The Secret Society of Human Work Advocates
This idea for the forum and conversation space was born out of sheer frustration with the gap between HR and other departments that we encounter in our work at People Not Tech and Verdant Consulting every day. Duena Blomstrom first brought up the concept of HumanDebt and its associated workplace horrors and mental health crisis it creates in her book People Before Tech: The Importance of Psychological Safety and Teamwork in the Digital Age and has since worked tirelessly to democratise the need for regular Human Work in the workplace but it wasn’t until our teams came together to build a Psychological Safety ISO add-on for our Human Work Team Wellbeing Platform we realised we are coming towards the Human Work but from two different directions. Us at PeopleNotTech from the Agile/DevOps/Tech side of learning about humans, neuro-divergence, hacking high-performing cultures, being experimental and risk-thirsty, eternally irritated by the slow change and the good folk at Verdant Consulting having arrived at the same frustration coming from the other side, the HR side, the side who was mean to set-up and encourage the Human Work to begin with. The Secret Society of Human Work Advocates welcomes every professional from any industry and at any level irrespective of job title or skillset as long as they agree the Human Work has to be done in the workplace for the well-being of the employees which leads to the success of the enterprise We are searching for people who agree that: Office and organisational structures of old are no longer fit for purpose; Most organisations have a lot of Human Debt (defined as the equivalent of TechDebt and comprised of a collection of toxicity and ailments that have resulted from years of neglect and of treating people as resources; The HumanWork (increasing EQ, 1-on-1s, Psychological Safety and good team dynamics, changing leadership, learning autonomy, etc) are mandatory to be performed regularly in today’s environment of necessary collaboration; Come and start building the future of humans in the workplace with us to the day when our Society will no longer have to be Secret.
