The Arc of Empowerment: From Individual Contributor to Agent of Change
Cultivating worker agency to create the conditions needed for human flourishing
The labour market is evolving faster than ever. According to the World Economic Forum, 83 million jobs will be replaced by AI in the next 5 years alone. (This isn’t a doomsday article, I promise.) Whether you believe the role of AI in the future of work will be displacement, augmentation or something in between, the rapidly changing world of work is already disrupting an entire working generation’s belief of what security, stability and labour actually are.
As the present melts into the future and we continue to grapple with the global meaning crisis discussed by cognitive scientist John Vervaeke and highlighted by anthropologist David Graeber in his book Bullshit Jobs, it becomes increasingly critical to explore a new goal for our labour market: worker agency.
By empowering workers with agency, we will enable them to harness their unique experience, skills, and motivations to embody their purpose and add tangible value to society and the economy. Imagine if every member of your organisation was a change-maker capable of self-directing themselves, creating a culture of change-makers at every level? The more we can empower individual workers with agency, the more we increase our chances of creating the conditions needed for human flourishing at scale. This essay aims to make the case that widespread worker agency will increase our chances of meaningful human capital deployment and fulfilment across the labour market.
What is worker agency?
To begin defining what we mean by “worker agency”, we can look to Serj Hunt’s brilliant essay on learner agency:
“Consider the thermostat as a basic controller. It operates on a simple feedback loop: when the temperature drops below a certain set point, the thermostat “reacts” by turning the heating system on. When the temperature rises above the set point, it turns the system off. This is reactive control, not agency. Agency requires an additional step: a system must predict and evaluate future states by forming counterfactuals or many “what-if” scenarios.”
In a professional context, this ability to envision multiple possible worlds and then purposefully optimise for desired future states allows individuals to make autonomous decisions, take ownership of their work, and have trust in their ability to get the job done.
In other words, worker agency empowers individuals to move beyond mere task completion and embrace their ability to adapt, innovate and contribute unique perspectives and ideas. Historically, the remit for innovation has been reserved for managers rather than individual contributors. Empowering every worker to do this will challenge the idea that they’re simply a box-ticker, instead enabling them to act on the multiple possible realities that align with their team’s goals. In an AI-augmented economy, worker agency will become even more critical as it allows individuals to leverage their distinct human qualities–empathy, unpredictability and creativity–in conjunction with AI.
But what happens when worker agency is stifled?
We see the collapse of purpose, control, self-worth and authority. One manifestation of this can be seen in anthropologist David Graeber’s notion of "bullshit jobs", which refers to the idea that most people in the labour market find themselves trapped in jobs that they perceive as devoid of meaning and purpose. Not only is this demoralising for the individual, it is demoralising for the individual’s colleagues, managers, and peers. To not see those around you embody their "muchness", as I like to call it, when you so clearly see a future state of them as a fully agentic being, can be difficult. By cultivating worker agency, we can combat the crisis of meaning that Graeber discusses, instead providing individuals with the opportunity to engage in work that aligns with their values, interests and aspirations.
Some may argue that the level of agency one exhibits at work is predetermined by past experiences and trauma. For example, if someone has previously experienced working in a toxic professional environment, they may act with less agency in their current role, given lower levels of self-worth and a learnt pattern of submissive versus confident behaviour. While this view has merit, Adlerian psychology offers an interesting perspective here. In discussing the effect of past experience and trauma on present decisions and actions, Adler says:
“No experience is in itself a cause of our success or failure, we do not suffer from the shock of our experience but instead we make out of them whatever suits our purposes. We are not determined by our experiences but the meaning we give them is self-determining.”
In essence, he argues that the self–and, by extension, our agency–is determined not by our experiences, but by the meaning that we choose to give them.
The argument I aim to make in this essay is profoundly simple:
When workers become fully agentic beings, they flourish. Embodying worker agency is within our own power and can be strengthened by creating cultures that support this.
How can we instil greater worker agency?
1. Create a shared language which builds a shared reality of agency
As a linguistic relativist, I firmly believe that the language we speak heavily shapes the worldview we adopt and propagate. The root of many socio-cultural problems stems for the fact that we don't have a shared language to engage in productive discourse about certain ideas: worker agency is one of these.*
Here, I’m sharing my initial hypothesis about the traits that collectively empower a worker with agency. These are: coherence, contribution, confidence, risk tolerance, belonging and orientation to learning.
Coherence: Coherence refers to the ability to see connections, relate new information to one’s own work and ultimately derive meaning from one’s work. High coherence often means being mindful of how one’s work ties into broader organisational goals and being proactive when spotting an issue. High coherence is often blocked by a fear of uncertainty. When an individual is lacking in coherence, they are often unwilling to engage in open-ended discovery or exploration. If a worker can't make sense of (or find meaning in) information, they might disengage from their work and team due to confusion, leading to alienation and detachment.
