Sparks: Humans, Not Tools: How Employee Experience Can Unlock Engagement and Bring Humanity Back to the Workplace

We often talk about employee engagement, but before that comes something deeper: experience itself. Just like we invest our own time and money into personal experiences that create lasting memories, employees evaluate their organizations through the experiences they have at work. The problem? For over a century, companies have designed work as if humans were robots—linear, rigid, process-driven, and void of humanity. From definitions of “manager” as “slave driver” to “employee” as “cog,” the very language of work reveals how broken the system has been. But times have changed. In today's Leadership Spark, we'll unpack the true meaning of experience at work and why it’s become the defining factor of the future workplace. If organizations want to attract, retain, and inspire talent, they must redesign around humanity, not utility. This episode explores why experience is the missing link between engagement and performance, and how leaders can bring humanity back to work.

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