Why can’t workplaces care more about people?

Alt title: Trevor Noah, Simon Sinek and Shrayana Bhattacharya walk into a bar my brain

There’s this conversation between Trevor Noah and Simon Sinek whose snippets kept popping up on my Instagram Reels for months. I had some time between hospital visits today, so I finally decided to watch the whole conversation — pretty powerful for something just 24 minutes long. There’s a lot to take away, but I want to focus on one thing that struck me a couple of times, and specifically in these chapters in the video.

15:28 Do Women Understand Friendship Better Than Men?
2:40 The Sacrifice of Friendship for Success
19:21 Friendship vs. Success: Prioritizing People Over Work

At 15:28, Simon Sinek draws a contrast between how women and men respond to some of his work, in that women get what he talks about but men ask for case-studies to prove that “trusting people, loving people, taking care of people is a good thing for business”. This reminded me of something Shrayana Bhattacharya wrote in November, 2024 about the ‘care economy’, so I went back and re-read it, and I came across this portion (again):

Some of us, often women, are encouraged to nurture the caring instinct, while others, largely men, are not given the skills or social sanction to comfortably inhabit these roles. In my interviews with elite middle-aged men from all-boys boarding schools, their capabilities at fatherhood remained a chief lament. Most gained strong skills for being economic providers, but this was often coupled with a belief that boys derived self-worth, love and meaning largely from their ability to signal their place in the market of real estate, status or wealth. All their lives, they had been taught to care about competing. We need a different curriculum, especially for men — both at home and in educational institutions.

My other highlights from the piece are here

Back to the video, the portions at 2:40 and 19:21 talk about people prioritising work over friends but rarely vice-versa, a “lop-sided” sacrifice, that in times of crisis it would be friends that would rescue you “Your friends will be there for you, your work won’t”. And how people in that room full of ‘successful people’ often said that they hadn’t seen their friends in a while, and so on.

This is great, but in many of the jobs we have, can anyone ever imagine skipping a meeting because you have to meet a friend? I want to draw this out a little bit more, and ask why we don’t have workplaces that are generally more caring and accommodating? Think of the mental and sometimes, physical, gymnastics many of us had to do to work while being sick, or working through some deep personal issues. Heck, some of us deal with this because of biology (think, menstruation [obviously this doesn’t include me, so that ‘us’ is not literal]).

And yet, we often find, that many places are not willing to do this. “Deadlines will suffer”, “client/customers will be unhappy”, “(something, something) urgency”, “this is not how businesses are run”, so goes the list — at some point many of us heard / listed one of these reasons. My takeaway from what Simon and Shrayana point out is that even if some people understand the importance of taking care of people, the underlying structures don’t allow for it at scale.

Why don’t workplaces care more about people?

Aside: At this point, I should say that I’ve generally been fortunate on this front, and had organisations / specific people at organisations who were understanding and accommodating through sickness, tragedy, leisure (planned/communicated in advance). And I’ve always tried to pay it forward on the occasions I’ve been in positions of authority. ¹.

Let’s work with the menstruation example a bit more. For a period, I did work at an organisation that had the concept of menstrual leaves. But in that time, I’ve also had conversations with many menstruating persons where they have expressed their scepticism and / or worry about discrimination as an outcome. Look, many of them have likely been at the receiving end of gendered discrimination, ‘casual sexism/misogyny’ during their careers, and it is not my place to question this bit. But, what I do question is:

Why workplaces can’t be more accommodating?
Why can’t they adapt to half the population?
Why does it have to be the other way around?

Or, more generally, why do people have to ‘balance’ work and ‘life’ ². This abstraction of workplaces / organisations obscures that it is ultimately, people everywhere.

So, I ask: ‘Why can’t people care more about people?’

Yes, this is idealistic, even naive. Yes, there may be challenges at scale, and a new equilibrium may need to be found. But the status quo/current equilibrium works against most people and forces them into false choices. And that needs to shift.

I am reminded of another line from the Shrayana Bhattacharya opinion piece I referenced earlier:

Beyond the economy propelled by consumption and costly penalties, there is one propelled by love, desire, care, concern and connection. Take the latter more seriously.

Seriously, why can’t people care more about people?

To what extent I actually succeeded in doing this is something you have to ask people who have worked with me↩︎
Think about how funny it sounds to say we need to balance life↩︎

Why can’t workplaces care more about people? AND Why can’t people care more about people?

Alt title: Trevor Noah, Simon Sinek and Shrayana Bhattacharya walk into a bar my brain