Join America Back to Work, a weekly podcast, video, and blog series that covers timely and relevant topics affecting the labor market and workforce with industry experts. The series includes recruiting, hiring, retention, employee satisfaction, customer service, background screenings, and more.
From the Experts: Bringing Humanity Back to Human Capital Management
In this week’s episode of America Back to Work, S2Verify co-founder and chief strategy officer, Arnette Heintze, sat down with Catherine Morgan, an award-winning career transition expert who has been coaching clients and colleagues through job and life transition for more than 20 years.
Morgan is an expert on topics related to career transition, workplace mental health, and small business entrepreneurship and is the author of This Isn’t Working! – Evolving the Way We Work to Decrease Stress, Anxiety, and Depression. Before starting her consulting business, Point A to Point B Transitions Inc, she was employed by KPMG, Arthur Andersen, and Deloitte.
In her conversation with Heintze, Morgan talks about the importance of bringing more humanity to human capital management–and points out the ways that employees are demanding it.
“I saw a survey by the American Psychological Association that said that 81% of employees expect their employer to consider their mental health,” she said. To Morgan, this signals the ways that employers are being forced to adapt.
According to Morgan, employers can solve their employee engagement struggles (45% of employees say they wouldn’t recommend their job to their worst enemy!) by bringing more acknowledgment, more respect, and more empathy to the complete employee lifecycle–especially during extraordinary times.
In a time where mass layoffs are almost trendy (see: Twitter), she says, “mass layoffs should be something of a last resort—not a go-to to balance the books because your human capital are in fact human beings who have lives and kids and mortgages and parents and things they need to do.”
Morgan encourages business leaders to bring this human-first mentality to all restructuring efforts—from mergers to acquisitions to reductions in force.
Her ultimate tip for bringing more humanity to human capital management: centering mental health in the workplace. A workplace culture that normalizes mental health conversations and provides employees with the flexibility they need to take care of themselves creates the conditions for a productive, engaged workforce.
Get more of Morgan’s tips for engaging and retaining the modern workforce through difficult times. Click here to listen to the episode wherever you get your podcasts.