Implications of humanistic management for the employer and the employed

Humanistic management may be among the latest buzzwords, but the older generation maintains that it knew all about it all along. Some of them had practised it at the workplace. It is all about workplace dignity. By giving it a fancy name, Generation Z is only reinventing the wheel. Upon interaction with the respondents selected for the study, the researcher concludes that humanistic management can help reduce attrition and raise employee productivity. As a result, the employer can become more price-competitive and quality-competitive at the workplace. Thus, the outcome is a virtuous cycle of enhanced productivity, enhanced competitiveness and reduced training costs. But what piqued the curiosity of the researcher was why, to this day, humanistic management remains an exception and not the rule, across the employer community. This is because employers placed more faith in authoritative managers than in individual workers and group dynamics. They ignored interpersonal relationships. They failed to acknowledge the value of dignity in the economics and management space! This amounts to being wise to the penny and foolish to the pound. At best, it may lead the employee to churn out products at the same dreary pace for the rest of his/her work life. For all one knows, the employee concerned may be capable of delivering more but no thanks to absence of humanistic management, the employee concerned is seldom motivated to excel himself/herself at the workplace. Humanistic management dispels the notion that productivity level is the same across employees.