In this entry (my first blog ever, actually), I hope to discuss a fairly abstract concept about people, nature, and society and its potential implications to the multi-faceted fields of corporate culture and organization development. I’m delighted that you are here to read this and hope that you will share your thoughts in response to this topic as well – it’s developing very holistically and I would love to incorporate any ideas you may have!
I don’t consider myself to be an “HR” guy. It is not the field that totally encompasses my interests, nor my expertise or experience. Personally, I am more interested in the sociology of human beings as it relates to the natural world. It is an area that bridges sociology, psychology, biology, ecology, anthropology, and philosophy. I’ve been working with an organization that specializes in the consulting about certain HR practices and I’ve found that there are elements of the Human Resource conundrum that do tickle my fancy. I actually attended a conference recently that spurred some thought in this arena and I made some intellectual connections amongst some ideas.
At first, I thought the conference was going to be about “talent recruitment strategies.” As I have only been to a few of these industry conferences so far in my career, I approached the hotel ballroom somewhat skeptically, thinking that this event was not going to be any different from the other ones attended previously. It turned out it was actually about talent recruitment strategies, but, somewhat peculiarly, the speakers discussed topics that turned out to be very intellectually stimulating.
The first speaker’s focus was about how to keep talented young women in the workplace. I don’t recall exactly what she brought up, but what I do remember was that the discussion with the audience took her topic in a whole different direction. It became more about workplace issues regarding job satisfaction, over-worked employees, and creating a true system of fair rewards. It seemed to go right down to the heart of human nature – what we workers get out of our jobs intrinsically, emotionally, and physically.
There seemed to be more questions than answers. What do we do to ensure the physical and mental health of our employees so that they are more productive? Our industry’s market demands that they work more hours, but this is unattractive to them in terms of retention – what should we do?
More and more, I couldn’t help but reflect upon what seems to be a primary aspect of our culture’s essential mindset – an intense focus on profit, development, progress and productivity. I think there are many parallels between this mindset and that of our treatment of the environment. Many authors such as Daniel Quinn, Doug Brown, and Paul Hawken argue that this mindset stems (recently) from the concept of market capitalism, but also agree that it has cultural roots extending much farther back in history. With this framework in mind, I wondered how could companies maintain a profit-driven focus and not seek to maximize the most of their employees? In this context, it seems understandable that companies are pushing the limits of their employees. I will get into this more as it relates to the next speaker.
The other speaker was a Dean of a reputable business school of management and labor. What he talked about was more up my alley of interests, but not all the way there. He spoke about the emerging trends of corporate social responsibility and environmentalism as an effective recruitment tool for filling jobs. Basically, along the lines of “show your recruit that your company cares, and they will be more enticed to join you.”
I’ll be honest, I’m very critical of the recent boom in popularized efforts to be socially and environmentally conscious by corporations. As an organization, I think much of the time they are just giving lip service to a movement that does have genuine interest in the betterment of human beings and the environment. I personally challenged his concept of “Compassionate Capitalism” and approached this dean after his speech. Surprisingly, he actually agreed with me! (As an academic, all he said he could really do was relay and analyze observations of current market fluctuations.)
He did, however, get me thinking more and more about how most modern human beings treat the environment. I started to see many parallels between the two speakers arguments and developed what seems to be a novel theory, at least in my mind. What I would like to posit is that by understanding the nature of human beings’ treatment of the environment, we can similarly understand trends of social interaction amongst ourselves and, furthermore, apply these lessons learned to the field of organization development and culture.
I don’t consider myself an environmentalist, but more of an “advocate of the natural world.” I believe that human beings have a rightful place alongside the butterflies, horses, and trees, but I’m aware that not everyone shares that sentiment. A common belief amongst our culture is that we have been granted “dominion” over the natural world – it is ours to take, manipulate, and conquer. We are somehow “special” in the closed system that is the global biosphere. Unfortunately, the field of ecology (the study of natural systems) has brought to light that we are, in fact, subject to the same laws of nature that govern those butterflies, horses, and trees. Thinking deeper, it seems this mindset is actually what’s driving the development of pollution and the climate crisis. Despite our magnificent intelligence and creativity, this understanding has only come to light very recently with evidence from anthropology, history, and (possibly) evolutionary biology.
This mindset has permeated our culture and has become its central tenet – and I will argue this notion is why we have so many unhappy workers. Much like we treated the earth’s natural wonders as an expendable resource, many corporations treat their workers also as expendable resources. From their badge/cubicle numbers to daily mindless tasks, workers today seem more disenfranchised from their jobs than ever before. Not only do many have trouble seeing their value and/or role in the organization, I’m not surprised that people feel overworked, stressed, and unhealthy because of their job. It is not their fault, nor that of their mangers. I argue that what’s at fault here is this central tenet of our global culture: productivity, development, profit and progress (rather than maintenance and/or sustainability.) If companies are to survive in an extremely competitive world, I think they need to intelligently reevaluate their own company culture as it relates to their human workforce.
Much like the environmentalist movement is evolving their focus more to this thing called “sustainability,” companies now seem to be discussing their need to focus on their own form of sustainability – the sustainability of human capital. With our current understanding of the natural world, I challenge corporations to take advantage of a great opportunity to make positive progressive changes with these lessons in mind: if we stop treating our workers as expendable “capital” and instead treat them as our most valuable resource, we may end up with happier and more productive workers. “Capital” denotes no sense of humanity, but that’s just what they are – human. This concept almost seems intuitive, right?
All-in-all, I think many lessons can be learned from the fields of ecology, history, and anthropology and that these lessons directly relate to the sociology of our workforce. Henceforth, these lessons can provide insight as to how to ensure survival and prosperity in the closed system of the modern marketplace. I’m interested in finding out how these lessons may realistically be applied to the field of Human Resources as it relates to corporate culture and workforce sustainability.
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