Six ways to redesign work around people

Each year, International Stress Awareness Week (2nd-6th November) provides an opportunity for businesses and leaders to reflect on how workplace stress affects their people, productivity and performance, and what they can do to create healthier, more supportive working environments.  This year’s theme, “Shaping the Future of Stress and Wellbeing: Rehumanising the Workplace”, raises an important question for business leaders: are we designing workplaces that support people to thrive, or expecting employees to continually adapt to increasing demands?

In this feature, experts share practical ways business leaders can redesign work around their people, from understanding the realities of their organisation and investing in connection and capability to rethinking their approach to pressure, establishing team agreements, building a business that doesn’t tether its founder, and reflecting on the relationship between humans and AI. 

Start from organisational reality 
The first step to redesigning work around people is diagnosing what’s really going on in the organisation, says Andrea Robottom, co-author of The Effectiveness Edge with Vanessa Loughlin. “Only when you have a clear understanding of the current reality can you materially improve ways of working and organisation effectiveness,” she argues.  Too often the unrelenting pace of organisations means leaders don’t have the space or permission to evaluate the full picture of how their organisation operates, and where friction or stress is originating, Robottom notes. As a result, knotty, complex challenges are left untouched in favour of expedient or simplistic solutions that don’t truly address the core issues.  Instead, she encourages leaders to diagnose the real sources of frustration and stress in the organisation. “An organisation effectiveness diagnostic can surface the issues leaders have sensed, but haven’t been able to address, or those problems that have been repeatedly ‘solved’ but continue to surface.”  “Leaders that are willing and able to confront the crux of systemically embedded issues create organisations that actually work for people and stop the wellbeing, productivity and bottom line costs from compounding,” Robottom concludes. 

Invest in connection and capability 
Work focused solely on performance and KPIs misses valuable opportunities for building the relationships fundamental for individual and organisational success, argues Alex Moffat, keynote speaker and NeuroLeadership practitioner.   “When connection is not prioritised alongside capability, stress rises. Leaders must create opportunities for teams to not only build their skills, but also relatedness and how valued they feel,” he says.  “An ‘ask me about this…’ board where individuals share their interests, little known facts and unexpected talents allows people to discover more about their colleagues.

Similarly, making hidden helpfulness visible to all with an ‘acts of kindness’ wall thanks colleagues for the acts of support that often go unnoticed,” he suggests.   Moffat also encourages organisations to create permission to be a beginner. “This could be short sessions where colleagues teach each other something that not everyone knows, related to helping them in work. Leaders should participate too, making asking questions and needing help more commonplace.”  “Dedicated opportunities for both connection and capability place people at the heart of work, creating healthier and more productive workplaces,” he concludes. 

Transform the approach to pressure 
Pressure is an inevitable part of working life, often coming from multiple sources simultaneously. Things will never completely go to plan, and last-minute requests, difficult feedback or challenging conversations will continue to surface, notes Lesley Cooper, Founder of WorkingWell. “What’s important is recognising how pressure is responded to at the individual and cultural level. With the right approach, these instances do not have to become sources of harmful or long-term stress,” she says.  “To humanise the workplace, leaders must take stock of how pressure is managed,” Cooper notes that everyone responds to pressure in different ways, and this individuality must form the bedrock of an organisation’s approach.

“Helping employees to build their emotional awareness means they can recognise their responses to rising pressure and identify strategies to remain calm and grounded in what they can control.” Leadership behaviours can also be a source of pressure. “Leaders themselves must also reflect on their own responses to rising stress, how they communicate with their teams and how workloads are managed.”  When employees are proactively supported through pressured situations, these can be sources of growth and confidence, Cooper concludes.

Encourage Team Agreements
Helen Sanderson, author of Psychological Safety in Practice (Kogan Page), observes that a lot of the stress people experience at work comes from their relationships with colleagues.  “One way organisations can redesign work around people is to help each team look at the tensions it experiences, such as people holding back concerns in meetings or being unsure who decides what, and turn them into specific behaviours they agree to work towards, called Team Agreements,” she explains.  

Team Agreements give people a shared understanding of what they can expect from each other. Teams keep them in use by reviewing them together in team meetings and talking about how well they are doing on each one.  Sanderson concludes, “the most important part is practice, where the team rehearses together what to do when a Team Agreement is not upheld, so everyone knows how to raise it with a colleague and how to respond.”

Build a business that doesn’t tether its founder 
Those at the top are in a uniquely pressured position. Anyone who has been in business long enough will know there are periods of high stress and situations they’d like to walk away from. But for some founders and executives, there comes a point where they’re ‘done’. The energy they once had for their business has drained away, or they’ve simply lost the passion needed to keep driving growth. When redesigning work around people, this includes the leader or founder too.

“A business is meant to enable, not tether those leading,” says Jenny Stilwell, strategy adviser, business mentor, and author of Value First, Exit Later (Rethink Press). The aim should be building a business for value, not just growth. When growth is the only metric, leaders can end up trapped and stressed at the top.  “A key part of achieving this is building an A-Team: a capable, accountable team that can make decisions and keep the business running smoothly without a leader or founder’s constant involvement,” she continues.  For Stilwell, the most valuable business is one that gives its founder the freedom to choose their future and place their energy where they can deliver the strongest impact.

Reflect on the human-AI relationship
With technology and AI continuing to reshape the workplace, Katie Muldoon, founder of Yellowrattle Collective and author of Mind Your Self: How leaders can integrate AI without disintegrating humans (Rethink Press), argues that organisations must be deliberate about how they integrate AI, ensuring it supports rather than undermines the uniquely human capabilities that make people effective  “Quite often at work, we have a tendency to push through in spite of feeling tired, stressed or irritable, equating professionalism with unflappableness. Combined with the uncertainty surrounding AI, this can leave people feeling increasingly stressed and unsure,” Muldoon explains. 

For Muldoon, redesigning work around people means encouraging individuals and leaders to protect their human capacity to feel, think and make decisions as technology accelerates. This means being comfortable with uncertainty, remaining open to learning and adapting, and creating space for respectful discussions and debate, even when we don’t have all the answers.  “When technology accelerates, human judgement doesn’t matter less – it matters most. As we integrate AI, the impact on humans and how work is designed around them must remain a key focus,” Muldoon concludes.