When a fifteen-year-old girl with Asperger’s syndrome galvanizes a global response to climate change, a president communicates with his nation and the world by tweet, and skateboarding becomes an Olympic sport, it seems that things that were once considered unthinkable have come to pass. Yet, when all about us is shifting, something fundamental remains the same: our human nature.

The psychological contract that used to exist between employer and employee has changed beyond recognition

Evolution is a very slow process, indeed. The human being using a flint tool for cutting animal skin is not so different physically and emotionally from the person barking voice recognition instructions into a hand-held computer. In a world obsessed with change, it is a mistake to forget this. What we ask of people in their work lives is constantly changing, but what human beings ask of employers, at a fundamental level, is not.

What do human beings need?

You do not need to be a psychologist to understand the basic features of human nature. For a brief moment, try stepping out of our modern world to stand in the footprints of ancient men and women. Staying safe, fed, and able to procreate is what life is about. The best way to achieve this is to be part of a protective group preferably one in which you have some clout. A shared sense of belonging and having some essential value to the other members of your group will boost your chances of survival. But that is not enough. Being safe now does not mean being safe in the future. Staying still is not an option because other, yet-to-be-experienced, dangers may lie in wait.

Now step out of your goat-skin jacket and back into today’s world. Although for most, the challenge of basic survival through physical prowess has gone, human beings still have a strong drive to feel safe. Alongside this is a need for belonging, a need to be valued, and a need to feel that our lives are moving forward. We come into the world with these needs. They permeate and shape our learning at a conscious and subconscious level. They influence our behavior throughout life. They join us on our commute to work and make their presence felt.

The course of childhood and subsequent life events influence the way in which these needs are expressed, making each person delightfully unique. However, at our core, human beings share the basic need to feel safe, to belong, to feel valued, and to grow or change.

A human being needs and works

There has never been a time when work was specifically designed to address our core needs, but, by chance, it often did. From the Industrial Revolution until recent decades, joining an organization and staying there for most of a lifetime may not have yielded riches, but it did provide a form of security, a strong sense of belonging, and perhaps a chance of advancement, if not in career terms but in other aspects such as personal influence, credibility in the community, or just authority in a family. Organizations, whether small or large, provide opportunities for social connection and identity. They also helped create personal value by defining roles that played a part in the success of the whole enterprise, even if that role was the lowest-ranking housemaid in the pecking order of a large house or the most junior clerk in an office.

How did we lose our human being self?

With sophistication comes gain and loss. For an individual employee today, safety comes through growing knowledge, skill, and flexibility rather than honing a single set of abilities. Over the past forty years, security through work as a realistic expectation has all but disappeared. We do not expect a job for life and we are actively advised to move from organization to organization to progress. Our security is based on the fact that the market wants us. While in the flow of this demand, life is exciting, but when knocked out of this stream because the demand changes, we become vulnerable.

The psychological contract that used to exist between employer and employee has changed beyond recognition. In this process, the drive to find and develop the talent needed to meet short-term agendas has, in many ways, worked against addressing the human being within us all. A focus on maximizing profit has closed the minds of leaders to the obvious: if they want human beings to use their skills to the full and remain motivated, core human needs must be addressed somehow, somewhere. Human beings are not unthinking objects to be manipulated without reacting in some way. Nonetheless, many change programs assume that people will simply believe what is asked of them because it is in the best interest of the organization to do so. I am afraid the interests of the organization are only of interest to a unique human being in so far as they support his or her own needs. Yet in much of the change work, there seems to be a collective forgetting of this fact.

A focus on maximizing profit has closed the minds of leaders to the obvious... core human needs must be addressed

How is this happening in an HR-savvy world?

It is surprising that this leadership amnesia has happened at a time when the human resources industry has blossomed and we are awash with materials, programs, psychometrics, competency profiles, and the like that are supposed to heighten our understanding of people. But our understanding of exactly what?

The average manager can easily feel besieged by the number of approaches clamoring to be accepted as one way to enable his or her people to perform. Within these approaches, there is frequently too much detail and too little clarity about how the aspect being addressed relates to the whole human being. People are complicated, but the profitable HR industry, like many others, feeds its growth by developing yet more sophisticated measures, tools, and techniques, thereby adding to this complexity. When it comes to human beings, more is not necessarily better if the wood is lost in the trees. Perhaps it is time to step back from this detail and start with the basics. It is time for leaders and managers to understand their people at a human level, that is, as people like themselves.

