I have been following the National Fund for Workforce Solutions’ recent initiative, Designing a Human-Centered Workplace, with great interest. My instant affection for this tool that helps employers improve talent attraction and retention comes from my familiarity with the language and approach. For me, if not quite “worlds colliding”, it is at least segments of my career colliding.
For a number of years, I was employed by an organization that served the parents and caregivers of children with behavioral health challenges. The work was largely funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The philosophy of the work was rooted in a System of Care that was defined by being:
family driven;
individualized, strengths based, and evidence informed;
youth guided;
culturally and linguistically competent;
provided in the least restrictive environment;
community based;
accessible; and
collaborative and coordinated across an interagency network.
The system of care approach is not exactly new; it was introduced in the 1980s. This method of assisting families and children gives space for those most impacted to not only be at the table, but also lead the conversation. In this model, the expectation for conventional system leaders (i.e., social workers, psychiatrists, etc.) is to play a culturally competent support role..
Fast forward to today. The National Fund for Workforce Solutions, in an effort to spotlight tools that address the shortage of high-quality jobs that workers seek out, is promoting the use of human-centered design in workplaces.
As the National Fund has stated, “human centered design operates at the intersection of leadership, equity, and creativity. It is based on the observation that the people closest to a problem often have the clearest ideas about how to solve it.”
“Given their day-to-day experiences with myriad problems and issues, frontline workers have critical insights into needed solutions. Yet these workers—mainly people of color and women—are often excluded from decision-making related to improving job design.”
The approach, like the system of care work, shuffles who is at the table and who is leading the conversation. It embraces cultural and linguistic competency. It utilizes a trauma-informed lens. It centers workers as people, not just inefficient robots.
I am excited to join the National Fund in this effort. We are at a very specific moment in history where the needs of frontline workers have been centered in the minds of many of us as a result of the pandemic and racial justice issues on the nightly news --clarifying the challenges faced by many. With the “great resignation” and the increase in worker power, employers embracing the concepts of worker voice, job redesign, and the human-centered approach will be solving for their workforce needs and they will be doing so at the table with their frontline workers.
To learn more about Human-Centered Design and how it might fit at your workplace, browse the National Fund’s Human-Centered Design Guide.
Mike Karman is a recent addition to the KentuckianaWorks team as a Sector Strategies Coordinator. He has many years of nonprofit experience, especially working with families and children.