Contribution: Contribution involves embodying a sense of self-worth that is derived from trusting that you do what you say you will do and feeling that you are making a contribution to others, the society, or the community. A lack of self-worth means that projects and goals are often reduced to an attempt to prove one’s worth to the company or community, simply by achieving more. Counterintuitively, workers with low self worth are often seen as very ambitious, since their goals are often status-oriented. In reality, those status-oriented goals are often disguising a deeper-seated insecurity around how one is contributing to the community around them.
Confidence: Confidence involves making meaningful decisions with autonomy and control. A lack of confidence often manifests as hesitation or seeking approval/permission from authority figures before acting. A fear of rejection often drives a lack of confidence and leads us to make decisions that are primarily aimed at avoiding others’ disapproval, rather than optimising for the best organisational outcome. People who are dealing with low levels of confidence are often victims of what I call “first opportunity bias”: when someone accepts the first opportunity they get, versus pursuing the opportunity they truly deserve. Operating from this place results in working in a way that is not truly values-aligned.
Risk tolerance: Risk tolerance involves using imagination and leveraging past experience when problem solving. When workers have low risk tolerance, they struggle to create novel solutions to problems, whereas workers with a high risk tolerance are often seen as more creative employees, since they are unafraid to make connections between different past experiences and act upon novel insights, even if they are not 100% certain that the outcome will meet intended goals or metrics.
Belonging: Belonging is about feeling supported and encouraged in a team environment. A feeling of belonging results in continuous collaboration, interacting with colleagues and providing and receiving support. People who feel as though they belong are often at ease when role-switching in the workplace. When workers struggle with collaboration, they often experience a lack of belonging. This lack of belonging can manifest as imposter syndrome and a lack of safety at work. They might carry too much burden before asking for help or fail to recognise the value of diverse perspectives, thus resulting in lower quality solutions.
Orientation to learning: Orientation to learning is about being open to learning new things. This involves asking questions, exhibiting a desire to learn more and delving below the surface. It involves not being too fragile and dependent, nor too rigid and persistent. If a worker is rigidly persistent, they believe that their way is the only way and are often reluctant to switch tacks. Conversely, if workers are too fragile dependent, they are unable to work independently, constantly seeking direction or permission from above.
2. Instil values literacy as widely as possible
I will likely dedicate another essay to this vast topic, but given how it dovetails with the language we have created above, I’ll touch on it here.
In its most basic sense, values literacy refers to the capacity to understand, evaluate and articulate one's values and the values embedded in social systems. By fostering values literacy, we can equip individuals with a framework for understanding which traits they have in abundance and which traits they’re lacking in. Agency without meaning is, after all, rather useless.
The School for Social Design suggests a brilliant framework with which to develop values awareness. Each value has three key components: (a) a context (b) an attentional policy and (c) a source of meaning. One example of this is:
“(a) When meeting new people or experimenting with novel ideas or activities, (b) exhibit abundant curiosity and wonder, without constraint or expectation. (c) When I do this, life and relationships set alight with possibility.”
Collectively, these components create a unique value e.g., Exhibit Curiosity, which can be recalled when making important professional decisions or having to make a high-stakes tradeoff.
Instilling values literacy in the workforce will lead to more individuals engaging in self-reflection, gaining a deeper understanding of their core beliefs and acting in a way that is aligned with their personal values. The hypothesis is that a deeper level of self-awareness will enable individuals to make more meaningful decisions about what to work on and with whom they should work. Values awareness will also help workers identify which worker agency traits they are lacking in, enabling them to do the work necessary to empower themselves with a fuller sense of agency and meaning.
Shared language is just the first step
Creating a shared language around worker agency and encouraging values literacy is just the first step, but an incredibly pivotal one. If we can reach a shared reality where organisations and individuals alike recognise the importance of embodying worker agency to reach their full potential and add tangible value to their organisation, we can then work to define strategies that help employers and employees identify which traits they are lacking in and support them in embodying those.
Ultimately, embodying worker agency at both the individual and organisational level is necessary to create the conditions needed for human flourishing. If we can cultivate workplaces, digital spaces and professional communities that place values literacy and worker agency at their core, we will help foster the meaningful deployment of human potential and contribute to the alleviation of today’s meaning and mental health crises.
Inspiration & Further Reading
*I was originally inspired to write this essay after diving into cognitive scientist Guy Claxton’s and Ruth Crick’s work around Learning Power. For a succinct explanation of, ready Serj Hunt’s recent essay here.
The Meaning Crisis, John Vervaeke
Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber
The Courage to be Disliked, Fumitake Koga and Ichiro Kishimi
Five Core Fears that Warp Ambition, Casey Rosengren