New Crusade - “PAY YOUR PEOPLE FOR THE HUMAN WORK FFS!”

We have to be honest - we know we have asked for a lot. We spent the last few years saying to you:

“We have oodles of HumanDebt?and the only way to clear -or at least make a dent in it-, is to distribute it to the team level and let you do masses of “human work” to better yourselves, so here we are everyone, this is what needs to happen - we need you to accept that the work you used to do is not enough, what we need now is extremely heavy lifting on the people side - we need you to: quickly increase your EQ; employ empathy; hold the space for the real conversations; learn and care about your team mates; block the time; have consistency; do your part in self-care; be courageous; be flexible; be super open; never stop being curious; never lose heart or dip in passion; always be willing to be uncomfortable; always withstand uncertainty and remain positive and connected; never impression manage; help each other; learn to change behaviours, replace bad habits, be intentional about candour, conflict and collaboration; be unprecedentedly “team-y”; and bring all your colleagues along the way too”.?

Simples, eh? No it isn't. And understandably, people rolled their eyes and sighed heavily or glared - aka “team resistance”.

We then acknowledged that between the team resistance and the resistance of the organisation, it’s the former that needs challenging as the latter is nearly immutable, so we’ve asked everyone to check their impostor syndrome regarding the human work and apply themselves to it without excuses such as “but I can’t/don’t know how/ am too busy/etc”.?

We built a library of articles and videos to help and more importantly, we built a software product to further help with this gargantuan task by holding the space, exposing the data and guiding the human work for our clients’ teams.?

And we continued to beg and plead that we all collectively learn to fall in love with continuous improvement and integrate this work in the day-to-day as an integral part and not as an afterthought.

All of this was us to you. And it has been a monumental ask, we never claimed it was easy or simple. But you have heard it and understood the need and have put in the uncomfortable and exhausting work of comprehending your own emotions and those of your team and then starting to modify behaviours.

We asked for a lot and many of you delivered already. It is nothing short of humbling to never go a day without seeing more evidence of developers and techies in general overcoming their aversion to the “fluffy” bits and putting in the work to think, feel and connect.?

But we haven’t excused the organisation either. We never shied away from honestly -and vehemently at times- pointing fingers when the sheer amount of HumanDebt translated into so much evident toxicity and bad culture that the organisation was directly impeding the work of individuals and teams.?

We accused empty rhetorics and sterile theory-no-action awareness-building exercises; exposed truths that others found uncomfortable; we pointed at naked emperors; we dared criticise the darlings of command&control - NPS, rigid process, Agile by numbers and powerpoint; we pulled alarm signals when agility itself -and flexibility and creativity implicitly- were faltering, or when passion was buried under disengagement and burnout; we showed the numbers that would directly impact the leadership team’s KPIs and connected them to the human work effort; we practically begged for HumanDebt audits and truly open and human discourses; we built and cheered on Human Work Superheroes; and we praised the companies doing well.?

This hasn’t necessarily endeared us to many organisations’ top management as you can imagine -and has definitely gotten us no popularity prizes with anyone feeling attacked by the truth from antiquated HR to checked-out leaders-?but we had to persevere. We are still doing so every day and have accepted our purpose is bigger than just making the tool for the work because the imperative is still blurry and being resisted.?

Yes, we may have only started out as a software-maker finding ways to measure and increase Psychological Safety as it’s the fastest way to high performance in particular in technology, but when we opened Pandora’s box we couldn’t ignore how much more there was to do once we saw the extent of the HumanDebt and realised we need everyone to help by doing their part and integrating the human work. We now offer a much bigger platform to enable this people work and we have accepted that we really are just accidental crusaders for the wellbeing of high-performing employees and while we help them undertake the work, we also have to protect them from the organisation at times and champion their efforts.?

