Many months ago, over a friend’s dinner table, I found myself disagreeing with two peers I’d come to respect and admire. They were both employed by virtue of their abilities as creatives, and spoke at length about how they’d never do their best work for a company that employed them. Their arguments were sound – relationship with work is fundamentally transactional, the reward was rarely worth the effort, and it never truly aligned with their beliefs they held personally. 

Call me young and naive, but I could not help disagreeing. However, at the time, I could not articulate my point of view convincingly enough, so I filed it away at the back of my head. This interaction remained there until I was thinking of the theme for Humanise’s third volume. And after throwing it around the various vestiges of my cranium over a long-ish walk, I had a theory I wanted to validate. 

I think many things need to align for you to give your best efforts to your employer, but core to that is feeling comfortable in your own skin. Our beliefs and lived experiences shape our identity at work, and that decides the places we work at, the projects we pick up, and the people we work with. 

This is an important, yet intangible aspect companies need to consider. Because culture is an amalgamation of our identities at work, and it influences everything from the policies we publish to whether it’s frowned upon to have your camera off during a call. And this amalgamation of identities influences how companies are perceived, both internally and externally. 

The best talent in the world has the privilege of choice. They get to choose their problem statements and it is often decided by whether their core principles align with the company. It is why someone proud to work at Anthropic might never consider working at xAI and vice versa, and why a fast paced culture will look attractive to one person, while another wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole. Therefore, respecting identity and cultivating expression at the workplace is an important conversation for everyone involved in this great charade we call workplace culture – for people leaders trying to hire great talent, for people looking to do their best work, for policymakers in general. 

In this edition, we explore this relationship between the employee, the employer, and both their identities through six pieces by six articulate writers. 

We open with Mitasha’s piece, which explores a world where we wear our identities on our sleeves, and yet are confused about what identity really is. Sunita views intergenerational conflict at the workplace through a simple premise – our relationship with work is tied to our identities, which in turn is tied to the era we grew up in. While Sanjana writes about the intangible instances of bias and microaggressions faced by women who refuse to conform, Kirthika explores how the male gaze influences everything at the workplace from design to culture to career choices. Gautam writes about the man in the arena, and how founders and CEOs grapple with their identity as a leader of the workplace. And finally Praful posits that meaningful DEI is designed not for one group, but cuts across caste, gender, neurodivergence, and more. 

I encourage you to read these pieces with an open mind, and think about them when you have a conversation around workplace policy, culture, and identity. 

And finally, while I’m proud of the themes this volume covers, I wish we could have platformed more diverse voices and perspectives. This is a personal failing, and I apologize for all the stories we could not explore by virtue of my ignorance. That said, there will be many more editions of Humanise, and many more opportunities to get this right. If you have a piece or an idea you’d like us to publish, write to me at ganapathi.r@plumhq.com. 

Bouquets and well meaning brickbats (no matter how harsh) welcome. :)