speak up and be able to willingly address topics that might not be easy to discuss. This also requires active listening with empathy. A workplace environment nurturing open communication leads to more transparency, trustworthiness, and – to use a concept from Brene Brown – a sense of belonging and being connected.

How do you do “open communication”?

Susan Scott published a book in 2002 with the title “Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work & in Life, One Conversation at a Time”. She defines “fierce conversation” a conversation in which we come out from behind ourselves into the conversation and make it real. In Fierce Conversations, the Conversation is the Relationship. Understand “fierce” as robust, intense, strong, powerful, passionate, eager, unbridled. Do not understand a “fierce” conversation as raised voices, threatening, barbarous, menacing, cruel. In Fierce Conversations you

• Interrogate Reality
• Provoke Learning
• Tackle tough Challenges
• Enrich Relationships

I introduced “Fierce Conversations” in a separate blog titled “Fierce Conversations”. Read this blog to get an overview of the Fierce Conversations framework.

I have been using the “fierce conversation” approach for years now. I used it to discuss performance issues with a team member, expressing appreciation for being supported by colleague, having mentoring conversations, to mention just a few. It has worked for me because it gives me the “tooling” to speak up and express concerns and criticism in personal one on one or large meetings with senior management. The fierce conversation method has given me the confidence to apply open communication at the workplace. Colleagues and managers have been listening and responded with respect. Using the fierce conversation approach shows authenticity and honesty.

Mark Fritz, a business and leadership professor, is quoted in the Headspring article The Expert View: How to Create More Humane Workplaces stating: “Your company’s effectiveness and the humanity in everyone’s working lives are driven by the quality of your conversations.” [see Headspring Executive Development (2021)]

Authenticity, Equity and Inclusion

Start a monthly “lunch & learn” series and call it, for example,  “Cross-cultural Sharing and Learning”. Invite your colleagues to (voluntarily) share something about themselves. For example, a colleague of mine grew up in the “Western” part of Berlin in Germany during the 1980s until the wall fell in 1989 that had separated West from East Berlin for over 25 years. It was quite an eye-opener for the audience to hear, for example, what it took just to travel from West Berlin through the communist East Germany to visit the grandparents in Bavaria in West Germany.

Another example was a great presentation by a colleague who is a member of the Hmong community. He introduced the audience to the rich culture and history of the Hmong people. I remember the first key learning – the Hmong people do not have a nation like the Americans have the United States of America or the French have France. Hence, there is no annual Hmong independence day with fireworks and parades like we have in the United States on July 4^th every year.

So, over the course of two years, almost all members in our program gave a cross-cultural talk about their ethnic background, how and where they grew up, their religion, and so forth. This was a diverse group but a very tight one, very reliable and very supportive of each other.

Courage to Ask for Help, Fail and Learn

In a HumanE Workplace, you understand and accept that nobody knows everything. Life is life-long learning. Even though we have subject matter experts in our team (that’s why team members get hired) there is still a lot of room to learn and grow professionally. It helps to adopt a Growth Mindset that is based on the belief system that skills are learned. You learn and grow by focusing on the process of learning that also requires effort to embrace and overcome challenges while learning from your mistakes and appreciating feedback to improve. See Mindset: The New Psychology of Success from Carol S. Dweck who shows in her 2006 publication what a difference a Growth Mindset can make from a Fixed Mindset.

I Can (not) Draw

To practice and apply a Growth Mindset, I organized a 2-day drawing workshop with a team of colleagues who supported the company’s sales representatives with learning and instructional online classes and tutorials. The art teacher of my daughter in elementary school back then taught the drawing classes based on Betty Edwards teaching methods.

Betty Edwards taught drawing at several universities in California. Based on research on neuroscience and brain plasticity, Edwards worked with the brain’s “L-mode” and “R-mode” to facilitate a learning method that enables students who think they don’t have any drawing skills to experience the opposite. Betty Edwards used 5-day workshops that she always started with a “pre-instruction” drawing of a self-portrait to assess the current drawing state. At the end of the workshop, students did a “post-instruction” self-portrait to see if their drawing has changed (improved).

Edwards overcame the “fixed” mindset of (“I cannot draw” or “I am bad in drawing”) by introducing exercises to shift from the verbal, analytical “L-mode” (dominant left brain side) to the visual, perceptual “R-mode” skill set (right brain side).

We did that in a shorter two-day version with similar success. I asked a colleague of mine to join me in the drawing workshop where she had to do a “pre-instruction” and “post-instruction” drawing of a self-portrait. She thankfully declined with the same reason: “I cannot draw.” Long story short, my colleague attended and did all the exercises. She successfully refused to share her “pre-instruction” drawing of her self-portrait on day one of the workshop. But she proudly showed everybody on her team her “post-instruction” drawing of her self-portrait after the workshop.

The difference? Yes, the “post-instruction” version was a little bit “better”; however, more importantly, the mindset changed. The workshop taught her that you can learn how to draw and that it “just” takes some effort and practice. This was a bonding experience not only because we had fun. The workshop provided a safe space to show courage, to make mistakes, to learn and improve.

Collaboration over Competition

The business world is a world of competition. Many think that one must be better than anyone or anything else and always strive to win! I don’t agree. The only competition that I face in life is myself. And that is already enough for me to handle. In life and especially in the professional world, I strive when I can build alliances with colleagues, business partners, and customers because the collective brain is much more powerful than just my brain. The characteristics of a HumanE Workplace offer a huge opportunity for truly effective collaboration and team work. Make sure that team goals are aligned with individual goals to promote a sense of shared purpose​ (Headspring Executive Development).

Conclusion

The listed characteristics of a HumanE Workplace in this blog is not complete. These are just the criteria that I wanted to highlight and provide some examples how to implement them in your workplace.

I want to stress that the HumanE Workplace is NOT a place of “mediocrity” but a place where human beings are authentic, find meaning (and happiness) in their work, and grow and excel through delivering outcomes according to company goals and objectives. The HumanE Workplace cultivates a culture of both excellence and compassion.

If you want to learn more about the HumanE Workplace and how to support this at your work place, contact Riesling Consulting and let’s discuss a potential workshop or training session with your team or groups in your organization.

References

• Brown, Brené. Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts. Random House: New York, NY. 2018. Review.
• Dweck, Carol S. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Ballantine Books: New York, NY. 2008. Review.
• Edwards, Betty. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. 4^th ed. TarcherPerigee (Penguin Random House): New York, NY.  2012. Review.
• Headspring Executive Development (2021). The Expert View: How to Create More Humane Workplaces. At https://www.headspringexecutive.com/the-expert-view-how-to-create-more-humane-workplaces/
• Scott, Susan. Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work & in Life, One Conversation at a Time. Berkley Books: New York, NY. 2004. Review.