1장
The Human Revolution: Transforming Workplaces for a New Era
In a world where technology is rapidly reshaping every aspect of business, Eric Mosley and Derek Irvine argue that the most valuable assets in any organization remain fundamentally human. Their book "Making Work Human" has become a rallying cry for leaders seeking to build organizations that thrive through human connection rather than despite it. The book has garnered praise from luminaries like Shawn Achor and Adam Grant, who see it as essential reading for the modern workplace. As companies like LinkedIn, Cisco, and Microsoft implement its principles, the book has sparked a movement that's transforming how organizations approach everything from performance management to diversity and inclusion. At its core lies a revolutionary idea: workplaces that prioritize gratitude, meaningful connection, and human dignity don't just feel better-they demonstrably outperform those that don't.
2장
The Human Enterprise: Where Purpose Meets Performance
The workplace might be our last, best hope for realizing our full humanity. As technology, globalization, and disruption reshape business landscapes, organizations are returning to fundamental questions about how people work together and what makes work meaningful. The human enterprise represents a new value proposition between employer and employee-one that inspires people to give their best rather than trying to extract it from them.
Consider the powerful "Human Moment" from Baystate Health where a physician recognized a groundskeeper, connecting two worlds that rarely intersect and profoundly impacting both individuals. While polarization affects our political and social lives, businesses increasingly represent diverse people uniting around shared values and missions.
Today's business environment faces unprecedented challenges requiring human-centered approaches. Disruption has invaded every industry, forcing organizations to become more innovative and agile. The accelerating pace of change requires quick adaptation, while hypercompetition in global markets creates worldwide dislocations. As information becomes a commodity, value comes from asking the right questions rather than merely acquiring data.
The more technology replaces human capabilities, the more valuable uniquely human traits become. In our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment, those who don't adapt quickly face extinction. While efficiency-focused models have led to outsourcing and contingent workforces, companies like Costco and Trader Joe's have thrived by designing jobs emphasizing human social interaction and creative problem-solving.
AI, robotics, and big data create both anxiety and opportunity-they're tools that enhance logical processes but aren't replicas of human minds. They free humans for higher tasks, which is why the future of work remains fundamentally human.
3장
The Future of Work Is Human: Connection in a Digital Age
The intersection of technology and humanity is reshaping work in profound ways. The most valuable and fastest-growing jobs combine technical expertise with relational "soft skills"-the ability to communicate, establish trust, and connect with others. As Tom Friedman notes, successful companies create "STEMpathy jobs" that blend science and technology with human empathy.
The workplace has become a driving force for social progress as businesses adapt faster than other institutions. Even in traditional cultures, the need for talented employees is breaking down old barriers. As global disruption creates social disconnection and political polarization, companies are increasingly stepping into roles once filled by government or religious institutions.
Despite being surrounded by people, many feel disconnected, with loneliness becoming an epidemic as devastating as smoking and twice as deadly as obesity. At work, this isolation reduces performance, limits creativity, and impairs decision-making. However, workplaces can nurture community, connectedness and purpose when they build cultures of support, inclusion and trustworthiness.
Modern companies don't need conformity-they recognize each employee's unique story and integrate it into the culture. Organizations attuned to individual experiences create deeper relationships with employees, moving beyond "you work, we pay" to environments where employees eagerly contribute their best.
Amazon exemplifies the modern approach to continuous improvement by investing $700 million to retrain a third of its workers by 2025. Rather than replacing humans with robots, Amazon aims to transform warehouse workers into skilled high-tech employees. This approach builds on the concept of kaizen-continuous, incremental progress by everyone-but applies it to human development rather than just processes and products.
Compensation is evolving from subjective decisions to data-driven precision through social recognition technologies. The future of pay will be more personalized and variable, with fairness ensured through transparent criteria and AI algorithms that eliminate hidden biases. When companies dedicate at least 1% of payroll to peer-awarded recognition, pay becomes more democratic and fairly distributed.
HR must evolve from data collection to human connection, using technology to strengthen ties between employees and customers. By empowering employees through recognition and embracing diversity of thought, HR can create workplaces where people bring their whole selves to work, driving companies to new heights.
4장
The Employee Experience: Building Cultures That Matter
A positive employee experience is crucial for attracting and retaining top talent, with 70% of US professionals refusing to work at companies with poor workplace culture. Organizations ranking in the top quarter for employee experience see triple the returns on assets compared to bottom-quarter companies.
