Bradley Daye Wants to Humanize Nova Scotia’s Workplaces
HALIFAX—As employees return to the workplace and we continue to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, Bradley Daye wants to make sure we remember what makes us human.
Daye is the co-founder and C.E.O. of Placemaking 4G, a Nova Scotia-based group that focuses on creating more equitable and inclusive workplaces by pairing companies with employees who meet their social and organizational values.
Daye was a featured speaker during Thursday’s NEXT Nova Scotia Business Growth Summit, where he spoke about humanizing the workplace. In his seminar, Daye talked about ways to foster healthy work environments that make employees feel comfortable and valued. In essence, a workplace where everyone is treated like a human.
“I think there is a lot of things in which system structures have been somewhat dehumanizing and we’ve forgotten what it means to show up as our full selves in the workplace,” said Daye.
The problem with fitting in
Part of Daye’s plan for humanizing the workplace is to change the vocabulary we use at work. He says many of the words we use hold deeper meanings that don’t make people feel seen and welcome. One of these words is “fit.”
Daye spoke about how “fit” has become a buzzword for recruiters and hiring managers: ‘we want a candidate who’s a good fit,’ or ‘how do you think you’ll fit in with our organization.’ For Daye, the use of fit is just another form of othering racialized employees.
“Everybody on this call can resonate with an experience in their lives where they’ve entered a space… where you felt that you’ve had to change something about yourself in order to fit in,” said Daye.
He went on to speak about his own experience attending university as a Black man and how he had to change the way he spoke and acted to feel accepted by his peers. This left him feeling like he lost a piece of himself in order to fit into the environment around him.
“The danger of ‘fit’ is that we’re creating these environments of groupthink. We’re creating these environments where the dominant culture, if you do anything outside of that, you’re deemed negative,” said Daye.
A new wave of contributors
Instead, Daye wants people to be thought of as contributors. He wants managers, co-workers, recruiters, and everyone else in the workplace to ask themselves how someone’s lived experience contributes to the organization.
“How does somebody’s differences, how does somebody’s cultural background, how does somebody’s ethnicity… and how they identify, actually bring a contribution to our space?” said Daye.
The idea of fit vs. contributors is one of the many ways Daye, along with his team at P4G, wants to change the workplace. Their goal is to create equitable access to prosperity, and humanizing the workplace is just a step along the way.
Joe Thomson is a Huddle student intern, based in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected]