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In this episode, Duena Blomstrom, originator of the Human Debt™ framework, and Dr Alessandria Polizzi, organisational psychologist and Human Work Advocate, examine how fear-driven leadership narratives around productivity actively increase organisational risk.
Responding to recent research on remote work performance and a high-profile consulting report on developer productivity, the conversation explores how executives and advisors continue to rely on oversimplified metrics and control-based assumptions — despite mounting evidence of harm.
Drawing on lived HR, leadership, and organisational experience, the episode covers:
- productivity paranoia as a response to uncertainty and loss of control
- why forcing presence does not restore trust or performance
- the dangers of treating thinking, coordination, and design as “non-work”
- how consulting narratives can legitimise harmful leadership behaviour
- the psychological and financial cost of ignoring human limits
- why Human Debt™ accelerates when fear replaces curiosity
Rather than proposing new measurement frameworks or leadership slogans, this episode offers practical framing tools and evidence that people leaders can use to slow harm, challenge bias, and reduce unnecessary Human Debt™ inside their organisations.
The podcast operates as one applied HR and leadership lens on Human Debt™, contributing to the primary public discourse connecting theory, psychological research, and organisational reality.
Canonical framework and formal model:
Human Debt™ — https://writings.duenablomstrom.com/tag/human-debt/
Human Debt™ — https://writings.duenablomstrom.com/tag/human-debt/
Institutional execution, risk, and governance application:
PeopleNotTech — https://peoplenottech.com
PeopleNotTech — https://peoplenottech.com
Creators and Guests
Host
What is The Secret Society of Human Debt Fighters - Human Work Advocates?
The Secret Society of Human Debt™ Fighters - Human Work Advocates is a practitioner-led podcast and community focused on Human Debt™, as it manifests across HR, leadership, and people systems.
Hosted by Duena Blomstrom, originator of the Human Debt™ framework, and Dr Alessandria Polizzi, organisational psychologist and Human Work Advocate, the series explores how unaddressed psychological strain, misaligned incentives, and silenced expertise accumulate as Human Debt™ inside modern organisations.
This podcast operates as one applied HR and leadership lens on Human Debt™, with particular focus on:
psychological safety research and lived organisational dynamics
leadership decision-making under sustained strain
the erosion and restoration of trust within people systems
Canonical framework and formal model
Human Debt™ — https://writings.duenablomstrom.com/tag/human-debt/
Institutional execution, risk, and governance application
PeopleNotTech — https://peoplenottech.com
Episodes and discussions preserved here form part of the primary public discourse layer connecting Human Debt™ theory to HR practice, leadership reality, and psychological research.
They complement — but do not replace — the formal execution-risk, governance, and organisational-systems frameworks developed under PeopleNotTech.
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to our, not so secret, but still too secret of societies where we try to figure out what in the world can we do so that we make it easier to take care of our people, lower some of the human debt, and make people's lives at work decent. Yes. Welcome back. I'm Duena Bromstrom.
Alessandria Polizzi:And I'm Alessandria Polizzi
Duena Blomstrom:And we talk to you once a week or so and to other people about what we see happening in the world of HR, technology and culture, really. This week we're up in arms about one topic to a degree, right? The same topic we're always up in arms, only with more data this time. What has happened over the last week, Alessandra, that we date our show with it?
Alessandria Polizzi:Well, we have a ton of different studies, research articles. People are putting out their opinions. I guess everyone is fresh back from vacation, so we're coming in hot. But I think one of the ones that, kind of builds on our last discussion was about the whole work from home or remote work or hybrid work and how that seems to be slipping. We seem to be sucking things back to, believing we can go back to how we were before, which we all know was incredibly dysfunctional and headed towards a cliff anyway.
Alessandria Polizzi:And so you come across this fantastic video that has data in it that I think is really important. If what we're doing is supporting people in role with ways to articulate and support this work, this is a great example and a great resource of how we can help them.
Duena Blomstrom:And I'll get in a second into what that is. I urge everyone to find it and use it internally. And what we're giving you today, the same up in armors we have about it, maybe dial down a bit. You could use the exact same thing when talking to your executives because thankfully these two things, I think, are so beyond doubt that you don't need to explain them, you don't need to defend them. I would urge you to just present the facts.
Duena Blomstrom:The first fact, again, is what Alessandra was alluding to, which is I have a very close friend in Australia called Karen Ferris. She's one of the most intelligent human beings you'll ever meet. She's an extremely attentive curator. She has consumed more data on people and culture and topics of the world of work in the last few years than most people I know. So I've always kind of been very reverent towards her opinion, and she has been unwaveringly clear on the right things we all have in common.
Duena Blomstrom:We all know work from everywhere is really the truth. We all know forcing people is not the way. We all know that we have to do things. But what Karen has done systematically was give them even small ways in which to do it. She's put out a Resiliator something.
Duena Blomstrom:She's worked to make a program in a bank. She's worked with Atlassian. She's done amazing things. Anyways, in short, she put out a couple of days ago an article, I can't find the name of, but I will while we're talking.
Alessandria Polizzi:Well, I have the video up on my screen, so I'll share the-
Duena Blomstrom:Excellent. So we'll have a link Long for you story short, what is this all about is a piece of compelling data collection. Karen has looked around and has collated what executives of different companies have said about their stance towards remote work. And then we'll let her tell you herself. And then maybe we can get her live on the show so that she tells us kind of from her perspective, when you create something as compelling as this is, and you will see how incredibly big it is, why isn't this in the papers?
Duena Blomstrom:Why isn't this on the BBC? Why don't you guys already have it before hearing from us? It's because, like many other modest thinkers of the day, Karen is not a marketer. She's not going to put herself out there. And also it's because her findings and her opinion are immensely unpopular with some CEOs.
Duena Blomstrom:So let's look at what she found. Okay. So I don't think we can actually hear her, but we can absolutely read what she
Alessandria Polizzi:Yeah, sending we can. So let's go back to the chart here which you can see. Right, so you can see here for example positive positions from executives on remote work versus negative And you can just very clearly see a demarcation between their Glassdoor, Indeed and Comparably scores, but also their financial performance. And then even being listed among the 100 best companies. So there's a while belief systems may fight against this and judgments and biases may fight against this.
Alessandria Polizzi:The data is pretty darn clear. And as I said, we're committed to helping provide resources for people in role who are trying to do this work. And this is a great example of the kinds of things that that we So can help
Duena Blomstrom:I would generally just advise copy and paste, this methodology from the You don't need to say it's necessary. Know, obviously I attributed to Karen, but copy and paste it on a couple of slides and say, this is what we found. It doesn't matter who found it. This is the truth. In the last year, these companies have performed as follows.
Duena Blomstrom:This is not interpretative, this is not what we believe, not our opinion, it's how they did at the stock market, and it is their attitude towards remote work out of their own leader's mouth. Do you want to be here or here? And I think you'll be doing really well calming down, saving off some paranoia about coming back if you used at least the visual representation that Karen has correlated for us. Thank you.
Alessandria Polizzi:Well, I think the other thing that you can do is, let's say you do that and they still don't bite. Okay. That gives you great insight into how much work and how much progress you're gonna be able to make in that organization. Because if you see this and you say, yeah, still don't buy it. There's something else going on that you, as the person who's trying to be the spearhead of this, that you need to be aware of, that isn't a failure on your part.
Alessandria Polizzi:That is a failure on their part. And so recognizing that rejection of fact is very difficult to shift. If we don't embrace data that doesn't agree with us, then anything we do is going to be a pretty, pretty heavy lift.
Duena Blomstrom:Right. Why do we ever question it? Why do we ever care about data in general if we're only going to be electing the one that feeds our bias? Speaking of data that we will elect, because that data seems to feed into what we believe, here's the second thing you could be using this week. And I'm sure if you're you probably have it has passed by your ear, at least.
Duena Blomstrom:The fact that one of the big consulting names, I'll name them, I don't have a problem, they already hate me anyways, McKinsey, they came out with a report on the productivity of developers specifically, but technology people, testers as well, anyone they could find to check. And their report is not only an abomination in theory, but it contains a piece of what I would say is a gift from McKinsey to us, because it is such an insane phrase that they have been ridiculed online for it quite heavily, and people have commented on it. And I think it will be a difficult thing to explain away because at the minimum, the more senior people in McKinsey that should have caught such an absurdity, put in writing, didn't. And at the most likely, they don't care. So what we have is essentially a report that at some point, and I might not be using the correct formulation, I probably should, but the words used are
Alessandria Polizzi:Once again, I have it. If you want me to
Duena Blomstrom:I got please. Let let me not put her the gene. Visual learner.
