A new online platform called Peoplenovate aims to make the workplace a more humane and rewarding environment for employees of all kinds. London-based lawyer Saniya Sharma launched the website to confront common problems workers face and brainstorm real-world solutions.
At a time when statistics show falling employee engagement and companies struggling to retain talent, Sharma recommends reenvisioning what the workplace can be from the ground up. Her approach advocates seeing workplaces as “skill development and connection hotbeds” that enable each employee to embrace and develop their individual strengths and skills in a nurturing and supportive environment.
Emotionally intelligent workplaces
While an all-too-common HR approach focuses on rationality to the exclusion of employees’ emotions, Sharma suggests this is a mistake. “When employees interact, emotions inevitably get involved,” she explained. “Workplaces can no longer afford to remain apathetic and indifferent to what employees experience on the job.”
As an alternative, Sharma highlights the possibility of HR policies that take care of workers. “We need to build emotionally intelligent practices that nurture employees from the first day they walk into the office,” she said. “A lot of research on employee retention shows you need to provide support to employees from day one.”
For Sharma, these strategies should be tailored to the specific worker in order to be most effective. “Different people learn and progress in different ways and at different paces,” she said. “Each individual has their own way of making sense. A flexible approach allows people to hit their targets and progress in a way that suits them.”
To help employees feel like they belong, she also calls for the creative reimagining of workplace expectations. “The workplace today still tends to promote majoritarian and/or neurotypical ideas, whether in terms of standards employees are supposed to meet, behaviors they’re supposed to exhibit, or structures they’re supposed to follow,” she said. This can make people feel like “misfits,” which can have a negative effect on their engagement, productivity, and retention rates.
In particular, to prevent unfair biases and barriers from stifling the career advancement of individuals from underrepresented backgrounds, Sharma recommends developing a skill-based approach and cultivating open-mindedness about who can fill certain positions, and how. “We need to keep the molds and pathways [for roles like CEO] flexible, and let people show who they are in a way that is consistent with their authentic self.”
Psychologically intelligent and safe workplaces
Sharma also advocates HR policies that take the psychology of individuals into account. For her, attachment theory, in particular, provides a productive way of analyzing employee behavior and intervening to meet their needs.
According to this psychological approach, there are four different kinds of people:
- “Secure” individuals who easily communicate their needs to others and set effective boundaries.
- “Ambivalent” (otherwise called “anxious”) people who commonly look to others for validation while devaluing themselves.
- “Avoidant” people who tend to devalue relationships with others while overrating their own independence.
- Disorganized (or “fearful-avoidant”) people who may exhibit both anxious and avoidant behaviors by turns.
For Sharma, understanding these differences is the first step to forming effective teams. “Pairing an avoidant boss with an anxious employee usually isn’t going to yield the best results,” she pointed out. “If the avoidant boss is unaware of their behavior, they will be unable to give the anxious employee the kind of reassurance and communication they need to do well.” Due to the avoidant boss’s discomfort with connecting in relationships, the anxious person’s desire for approval or validation is likely to come off to them as clinginess or lack of confidence instead.
Indeed, scholars of attachment theory have long noted the degenerative spiral that tends to develop when anxious and avoidant individuals attempt to relate. The avoidant’s refusal to validate the other normally worsens their anxiety, leading them to make renewed bids for attention and validation, which receive increasingly chilly responses. The anxious individual chases, while the avoidant one pulls further away — a frustrating situation for both.
These differences present challenges in the workplace.
“Sometimes, you can get around those problems by designing teams that take into account those kinds of behavioral preferences,” Sharma said. “But a lot of problems can be solved by just making people aware of their behaviors and giving them strategies to manage it.”
Indeed, researchers have found that knowing one’s attachment style can help people improve their relationships.
“This is just one aspect. Similarly, it is important to appreciate that everyone has a different style and preference of communication. Some respond best to affirmations, while others respond well to quality time (i.e., workplace bonding). If you don’t know how to communicate with a team member in the way that works for them, you risk misunderstandings and alienation”, she notes. “Sometimes, people just don’t know what to do. A lot of problems could be solved by giving people the tools that will bring out the best in themselves and in those around them.”
Companies as agents of change
While businesses traditionally emphasize making profits over other considerations, Sharma would like them to view themselves as agents of positive social change.
“There is sound research that sees employment as an active way of creating employee wellbeing,” she said. “Employment can serve as a regenerative process that actively helps people feel good about themselves in the workplace.”
To tap into this potential, Sharma suggests employers shouldn’t just prioritize employees’ health and wellbeing, but also create incentives to promote growth and prosocial behavior.
“People want to maximize happiness and kindness at work,” she said. “We all understand that’s important, and we all want those kinds of behaviors. But are we rewarding them in organizations where producing deliverables and increasing profit are usually the only metrics for rewarding someone or promoting them? Why would an employee choose showing kindness or lending a supporting hand to another over improving their billing statistics if it is not going to lead to anything? We need to find a way to incentivize these emotionally intelligent behaviors that create better workplaces.”
Shifting workplaces from top-down hierarchies to more egalitarian environments in which employees enjoy freedom and autonomy might seem like a daunting task. For Sharma, however, bringing this transformation about may be easier than it might first appear.
“Humans are designed to nurture and feel compassion, empathy, and respect,” she explained. “These qualities are inherent to us. It’s just about being human. We know how to be good to people. Everybody wants to be good, and everybody feels good if they are good to other people. We just need to find ways to encourage more people to do that in workplaces.”
