Recognition, Performance Reviews and the Human Work

We’re a distributed fully remote international business at PeopleNotTech but even so, many of us are in the United Kingdom so yesterday we decided to let people choose if they wanted to avail themselves of the bank holiday and honour their Queen’s memory by reminiscing or watching the majestic televised display of affection or not, and unsurprisingly, most of us did indeed take the day off to reflect hence the lack of newsletter.

There isn’t anything I could say here about the loss or the significance that you haven’t read already, but I would be remiss to not admit that personally, to me, there is no one to have contributed to feminism more than our late Queen, there is no better example of extreme work ethics (with the final mark of it being how she was working on Tuesday and passed away on Thursday) and there’s no clearer manifestation of true servant leadership borne of a sense of purpose and mission greater than we can imagine. May we always be inspired by what she stood for.

Our work lives, our needs, our squabbles, they all seem minor in comparison and in the grand scheme of things perhaps they are, but in the day-to-day reality of our businesses, they are not so. As mere mortals, we’ll never measure up and surely no organisation expects us to. That said, over the past few days, her vivid memory came with some voices saying we ought to be more hardy and resilient as she was in lieu of the perceived “snow flakery” they claim to be observing and that is dangerous rhetorics.

Irrespective of whether we are ready to admit it or not, we are traversing a period where the workplace is transforming entirely and the cornerstone of this transformation is a return to our human nature complete with the recognition that we have emotions that heavily influence our work behaviours. As such, the nature of our work is changing, what we are called to do is no longer the same as it was before this shift and no organisation will be able to move forward if it hasn’t been intensely mindful of its culture and the people work that needs to take place.

Mental health, and individual and group well-being, have not become top of mind out of a sense of morality, or because we owe our people more care and respect, but because they now directly impact the bottom line. In this day and age, where collaboration, flexibility and human interaction are unavoidable, there can be no performance if we disregard our people’s ability to engage effectively. In other words, none of this is about ultra-sensitivity, ensuring one’s employees are in a strong and stable emotional groove and are engaging in healthy, safe and fair team dynamics is simply good economics as there can be no performance in their absence.