Part of the -absolutely understandable- individual and team level resistance alongside lack of education and lack of practice - was the lack of trust in the good intentions of the organisation and the sense of injustice of having to add even more work to an already overflowing plate we all have. “Do they really care about us all of a sudden? Are they really listening to us now? Do they really want us to do some of this work so that our work lives are better? Why isn’t this HumanDebt squarely and solely the organisation’s headache?” And more importantly, “if this is so crucial why don’t they block off and protect the space and time for the human work and reward us for it?”

This last question is key we feel, and now, when we have finally arrived at a place where we collectively understand the need for the people work, where we have stopped fighting it, where we understand we have to show up, it’s more urgent than ever.?

So “Pay them for it FFS!” is our next -undoubtedly loathsome- call to arms to the organisation. “You asked them to do the human work themselves to correct some of the bad culture you let happen and to better their own work experience as you failed and they fought it at first, but they are now starting to do it consistently, not thanks to you but really, in spite of you, the very least you can do is thank them for it by acknowledging it and rewarding it.”

An immense ask.?One that cuts across most departments and unquestioned processes from yesteryear. Performance reviews, benefits and compensation, L&D, finance, ops, you name it, no one is exempt from having to come to the table and work out “How do we acknowledge our people are spending time investing in their own wellbeing and in the health of the team and that time needs to be adequately compensated?”?

Some organisations worked this out a while ago. They pay people for time spent learning -or even being curious-; they ask people for a proportion of their time to be squarely dedicated to the human work -one company is trialing a 70%/30% split of operational versus emotional work-; they reward acts of vulnerability and courage.

Maybe most encouragingly, as we’ve seen it first hand, some of our clients asked us for reports on how much time people have spent in our software either answering questions or doing the crowdsourced team actions as they are evidently thinking and learning about each other and themselves. While this is great news potentially, we feel it is also our job to determine what to do to ensure this data is used “for the good” and not for nefarious purposes. We’re basically answering them with:?

“Yes, you’ve asked your people to do this human work and they mercifully lowered their natural resistance to the emotional and behavioural work and they are engaging with our software, learning, growing and being more psychologically safe with every sprint and you are now saying you’d like to know how much time they spend on this to be able to reward them for it, but one of our core principles in PeopleNotTech is “Whatever behaviours need to be bettered in the team, can only be bettered by the team itself so it all stays at the bubble-level, it’s none of the organisation’s biz-wax, what happens in the Dashboard stays in Dashboard” so we have to firstly protect that, so we’ll need to know more about your intentions and trust them to be genuine and well-intentioned before you have this data. What are you going to be doing with it, how will you use it to compensate not punish or control?”

Simply asking the question should give these organisations food for thought. Are they coming from a place of servant leadership or command and control when they ask for the human work data? Is time spent doing the work the main measurement? (Spoiler- we feel it’s a great initial one indeed) How do they tread carefully not to break the incipient trust and make people revert to their initial resistance? What does this mean for us as people-centric organisation and how do we rethink all the processes and systems that are holding them back??

The good ones will ask all these and find ways to indeed compensate the efforts while normalising and accommodating the work and that alone, will half their HumanDebt taking them from empty rhetorics to regular action.?

So don’t worry, we got you, we’ll take on the “Pay them for it FFS!” massive fight -or, if you were already having one, we’ll join yours and substantiate your needs and claims with the data to show you’re doing the hard work- and hopefully, sooner or later, that will all translate into a closed feedback loop of human work that in turn translates into unprecedented high performance for the organisation but also comes with the respect, appreciation and joy you deserve.??

Let’s go.?

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At?PeopleNotTech ?we make?software ?that measures and improves Psychological Safety in teams, come see a DEMO.

“Nothing other than sustained, habitual, EQed people work at the team level aka “the human work” done BY THE TEAM will improve any organisation’s level of Psychological Safety and therefore drop their levels of HumanDebt?.”

To order the "People Before Tech: The Importance of Psychological Safety and Teamwork in the Digital Age" book go to this Amazon?link