Work For Humans
Too often business leaders are forced to choose between the needs of their company and the needs of their employees. It’s a lose/lose scenario leaving managers burned out and workers seeking other opportunities. At Work for Humans, we believe work can be designed differently. When you design work like products people love, your company wins. Work becomes irresistible, employees passionately buy into their roles every day, and your company takes measurable strides towards your vision.
Episodes
152 episodes
The Anatomy of Genres: How Story Forms Explain the Way the World Works | John Truby Replay
From an early age, John Truby knew that stories are not just something that happens on a page. Story is all around us. It structures how we interpret events, and even how we decide how to live. For John, story forms explain the way the wo...
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Season 1
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1:07:29
How to Build an Economy That Works for Everyone | Nick Romeo
As a journalist, Nick Romeo has interviewed people doing remarkable things, from running worker-owned companies to redesigning gig work as public infrastructure. These experiences shaped his new book, The Alternative: How to Build a Just Ec...
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Season 1
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Episode 149
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1:06:50
The Progressive Work Ethic: What We Lost and How to Win It Back | Elizabeth Anderson
For centuries, the work ethic was used to justify inequality, but it also fueled a powerful movement for justice. In the final part of this series, Elizabeth Anderson and Dart Lindsley explore the progressive work ethic, a vision of labor roote...
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Season 1
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Episode 148
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1:17:43
Work Ethic's Dark Turn: The War on the Poor | Elizabeth Anderson
The work ethic began as a religious principle before evolving into an economic theory. But by the 18th and 19th centuries, it had taken on a new role: a justification for social inequality. Thinkers like Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill saw work...
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Season 1
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Episode 147
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53:10
How Work Became a Moral Duty: The Origins of the Modern Work Ethic | Elizabeth Anderson
Elizabeth Anderson is one of today’s leading political philosophers and has spent years studying how the work ethic shapes our economy, society, and politics. In her latest book, Hijacked, she explores how hard work, a principle origin...
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Season 1
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Episode 146
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57:27
Designing Work Like a Subscription Product: How to Retain Top Talent | Luke O’Mahoney
Luke O’Mahoney is one of the leaders of the movement to reframe work as a product that every company sells to employees. In particular, Luke has gone deep into the implications of recognizing work as a subscription product, and brings ...
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Season 1
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Episode 145
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1:14:01
Who Owns the Experience of Work? Managers as Product Managers | Alex Komoroske
This is the third in a series of episodes with world-leading product management experts about how we might build product management best practices into team leadership. Alex Komoroske spent years as either a Product Manager or...
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Season 1
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Episode 144
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57:07
Beyond Accommodations: How Personalization at Work Benefits Everyone | Charlotte Dales
Most employees need some form of support to thrive at work, whether it’s flexible hours to care for a loved one, mental health resources, or a quieter space to focus. But asking for help can feel risky. That silence holds people back and costs ...
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Season 1
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Episode 143
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53:49
The California Experiment: Can Government Use Community Service to Fix Work and Heal Society? | Josh Fryday
When Josh Fryday’s wife was evacuated from Japan after the 2011 Japan disaster, he stayed behind. As a Navy officer, he joined Operation Tomodachi, one of the largest humanitarian relief efforts in history. Working alongside people who thought ...
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Season 1
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Episode 142
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55:06
Your Company's Superpower: How Dyslexic Thinkers Are Shaping the Future | Kate Griggs
At eight years old, Kate Griggs sat in a parent-teacher meeting and heard the words, “She’s not very bright.” The school had already written her off. But she wasn’t struggling because she lacked intelligence. She was struggling because the syst...
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Season 1
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Episode 141
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1:01:33
Retirement at Risk: Is Work Is Failing the Next Generation of Retirees? | Matthew Rutledge
With a career in a stable industry and a solid plan for retirement, Matthew Rutledge’s father expected to retire on his own terms. But when he was suddenly laid off at 59, the financial impact was crushing. Watching his father struggle to bounc...
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Season 1
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Episode 140
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1:10:33
Starbucks President: It’s Not about the Coffee, Leadership Lessons from Scaling Starbucks from 28 to 1,500 Locations | Howard Behar
Howard Behar barely graduated high school and spent just two years in community college. Yet, he became a key leader at Starbucks soon after joining the company. From the start, he saw that Starbucks was not just about coffee but about people. ...
