In today’s economy, people are at the centre of almost all that we do. For most organisations, people drive everything of value to them from IP and innovation, adaptability and attitude towards risk, through to productivity, retention and ultimately revenue.
However, businesses are falling short when it comes to looking after their people. Companies have become focused on extracting as much value as possible from their workforce, ‘draining’ their resource rather than seeing their people as integral to their success, and an asset to develop and ultimately covet. By developing and supporting people, not only does it benefit each organisation but it benefits people and wider society too.
When it comes to people, the modern workplace is facing unprecedented challenges that organisations need to combat. We’ve highlighted just a few eye-opening statistics below:
- 75% of employees have experienced burnout due to work
- 79% of employees commonly experience workplace stress
- There’s been a 55% increase in sickness absence levels since 2019
- Mental ill-health was the leading cause of absence in 2023 due to anxiety, stress and depression
Many organisations are aware of the challenges they face around the health and wellbeing of their workforce and have put support measures in place, but more recently, businesses are being accused of ‘well-being washing’, where they say all the right things publicly, but in reality, fail to make genuine and meaningful change.
What businesses need is a longer-term strategy to build, maintain and enhance the health and wellbeing of their employees putting the quality of experience their people have at work at the forefront, which is where the term human sustainability comes in. Businesses who prioritise their people now, will ultimately thrive well into the future.
What is human sustainability?
The term Human Sustainability was first coined by Deloitte in 2023. Human sustainability requires organisations to focus less on how much their people benefit from the organisation and more on how their organisation benefits people.
It’s the idea that businesses need to follow through on their commitments to people, prioritising not only health and wellbeing, but skills and professional development, developing roles with purpose that give people meaning, all of which can benefit an organisation greatly.
It’s about preparing people to be sustainable, much like the approach and importance we place on the environment – the more we’re aware of our impact, the more steps we can take to improve which is beneficial to everyone in the long term.
Importance of human sustainability & the benefits for business
A recent survey found that only 43% of workers say their organisation left them better off than when they started working with them. Increased stress and pressure at work, plus the ‘always on’ economy has led to extensive levels of burnout and disengagement at work, when you start digging into the statistics, it’s easy to see how we’re sleep-walking into a much deeper and longer-term crisis.
That’s why the concept of human sustainability is becoming so important, and workplace culture is at the heart of it. When businesses commit to looking after and developing their people on a deeper level, people are less stressed and overall healthier, they have purpose and meaning at work which increases engagement and innovation, plus they have the right skills for the future, meaning they are more employable.
Some key statistics below demonstrate why human sustainability is so important to businesses:
- 82% of workers say feeling happy at work is a key driver of productivity
- 93% of workers say their physical health and wellbeing impacts their productivity
- 93% of workers value their well-being as much as salary
- 70% of employees said their personal sense of purpose is defined by their work – and when work is meaningful, they perform better
And there’s research to back up the case with the University of Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre finding a “strong positive relationship between employee well-being and firm performance,” which included stronger profits and stock returns among organisations with the highest levels of well-being.
The research also found that organisations that scored the highest on treatment of their workforce had a 2.2% higher five-year return on equity.
Adding value for employees, also adds value for employers. Developing a workforce for the future not only benefits your business now, but it also benefits workplaces in the future because people are healthy, with desirable skills. And it’s also beneficial for the wider society, healthier people mean less stress on our healthcare systems and higher skilled workers can not only help plug the skills gap but drive productivity and economic growth.
Role of culture in human sustainability
Culture is the backbone of human sustainability. It may seem obvious but when you treat people well and provide a safe working environment where employees are treated with dignity and respect, their overall well-being and capacity to thrive improves.
A few reasons why promoting a positive culture is key to human sustainability:
- Drive employee well-being – a positive work environment and a culture that prioritises the health, well-being and safety of employees, reduces stress, prevents interpersonal conflict and avoids burnout.
- Promote diversity, equity and inclusion – an open and considerate culture that fosters respect enables everyone, regardless of their background to thrive, and more diverse workforces are more innovative.
- Builds strong relationships – people trust and rely on each other, enhancing communication, collaboration and community.
- Enables resilience – a supportive workplace culture can help individuals overcome challenges, both personal and professional, building resilience in uncertain times.
- Builds purpose – when your culture aligns with employees’ values and work gives them a sense of purpose, they are likely to feel fulfilled, engaged and stay at organisations longer, improving retention rates.