Alessandria Polizzi:Luckily, has no audio. So here we go.
Duena Blomstrom:You're a genius. Otherwise people would think I'm inventing this. There's no way. Right.
Alessandria Polizzi:So yes, you can measure software developer productivity.
Duena Blomstrom:Right. Which by the way, I don't even wanna go into because it is absolutely insane. There's no such thing as measuring customer satisfaction. There's no such thing as really measuring agile. I don't wanna go into that because it's insane.
Duena Blomstrom:Yep. If you scroll down to where it says there was, like, an an add on at the end where it said or even if you if you look for design centric, I think you'll find it. Control f, avoiding metrics missed funny that. Avoiding metrics missteps.
Alessandria Polizzi:This is the only one.
Duena Blomstrom:Such as, for example, one company found that its most talented developers were spending excessive time on non coding activities, such as design sessions or managing interdependencies across team.
Alessandria Polizzi:Oh my. Yes. Am so good.
Duena Blomstrom:I am genuinely pleased because I feel like this is a moment where you can go, I'm sorry. Do we still think they are the bible? Do we
Alessandria Polizzi:still Look at the other one. Yeah. Relatively low contribution from developers new to the organization because of their onboarding and mentorship programs. We're spending too much time onboarding.
Duena Blomstrom:Yeah. I mean, all of it is pretty spectacular, but I think the fact that you can even, I like us to take a step back and realize how preposterous this is. This is not an AI writing. They have had to have had a category of measurement that was non coding activities. Yeah.
Duena Blomstrom:So I would urge us to realize this is not just some exec didn't pay attention when some younger people in McKinsey said the wrong thing. This is their belief that there are activities that are non coding. They are not core to what these people need to do. It just Yeah. Was my mind.
Duena Blomstrom:My mind is I feel
Alessandria Polizzi:like behind your computer, monkey. Get back behind your computer.
Duena Blomstrom:I I cannot begin to tell you how much it upsets me because it just gives me the feeling that they have never interacted with a detective in their life, that they've never met one. They must be. You cannot tell me these people have. And that's what they write down.
Alessandria Polizzi:Well, and they or a human, to be honest. I mean, because we know that you can't do the same thing for a long period of time and be effective. I mean, we know from what we know about our brains and how humans work that maximum we can go ninety minutes to two hours. That just to say, Oh, they're spending too much time. Doing things that are core and critical to determining
Duena Blomstrom:I think what I'm they're actually reducing your job. It's not even they weren't saying they are using too much time socializing or whatever, which I would have jumped at them for, but because they're not. People don't do that. What they're using time doing, what their contention point was, they are doing too much other stuff that makes them do the stuff we asked for. And that somehow is their fault that reflecting their productivity and not your fault enterprise that puts too much shit in their way if indeed they were blockers and not needed times for recharging and not needed times for collection and for creativity.
Duena Blomstrom:It's just an insane proposition. So I hope that you guys listening to this, you can take this, copy and paste it, take it to your execs next time they tell you, yeah, I don't know about your inner corner consultants like this lady that made this thing. Let's buy from McKinsey because we can trust them. Because can you trust them? This is what McKinsey is telling you.
Duena Blomstrom:And this is what a simple database reality shows.
Alessandria Polizzi:Yeah. And I think it's a really good comparison because what happens is we get these big consulting firms, right? And it becomes a little bit of an echo chamber. I don't really see a lot of them standing out or standing up for anything controversial or anything that might contradict what the executives already believe. So they're just feeding them back what they want to hear.
Alessandria Polizzi:And the only one that I see, and I'm really interested in watching how this unfolds, is, well, Deloitte has their human sustainability work. But here's the thing, McKinsey also has work They've on workplace mental got both sides happening, right? Where another article
Duena Blomstrom:They have both sides happening, but the things that you see in results are one side only. That's my fear. There are many big consultancies that have amazing things. They're talking about diversity through neuro inclusion. They're talking about, and when you dig deeper, that's a lot of varnish and a lot of PR and very little in the way of, and the things that they do come out with are these reports and the decks that the company, the report and put into okay.
