The Human-Centered Approach to Management
Throughout my HR journey across various industries and roles, I’ve seen firsthand how seasoned business leaders and HR professionals emphasize the importance of aligning HR strategies with overall business goals. Personal experiences, including some missteps and failures along the way, have led me to wholeheartedly support this valuable advice.
As HR professionals, we play a crucial role in this alignment, requiring a deep understanding of both the business landscape and the unique challenges employees face. Equipped with this insight, we are uniquely positioned to create a work environment that empowers employees to reach their full potential while helping ensure the organization achieves its objectives. However, achieving this balance is often challenging. Many HR professionals can attest to the difficulty of reconciling genuine concern for employees with the stringent and sometimes impersonal demands of business success. As we navigate this tension, we frequently face the challenge of prioritizing between business and employee needs. Unfortunately, many of us know that business needs often take precedence.
Why does this happen when HR professionals and business leaders agree that successfully balancing HR strategies and business objectives is a critical ingredient for success? I believe that this is because the primary focus of most organizations is on financial performance and growth.
Business leaders are accountable to stakeholders, investors, and the market, and this accountability places immense pressure on them to deliver results. Since it is implicitly understood that HR strategies must align with these overarching business goals, the latter naturally takes precedence. The immediacy of business outcomes overshadow the long-term benefits of robust HR strategies, which can be complex, hard to quantify, and time-consuming. While the value of aligning HR with business objectives is recognized at the highest levels of the organization, the pressing demands of meeting financial targets and addressing market challenges often dominate organizational priorities sadly rendering the quest for alignment as lip service and mere employee townhall pronouncements.
Lately, however, there’s been exciting conversations about a new way to approach business management. The Human-Centered Approach which focuses on recognizing and valuing employees as individuals, with their own unique needs, goals, and contributions. This perspective creates a work environment where people feel respected, empowered, and genuinely engaged in what they do. By emphasizing emotional intelligence and empathy, it encourages strong relationships and a better understanding of what motivates employees.
Instead of simply aligning HR strategies with broader business goals, the Human-Centered approach stands out as a vital strategy in its own right—one that is just as important, if not more important, than other business objectives. At first glance, it might seem like a rehash of an old idea. However, a closer look reveals that it is fundamentally different; in that it puts people at the center of the organization, guiding management decisions, policies, practices, and resource allocation. In this model, employees aren’t seen as assets to be used, managed and controlled, instead employees are at the heart of everything the organization aims to achieve.
Perhaps it is easy to imagine how this approach can be used for the softer, more HR related concerns of management, such as hiring, performance management, talent development or even culture building. But how can it be applied to more tangible areas of the business like profitability, productivity, customer satisfaction and growth. In the face of the more urgent and pressing requirements along these lines, is it really possible for organizations to be genuinely Human-Centered?
I believe it is . . .
In traditional management, profit is often prioritized, especially during low growth cycles through cost- cutting measures, such as hiring freezes, layoffs or reduction in salary and benefits, common initiatives that can lead to lower employee morale and higher turnover rates. In contrast, a Human-Centered approach invests in employee satisfaction and well-being specially in the face of business difficulties. This strategy though counter intuitive, results in reduced turnover, resulting in not just more engaged employees but more importantly in operational stability as well as retention of institutional knowledge and skills - critical success factors often overlooked as sources of sustainable competitive advantage.
Traditional approaches to productivity rely on strict performance metrics and quotas, placing pressure on employees to meet targets often overlooking overall employee well-being. Putting emphasis on variable incentives and rewards often with the misguided belief that these will motivate employees to work beyond or around stress and pressure to perform better and become more productive or efficient. The Human-Centered approach, on the other hand, encourages employees to provide feedback on work processes, empowering them to make decisions and work towards continuous improvement, believing all the while that those who actually perform the work are experts in doing it better and easier. Moreover, by promoting flexible work schedules and a healthy work-life balance, instead of encouraging competition and increasing stress, organizations can enhance employee engagement, which often translates into higher productivity and efficiency levels.
Customer satisfaction is another crucial measure affected by management approaches. In traditional frameworks, customer satisfaction is typically measured through surveys and metrics, often overlooking the necessary connection with employee experience. The Human-Centered approach highlights that when employee experience is positive, characterized by the feeling of being valued and trusted, recognized and appreciated, they are more committed to delivering excellent service.
Improving sales performance and revenue growth is another area of management where the Human-Centered approach may seem out of place. In a traditional management context driving sales and revenue performance may rely heavily on financial incentives, strict execution of sales routines, with emphasis on individual performance sometimes fostering unhealthy competition and burnout among sales staff. In contrast, a Human-Centered approach encourages recognition and celebration of team accomplishments, along with providing training and fostering a supportive team environment. This collaborative atmosphere leads to improved sales performance, as employees work together more effectively, driving revenue growth.
Finally, while traditional management may treat innovation as a separate endeavor from daily operations—rigidly structuring processes that stifle creativity, the Human-Centered approach encourages a culture of experimentation where failure is seen a learning opportunity rather than a set-back. In this environment, employees feel safe to take risks and propose new ideas, leading to measurable increases in innovation metrics, directly supporting the organization’s growth.
These examples, while not exhaustive, underscore the challenges of implementing a Human-Centered approach. However, when organizations embrace this philosophy, they send a powerful message to their workforce: that employee well-being is central to how the organization operates. Because people naturally tend to reciprocate positive treatment, this alignment between employee experience and company objectives fosters a sustainable and positive cycle of success.