Founder of Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard.
The following post was published in the chapter Engineering Work Building Social Capital from Pennypacker & Perez's book (2022) Engineering the Upswing: A Blueprint for Reframing Our Culture.
Introduction - Building Human Competence
Human capital involves the worker’s skills, talents, education, experience, and knowledge, which needs frequent retooling and upgrading in today’s rapidly changing work environment. Human capital is essential for delivering financial value. It is worthwhile for every workplace to focus on and prioritize how to manage and reward its human capital.
Felknor and colleagues (2020) published a summary of the consensus recommendation from a workshop at the Southwest Center for Occupational and Environmental Health about how the future of work shapes the occupational safety and health (OSH) profession of the future. I (Francisco Perez) participated in the workshop held on February 3-4, 2020, just as the pandemic was taking off. The focus was to evaluate the implications and impact that the future of work will have on the education and training of OSH professionals and the workforce. Even though the focus was on the OSH workforce, the key changes in education and learning recommendations apply to preparing workers in general. To deal with this challenge, three changes in education and learning were proposed:
New Types of Learners: How do we more effectively meet an increasingly diverse workforce's education and learning needs?
New Types of Learning: How do we develop teaching and learning methodology to enhance the needed new skills of the worker?
New Things to Learn: Wilson (2013) noted how we can anticipate changing skill needs, which will play a key role in ensuring that education and training deliver the right skills to future workers.
The World Economic Forum, in its annual meeting in early 2020, warned us of the need for “a global reskilling revolution.” The message is that the world faces “more than 1 billion jobs transformed by technology.” To manage this crisis, they warn us that “The world is facing a reskilling emergency.” Future workers will have to be educated and trained to work in new ways, and present workers will have to learn new ways of working and become re-skilled. If we do not manage this challenge successfully as a nation, the U.S. will likely fall behind with significant economic and social ramifications. The emphasis must be on practical and performance-based skills development and quality education for all.
Unfortunately, this world crisis in skills preparedness is happening while we face a dark period in our educational system. We are failing our students, and as such, we are at risk of failing as a nation. A recent Opinion in the Wall Street Journal (Feb. 7, 2021) by Andy Kessler, Mediocrity is Now Mandatory, briefly reviewed the recent SAT changes and the state of our schools and educational institutions. He argues that education is being “dumbed down” instead of adequately preparing all students to the point that “mediocrity has crept into our self-proclaimed elite colleges.” This is how we are preparing our future workforce. The World Economic Forum, in its brief, emphasized, “This focus on reskilling and future-proofing workforces for the jobs of the future will be instrumental in improving social mobility, a key factor in reducing inequality.” We propose that one of the most effective ways to reduce inequality in the United States is to start focusing on early childhood education, parental and family support, and education that reinforces a life-long learning strategy. Practical and performance-based education for all is the key to starting an evolution towards equality. It will take some time, but it needs to be done. Gilbert (1978, 2007) encouraged us to engage in practices that produce worthy performance. Harless (1998, 2016) has given us a framework to reform educational practices so that individual students can become accomplished citizens.
Building People-Centered Work Environments
We spend about one-third of our lives at work, not including commuting time and overtime. It is estimated that 80% of workers are unhappy with their jobs. Most will have about eight jobs by the age of 30. Why do we have to live this way? Is this your work culture?
The Culture Book: When Culture Clicks is described as a practical guide to building incredible corporate cultures. It is a collection of 32 leaders of diverse organizations and work settings describing the individual culture-building behavior process they applied to build a people-centered culture. Reading it makes you want to work for them. Why? Because the culture reinforces and creates your work team, well-being, and performance. It builds trust in each other, a building block to collaborative We behavior. The Culture Book is a great resource to help us pinpoint, from tested experiences, what behaviors and practices set the occasion for engineering people-based work culture. These are some actions and practices promoted:
Serve the greater good.
Culture thrives in feedback.
Be compassionate, not controlling.
How do you bring new employees up to speed on your culture?
Behavior, not values.
Spotting misalignment.
Hire for learning skills.
