Future Of Work Is About Emotional Security
Security is the foundation of diversity. Emotionally secure individuals don’t feel obligated to subscribe to homogeneous norms. They feel empowered to integrate their own preferences for working effectively into wider team or organizational processes. This comfort negates the fear of social exclusion and supports creativity and risk-taking. This allows the social ecology of the team to grow richer.
People need to feel deep emotional security to embrace the innate risks of exploration, creativity, and innovation. Emotional security is the source of healthy personal agency and team cohesion. Security in the workplace is nurtured when leaders are both a Safe Haven and a Secure Base, being accessible and responsive to distress and instilling confidence that exploration is safe. This allows for what psychologists call “rupture and repair:” the process by which a team member can express distress— which momentarily creates relational imbalance—but subsequently receives a reparative response.
Amit Das, Director-HR & CHRO, Bennett Coleman Group, is of the view that, “We are witnessing a simultaneous transformation of WWW, work, workplace & workforce, as we are transitioning into a "work from anywhere" hybrid workplace arrangement. We need to consciously accelerate the development of Emotional capital in our enterprises, where we foster competencies like Tenacity during volatility, Virtual empowerment, Decisional agility, and Emotional resilience. The emotional well being for future workforce need to be managed with higher degree of hyper personalised learning & engagement offerings, flexibility of work schedules, greater empowerment, freedom for experimentation and entrepreneurial opportunities in a much more flatter project based & community driven organisation structure, within a stable, transparent, collaborative, progressive and ethical organization culture.”
Organisations need to reinforce a comprehensive framework to drive Total wellness quotient through a balance of mind, body & soul for their employees & family members as well, in the futuristic enhanced continuum of work, workplace & workforce ecosystem. The emerging trends at workplace are flexible & remote work schedules leading to work-life integration, more investments in employee well-being & inclusivity, opportunities to fulfil social purpose through innovative job roles, flexibility through portfolio career options in a gig Talent ecosystem, enhanced collaboration of man & machine to optimise productivity outcomes, in an environment of urgency, high stakes & uncertainty, which needs to be balanced through right dose of empathy, sensitivity, creativity & innovativeness, compassion & care.
Last year during the advent of Covid we were all talking about productivity at work. Though humanness wasn’t fully functional during the pressured moments. But not the time has come where we are required to invert the pyramid. “Today all the workplaces, if they have to thrive humanness needs to be embedded primarily. ‘Productivity combined with humane approach,’ is the talk of the town today.”
“Hence, those who will be able to do it, will be able to create an aura of psychological security. Today the workplace style carries the motto of “humanness first, productivity second” for a safe workplace design.”
Now linking it to emotional security, my learning in the segment of talent states that, 'talking about compensation, training, development; it is now proven research that if people feel same physically and emotionally at any organisation, then they are automatically at their productive best. The research also claims that if people feel safe emotionally, then all their energy gets utilised in a more productive manner at work," states Sanjay Verma, regional CEO, Asia Pacific, G4S Technology.
