Employees spend a substantial part of their day and life at work. How we work can positively or adversely impact everyone’s mental health and well-being.

We are witnessing a workplace culture crisis. This raises questions about force-fitting command and control cultures for results in new-age organisations that employ mostly natives to technology. Instead of deploying technology to reduce the effort of work, we appear to have conveniently used it to create ‘always on’ organisations that demand work with disregard for normal human cycles of sleep, food, and pursuit of personal relationships, exercise, or hobbies.

Interestingly, this ecosystem is also created in large organisations where employment is considered prestigious, ambitious and qualified people seek careers, and the unspoken rules expect employees to do what it takes to ‘win’.

Human-Centric Leadership: This is marked by recognising that sustainable profitability comes from happy, healthy, and engaged employees rather than those who are burnt out, stressed, and driven by uncertainty or fear. It is the combination of providing flexible workplace experiences, fostering intentional collaboration in and across teams and promoting empathy based on positive management styles.

Human-centric leadership has a strong EQ (emotional quotient) and has the following traits:

• It is empathetic in work allocation using a leader-as-teacher style to improve performance and uses a coaching style to give feedback.
• It is good at reading body language and can intervene to offer support and psychological safety through open, transparent communication.
• Such a leadership style makes genuine human connections of trust to create an environment of acceptance across diverse groups. It does not allow bias or play favourites.

The research confirms several advantages a human centric leadership style can have in the workplace such as:

• It improves employee engagement, teamwork, and innovation, leading to sustainable performance & contribution.
• It improves organisational culture and reputation, leading to greater talent attraction and retention.
• While human-centricity may sound weak in the chase for profits, it’s the path of wisdom to uphold people centricity as the path to sustaining business outcomes.

People managers can significantly reduce tension at work by leading with compassion and wisdom. The world of work needs strong codes of conduct, mapping and communicating desired cultures, and assuring employee voice.

_{This article was featured on Times Ascent on October 3rd, 2024}