Forum Sees Need for People-First Leadership in Workplace

NAPERVILLE, Ill., Aug. 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As a post-recession America anxiously heads for the 116th celebration of Labor Day, the national holiday celebrating the contributions of the labor of ordinary men and women, the Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement calls for a new style of business leadership in its white paper: "Leading In The New Age of Putting People First."  The paper outlines how businesses can implement a new people-centered leadership style that focuses on "employee enrichment" to help make a demographically diverse and socially connected workforce feel more valued.

Based on the idea that ordinary workers are "the lifeblood of an organization," the paper points out that leaders need to be more "genuinely concerned" about the quality of their employees' lives, not just focused on job performance and ROI.

"Given the workplace stresses of the last few years, we find that leaders need to not only encourage the job-related growth of their employees at work, but they also need to be concerned about their employees' personal growth," says Beth Schelske, Forum president. "This approach recognizes that employee concerns and contributions go beyond, and profoundly influence, the workplace."  

Jennifer Rosenzweig, Forum director of research, points out that the idea of enrichment leadership expands a leader's role to include genuine concern about helping employees to truly have better lives.

"Organizations that can better address the complicated needs of their people will be in a much better position to create the long term relationship that begins with a people-first orientation and ends with the better results we need to emerge from the recession," she continued.

As the ability to attract, retain and motivate good workers becomes increasingly important in a post-recession economy, an enrichment leadership perspective may well help determine a company's ultimate success.

A copy of the white paper is available at: www.performanceforum.org.

The Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement (www.performanceforum.org) is a research center within the Medill Integrated Marketing Communications graduate program at Northwestern University. A central objective of the Forum is to develop and disseminate knowledge about communications, motivation and management so that businesses can better design, implement and manage Employee Engagement initiatives inside and outside the organization.

SOURCE Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement