For too long, the vast majority of humanity has been left out of the business equation, says the Dean of EHL Hospitality Business School, Dr Achim Schmitt. Now educators need to play their part in driving a new, more human-centric approach.
I’ve always been interested in the human dimension to business. In my days as a business turnaround consultant, I never understood how companies thought they could just cut jobs, cut costs and retrench, and expect things to improve without investing in their people at the same time and building up the company from its roots.
Employees do identify with their company and are prepared to invest in it if they’re given the right opportunities and incentives. This became the theme of my PhD, looking at the human element in driving innovation and growth in business transformations.
Valuing people
One area in which these issues are particularly coming to the fore is the crisis of employee stress and burnout in the workplace. According to a 2024 report by the global research and consultancy group Gallup, 41 percent of more than 128,000 workers surveyed around the world said they’d experienced a lot of stress in the previous day. That’s up from 38 percent before the Covid-19 pandemic and follows two years at a record high of 44 percent. In the UK, one-in-five workers said they’d needed to take time off work in the past year due to poor mental health caused by pressure or stress, according to a 2024 report by Mental Health UK, a mental-health services provider.
But there are signs that a new, more human-centric era is dawning. The need for employees to be seen as “people not just resources,” was identified by Gartner in the wake of the Covid pandemic, and its research showed that employees who feel valued are more likely to be high-performing. In its The Future of Work 2023 Report, the tech firm Infosys sees a future in which successful businesses are more human-centric, using flexible and hybrid working to increase talent retention, a skills-first approach to drive digital adoption and stronger growth, and diversity to bring new perspectives and ideas.
The ripple effect
Human-centricity also shines a light on other challenges being faced by the world, such as the inappropriate application of new technologies, growing consumer dissatisfaction, unsustainable and unethical business practices, and a lack of innovation and long-term value creation. When you put the human first across all layers of the business framework, it drives a different sense of priorities.
This starts with the individual employee and their sense of self, well-being, and fulfillment. It impacts the way we behave with our colleagues. It feeds into the values, culture and processes of the organization to which we belong. It drives how we think about our customers and interact with them. And it creates an impetus for building value for the wider business and social ecosystem by pursuing responsible and ethical business practices, seeking collaboration, safeguarding workers, and increasing positive outcomes such as supporting local communities.
Putting human-centricity into practice
This kind of virtuous circle has been demonstrated by Europe’s oldest luxury hotel group, Kempinski. It starts with the many thousands of employees at its 77 hotels around the world. The group’s goal is to be the employer of choice in its market, and it’s built a workplace culture where employees feel cared for and listened to.
According to Bernold O. Schroeder, former CEO at Kempinski Hotels, the term ‘human resources’ is misleading. He believes every leader must understand that we now need to talk about ‘human capital’, instead. If we invest in this, it will result in greater paybacks in terms of quality and, subsequently, more and higher-paying guests. Schroeder sees this investment as being 5 to 7 percent of payroll, and at least 150 hours of training per year.
Reflecting this, Kempinski has an active employee engagement program that welcomes employee feedback, shares results, showcases actions taken, and celebrates colleagues and their achievements. Leaders role-model the approach by taking time to check in with staff members. The result is committed employees, many of whom stay with the company for decades.
The approach also helps deliver a uniformly high level of service across Kempinski’s hotels and locations, which is appreciated by customers. Boosted by “guest intelligence technology” (which provides data-driven insights to better understand customer needs and target performance improvements), Kempinski rose from fifth to first among direct competitors in 2023 on its Global Review Index, an online reputation score based on hotel reviews.
The group published its first environmental, social and governance report in 2021 and is working with the advisory group EarthCheck to consolidate its approach. It’s made progress in a wide range of areas, from promoting equal pay to reducing waste, and it supports social health programs in the communities in which it operates.
Educating for change
But businesses can’t become human-centric overnight. It’s a process of transformation that needs the support of educators. They can transmit the tools of human-centric strategies, such as emotional intelligence, wellbeing thinking, and diversity, equity and inclusion practices. All of which take time to understand and implement. They can work with leaders so they feel able to promote open communication, foster autonomy, and lead by example. And they can demonstrate how progress can be sustained by gauging how employees feel, celebrating success, learning from setbacks, and developing a community of leaders.
Human-centric organizations are likely to see better teamwork, more effective communication, greater understanding and sensitivity toward customer issues, and more ethical behavior.
All of which feeds into better business results. Firms focused on human-centric business transformations are 10 times more likely to see revenue growth of 20 percent or higher, according to the change consultancy Prophet. It also reports better employee engagement and improved levels of innovation, time to market, and creative differentiation.
In terms of business transformations, Prophet defines a human-centric organization as one which has established transformation initiatives, met projected stakeholder expectations, and aligned its business strategy around the human. It will, for example, follow human-aligned change-management principles and have a defined vision, clear ownership, distributed decision-making, and growth and innovation driving more relevant customer experiences.
I believe that all organizations should make human value their highest value—embracing the whole spectrum of customers and consumers, leaders and employees, and society. Given the scale of challenges in the workplace and wider society, my hope is that we can all do this, that we can all make sure that humans are not forgotten in the wider picture.
