Why Does It Feel So Wrong To Be Human At Work?

We're employees. But we're also humans. We have good days and bad days; we have emotions like pride, envy and frustration. There are so many things that make us distinctly human. So why are organizations set up to view their team members more as resources and less as people?

Pinaki Kathiari, CEO of Local Wisdom, and Chris Lee, Vice President, Communications at Gallagher, have thought a great deal about that question — so much so that they started a podcast about it, now co-hosted with Bree Bartos of Local Wisdom. Why Does It Feel So Wrong To Be Human At Work? challenges the working practices we have been conditioned to accept for generations, and looks at each one from every side.

This session is not a panel. The audience is the panel. The hosts hand the room the format of their own show: tables surface the things that feel wrong at work, the room votes the hot takes up by applause, and the hosts then run the top three live — asking the same questions they ask on the podcast, and closing each one on three things a communicator can actually do.

Attendees leave having said the quiet part out loud in a room of people who recognised it, and with a method for asking the uncomfortable questions that shift an organization.