The consequences of not paying attention to core human needs

When behaviour goes awry, it has a cost. At a local level, it is mostly in terms of small but regular amounts of wasted time and effort. Multiply this through many departments and teams, and the cost is high. From the boardroom downward, offices ring with discussions that, on the surface, appear fully logical and factual but are controlled by the shadowy nature of individual needs. Leaders struggle to understand why their initiatives do not have traction, why the same problems recur, and why individual employees behave as they do. Decisions are made on the basis of an individual’s need to prove his or her value; peers fail to challenge for fear of losing their position in the hierarchy or competing to enhance their value. Major investments in culture change programs produce a change in nomenclature, but old ways resurface as soon as the initial enthusiasm fades. The list is long.

Organizations are led and managed based on logic and facts but the logic and facts are in the hands and hearts of human beings

If we choose to ignore the power of our core human needs or to simply override them, we cannot expect human beings to do what leaders decree. The pull of human needs is too great. Organizations are led and managed based on logic and facts, but the logic and facts are in the hands and hearts of human beings, the consequences of which are not difficult to see.

• When human beings feel unsafe, their ability to concentrate on other matters is affected in a profound way. It is like wearing a pair of insecurity glasses through which everything else is filtered. The effort is then channeled into regaining personal security, which might but probably will not coincide with what the organization needs.
• When positive validation is in short supply, human beings seek it out. The need to prove one’s worth brings the benefits of energy and focus, but it also skews the balance of what is good for' me' and good for ‘us’ firmly in the home''. Decisions are made on the basis of hidden (or not-so-hidden) egos as a primary consideration. The other face of this need, the fear of failure, prompts withdrawal to a safe area of operation where people do what has worked in the past, the challenge is avoided, concerns are not voiced, risks are not taken, and change is actively resisted by behaviours that can be equally damaging.
• When it comes to the need to belong, the practices of working from home, having a zero-hours arrangement, and being an associate or a contractor all lessen attachment to an organization. If I sense I do not belong, I will place my need to be part of something elsewhere; a social group, a professional body, or a linked-in network can become more important as a form of identity than an organization from which I expect little loyalty. Alternatively, where a team or department has an overdeveloped sense of belonging, it creates an equal weight of ‘not belonging’ to other groups. Parts of the organization are ignored or derided.
• Where there’s little chance of using potential, minimal development or progression, or where work is a repetitive meal of the same type of tasks dished up each day, motivation eventually drains away. The consequences of this disillusionment are not just a lack of interest and effort. When they feel stuck, human beings get fed up, frustrated, depressed, or downright angry. Lack of concentration through boredom leads to mistakes, even if tasks are routine, some of which may be expensive. Frustration and anger lead to disruption. Many jobs may be stretching, but the same type of stretch over time, or simply more of it, does not constitute growth or change.

All this human behavior, and considerably more, is going on each day behind the doors of our best-known organizations, which hum with the effects of our core needs from the bottom to the top.

How to harness our human nature

So, what do we do? We cannot outlaw our human nature. Clearly, the answer has to be to work with it so that it adds to the collective success of an organization rather than pulling it apart. This does not mean going back to old structures. The past is the past. Instead, it requires the courage and honesty to acknowledge what is truly going on in organizational life the recognition that an organization is a living entity made up of living beings. And if we do embrace this reality, it only puts us on the starting block for change. If your ambition is to work actively with human nature rather than keep your fingers crossed and hope that it will not block your path, more considered steps are needed. The first is to recognize that meeting human needs is not easy.

Perhaps the most effective approach to the human question is to create an over-arching culture that aims to cover all bases for core human needs in a general way

Many people are unaware of the existence of these forces, let alone the degree to which they have a hold over them. What is more, core human needs do not pack their bags and go away when ‘fed’. A psychological sandwich is not the answer to long-term emotional hunger. At root, the shape of an individual’s needs is formed in early life. Unless you are planning therapy for all staff, you are unlikely to see this shape change, which means a one-off event does not do the job. Core needs need to be satisfied regularly.

