Uncertainty inevitably changes the way organisations behave.
When circumstances change, the pressure to show control and momentum intensifies. Leaders focus on structure, reporting, systems and speed – anything to regain a sense of stability.
At our recent Virtual Roundtable, “Humanising business: a view from outside HR”, we noticed the emergence of a clear tension. When volatility increases, organisations move away from human-centred leadership, just at the point where they need it most.
This retreat is understandable. Humanised work needs dialogue and shared ownership. Under pressure, those approaches can feel slower and less controllable than a more structural approach.
At our Virtual Roundtable, the experience of Tobias Haug during his time at SAP illustrated this clearly. His “Humanising Business” initiative delivered measurable commercial impact – strengthening internal pipelines, accelerating onboarding and improving retention. The business case was clear but scaling the work globally proved difficult. Leadership turnover, strategic resets and the pace of HR transformation reduced the impetus for culture-led change.
This is the risk during volatility: the focus narrows to what feels controllable and the deeper work of building trust, capability and ownership is quietly set to one side.
This really matters because the business consequences are real.
When change is experienced as something done to people instead of shaped by them, engagement becomes compliance and trust erodes.
In our world here at The Career Innovation Company, organisations see internal mobility slowing and career conversations shrinking to short-term performance – instead of long-term contribution. The irony is that organisations rely on adaptable, confident and commercially aware employees to see them through the tough times. To retreat from human-centred leadership weakens these key capabilities and tells them that their future may lay elsewhere.
The question is not whether humanised work is feasible during volatility. It’s whether, under pressure, we choose to protect the behaviours that build capability and careers – or allow them to quietly erode.
