How to Crank Up Human Sustainability | 2-Minute Video

Do you take care of employees in the best possible ways, setting them up to succeed and help your organization flourish?

You probably try. And there’s a name for the effort: Human Sustainability.

It’s important these days because people are important — your employees, contractors, customers and the wider community. How the company connects with them — and helps them connect with each other — can impact everything from revenue and innovation to efficiency and brand relevance.

Getting Human Sustainability Wrong

“Yet organizations’ current efforts to prioritize these all-important connections appear to be falling short, partly because many organizations may be stuck in a legacy mindset that centers on extracting value from people rather than working to create value for them,” the researchers behind Deloitte’s Human Capital Trends Report tell us.

Here’s the kicker: 76% of leaders believe Human Sustainability — investing in their people to make them better — is important. But just 46% say they’re actually doing something about it, and 10% say they’re doing great things about it.

So organizational leaders know they should change the outlook from strictly getting value from people to creating value for them. But many haven’t figured out how — or have chosen not — to ramp up Human Sustainability within their companies today.

Fortunately, we have some insight on how you can do something — or better, great things — when it comes to Human Sustainability from one of the lead researchers.

In this episode of HRMorning’s 3-Point, Sue Cantrell tells us what’s critical to Human Sustainability, plus gives us tips on how to achieve it.

Click, watch and listen for more details on the research and its impact.

Transcript (edited for clarity):

Here’s a new outlook on your job in HR: Yours is the only role in the organization with the word Human in it.

By default, you’re in charge of all the humans near and far!

So how you can sustain them? It’s the sort of question researchers at Deloitte asked – and answered – in their Human Capital Trends Report.

We’re talking about Human Sustainability. That’s the value you create for the people your org touches – employees, future employees, customers, stakeholders – and leaving them all better because of what you do.

One of the report’s lead authors is Sue Cantrell. She can give us the lowdown.

Cantrell: Human sustainability really takes a different angle and it requires organizations to shift their focus from how much people benefit their organization to how much their organization benefits people. And it’s really a mutually reinforcing cycle. So what kinds of value are we talking about that organizations can create value for people as human beings? Things like greater skills and employability, and putting them into good jobs with opportunities for advancement. Things like greater health and well-being, physical, mental, social, financial, progress toward equity, belonging, and heightened connection to purpose. Because when we create value for people as human beings, business outcomes ensue, and it creates better business, work, and lives for everyone.

Sounds like a tall order, but Human Sustainability is really about taking care of your employees in the best possible ways so they flourish and help your company succeed.

Three critical factors to sustainability:

• Feedback. You’ll never know what will make employees thrive if you don’t ask what motivates, concerns and frustrates them.
• Mindset. Cantrell told me that many companies view humans as costs. Shift that mindset to seeing them as assets you want to create more value for.
• Diversity. This is accomplished through diverse benefits, perks and opportunities for connection. Nothing can be one-size-fits-all.

HR, the power of Human Sustainability is in your hands. Now’s the time to help your humans thrive.