Dear HRart Worker,
For the past year, I’ve had the privilege of traveling alongside my good friend Jeff Harry as we speak to leadership audiences across the country. Each time we take the stage, I ask one question: “What do you need right now?”
Typically, I’m speaking to my HR tribe, eager to absorb new people development strategies. But what I’ve learned from their answers reflects one of the most significant gaps in our workplaces: leaders, just like employees, often overlook their own engagement and wellness.
We invest countless hours trying to solve the complex puzzles of employee engagement and retention, yet we neglect an essential insight right at our fingertips: our own needs as employees.
Yes, we are employees too. We wake up each day, choosing to remain at our jobs, facing the same struggles to stay engaged and productive as those we lead.
When I first pose the question, most responses focus on the need for more support and resources. But when I dig deeper—asking what they need as human beings—one common theme emerges: work-life balance.
This concept of “work-life balance” is, in reality, a disjointed notion that builds a wall, separating our professional and personal selves. It implies that work and home should remain separate, unaffected by one another. But that’s simply not true.
Someone recently asked me if work-life balance even exists. My answer: Rather than striving for balance that splits our lives into two separate spheres, we should aim for true, holistic balance that honors the entirety of who we are.
The truth is, your work life and home life are parts of the same life.
When we started working with energy in organizational settings, I underestimated the divide between these spheres. I assumed it was more of a hurdle than a chasm. However, I’ve come to realize that this separation is a root cause of much suffering in our workplaces.
This divide makes it nearly impossible to infuse our workplaces with the humanity and empathy they so desperately need. Even the current push for psychological safety aims to address this suffering, yet we are still underestimating the divide’s true impact.
Our initial organizational interventions at the HRart Center revealed just how entrenched this divide is. Teams became uncharacteristically disruptive when invited to acknowledge their personal lives alongside their work. The resistance was clear: the ingrained belief of “leave your home life at the door” had compounded under the pressures of the global pandemic, creating an unsustainable internal heaviness.
Cue the Great Resignation, Quiet Quitting, and other coping mechanisms people have adopted to simply get by. In response, we’ve shifted our approach. Instead of pushing culture change interventions aimed at thriving, we now focus on creating the cultural framework necessary for survival first.
At the top of the list of strategic interventions:
We must normalize being our whole, authentic selves at work.
This starts with offering personal development opportunities that are culturally integrated and viewed as essential, not optional. For this to succeed, a few things are necessary:
- A Clear “Why”: Employees need to understand the reason behind this shift. Why focus on personal development instead of traditional professional training?
- Connection to Work: Draw a clear line between personal development and the benefits it brings to their work, easing resistance from the work-life divide perspective.
- Cultural Integration: Make it significant. If participation is optional, many will self-select out due to discomfort. We must shift the belief that work is purely for work and not for personal growth.
Next, we’ll explore the dynamics of giving and taking—an equation that significantly impacts burnout and toxic workplace cultures.
Sincerely,
Samm (she/her/hers)
