As the Industrial Revolution recedes into the past, the Conscious Revolution has entered the zeitgeist with a more human vision at its core.
People are starting to awaken to a renewed sense of self, more clearly identifying with their values and personal boundaries. They feel keenly the pain of realization when they understand how their boundaries have been violated without any intervention.
Younger generations — those entering the job market in the near future — are even more keenly aware. They want to be recruited and produce results in a meaningful way, not based on external factors. It’s a misunderstanding to call them job hoppers, the “curling generation,” the TikTok generation, or anything else.
They all have a voice. They are focused on challenging their surroundings, regardless of age or professional seniority, through egalitarian dialogue in a job market that very much includes them. Without this, they will uncompromisingly move on to other companies or go abroad — and good for them.
Prosperity before wellbeing or wellbeing before prosperity?
If we are to succeed in creating the wealth necessary to ensure our social wellbeing, we need to increase the number of sustainable jobs where human wellbeing is prioritized through conscious leadership.
The quality of leadership in both the private and public sectors is not mature enough to create psychological safety for workers. Many leaders suffer from the poor leadership of their own managers, leading to a trickle down lack of support. We know that there is neuroscientific evidence that stress reduces the ability to act empathetically.
This means that many of the people who are supposed to ensure the prosperity of our society lack a foundation for maintaining their own long-term wellness. Both leaders and non-leaders are exhausted and burnt out to varying degrees, yet most choose to continue anyway.
One common mind in the workplace for enhanced wellbeing
At the height of Corona, the concept of “civic spirit” became not just a concept, but a standard — a behavior that we practiced together to take responsibility for keeping us all safe within our society.
Community spirit or belongingness is also a behaviour we co-create in the workplace. It develops a community that allows us to increase prosperity through wellbeing, with minds that have room for empathy, producing joy and, not least, innovation. This in turn reduces our need to make use of the welfare that provides us with symptom-dampening chemistry and pay during sick leave.
With conscious, altruistic leadership, we can limit our consumption of welfare, instead spending the funds on other things. If we take a more realistic approach, focusing on where we need to take action and how, people in everyday life can have a more secure environment to operate within.
Before this is prioritised and taken seriously, “prosperity before wellbeing” (or vice versa) becomes just another socio-economic blue vs. red bloc political disagreement about the correct way to govern a growing society, because the disagreements are far too lofty and abstract to be able to address the reality of the average Dane.
The unconscious investors
We need to conjure up a more charitable view of humanity at all levels. Therefore, a more bottom-up approach is needed in order to develop realistic action plans based on facts from everyday life — the everyday life that most of us practitioners try to create results in every day.
Because prosperity does not generate wellbeing if that which generates prosperity cannot thrive!
One of several areas that could make a significant difference in both the short and long term is if investors become more conscious of what they are investing in.
The conscious investor of the future
In concrete terms, this means that future investors must ensure full insight into the working environment they are about to invest in and whether it is humanly sustainable.
Because if Denmark is to be able to produce more large companies in the future — start-ups that scale out and attract and retain top talent — our currently unconscious investors carry a huge responsibility. They are the ones who are able to ensure that human wellbeing is present internally in the companies they invest in, so that healthy cultures, where people are thriving, are allowed to grow, instead of cultures where employees are mistreated.
So dear investor of the future!
Demand even more transparency from those seductive Excel sheets.
Do your due diligence and keep your integrity a priority.
The tools to support you do exist, and they are more in-depth than the usual employee data, which is represented via reactive KPIs in the form of employee satisfaction measurements, employee departure, and sick leave analytics.
You need to make sure that you have complete insight into how people thrive in the companies you add your brand and capital to as their investor. Be aware of your human responsibility.
You can no longer excuse yourself by feigning ignorance.
Because people will continue to suffer — underneath the weight of your investment portfolio — if you neglect to prioritize the growth of companies in which the employees who work for your success are doing well.
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