With policies and procedures for everything and now 5 generations potentially in one workplace, humanising your workplace has never been more important than it is right now. 

Add our recent crazy times of COVID, bushfires and massive personal and professional change to the equation…. letting team members know you care is going to be a key requirement moving forward. 

So here are 4 things you can do humanise your workplace? 

1. Add Employee Welfare as a priority

Having a safe workplace is just a minimum expectation. 

Now, building on that is actively thinking about your employee welfare and wellbeing and making your team feel valued relevant to your industry and team member personal aspects and expectations. 

For example, things like hours worked, actively dealing with conflict in the workplace, domestic violence and mental health are all additional things that employers are now needing to think about. 

2. Focus on Compassion and Empathy 

It is no longer just about ‘treating people how you want to be treated’. It is about ‘treating people how they want to be treated’. 

Really getting to know your employees is important in understanding what motivates them, what are they looking for and how they perform at their best. 

With the recent COVID pandemic, this has shown us just how important it is to show team that you care about them and are compassionate to their situations.

3. Being authentic and opening up communication 

Having leadership that is truthful, real and transparent is critical in humanising your workplace. 

Alongside this is also demonstrating leadership vulnerability and sharing their stories and real life experiences and learnings. This helps in making leaders ‘real’ human beings and being approachable.

Holding all the information to the business owner’s chest also is being challenged with team members wanting to be included in decision making, priorities and regular updates.  

Having regular communication rhythms, systems and ‘chat’ set up for your organisation are all critical as well as setting up open feedback environments (which we will talk about this month). 

4. Focus on the Employee Experience 

Delivering on the Employee Experience (EX) will be the top priority for businesses. EX is the ‘user experience’ of the company – the intersection of an employee’s expectations and the reality of an organisation’s culture and day to day work life.

Design your HR services around real user personas, not just job roles. What do your team need and value?

In a candidate driven world, designing your organisation to be more people-centric and nailing your EX will be critical. Similar to the concept of regularly reviewing your customer experiences, designing delightful experiences that bring out the best in your people will be critical for future success.

According to Mercer’s 2020 report titled ‘energise the experience ’, energised employees (ie employees who rate themselves at least 7 out of 10 on a scale of how energised they feel in their jobs on a typical day) are seeking an experience that is empathetic, embracing, enriching and efficient. 

Employees will place a premium on how companies care for them. One of the basic principles of energising employees is to listen to them and understand ‘why’ they come to work every day. 

How do you score your company out of 10 (10 being the highest)?

 What is 1 thing you can you do to humanise your workplace?