Practice radical honesty.
Leaders don’t build a culture - employees do.
How we work depends on why we work.
Measure performance - not emotions.
Quantifying the spectrum.
Well-paid does not mean well-designed.
Yes, you still need metrics.
Learn from your mistakes.
Anything worthwhile takes time to build.
Bringing people together by giving back.
Thrive on change.
Put your people first.
Find strength in empathy.
Aim to build a human culture.
Accountability is key - reward culture-based behavior.
A good culture is good business.
The Culture Book offers many other suggestions and practical guidance. As Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield noted in his review of the book, “Companies today can benefit from a defined mission that goes beyond simple economics. This book addresses leveraging culture to build something impactful, authentic, and sustainable.”
Innovative Practices for Building a People-Centered Work Environment
Creating a culture centered on human well-being fosters a work environment that supports health. This involves reinforcing worker engagement and assisting them in cultivating habits that promote work-life balance. Ours has been an “always-on work culture.” When we do not have a work-life balance, everyone suffers the consequences, and the worker often becomes burned out. Most workers take work home with them. Family conflict arises. What we do with our time between work and “everything else” is often difficult to separate. We now also have a work-family balance problem. Statistics show that people who work too much have a higher incidence of divorce. The concept of work-life balance is widespread, but the meaning of what it is and what actions to take are not well defined.
Some of the characteristics of someone who has an excellent work-life balance reflect:
Absence of work-family conflict.
High engagement across multiple roles.
Achieving high effectiveness and satisfaction across numerous roles.
The fact is that a life-work balance is necessary for an engaged and meaningful life. Work-life balance issues differ by occupation, work position, and social class. Many workers face everyday life challenges as single parents, low wage earnings, and expensive and inadequate childcare services, among many other challenges. Exhaustion, frustration, disengagement, and disruptive family life are consequences. Work and family suffer. The worker is at risk of developing chronic physical and emotional problems. Many become unemployed because of the stress associated with day-to-day life maintenance. As Pfeffer (2018) noted, the national and work culture that contributes to not having a life-work balance needs to change. Inequality is also seen in the opportunities afforded to have a life-work balance. Addressing the problem of life-work balance also needs to focus on building strategies to reduce disparities.
At this time, we do not have clear solutions to the public health crisis of workers being unable to achieve work-life balance. Some suggestions have been made to address three contributing factors:
Government and Business Culture - Many industries do not usually support workplace family-friendly policies like universal childcare benefits and subsidies, but many small and large industries are more human-based and generous in their benefits. It is a fact that providing child care results in fewer work disruptions and is bound to allow low-income families to have a better life. In the U.S., government support is not at the level of other developed countries.
Workplace Culture and Policies - Surveys have demonstrated that an employer that provides childcare options for working parents has greater workplace satisfaction. The employees are less likely to quit their jobs and or be absent. Workplace supports such as personal time off, paid leave, on-site or nearby childcare, financial assistance for childcare, and other family-friendly policies are Western European workplace norms that could solve some of the work-family balance problems in the United States.
Ultimately, individuals must learn how to achieve a healthy work-life balance that reinforces well-being and job satisfaction.
Creating a Human-Based Work Culture - Provide Family-Affirming Policies
Our economic culture relies mainly on both parents working, usually outside the home. Finding reliable child care to accommodate the demands of the work schedule is a challenge and can be quite stressful and disruptive to finding a life-work balance. This is even more difficult for a single parent. Some companies have realized that the key to happy and engaged workers is helping them to find work-life balance. Providing childcare benefits is the most effective way to accomplish this with workers with young children. The fact is that providing workers with safe, reliable workday learning experiences for their children has many benefits and superior results. It is positively reinforcing.
Small Business Trends (January 19, 2020) reported that 6% of small companies offer childcare benefits to employees. Providing childcare benefits will benefit both parents, but it will likely allow women to advance at work to their full potential and achieve equality with less stress. Providing childcare benefits for small businesses is challenging, but we must find solutions like subsidies and flexible and predictable work schedules. Providing childcare benefits has significant implications in hiring and retaining performing workers and enhancing their well-being.