The psychological barriers between work and life are disappearing as mobile devices blur physical boundaries, making it impossible to separate what happens outside work from what happens inside. Traditional organizational models built for efficiency through strict hierarchy and top-down decision making are poorly suited for today's world.
Steve Pemberton's life was transformed by a single human moment when a neighbor noticed him reading and gave him books, starting his journey from a neglected foster child to becoming Workhuman's chief human resources officer. This illustrates how one person can make a profound difference in another's life through a simple connection.
As business culture shifted from command-and-control to innovate-and-learn models, organizations have fundamentally changed in four key ways. First, strict hierarchies have been replaced by networks of teams that form, solve problems, and disband. Second, today's hybrid organizations include diverse work arrangements-full-time, part-time, remote, and gig workers-often spanning three generations with different needs.
Third, continuous learning has become essential in responding to disruption, with employees integrating learning into their daily workflow. Finally, organizations must address burnout from accelerating change by building cultures of positivity and trust. Companies like Costco, Wegmans, and Trader Joe's demonstrate how cultures of respect and caring create sustainable advantage even in low-margin industries.
Renee Kaspar, Chief People Officer at Octane Lending, shares a revealing anecdote about gender double standards in the workplace. As the only woman in a tech startup board meeting, she observed nine men with beards constantly touching and grooming their facial hair throughout the meeting. She realized that if a woman exhibited similar behavior with her hair, she would immediately be judged as unprofessional-highlighting the subtle but persistent double standards that women face in professional settings.
5장
What Employees Truly Want: Beyond the Paycheck
This chapter explores what employees truly want in the workplace beyond compensation. It examines how people bound by trust and goodwill accomplish more together than alone, highlighting the disconnect between managers and employees-58% of employees never hear thanks from their boss, while 37% of leaders avoid giving positive feedback.
Shawn Achor's observation about LinkedIn's Bravo! recognition program showed that employees receiving multiple awards demonstrated improved performance ratings year-over-year. The data revealed that recognition recipients often become recognition providers themselves, creating a positive cycle of engagement.
Daniel Pink emphasizes that since people spend over half their waking hours at work, we must consider work's role beyond providing a paycheck. He challenges organizations to create conditions where humans flourish-becoming happy, satisfied contributors and the best versions of themselves.
In today's job market with more openings than skilled workers, money alone won't retain talent. A superior employee experience-with recognition, appreciation, learning opportunities, and investment in people's growth-often outweighs modest salary increases when employees decide whether to stay or leave.
Business has evolved from the industrial era (focused on physical productivity) through the knowledge era (mental productivity) to today's cognitive era, where imagination, insight, collaboration and communication are premium skills. In this new era, technology extends our cognitive processes, and empathy becomes crucial for management.
Research by IBM Smarter Workforce Institute and Workhuman developed the Employee Experience Index by analyzing 30 million moments of gratitude among 5 million employees. They identified six human workplace practices that improve employee experience: organizational trust, coworker relationships, meaningful work, recognition/feedback/growth, empowerment/voice, and work-life balance.
Organizations scoring in the top quartile on employee experience report nearly triple the return on assets and double the return on sales compared to bottom-quartile organizations. Employees with positive experiences are more likely to report higher discretionary effort (95% vs 55%), are 52% less likely to leave, and report higher performance levels.
Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer suggests that activities bringing people together in meaningful contexts help build common identity and strengthen social bonds. His top recommendation for workplace well-being is simply encouraging people to care for one another. Simon Sinek describes this as a "trusting, vulnerable team" where people can admit mistakes, ask for help, or share personal struggles without fear of humiliation or retribution.
Leaders in the human decade must balance analytical skill with human values, serving as mentors, coaches and conveners rather than command-and-control figures. Today's effective leaders are both data-driven and story-driven, setting goals while empowering employees to achieve their highest potential.
6장
Purpose, Meaning, and Gratitude: The Heart of Human Work
This chapter introduces three interconnected concepts that form the heart of employee experience: purpose belongs to all, meaning is unique to individuals, and gratitude builds lasting connections between people.
Purpose is an organization's fundamental role in society-its irreducible reason for being. When employees align with an authentic stated purpose, it becomes a powerful expression of company values. While effective mission statements like JetBlue's "To inspire humanity" capture a brand's essence, many fail by becoming lengthy platitudes disconnected from employees' experience.
