People Science

Reflecting back on my week, I feel that there are two kinds of good cooks…

While one is proficient at following the recipe along with consistency, control, and diligence. The other comprehends how the recipe works and understands patterns and opportunities to change the recipe to fit the problem to be solved.

Both are crucial for success.

If you think this is a post about cooking, you might be the first kind off the cook!

Lately, with so much buzz around the quiet quitting on social media, it is evident that employee engagement can’t take a back seat in any organization. After so much being said and done around this topic referring to the recent article by Microsoft WorkLab, “Hybrid Work is Just Work. Are We Doing it Wrong? stressing about productivity paranoia or embracing the fact that people come in for each other. The article got me thinking about how to go beyond traditional ways of performance management, learning & development, and employee engagement.

I like to believe I’ve been interested in “People Science” since I was young. Of course, that term wasn’t part of my childhood lexicon, however, I grew up in a household fascinated by why people do what they do. My parents valued compassion, empathy, and curiosity the most. My mom is a mathematics teacher for 23+ years in Air Force School and our family conversation usually centered on the questions about how to drive interest in the subject, and how to drive engagement, and pursuit itself.

And in a nutshell, that’s what People Science actually is: the study of what makes people successful and happy at work. It touches on aspects like how to create environments and habits that elevate success and happiness.

People Science is an agile and people-centric approach to comprehending as well as the practice of creating a healthy environment in the workplace. It blends fields of studies like organizational development and occupational psychology with data analytics, product management, and user design. From a practical standpoint, People Science bridges traditionally siloed programs of performance management, employee engagement as well as learning & development into what I like to call unified People Projects. This can offer a holistic approach to better enable the people in order to bring their best selves to work so that they can give their 100%. Understanding People Science can transform how people and businesses succeed by developing new mindsets and habits.

If I could pick an aspect to summarize one of the bigger learnings from my profession, it would success of people. How do you make others look good while taking a back seat for their success. I am trying to nudge on the aspect of enabling people to bring their best selves to work- such that they are driven to go beyond their job description. That kind of atmosphere looks very different from one organization to another.

With changing shape and form of the workplace, we need to go beyond the traditional ways of performance appraisals, learning, and engagements. In today’s competitive environment, business values agility which entails the ability to adapt promptly to change. One crucial habit which keeps the organization agile focuses on the conversations. Hence, it is more about urging genuine conversations and connections at work. When organizations orient themselves around the success of their people, the outcome is an engaged workforce prepared to meet the dynamic challenges of today’s world. By holistically looking at employee engagement, performance, and learning, businesses can create a unified experience for employees. In this way, people feel supported and able to deliver their best for overall success. Higher employee engagement can be correlated with higher average revenue growth, customer satisfaction, enhancement of profit margin, and earnings per share.

It’s pretty magical when you do something that benefits both your people and your organization!

Cheers,

BibliophileParul

References

The Next Great Disruption Is Hybrid Work—Are We Ready?. (2022). Retrieved 24 September 2022, from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/hybrid-work

Stein, D., Hobson, N., Jachimowicz, J. & Whillans, A.(2021). How Companies Can Improve Employee Engagement Right Now. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2021/10/how-companies-can-improve-employee-engagement-right-now

Amah, O. E., & Sese, E. (2020). Relational Energy & Employee Engagement: Role of Employee Voice & Organisational Support. Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, 53(3), 475–487. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26536472