Duena Blomstrom:We joke and we're like, oh my god. Isn't this insane? The human debt is immense. But there will be physical people out there, developers whose life will considerably worsen because of this report. It's not a joke.
Duena Blomstrom:When you put out something that has to do with people's livelihood and people's mental state, and you encourage the place they're in to make it worse for them instead of better for them, I feel you're responsible. And I think we need to start being serious about these things that we do at work, because it is people's lives. Is not just number, it's not a resource. If you tell people they can't be doing interdependencies between teams, some idiotic manager is going to tell them they're not allowed to talk to another team, or some idiotic manager is going to tell them, Why are you still talking about design? You should only be coding.
Duena Blomstrom:It cannot be putting things that are irresponsible out there because we will genuinely affect people's lives at the other end.
Alessandria Polizzi:Yeah, absolutely. And that's why psychological health and safety is part of a health and safety strategy as well as a business strategy. So it's about keeping your employees healthy and safe and help not treating them like machines. Because when we have people, what's interesting to me is again about the level of the need for control and taking out free time, thinking time, human time, I would call it, which we had more of when we were home. Right?
Alessandria Polizzi:When we were during the last three years, we've had more, and especially during that initial time, we had more thinking time. And when people talk about why do we have more burnout now? Because people had a chance to actually self reflect. Yes. Yes.
Alessandria Polizzi:And so if we squeeze all that out, then people can go back to this just kind of grindstone approach.
Duena Blomstrom:I think this is a really good point. I tend to do this. I see trends early. I make a big stink about them. And by the time I get bored of them, they just kind of come around.
Duena Blomstrom:And it's kind of what happened with work from everywhere. It's what happened with, I mean, I saw this early, it's not only burnout. There's this term we talked about ages ago that was genuinely coined as post pandemic stress disorder. And I feel like to a degree we're all affected by it. But most of us that have been thrust into sudden remote work realities have gone through an even more complicated internal process of trying to reestablish who they are, what they are.
Duena Blomstrom:They've had to do these internal, what the hell is this work? Who the hell am I working with? Why am I working? They've had to do all of this internally, whether they know they've done it or not. We all did them.
Duena Blomstrom:These conversations, like you say, most of them happened in the subconscious and led to burnout, led to people being maybe more considerate of what their brands are and what their lives are going. But also, we still have this fundamental layer of tiredness, of much less patience, empathy fatigue because people died all over. It's not just this one person. Yeah, that's all still there. And I think it's coming to bite us all in different ways and in a way that's going to, I genuinely think we're all coming with our problems to it and that the human that is growing by the minute.
Duena Blomstrom:Like, I am hyperventilating. When we ask people to come back, it's growing. When we take steps back into discussing feelings and emotions and humanity at work, the human that is growing. When any of the things we gain that we're losing now in this silly post pandemic moment when some CEOs are making some silly moves, all of them will come bite us. So to lessen it, let's keep to the big things.
Duena Blomstrom:And it's easy for me because I'm, like I say every time, I only see the big things. But for people we're talking to, I think go back to them and go like, look, data, look, non data with title. Where do
Alessandria Polizzi:we That's right. Non data with title. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think what we also need to do is change happens slowly and in small moves, right?
Alessandria Polizzi:So it's not going to be, I'm going to do this one presentation and this one conversation and all of a sudden everybody's minds are going to change. People are going to be more open, etcetera, etcetera. It is weaving this into the fabric of everything that we do within the organization and looking at changes, implementations, communications, restructures, new hires, onboarding, all through the lens of what does a human need.
Duena Blomstrom:Remuneration, the way you show people you value them. You have so many things you should be worried about that you should be discussing from zero. That's not only in HR, right? Everyone functions in this tailored, fit for purpose situation. We all live in this.
Duena Blomstrom:I think we're on the verge of much bigger changes. I think to a degree, I've come down on insisting, work from everywhere, work from everywhere, outcomes only, don't be ridiculous, because I don't even think that this is going to be an issue. I urge us to remember that we are exiting the workforce, those of us that are still kind of having some fight in us. And we almost have, I hate being this painting us with that wide of brushes, but I see a lot more disillusionment or rather lack of hunger to fix things in our age group, which is sad, I think. It's a bit early for us to go, never mind that.