Only 39% of employees clearly see how their job connects to organizational purpose, creating costly inefficiency. Without shared purpose, work relationships become merely transactional. In contrast, purpose-driven organizations help employees see their daily efforts building something larger than themselves.
Meaning differs from purpose-purpose is shared while meaning is personal. Employees in the same organization can share purpose but derive different personal meaning from their roles. Workhuman's Employee Experience Index found meaningful work is the largest contributor (27%) to positive employee experience, followed by empowerment and voice (17%), recognition and growth (16%), coworker relationships (16%), organizational trust (15%), and work-life balance (9%).
When asked what makes them stay at their company, 32% of respondents cited meaningful work as their top reason. Among employees recognized in the previous six months, 93% agreed their work had meaning and purpose. The desire for meaningful work is particularly strong among millennial and Gen Z employees, who seek employers with authentic values.
Great leaders instinctively know that more gratitude in a company correlates with better performance. Through social recognition, over 5 million humans worldwide experience rewards from aligning gratitude to shared purpose. Gratitude magnifies positive attributes like belonging and loyalty, serving as an antidote to our brain's natural tendency to look for danger.
Both giving and receiving gratitude transform people-receivers feel appreciated and improve performance, while givers become more authentic and vulnerable, creating bonds that satisfy deep needs for attachment. Research shows grateful employees perform better with creative tasks, bring more effort, and are less prone to burnout.
When employees receive recognition, they experience improved performance, morale, energy and engagement. Science confirms these benefits-grateful employees excel at creating ideas and managing relationships, volunteer more readily for additional tasks, and show greater resilience following difficult events.
The act of giving thanks can be even more profound than receiving it. When giving recognition, you expose yourself, becoming vulnerable and authentic. As Brene Brown notes, gratitude connects to bravery and vulnerability-"the people who can fully lean into joy despite their vulnerability have just one thing in common: gratitude."
The optimal amount of gratitude-based recognition is simply "more"-there's no limit to authentic recognition's positive impact. Most people feel they deserve recognition two to three times quarterly, but organizations see maximum benefits when recognition occurs at least monthly. Investing at least 1% of payroll for peer recognition creates sustainable positive effects.
7장
Human Moments That Matter: The Power of Data and Connection
This chapter introduces the concept of "human moments"-meaningful interactions that have significant impact on people's work and personal lives. Christina Hall, CHRO at LinkedIn, shares how a recognition award for her work on an acquisition allowed her to take her children to Disneyland, creating a positive connection between her work achievements and family life.
While common sense might suggest certain workplace practices are effective, Adam Grant explains that research often challenges intuition, reveals underestimated impact, and allows knowledge to be accumulated across multiple companies and industries. In today's data-obsessed business environment, HR is evolving beyond soft skills to embrace data-driven decision making.
The chapter contrasts administrative applications (which make old routines efficient but can become tools of bureaucracy) with human applications that enable innovation and collaboration while respecting individual dignity. Data transparency can eliminate bureaucratic control, as illustrated by Gary Hamel's thought experiment about business travel expenses being publicly posted instead of tightly regulated.
Every day, billions of devices generate an incomprehensible flood of data. Without intelligent analysis, this data is overwhelming-like a raging flood. Data scientists work to gather relevant information and analyze it using AI, machine learning, and natural language processing.
While administrative applications focus on process, human applications focus on people and facilitate meaningful human moments. These applications build relationships, increase alignment around shared values and goals, and instill feelings of inclusion and belonging. They connect people through feedback, recognition, and celebration in ways that feel natural because they're built on informal, moment-by-moment communication.
Human applications design workplace connections that create high-impact moments rather than leaving them to chance. As Jason Lauritsen explains, just as customer experience design focuses on moments with disproportionate impact, workplaces can intentionally design positive connections between people.
Cloud computing has revolutionized how data and narrative work together, enabling vast networked data centers to process big data rather than relying on individual devices. This creates deep stores of data points and analytics that measure urgent enterprise questions, making hidden patterns clear and providing insights that cut through wishful thinking.
8장
Recognition: The Foundation of Human-Centered Work
Social recognition forms the foundation of human applications by enabling people to recognize and reward each other's efforts through positive feedback. It reinforces shared purpose and gives individual meaning through gratitude, improving performance, deepening relationships, driving engagement, connecting dispersed teams, inspiring better work, and building trust.