How to achieve human sustainability
Achieving human sustainability is not easy – whilst well-being is a central theme, it’s not another health and wellbeing programme, it’s not a gym membership or time off to do community work, it’s addressing fundamental structural and systemic issues, balancing short term issues for the longer-term future.
It requires businesses to take a more holistic and honest approach to people, evaluating the culture of the workplace to eliminate culture damaging behaviours, addressing systemic issues to create a workplace that gives employees a sense of equity, purpose and belonging, taking responsibility for employees’ wellbeing, developing skills and providing ‘good work’.
Actions to achieve human sustainability
Drive systemic change
Organisations need to look at wellbeing as being a problem with the working environment, not about the employees themselves. Leaders need to firstly identify issues with their culture, what is driving stress and poor wellbeing? Is it particular managers? Is it unsustainable workloads? Is bullying or harassment occurring either across the business or in small pockets?
Once you locate the problem, only then can you begin to address it.
Actions to drive systemic change could look like:
- Conduct a culture review to fully understand behaviours across your organisation and develop a strategy to improve it.
- Implement an anonymous reporting platform such as Culture Shift to allow you to listen to your employees’ experiences, giving you better insight into your culture.
- Recruit more people and appropriately support and train them to reduce workload and burnout.
- Implementing meaningful policies, such as encouraging flexible working, generous holiday allowance and ensuring holiday entitlement is used fully.
Eliminate culture damaging behaviour
Negative work environments contribute significantly to poor mental health, low engagement and productivity rates. Identifying behaviours that are damaging your culture, whether that’s bullying and harassment, a lack of accountability or poor communication through to toxic management is an essential first step to tackling it.
And just because you don’t hear anyone talking about negative issues or you don’t receive any reports, it doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. It would be naïve to believe that your organisation has no issues at all, especially when working with people. It’s more likely that people don’t feel comfortable speaking up and voicing their concerns or they don’t know how to, which is equally as problematic for your workplace culture.
Actions to eliminate culture damaging behaviour could look like:
- Implement an anonymous reporting platform like Culture Shift, giving your employees an additional reporting route, beyond the traditional HR team which gives them straight-forward, anonymous route to report bullying, harassment and other culture damaging behaviours.
- When you receive reports, it’s essential that you follow up and understand further, then put steps in place to resolve and prevent the behaviour from happening again.
- Set clear behavioural expectations and when employees do not live up to your desired standards, address issues promptly.
- Foster open communication to build a culture of transparency where employees feel comfortable sharing their opinions and concerns.
Create a sense of purpose at work
Creating purpose at work is also a key part of human sustainability. When employees believe they have a purpose at work they are likely to be happier and healthier, with opportunities to grow both personally and professionally. Embedding purpose into your workplace culture benefits businesses because people are likely to be more aligned to your company’s overall goals, sharing the same vision and are therefore more likely to be productive and engaged in their day-to-day work.
Creating a culture where employees belong
When employees feel like they belong and can bring their whole self to the workplace, individuals experience higher levels of job satisfaction and well-being. A study by EY found that a sense of belonging “significantly reduces stress level and improves physical health, emotional well-being, and performance.”
Belonging goes hand in hand with diversity and inclusion – often employees from marginalised groups, whether that’s related to race, religion, disability, gender or sexual orientation may feel the need to hide who they really are from colleagues because they’re scared of not fitting in at work or worse experiencing prejudice or discrimination.
Personal development
Along with culture and well-being, personal development is central to human sustainability. The ability to learn new skills to advance and grow is crucial and is a contributing factor to employees’ fulfilment and purpose at work.
Organisations should provide clear career pathways, ongoing training opportunities and if appropriate, secondments to other teams or businesses as a way of expanding responsibilities and experiencing different environments.
Ultimately human sustainability centres around the idea that people are critical to business success and when people thrive, businesses thrive too. It’s a departure from the current, more transactional nature of employee / employer relationships and requires a holistic, cross-business approach to achieve. However, as worker expectations evolve and organisations look to stay ahead of the game by hiring top talent to drive revenue, can organisations afford not to invest in human sustainability?
Sources
Gympass’s The State Of Work-life Wellness
https://www.peoplehr.com/en-gb/resources/blog/sick-leave-report-how-are-different-industries-faring/
