Premise
Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report found that globally, employee engagement fell from 23% to 21% in 2024, matching the size of the drop seen at the height of COVID lockdowns.
This level of drop has only happened twice in the last 15 years. Even a single percentage point increase in engagement can lead to millions of dollars in productivity gain.
This made me think about the reasons for this drop and I believe that the answer is hiding in plain sight. It lives in two words.
Two words that have become so deeply embedded in the vocabulary of modern business that we rarely stop to question them.
Human Resources.
Think about what those two words communicate. We have taken the most complex, creative, and emotionally rich entity on the planet, a human being, and reduced them to a “resource.” We have equated them to budgets, software licenses, and office supplies.
We allocate them. We utilize them. We calculate their cost-to-company. And when they are no longer useful, we let them go or replace them with others or increasingly with technology (AI).
Then we wonder why they are not engaged and why cultural phenomenon like quiet quitting emerge. Organizations have little to no loyalty towards them but expect them to be loyal and bring their full selves to work.
Language Shapes Behavior and Behavior shapes Language
This is not just a semantic argument. The words we use, shape our perceptions, our beliefs, our decisions, and our behaviors. And these behaviors then reinforce the language that we use. This then becomes a self-reinforcing loop.
When we look at humans as resources, we end up treating them like any other resource – a line item on a balance sheet or a spreadsheet, replaceable at will.
Consider the ripple effect. When we say “my resources,” it communicates ownership. When we say “my team,” it communicates belonging. When we say “our people,” it communicates a shared responsibility.
These are not interchangeable phrases. Each one creates a different relationship, a different set of expectations, and a very different experience of work.
A leader who talks about “talent acquisition” thinks in terms of transactions. A leader who talks about “finding the right person for the team” thinks in terms of relationships.
The first optimizes for speed and cost while the other optimizes for fit, growth, and long-term commitment.
The Research Is Clear: De-humanization Destroys Engagement
This is not just intuition. A growing body of academic research now studies exactly this phenomenon under the term “organizational de-humanization.”
In a 2017 research paper, Florence Stinglhamber and Gaëtane Caesens found that when employees feel de-humanized at work, it directly threatens their self-esteem and self-concept, depletes their psychological resources, and leads to exhaustion. Exhausted employees are neither engaged nor effective.
By 2024, Lagios and colleagues expanded this research across five studies involving 2,635 participants and found something even more troubling: organizational de-humanization does not stay at the office. It spills over into employees’ family lives, increasing work-to-family conflict and reducing relationship satisfaction among their family members.
Read that again.
The way we treat people at work follows them home.
Referring to humans as resources is a legacy from the industrial age where the humans in the factory floor were resources, one’s that could be replaced at will, just like machinery or any other resource. As we no longer work in that age, this is an outdated concept that needs to be weeded out.
What is our role here?
Lets be clear – waiting for the HR department or anyone else to come fix this is a cop-out. The problem lies in the very definition of the department.
It is up to us, as leaders, to start where we are – instead of asking for “headcount” or resources, can we change the language and start asking for “help”.
It is up to us to listen to them, genuinely and create a culture that is safe for them to share their thoughts and perspectives.
It is up to us to not treat them as numbers on a spreadsheet or a box on the organizational charts when debating options about their future within our teams, whether it is re-organizing them into different teams or having to let go.
It is up to us to hire well so that we don’t have to come to the point of letting people go. If we are having to lay off people in large swathes, it is in some parts a failure of our leadership.
It is up to us to curate a culture that seeks to bring out the best from everyone on the team and for the team to perform at their absolute best capability.
We need to shift from the concept of Humans as Resources or assets to Humans as beings, with all their complexity, strengths, weaknesses, creativity and who brings with them their knowledge and perspectives.
This shift of thinking of human as resources, to human as beings, is fundamentally a leadership responsibility. It requires leaders at every level — not just the C-suite — to make a conscious decision to see people differently and to act on that decision daily.
So, What We Can Do Today
Ideas without action are just ideas. So, here is something we can do today — not next quarter, not after the next leadership offsite. Today.
Let’s audit our language. Let’s pay close attention to how we talk about the people we lead — in meetings, in emails, in Slack messages, and in our own internal dialogue.
Every time we catch ourselves using the word “resource” to refer to someone, can we take a pause. And instead, can we refer to them by their name. Let’s give them the dignity and respect they deserve.
This is not about being politically correct or pure semantics. This is about breaking the self-reinforcing loop that leads to de-humanization and re-wiring how we think.
Let’s learn to see the whole person — someone with aspirations, experiences and who has the potential to contribute, just like us. Someone whose potential we can help unlock. By doing this, we start to give them the dignity and respect that they deserve, that every human deserves.
Then take it one step further. In our next one-on-one, before we ask for a status update, let’s ask a question that helps us connect with them – human to human – “How are you doing — really?” or “What do you need from me to do better?” or even a simple, “How can I be of service or help to you?”.
You might be surprised at what people share when they believe you genuinely care about the answer.
And you will be surprised by them and their impact – pleasantly.
The world does not need more leaders who are good at managing resources. It needs leaders who are good at seeing human beings — in all their messiness, brilliance, and potential. This shift can transform you from being a manager to a leader worth following.
That shift does not require a budget, a strategy deck, or executive approval. It requires a choice. And you can make it today.
Treating humans as beings might not only be the best thing that can happen to them, it can also be the best thing that happens to your team.
That 2% drop in the Gallup data isn’t a mystery. It is the accumulated cost of millions of small moments where a person was treated like a line item.
We cannot fix that at the policy level. But we can fix it at the human level, in our next meeting, our next one-on-one, our next conversation. And we can start today.