When recognition is "social," it means using technology to amplify exemplary performance throughout the company, making company values visible in action. Recognition moments create a permanent record of effort and thanks, with Workhuman having captured 30 million such moments across 5 million employees in 160 countries.
The ideal recognition scenario involves people at every level noticing good work with a steady cadence of recognition that includes personal written records connecting behaviors to company values. Recognition should always include tangible awards of real value proportionate to what's being recognized.
Recognition delivers concrete business results, with HR practitioners reporting that recognition programs help with organizational culture (85%), employee engagement (84%), employee experience (89%), employee relationships (86%), and organizational values (83%). By breaking feedback into small, real-time moments, recognition becomes part of daily routine.
Organizations with highly engaged employees outperform those with disengaged workers across multiple metrics: 22% greater profitability, 21% greater productivity, 65% lower turnover, 10% better customer ratings, 48% fewer safety incidents, and 28% less theft.
While executives can initiate cultural change, communities are ultimately built from the ground up through thousands of small interactions. Peer-to-peer interaction proves most impactful because peers are significantly more trusted than executives. As Shawn Achor notes, "Positive inception works best when it comes from someone other than the team leader."
Turnover cost employers $600 billion in 2018, with estimates rising to $680 billion by 2020. Remarkably, the Work Institute concluded that 77% of employees who quit could have been retained. At Eaton Corporation, employees recognized four times yearly left at half the rate of those without recognition. At JetBlue, every 10% increase in recognition yielded a 3% increase in retention and 2% increase in engagement.
Recognition data creates powerful visualizations of organizational connections, revealing insights invisible to traditional management. Super-connected employees are hidden influencers who quietly reinforce company values while building extensive networks. Natural language processing adds depth to this analysis, revealing temperamental qualities that succeed in specific positions.
9장
Transforming Performance Management for the Human Era
Performance management is evolving from rigid annual reviews to continuous conversation and feedback. Traditional systems that consumed massive resources (like Deloitte's 2 million hours annually) are being overhauled by major companies including Accenture, Cigna, Adobe, and GE. The business environment now moves too quickly for the ponderous pace of annual targets.
Annual ranking systems dehumanize employees by reducing a year's work to a single digit. Most employees approach traditional reviews with anxiety, feeling judged rather than developed. The greatest flaw in annual appraisals is their structural focus on past performance, driven by bureaucratic needs to distribute rewards.
The key improvement is flipping this ratio-making discussions 20% about past performance and 80% about future development. About 70% of multinational companies are moving toward this future-focused model despite bureaucratic resistance.
According to Dr. David Rock, the current state of feedback is broken, often doing nothing or making things worse. Contrary to misconceptions, humans actually crave feedback-it's how we learn from birth. Research shows positive attention is 30 times more powerful than negative attention in creating high performance.
The agile organizational model demands more frequent performance assessments than annual reviews. When work becomes project-based with flexible teams and different leaders, continuous feedback makes more sense. Fast and frequent feedback addresses recent performance while it's fresh, can come from managers or peers, and can shift emphasis based on project needs.
The human enterprise embraces learning for competitive advantage and greater job satisfaction. While traditional corporate structures restricted information flow and prepared only select individuals for advancement, today's organizations recognize that learning benefits everyone.
Managers now function more as coaches than commanders. Gallup research emphasizes the importance of continuous feedback between managers and employees, showing that both quantity and quality of conversations need improvement. Employees who strongly agree they've had conversations with their manager about goals and successes in the last six months are 2.8 times more likely to be engaged.
High-performing teams function more as networks than hierarchies, with shared authority and goals. Team members understand each other's strengths and collaborate effectively across boundaries. In agile environments like IBM's, daily team check-ins allow members to identify issues and suggest solutions, with feedback captured transparently in summary apps.
10장
The Future of Diversity and Inclusion: Moving Beyond Bias
Diversity and inclusion has evolved from a moral imperative to a business necessity, with CEOs and younger generations prioritizing it. Renee Kaspar, Chief People Officer at Octane Lending, shares her awakening moment when she noticed a conference room full of diverse children during a "Bring Your Children to Work Day"-yet realized they were children of employees, not executives.
Upon investigation, she discovered diversity "fell off a cliff" at the director level, with men receiving 40% more "exceeds expectations" rankings than women. The performance evaluation language was unconsciously diminishing people, prompting her to take action.
