Bring Your Human to Work summary
Book Summary & Synopsis
What's it about?
This book explores how to create a workplace that benefits both people and business by re-emphasizing human connection. It argues that in a modern world often dominated by technology and efficiency, the human touch, authenticity, and genuine relationships are frequently overlooked. The guide offers practical strategies to foster better interactions, from designing productive meetings and leveraging technology to support human connection, to promoting employee wellness, giving back to the community, and showing appreciation. Ultimately, it advocates for workplaces built on empathy, creativity, kindness, and strong human bonds, leading to happier employees, stronger teams, and a healthier business.
Who is it for?
- Business leaders and managers seeking to build more human-centered and productive workplaces.
- HR professionals looking for strategies to enhance employee engagement, wellness, and retention.
- Employees who want to understand how to foster better connections and bring their authentic selves to work.
- Anyone interested in improving workplace culture and the balance between technology and human interaction.
Meet the author
Erica Keswin is the author of this guide, which helps foster better interactions and bring the human touch back into business.
From the Introduction & First Chapter
Introduction
Bring Your Human to Work by Erika Keswin Design a workplace that is good for people and great for business. Do you ever feel like your workplace is missing something important? In today's modern world of work, human connection is often overlooked. Face-to-face communication has been replaced by instant messaging.
But what if you could bring the human touch back into your business? This guide will help you foster better interactions. It covers everything from meetings to feedback and values.
Separating Professional and Personal Lives
Separating Professional and Personal Lives. We are often taught to keep our professional and personal lives separate. But it might be time to rethink this rule. When you try to keep a strict divide between your work and life, you miss out.
You miss a key opportunity to bring your humanity to work with you. You miss being your authentic self all day, every day. A study from Harvard Business School found that businesses celebrating authentic personalities enjoy higher employee retention. They also enjoy more satisfied customers.
This is more effective than forcing a uniform corporate identity on staff. The key message here is, bringing your authentic self to work is good for you. It is also good for your company. So what does business authenticity look like in action?
A company based around the humble kitchen apron can show us the way. When Ellen Bennett began her apron company, Headley & Bennett, she branded herself. She was a millennial who was wise beyond her years. She began telling people that she wanted to make the world a better place.
She wanted to do it one apron at a time. Her communication style was authentic, too, even if that meant dropping the occasional f-bomb. This may not have been strictly corporate behavior, but it did make her stand out from the crowd. These days, Headley & Bennett is a global leader in fashionable kitchen aprons.
Ellen credits her success to simply being real with everyone around her. This includes her employees, her clients, and her investors.
Table of Contents
- 1 Introduction 0:39
- 2 Separating Professional and Personal Lives 1:49
- 3 Embracing Authenticity and Storytelling 1:16
- 4 Technology and Human Connection 2:51
- 5 Meetings as Opportunities for Connection 2:54
- 6 History of Workplace Wellness 3:17
- 7 Making Connections by Giving Back 2:57
- 8 The Pleasure of Doing Nothing 2:45
- 9 Making Employees Feel Appreciated 4:42
