It’s human nature.

Work has always been a central part of what it means to be human, from our survival to a sense of social cohesion. But over time, we’ve systematically stripped meaning, connection, and agency from work - the very notion of what it means to be human.

Our worth has become defined by what we produce, as who we are collapsed into what we do. We’ve lost the idea that our value exists beyond how useful or productive we are.

It’s not just a crisis of work, it’s a crisis of identity. And the result? Over 80% of us are unhappy at work.

A shared responsibility.

No economic system can thrive in the long-term if it burns out the very people it relies on. To build sustainable, productive economies, we need human beings to flourish at work. That means working environments that support agency, belonging, and competent contribution.

But while companies and systems fail us, we internalise the pressure to fix it ourselves. We are told to ‘set boundaries’ or ‘find our purpose’, and ‘bring our whole self to work’ - but we do so within environments that are designed to fragment and disconnect; reducing our identity to productivity and extracting relational from transactional.

Real change requires both:

• Individual agency and

• Systemic responsibility.

We need to empower people within environments that are actively designed to support, not sabotage them.

We need to put the human back into work

The future of work will not be measured by efficiency or productivity alone, but through adaptability, creativity, resilience, and social cohesion.

It’s a profoundly human, relational, and contextual thing. We need to bring the human being back to work.