The evolution of diversity and inclusion has occurred in three phases. Phase 1 focused on recruiting diverse talent, but faced the "pipeline problem" where people tend to hire those who look like them. Phase 2 addressed inclusion and belonging-recognizing that recruiting diverse talent is futile if people don't stay.
Phase 3, just beginning, targets unconscious bias through awareness (bringing unconscious beliefs to consciousness), acceptance (acknowledging these beliefs have consequences), and action (rewiring the brain). Like orchestra judges who unconsciously favored male musicians by the sound of their footsteps, everyone has biases that require conscious effort to overcome.
Dr. Rachel Arnett's research with Workhuman revealed that meaningful cultural expression actually increases inclusive behaviors. In their study, participants who learned about meaningful aspects of their partner's cultural identity felt closer to them compared to those who engaged in small talk. These participants exhibited greater inclusive behaviors-they were more likely to ask for their partner's professional input, refer them for opportunities, and socialize with them.
The business benefits of diversity and inclusion are extensively documented. According to McKinsey, gender-diverse companies are 15% more likely to outperform peers, while ethnically diverse firms outperform by up to 35%. Every 10% increase in racial and ethnic diversity on senior executive teams correlates with a 0.8% rise in earnings.
Workhuman's data analysis reveals startling patterns of unconscious bias in workplace interactions. Women have significantly larger, more gender-balanced networks at work than men, whose networks tend to be smaller and male-skewed. While women receive more recognition awards, they receive 12% less monetary value in these awards than men-even though their networks include more women.
Recognition platforms can create teachable moments by using natural language processing to identify hidden bias in real time. When someone writes an award with subtly dismissive language toward a colleague, the system can flag it privately, allowing them to reconsider their wording without shame. These private, personalized interventions create low-stress teachable moments that help even enlightened people improve.
11장
Leading with Humanity: Courage to Transform Organizations
The most common question leaders ask after being inspired to create more human organizations is "What do I do now?" The answer begins with finding the courage to lead change, followed by hard work.
During humanitarian work in Ethiopia, Kat Cole, COO and president of FOCUS Brands, experienced a leadership epiphany. When asking village leaders about their priorities, they repeatedly answered "water" for their top four priorities. This clarity inspired her to ask her teams, "What is our water? What is the one thing to do right now so that everything else would get better on its own?"
Nataly Kogan, founder of Happier @ Work, describes gratitude as "the magic pill" for dealing with workplace stress. The moment you think of something you're grateful for, your brain releases dopamine and creates new neurons. Gratitude counteracts the brain's natural negativity bias and serves as a powerful source of resilience.
Happiness researcher Shawn Achor argues that meaning and happiness cannot be separated-sustainable happiness must be meaningful, and meaningful pursuits require positive fuel. He describes working with Orlando Health, where staff meetings began with each person sharing something they were grateful for. When the Pulse nightclub shooting occurred nearby two years later, these teams demonstrated remarkable resilience because their gratitude practice had deepened their social bonds.
Simon Sinek challenges HR's purpose, contrasting finite games (focused on accumulating power and money) with the infinite game-making impact in others' lives. HR should exemplify this infinite mindset by creating environments where people work at their natural best and feel they can be themselves.
Susan Cain challenges conventional leadership stereotypes by highlighting Jim Collins's research that exceptional companies are often led by quiet, unassuming people. Introverts tend to develop deep passion for one or two things, building expertise and trust through genuine care rather than seeking leadership positions.
Harvard professor Amy Cuddy explains that when we're authentically present, we demonstrate trustworthiness through vulnerability, creating safe spaces for others to connect. While social power isn't always available, personal power-accessing our core values and best selves-is always accessible.
Wharton professor Adam Grant's research reveals that women's ideas, though rated more creative and useful when evaluated blindly, are often ignored or judged as too aggressive in meetings, while identical ideas from men are celebrated. Grant urges those with privilege to amplify underrepresented voices.
Business thinker Gary Hamel uses Southwest Airlines as an example of a thriving human workplace. At Southwest, employees share a meaningful mission, have complete financial transparency, operate with minimal hierarchy, and consider all roles equally important. As founder Herb Kelleher said, "a company is stronger if it's bound by love rather than fear."
The diverse voices at Workhuman Live share a common purpose: making organizations more human. This growing movement spans businesses, nonprofits, schools, and universities, all determined to improve workplaces. The book invites readers to join this "infinite game" without a defined endpoint-a continuous process of challenging obsolete behaviors and habitual thinking.