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Season 1
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Episode 139
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1:16:50
Quiet Heroes: The Untold Stories of U.S. Public Servants at Work | Cameron Kober
For many people, the mention of government work conjures images of endless red tape and bureaucracy. In reality, though, federal employees are doing life-changing work every day. They fight hurricanes, advance cutting-edge research, protect chi...
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Season 1
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Episode 138
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51:54
Beyond the Job Description: Designing Work for Joy and Impact | Sam Schlimper
Sam Schlimper is the Managing Director at Randstad, the largest HR service provider in the world. Largely anchored in talent acquisition, she has over two decades of experience working with global organizations to link human potential, AI, and ...
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Season 1
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Episode 137
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51:24
Culture Change at Scale: How Design Gym Transforms Organizations by Talking to Employees | Andy Hagerman
As co-founder of The Design Gym consultancy, Andy Hagerman has spent over a decade tackling the challenge of aligning employee needs with business strategy—an issue that can make or break organizational success. Working with clients like Marrio...
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Season 1
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Episode 136
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1:12:21
Work For Grown-Ups: Escaping Parent-Child Leadership Dynamics at Work | Sammy Burt
Companies have long treated employees like children, micromanaging their tasks and monitoring every move, hoping to boost productivity. The problem is that this approach undermines trust and stifles innovation, parenting employees instead of su...
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Season 1
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Episode 135
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50:54
Number 2 Glassdoor CEO: Leading People in 2025 and Beyond | Robert Glazer
Award-winning entrepreneur and author Robert Glazer has identified a core issue in today’s companies: the traditional “growth-at-all-costs” mindset is unsustainable. After a decade of relentless expansion, many companies are struggling to grow ...
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Season 1
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Episode 134
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1:06:51
Applying Product Management Tools for a Better Employee Experience | John Cutler
Product managers are often used to setting goals and going after them with a single-minded focus, achieving success by pushing for results. If they approach the job like a mechanic—fixing, controlling, and managing tasks—they risk stifling inno...
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Season 1
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Episode 133
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1:27:30
Why Employees Quit: The Four Drivers of Job Moves in 2024 | Ethan Bernstein & Michael Horn
An estimated 1 billion people switch jobs every year, and the war for talent continues. Leaders and HR teams keep using the same hiring strategies as the average employee tenure decreases year after year. Companies aren’t addressing the root is...
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Season 1
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Episode 132
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1:08:08
Are Skills the New Currency of Work? Questioning the Skills-Based Management Paradigm | Gareth Flynn
Moments before presenting at a large conference in Sydney, Gareth Flynn was confident in sharing his expertise on skills strategy. Suddenly, his friend Dart Lindsley tapped him on the shoulder and made a bold claim: skills strategies don’t work...
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Season 1
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Episode 131
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51:51
The Heart of Leadership: Emerging from the Dark Ages of “Power-Over” Management | The Clark Family
When Kim Clark was completing research for his doctoral dissertation, he compared two nearly identical cement plants located five miles apart. As an economist, he couldn’t pinpoint why one plant was 70% more productive than the other. Determine...
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Season 1
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Episode 130
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1:09:28
The Employee Experience Manifesto: Unlocking the Talent inside Your Organization | Samantha Gadd
When Samantha Gadd began her career in HR, she quickly noticed traditional HR processes and practices often overlooked the people they were meant to serve. Struggling to find the “human” in human resources, Samantha took a leap of faith a...
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Season 1
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Episode 128
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1:02:17
Social Networks: The #1 Predictor of Economic Advancement | David Obstfeld
David Obstfeld, a tenured professor with over 15 years of research experience, saw a troubling trend at universities: first-generation college students were struggling to secure job opportunities upon graduation, leaving them at a disadvantage ...
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Season 1
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Episode 128
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1:19:08
Disruptive HR: Solving Your People Problem through Work Design | Lucy Adams
Lucy Adams, a seasoned HR leader, has held senior roles in major organizations, including her recent position as HR Director at the BBC. Despite her success, she grew increasingly frustrated by HR’s one-size-fits-all approach, which treated all...
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Season 1
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Episode 127
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1:06:56
Ken Coleman: What I've Learned Helping Thousands of People Find Work They Love
Ken Coleman has interviewed thousands of people on work, uncovering a common struggle: people start their careers wanting to make a difference but often lose that drive due to restrictive job expectations and rigid company rules. This disconnec...
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Season 1
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Episode 126
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1:00:30