POWERING WORKPLACE PERFORMANCE AND ENGAGEMENT
- Erin Barnes
- 5 hours ago
- 4 min read
WORKPLACE PERFORMANCE AND ENGAGEMENT ARE GROWING CHALLENGES FOR LEADERS AND FOUNDERS.
People have always been complex; biopsychosocially and neurobehaviourally. No two are the same.
And businesses? Just as complex. Just as nuanced.
Merging the two together successfully has always taken effort.
But in the modern era, it's become even harder.
Those natural human and business complexities have collided with a whole new layer of pressures:
PEOPLE:
• Mental, physical, and emotional health are still declining.
• Distraction is chronic. Most people struggle to achieve more than three quality hours of productive work per day.
• Societal expectations are relentless, comparison is constant, and the race never ends.
• We’ve never had more tools to connect, yet many people and teams feel increasingly disconnected.
• And under it all, we’re labelling ourselves more than ever: introvert, empath, ADHD, neurodiverse, Gen Z... Labels can help us understand, but they also limit us when they shift from insight to identity and culture.
WORKPLACES:
• Technology and AI are reshaping not just what we do, but how fast we’re expected to keep up.
• Innovation cycles are accelerating , yet engagement and productivity are declining.
• Teams are being asked to do more with less.
• Turnover is rising, even in organisations doing all the so-called ‘right’ things.
We are living and leading in a time of chronic complexity.
The load on today’s leaders has never been heavier; emotionally, financially, strategically, and operationally. Founders and business owners are carrying the full weight of the organisation while trying to build cultures of trust, deliver commercial results, and meet rising people expectation. Expectations that are often unclear, misaligned, or impossible to meet within the current system.
Meanwhile, your people are asking for more. More flexibility. More purpose. More development. More safety. More belonging. More wellbeing. Often all at once, and often in ways that don’t align with what the business can sustainably provide.
THE TRUTH:
THE HR MODEL MOST ORGANISATIONS ARE STILL USING, IS NO LONGER FIT FOR THE PACE OR THE PRESSURE OF MODERN BUSINESS, NOR THE COGNITIVE AND EMOTIONAL REALITIES OF THE MODERN EMPLOYEE
WHY?
1. WE'VE OUTGROWN THE STRUCTURES WE BUILT FOR YESTERDAY'S WORK
We built org models for efficiency, not adaptability. For control, not congruence. For compliance, not self-regulation.
But today’s workforce brings:
• Stress cycles and cognitive load
• Fluctuating arousal states
• Layered identity and emotion
• Rapid feedback needs
• Autonomy and agency expectations
These aren’t edge cases, they are baseline. Yet our systems still treat them as exceptions.
2. THE WAY WE MATCH PEOPLE TO WORK IS BROKEN
We’re still screening for job titles (many of which won’t even exist in 5 years), tenure, keywords, unverified paper qualifications, and surface-level proxies.
What’s missing? The determinants that now matter most:
• Potential
• Transferable skills
• Pace, values, ambition, and character alignment
We’re not just mis-hiring, we’re mismatching. And that’s where retention issues begin.
RETENTION STARTS WITH SELECTION
3. TRADITIONAL LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT IGNORES THE SCIENCE OF SKILL ACQUISITION
Most L&D is built for content delivery, not cognitive development. It prioritises information over integration.
But skill acquisition depends on:
• Emotional and operational relevance
• Frequent, real-time feedback loops
• Adaptive-level challenge (not just ease or overwhelm)
• Repetition, rhythm, and recovery to form neural patterns
And yet, most systems still rely on workshops and content libraries.
4. WE'VE DISCONNECTED PERFORMANCE, WELLBEING, AND SUSTAINABILITY - AND HANDED THEM OVER AS A WORKPLACE RESPONSIBILITY
We’ve been taught that:
• Performance lives in reviews
• Wellbeing is a perk or is achieved in comfort
• Development happens in workshops
But recovery, arousal, clarity, trust, and perceptual load aren’t separate categories. They’re shared systems: interdependent, behavioural, and biopsychosocial.
When we silo them, we fragment the human. When we offload them entirely to the organisation, we strip the individual of agency. Drive learned helplessness in the person who can actually control them.
Performance and wellbeing aren’t programs. They’re patterns shaped by design, sustained by rhythm, and owned by both system/environment and self.
5. POLICY DOESN'T CHANGE BEHAVIOUR
Policy can set guardrails, but it doesn’t change behaviour.
Policy doesn’t build capability or character.
WHEN WE PROTECT PEOPLE FROM DISCOMFORT, WE ROB THEM OF THE VERY EXPERIENCES THAT BUILD STRENGTH, RESILIENCE, FULFILMENT, AND PERSONAL AGENCY
Behaviour doesn’t shift through compliance manuals, it shifts in context. Well-intentioned over-application of policy often removes the necessary tension for growth and fulfilment.
Culture doesn’t come from frameworks. It’s strengthened in rhythms, language, rituals, observable behaviours, and feedback loops.
HIGH-PERFORMING, HIGH-TRUST TEAMS, WHETHER ON THE FIELD OR IN BUSINESS, DON'T JUST HAPPEN. THEY'RE BUILT. INTENTIONALLY.
Powering workplace performance and engagement isn’t about chasing the latest trend, platform, or policy. It’s about re-architecting how we operate as humans inside systems of work.
And if we get that right, we don’t just build better businesses, we build a better society.
If this resonates, we’ve built a free training to walk through what comes next.
Backed by science. Built for the future of work.
