Humanising business: a view from outside HR

Our latest virtual roundtable here at The Career Innovation Company – “Humanising business: a view from outside HR” – looked at how organisations can achieve this in a way that delivers measurable business impact. The session featured Tobias Haug, Founder of the Humanizing Business Network and former Chief Happiness Officer at SAP, who shared an insider perspective on moving human-centred work from concept to commercial impact.

Building a business case for culture

As technology reshapes how work gets done, all organisations are trying to unlock productivity and performance, without losing the human elements that matter most. Drawing on his experience at SAP, a global organisation of more than 110,000 employees, Tobias described how culture became positioned not as a HR programme but as a strategic lever owned jointly by business leaders and the people function.

At the heart of the initiative was a clear proposition: sustainable success is created through engaged, empowered and inspired people. Culture, in this framing, belongs to everyone and is expressed in everyday interactions, rather than formal statements or policies.

A central theme was to connect culture directly to commercial outcomes. Working within a sales organisation, where revenue is the dominant measure of success, the initiative focused on four critical business outcomes:

• Recruitment. Bring better talent into the organisation faster.
• Time to Revenue. Accelerate the onboarding and contribution of new hires.
• Raise the ceiling. Boost performance trajectory via empowerment and autonomy.
• Increase longevity. Retain and support valued employees.

These elements were brought together in what became known as the organisational revenue model. By shortening time to hire, accelerating on-boarding, increasing empowerment and improving retention, the team were able to demonstrate measurable year-on-year impact, including significant revenue gains.

Importantly, the work was not positioned as a HR-led culture initiative. It began as a board-level intervention and was driven within the business, with HR acting as a partner, rather than a service provider. This shift in ownership proved critical for its success. Culture is behaviour between individuals and teams, expressed daily, and therefore requires engagement and accountability at every level.

Practical actions to change behaviour

Two practical examples illustrated how ’Humanising Business’ translated into concrete action.

The first was the Manager Profile Workshop. When a management role became available, teams participated in a short, structured session to define the profile and expectations of their future manager. Rather than receiving a job description from above, employees co-created it. The process generated empathy, clarified expectations and created a feedback loop in which teams could hold leaders accountable against agreed behaviours. Over time, the workshop became standard practice across multiple management levels.

The second was the FlexWork Workshop, developed in the aftermath of Covid, as teams returned to the office. Instead of making attendance mandatory, teams mapped their working patterns across two dimensions: frequency and collaboration. Activities done frequently and independently were suited to remote work; high-collaboration activities indicated value in physical co-location.

Teams then created explicit commitments about how and when they would work together. The result was not only clearer hybrid working norms, but increased ownership and transparency across functions.

These interventions were deliberately small and pragmatic. Yet they reinforced autonomy, clarified expectations and strengthened collaboration. In Barcelona, where the initiative was piloted, the combination of measurable business impact and behavioural change created strong local momentum. However, scaling proved more complex – what worked in one location required local leadership, sponsorship and capability to translate it effectively elsewhere.

Our view

Tobias’s incredible work with SAP highlights a clear link between human-centred culture and business performance. It really helps when outcomes are defined in commercial terms and the metrics used resonate strongly with any successful career strategy.

Our view at The Career Innovation Company is that when career pathways are visible and principles are explicit, success follows. Organisations enjoy a career multiplier effect through improved attraction and recruitment, increased engagement and greater performance potential. And when people see a future career for themselves within the organisation, retention improves.

From our perspective, three aspects are particularly relevant:

• Thinking. Establish an explicit career philosophy that connects careers to business outcomes and prevents fragmented decision-making.
• Delivery. Implement scalable interventions and resources that genuinely shift behaviour for managers and employees.
• Enablement. Look for ways to build internal capability, so you can sustain and localise change at scale.

‘Humanising business’ is not separate from careers – it is central to its success. It reinforces the need for clarity, ownership and practical mechanisms that enable people to navigate growth with autonomy and purpose. When culture and career strategy align, both commercial and human outcomes can only benefit.