Many larger companies engage dedicated organization providers, such as Bright Horizons Child Development Centers, to provide enriched educational programs to their employee’s children that go beyond primary child care. Bright Horizons is a global provider of child development services, including child care and education for infants through pre-kindergarten. They also offer school-age programs. They strongly emphasize applying a developmental approach to each child, and they provide teachers trained in early childhood education. They offer on-site and nearby off-site programs with a curriculum that builds the foundation for language development, social skills, science, and math. The goal is to facilitate a child’s readiness for school and academic success.
How a company implements programs such as Bright Horizons varies. Many offer subsidies for their workers. Bright Horizons has been named for the last 20 years as one of the Fortune “100 Best Companies to Work For.” Their vision statement states, “At Bright Horizons, our goal has been and will always be to create a culture and workplace where every employee is welcomed, respected, celebrated, and feels a sense of belonging.” That is why they have been around since 1986 and are still growing. Then, in 1986, they “saw that child care was an enormous obstacle for working parents.” They have gone beyond “child care” and offer other services, but the program is now focused on providing a challenging and enriched environment conducive to healthy child development. The child’s brain is also being enriched. These programs greatly contribute to life-work balance and work satisfaction.
Onsite Child Care as a Bedrock Benefit - The Patagonia Experience
Patagonia is an outdoor clothing and equipment company headquartered in Ventura, California. It has offered child care at its headquarters and distribution center since 1983. Malinda Chouinard and Jennifer Ridgeway (2016) have published Family Business: Innovative On-Site Child Care Since 1983, describing Patagonia’s child care work culture. More details about Patagonia’s “secret to employee engagement” can be found here and here.
Early Childhood Education - Evolving our Future Workers
Facilitating and providing child educational and developmental programs opportunities universally to parents not only enhances their well-being and that of the family by enhancing work-life balance but also provides the opportunity for the nation, united, to implement science-based practices to enhance our future and intentionally evolve our culture. As documented in Chapter 4 of our book, Engineering the Upswing, The Neuroscience of Behavior/Building Cognitive Foundation, during early childhood, when the brain is highly flexible and exhibits cortical plasticity, the foundation for learning is being established through environmental experiences. This process involves the wiring of neural connectivity, which is heavily influenced by interactions with the environment. Early-life environments can influence healthy/unhealthy brain growth and behavior. We have windows of opportunity to lay the biological foundation for lifelong learning. Environmental enrichment early in life significantly improves physical and cognitive performance in the future. An enriched childcare learning environment can teach conforming to the rules and norms of socially accepted behavior, known as prosocial behavior.
The concept of universal child care needs to evolve and focus on child development. Applying proven educational and developmental practices, as discussed in the Education chapter, provides samples of applicable educational technologies. Conceptualizing child care as an early childhood developmental and educational center program offers the opportunity to give every child a chance. Teaching children early social and learning skills will, in the future, create a healthier collaborative national and work culture. It can potentially reduce inequality significantly by creating equal learning opportunities for every child. It also creates an innovative and well-trained future workforce.
Food for Thought
Binder (2017) reminded us that Gilbert (1978, 2007), in his book, pointed out “that the value delivered by human performance is in the accomplishments it produces and that the behavior needed for producing those accomplishments is costly, not valuable for its own sake.” Gilbert used the term “worthy performance” for costly work, but the product was worthy to perform. You find a lot of this in Olympic athletes. Accomplishment-based performance improvement is the objective of performing the work. Harless (1998, 2016) has demonstrated the effectiveness of creating an environment that focuses on accomplishment-based performance in the schools. The workplace can start building our future by offering early childhood education and developmental opportunities to the children of their employees, enhancing life-work balance, reinforcing workers for worthy performance accomplishment, and teaching and reinforcing safe behavior. Acting on these practices is more profitable, reinforces well-being, and ensures an accomplished and performance-based future workforce. It usually leads to increased profits that can be shared. A human-based work culture can help us evolve into a united nation.
Thanks for reading.
Frank and Faris