As custodians of the employee experience, HR teams face tough and complex questions. A fundamental challenge is how to nurture an environment where team members thrive and also create value for customers and/or other stakeholders.
HR’s vital yet complex challenge
The economy and work shape society and human lives, so this HR imperative is linked with broader questions of how to build a world where humans flourish, and with individual concerns of how we make the most of our lives.
HR teams must navigate this conundrum in practical terms and with sometimes conflicting aims in mind: How might employees live their best lives and grow the bottom line by five per cent?
This burden is made even heavier by powerful societal forces that limit our imaginations, shape our decisions and constrain our actions – often without our awareness. Brainwashing is a worry today as much as, if not more than, it was in 1984.
Brainwashing within culture
Many of us are familiar with how logical fallacies and personal biases hamper good thinking. But what about the wider cultural factors that shape, by sleight of hand, how we think and act?
Below are five ways our culture brainwashes us, along with guidance for breaking free from the uniform, mediocre thinking this encourages.
Brainwashing is a worry today as much as, if not more than, it was in 1984.
1. For corporations, profit and efficiency
Taken for granted in many organisations, the imperatives of money and profit lies behind many if not all decisions. HR teams must show return on investments (ROI) in people. In the boardroom we often hear, ‘We have no budget.’ Yet are hands really as tied as we like to believe?
Cost-efficiency is the bedfellow of profit and has become the holy grail of management action. We are brainwashed into thinking the only way is to squeeze more out the system, and from the people who are cogs within it. But ironically this slows our progress toward human flourishing.
2. For consumers, cost and convenience
Consumers speak of high quality. But much of the time markets rally for what is cheap. When we order plastic toys from China, or buy processed sandwiches from a supermarket, rarely do we think of our wellbeing or the sustainability of a value chain.
Likewise for convenience. Fast and easy are the watchwords of our economy: we have moved from home freezers to meals delivered in minutes. Advertisements everywhere endorse the trend: it is not easy to champion ideas, no matter how beneficial, that cost people time or effort.
The consumer values of cost and convenience limit what seems possible in the workplace.
3. Surface-level outcomes
We love to tick boxes and coo over results. But our emphasis on near-term, marketable outcomes means we often leave untouched the deeper beliefs that drive our behaviour. The result? New manifestations of longstanding problems.
Appointments to company boards have risen for women, yet surface-level thinking explains why commerce still dances to the tune of masculine values, women battle demeaning stereotypes, and domestic abuse soars whenever England wins or loses a football match.
At work, in a wellbeing drive we offer free gym memberships or ship camomile teabags to offices around the globe. But the pressures of job insecurity, poor management and meaningless tasks leave employees awake and under stress. Whilst teabags and yoga classes may raise awareness for a day, such tactics fail to grapple with root causes.
4. Obsession with technology
It is unfashionable to question solutionism, the belief that technology will solve the world’s problems. Still, artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies now shape our lives in ways that no one fully understands. The need to ask questions independently of this obsession matters more than ever.
5. Network effects of social media
Organisations find themselves having to respond, often positively, to ideas that have currency on social media. But content here succeeds not because it is of high worth, but because it stirs emotions, generates clicks, and tips dollars into the bank accounts of Silicon Valley.
HR and business leaders must rise above the politics of the public square if they mean to create a workplace where people flourish.
Our emphasis on near-term, marketable outcomes means we often leave untouched the deeper beliefs that drive our behaviour.
How to create space for autonomous thinking and better ideas
HR’s only chance to fulfil its duty is through imaginative ideas and confident action, where possible free of cultural brainwashing. In our experience, several approaches allow executives and their teams to rise above the norms of mediocrity and discover new and lasting forms of value.
Dig below the surface
Keep asking ‘Why?’ (or a variant thereof) until you get close to the root causes of an experience.
Supervisors want autonomy from controlling managers. Why? Because managers demand they fill in timesheets. Why? Because trust is low. Why? Because executives asked for weekly reports. Why? Because executives think supervisors are lazy. Why? Because managers told them so. Why? Because managers believe red tape makes a manager’s life easier.
By examining the factors, and beliefs, that lead to an experience, it is easier to pinpoint an intervention that goes beyond box-ticking to shift outcomes over the long term.
Take dominant values off the table
Profit, efficiency, convenience and cost dominate much of our thinking at work. This dialogue technique may feel like a thought experiment yet is useful all the same: ‘What is the value of such and such action if we set aside profit, efficiency, convenience and cost?’
The question compels everyone to think beyond the usual discourse and explore human value. (These other imperatives may be reintroduced, ideally with appropriate weight, after ideas have been evaluated for other forms of return.)
Run a litmus test with employees
When considering strategy it often helps to gather feedback from employees, who know well the organisation and its products.
More imaginative, however, is the question ‘What value does this plan create for our employees?’ Strategies that deliver lasting value likely also enable employees to flourish. Be wary of any ideas that cost employees with no hope of gain.
In rare cases where a plan has neither positive nor negative impact on employees, appeal to other human stakeholders: customers, those in the supply chain, citizens at large.
Independent thinking matters
If we aspire to change the world for the better, HR teams must think beyond the norms of current society. Awareness of how the environment silently brainwashes us, limiting what we imagine to be possible, is vital if we are to fulfil our commitment to human flourishing.
