There is a significant shift in how organizations define and approach improved employee performance. Tomorrow’s work cultures will be focusing on well-being first as a catalyst to improved safety, health, and achievement. A gradual shift in business practices requires daily micropractices to produce personal transformation and lasting organizational change.
One of these micropractices is authenticity. Individuals who interact authentically feel accepted in the workforce for their unique qualities and skills. This reinforces their contributions and leads to greater performance with higher levels of mental and physical awareness. Being conscious of working relationships with others lets us see the bigger picture, including hazards on the job. Working together as a whole, teams of employees can solve problems to reduce each other’s exposure to injury or illness and create a safer work environment.
Authenticity is a tool that can prevent less tangible psychological injuries and allow people to reach their full potential. As leadership and employees communicate genuinely, they remove the fear of disappointment or criticism and can achieve much higher goals. Well-being becomes a means to increase workplace safety and general performance.
New Organizational Goals
In a global study of OSH executives, all participants felt that having an organizational culture where people feel confident to point out safety issues and react without fear of repercussion would lead to an enhanced work environment. They thought employees who felt safe to speak up would share honest feedback about workforce conditions and happily share ideas for solutions.
Leaders today need to look beyond safety and health issues to prevent mental injuries and engage with the workforce on an authentic level. When leadership is approachable and understands the challenges individuals face in their roles, they achieve greater performance overall. Each employee becomes sympathetic to a team member’s emotional change, discovers underlying problems, and can speak up about concerns when needed. Behavioral changes start with daily microhabits. As employees become more comfortable giving feedback, the momentum toward a cultural shift increases to meet organizational goals.
The Benefits of Authentic Working Relationships
Authenticity raises personal well-being, which then impacts aspects of work life, such as:
- The quality of performance and safety of the environment
- A workers sense of individual accomplishment
- An employees’ value as a team member
- The emotional climate at work and within the organization
Authentic interactions in the workplace enhance other OSH measures to ensure workers are safe, healthy, satisfied, and engaged at work. Employees develop a strong sense of identity that breeds trust and respect between co-workers and leaders. In turn, they are better able to cope with daily stress, increase productivity, and strive to improve the community around them.
The Benefits of Improved Employee Well-Being
As greater authenticity leads to an increased feeling of contentment of the workforce, the environment develops other positive outcomes, including:
- Lower absenteeism
- Reduced employee turnover
- Higher productivity
- Increased profitability
- Greater performance
Companies competing for talent may be better off focusing on retaining employees by creating a motivational environment for reaching their full potential. It begins with emphasizing authentic interpersonal relationships and values that influence employees to stay with the organization.
A Snapshot of the Future Workplace
In the near future, authentic interaction centers on the human experience and the wisdom gained as we learn and work with others. In an age where we are determining which processes will be better served by machines, we need to place the value of our employees on their ability to collaborate and empathize. Based on this, companies have begun moving away from hiring based on long-term commitment or company loyalty enticed by promises of more money, status, and prestige.
The employee relationship is pivoting to contracted services that are aligned closely between employees and organizations. It involves teams with a combination of skills working together to solve problems. There isn’t a need for a defined leader in a fluid environment led by curiosity, creativity, and accountability as a whole. People can motivate themselves to meet intrinsic personal goals as much as work-related achievements. They are rewarded with fair pay and choices between remote, virtual, and in-person solutions that benefit the workforce and the entire organization.
Authenticity becomes part of psychological safety practices in which workers share ideas, express concerns, ask critical questions and make mistakes without fear of punishment. Workers are free to perform without worrying about their mental and emotional well-being, reducing fear, anxiety, and stress.
The Psychological Effects of Authentic Leadership
Authentic leadership has proven to be the strongest predictor of job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and optimized workplace environments.
Being authentic requires fluid interaction. We behave differently in various situations, which combines more than one sense of self:
- Underlying self, or innate nature
- Everyday self, our interaction with others
- Overextended self, our behavior under stress
Revealing each of these three personas makes us feel vulnerable to others. Authenticity explores all three personas to make stronger relationships.
We take interpersonal risks while worrying about being judged or dismissed as incompetent, or accepted by the rest of the team, while remaining devoted to core views or innovative ideas.
Micropractices Harmonize the Three Personas
Certain micropractices help the three personas combine to manifest effectively in the workplace. They can improve self-awareness and our relationships with each other under stress. Organizational leaders bear the responsibility to create a culturally diverse environment, and authenticity can be challenging and takes effort. Only by changing our social connections can we make the shift to our future organizational goals.
Start with daily micropractices to promote authenticity, including body language, eye contact, and conversations.
- Share stories and emotions at the right moment
- Identify your values by discussing them and acting on them
- Extend trust through autonomy
- Offer apologies when making mistakes
- Communicate the need to connect with team members personally
These actions help employees see that leadership is willing to share emotions, trust them, stand by their skills and abilities, talk openly without criticism, and genuinely care about their well-being.
Changes require commitment, and employees will respond positively to managers who embody and repeatedly demonstrate authentic attributes and can produce lasting and transformative results.
The Organizational Outcome
Executives must buy into the intangible aspects of well-being and apply micropractices for a strategic advantage. The results over time are reduced costs, increased productivity, higher customer retention and satisfaction, and a safer workplace. Employees will demonstrate:
- Higher self-esteem
- More authentic and empathetic interactions
- Greater trust and cooperation
- Lower rates of anxiety and depression
Authenticity allows people to be themselves and unleash their strengths and talents. They are better able to navigate different behavior and thoughts in various situations, especially under pressure. Teams achieve greater collaboration and support.
As organizations ask leaders to do more with less, focusing on well-being through micropractices releases maximum human potential with minimum investment. Small positive social interactions don’t add more time or demand and work naturally with our brain’s chemistry. Acknowledging individual differences allows people to choose, adapt, and develop good well-being habits at a comfortable pace and shape the future of changing workplace initiatives.
Leaders should create safe environments for employees to grow intellectually, emotionally, and socially by adopting micropractices for authenticity. Mobilize the entire workforce to discover and confront risks, speak up to drive change, and extend the benefits of well-being to the organization’s safety and compliance systems. The transition to the future workplace will bring uncertainty, which is all the more reason to have a skilled workforce that is fully engaged.