Perhaps the most effective approach to the human question is to create an overarching culture that aims to cover all bases for core human being needs in a general way; that is, to foster a working environment that most people will find satisfying but which also allows for the individual to meet these needs in his/her own particular way. This is a culture in which:

• Employees are not cosseted like children but are informed and prepared so that surprises are few. People are likely to feel safe when communication is honest both in times of success and in times of difficulty, physical safeguarding and wellness are a priority, and employment contracts provide flexibility but protect rights.
• Systems, processes, and working practices are designed to reinforce respect and personal value for both effort and outcomes at all levels of the organization. Leaders and managers clearly model respect for others. Disrespect is not tolerated.
• The effort is placed on developing camaraderie, support, equality, and a sense of belonging to the whole, but with care not to create unhealthy out-groups; status boundaries between leaders, managers, and staff are minimal; the emphasis is on ‘us’ not ‘them and us’.
• People are regarded as individuals, respected for what they bring, not what they lack; a good match exists between an individual’s skills and the demands of the role; and a variety of styles is welcomed, not selected out. Performance issues are dealt with early on with curiosity, support, and honesty, not blame, and growth and development are fostered as a true partnership between what the organization wants and what the individual needs.
• Communication is two-way, with ideas and solutions flowing both up and down organizational structures so that all people are part of the problem-solving brain of the organization.
• If there is some fun and happiness in the air, why not?

An idealistic dream? Not necessarily. Repeated Gallup surveys have shown how organizations with higher staff engagement ratings outperform those with lower ratings on a broad range of key measures; more human-friendly seems to mean more productive, not less. Ultimately, commercial drivers, not philosophical stances, will press leaders to take a more human-friendly approach.

How to achieve a human-friendly culture

If the holy grail of organizational change is to develop a culture with full employee engagement, we must first create a detailed understanding of what this engagement looks like at a day-to-day level. What will leaders, managers, and all staff be doing, thinking, and believing in an engaged world? The strategies required to foster this change and the metrics needed to measure progress must be defined. This is a significantly greater task than a single-change program can address. It requires interventions in education systems, and it challenges concepts of organizational purpose and how organizations are led.

At an individual level, the starting point has to be increasing awareness of the ‘why’ of behavior—why each of us does what we do. Our education system is taking tentative steps to embrace this through mindfulness and resilience training, but it has much further to go if we are to foster the satisfied and productive adults needed to grow sustainable organizations. We need a new lexicon that allows us to talk about our inner needs and how they feed directly into well-being, motivation, and mental health, and we should be as comfortable discussing these broader life issues at work as profit, efficiency, and strategy. In the immediate term, the population most in need of awareness-raising work are senior leaders.

Few managers are truly powerless when it comes to shaping the way work is delivered. there is much scope to develop a human-needs-aware approach

The homogeneity of the leadership population creates a particular problem for a human-friendly culture. This commonality of psychological style arises from the stony path that leaders must follow to reach the top. To become a leader today is a demanding task requiring the tenacity, determination, and focus to use high-level skills to outshine similarly ambitious competitors. To succeed on this journey, an individual requires inner strength, which is most often fuelled by an unbalanced drive to prove personal value. But what happens when the majority of people at the top have an insatiable need to prove their worth through achievement and an abhorrent fear of failure? In addition to questionable, ego-centric decision-making, short-termism, and unhealthy behaviors, the most obvious result is a senior-level blindness to the needs of the rest of the workforce. If leaders do not appreciate the need for safety, belonging, and change, it is difficult for them to accept that they matter to others. A human-being-friendly culture cannot flourish where those who hold the power look through a skewed lens.

When the key sponsors of change eventually become less blinkered and accept a holistic human approach, then the systems, processes, and activities that follow can be designed with human needs in mind. We are beginning to see this with the emergence of more personal approaches to performance management. However, in many organizations, there will be a long wait before a truly human-friendly culture emerges. Yet, that does not mean nothing can be done. Even when the organization’s boundaries are tight and the wriggle room is small, few managers are truly powerless when it comes to shaping the way work is delivered. At a team level, there is much scope to develop a human-needs-aware approach.

If that sounds a little ambitious, just remember that employees already know that meeting core needs is the real impetus behind organizational life. There is nothing new here. Human beings read self-interest quickly, but in hierarchical power structures (from the family onward), we have learned not to call it out. We would be a healthier, more content, and more profitable society if we did.