Duena Blomstrom:And I think that we can't ask anything of older generations if we do that. And also, I think the new generation's life at work will be completely and utterly different. Completely and utterly different. I think these conversations where we should work, they'll sort themselves when workers themselves will dictate it, and they will. These conversations about how and when we should work, people will solve these by the mere fact that they will demand the self respect that the human should have always had at work, the new generation will, and they will demand adaptations and respect and understanding and validation and value and kind of a woke clean atmosphere, and they will demand it, and they will not give you work unless you give them that.
Duena Blomstrom:So I'm not really worried about growing organizations towards what the new generation will want as the minimum. They're really worried about giving the new generation this climate of minute lies, this climate of it's okay to not bring your whole self, it's okay, some things they'll grab out of us, but we are bringing them into this wrong environment and it's not right for us. And I sometimes say this to CEOs when we chat about this and they're like, but it's too late for me. I'm not going to make this big of change in the two or three years that I have left. And everyone goes through those conversations, right?
Duena Blomstrom:And I can understand. But one of the things I say is I think the world changed altogether, not to our company. I think the world changed altogether overnight with COVID. We all had a come to Jesus moment we didn't know we had it or needed or wanted. And it's all about now it has to be all about who we are and emotions and how we feel, and how we interact, and how we are human.
Duena Blomstrom:And that's everywhere. And at work, if we don't find it faster, we won't be making products and technology anymore. That is why culture will be tackled first, I think.
Alessandria Polizzi:Yeah. Well, and the other thing is in those conversations about it's too late for me or, you know, I'm kind of already set in my Your last ten years will be better if you focus on even just treating yourself and other people like humans. These are basic skills of starting with curiosity, asking questions, self compassion, self coaching versus self criticism. This will create a healthier life for the the people at work, not just the workplace. These are skills that apply everywhere and have been scientifically proven to have better outcomes, both financially and from a health perspective and psychologically.
Alessandria Polizzi:So it's not just it's really a decision about quality of life, about quality of work. Do I want to, you know, it's like I've always walked barefoot. It's too late for me to get used to wearing shoes. Yeah, but eventually that's going to feel a lot better.
Duena Blomstrom:Yeah, that's very true. Very, very true. And I think everyone should just kind of realize we're not those people that are against the enterprise or against the leaders, or it's all about the worker and stuff. Who we are is we all have different types of challenges. There's more challenges in the leadership realm than anyone will ever comprehend unless they've ever managed people.
Duena Blomstrom:So no one's saying it's easy, but think the big difference these days is going to be between awake or existing and subsisting. So I think we have a choice at work. We can be fully in or continue quite quitting like we have done. Unfortunately, because the size of the problem is so big, I think anyone who chooses to intentionally not engage in any human work, I don't find that admirable, to put it mildly, but I can understand why people will do it. And I also think the more of these things we can put in a library, even these that we talked about today, even any type of resource that would ever help one HR director go to a CEO and say, you know, I've been saying this for a year, but I'm dead serious now.
Duena Blomstrom:Can we now do that conversation about how we really do things here?
Alessandria Polizzi:Yeah, and it doesn't have to be scary, right? It doesn't have to be about, you know, we're not talking about everybody just kind of putting all their dirty laundry out there, but we're talking about better understanding ourselves in order to understand each other. There's some basic things we can do. There's some basic psychosocial hazards we can address. And all of those are available, proven and relatively small.
Alessandria Polizzi:Easy. It's just a matter of getting started.
Duena Blomstrom:Very true. So we hope you can use these two things we've left you with today. We'll try together more. I am also thinking, I don't know if Alessandra was to be that horrible or not, of a small segment that's about why on the hell did we need a picnic on the floor of this enterprise? Because I'll remove the name of the companies, obviously, but we need to be real.
Duena Blomstrom:There's so much more than he's doing. If the £300 we spent on the picnic, we could have kept them for another two days so that we learn about emotions together from a book, it would have been probably better. So with that, good luck. We hope you find ways to subsist and resist and feel better about this hard work we're doing. The world needs you.
Duena Blomstrom:See you next
Alessandria Polizzi:time. Thanks.
Duena Blomstrom:Bye. Bye.