The Brain: Saboteur or Success Partner? Neuroscience in the Workplace Has Major Impact!
- Sharm Siva
- Jun 19, 2020
- 4 min read
Neuroscience and its related fields are having a major impact within and beyond the walls of research, seeping its way into the corporate world, where it is being used
to increase bottom lines, through enhanced employee engagement, the science of achievement, increased team synergy, better and more impactful leadership, and gen-
eral organizational wellbeing.
Neuroplasticity, for one, which is the ability of the brain to continuously change and reorganize itself by form-ing new neural connections, has attracted the interest of more than just neuroscientists. Today, organizations are curious to know how neuroplasticity can benefit the workplace, and cognitive training is quickly gaining traction across industries.
The World Economic Forum (World Economic Forum, 2016) has identified for the first time,
cognitive flexibility as one of the top ten skills needed by the workforce in 2020 and beyond for the Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0. A similar report
published by the Institute for the Future at the University of Phoenix Research Institute (UPRI) (Davies, 2011) identified cognitive load management as one of the neces-
sary skills to survive in the 2020 workplace. Both reports highlighting the pruning of the brain as an essential skill, reveals how important a time it is for the integration and
proper assimilation of neuroscience into workplaces.
Institutions of higher learning, like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT (Massachusets Institute of Technology, 2019) are now offering neuroscience-related
subjects for business courses, because of the inevitable benefits of how heightened awareness of the working of the brain can impact the way we think, lead and do
business. Neuroleadership (Rock, 2010), a coined term that is making waves within organizations, and which provides knowledge on how to apply neuroscience within
leadership practices, change management and employee engagement, is another clear indication of how the global workforce is embracing neuroscience in the workplace.
Even PhD students in neuroscience are starting to branch out into more careers within the industry rather than within academia (Akil, et al., 2016).
The Focus of Neuroscience-Based Learning at Work: The Primary Aims of the Brain
In the corporate scope of neuroscience and how it can help enhance human performance through awareness of the functioning of the brain, the focus of most brain-based
learning initiatives have been on the field of neuroplasticity, or how to rewire the brain, through the strengthening or weakening of neural pathways in the brain. Every time there
is a new learning, the brain forms pathways between neurons, or brain cells, through synapses. When the learning is repeated, the neural pathways strengthen, and without
realizing it, this learning sticks –we see this when we learn to drive a car.
What may have seemed difficult, awkward or fearful at first, would seem very much easier and natural (Kalina Christoff, 2016) as we continue to do it.
Just as the neural pathways strengthen when the learning or action is repeated, they weaken when the learning is not repeated. This shows that any habit or thought pattern can be changed within a person by actively training the brain to rewire.
When teaching employees about neuroplasticity, they
must first understand the brain. Most people would have some prior knowledge about the brain, but a foundation or refresher is necessary, to ensure that brain-based learning in the workplace has a higher stickability factor.
The two biggest elements of the brain that are constantly highlighted in corporate brain-based learning initiatives, are that the brain is extremely efficient and that it is
wired to keep us safe.
In its primary function to be efficient, the brain manages almost 99 percent of its processing of sensory inputs in an automated manner (Wilson, 2004), which means, that
most of the 11 million bits of input that comes in through our sensory organs per second, goes into non-conscious, automated processing which we are not aware of. The
result is that most of our responses are automated, or on automatic pilot (auto-pilot). The brain needs to stay efficient because consciously processing every bit of data
is time and energy-consuming, and so, it relies a lot on heuristics or mental shortcuts, also known as experience dependent neuroplasticity.
What we have experienced before gets stored in our brain through neural pathways, and the brain accesses these memories when dealing with a similar stimuli or trigger. Someone who has been bitten by a dog when he was a child, would most probably be still afraid of dogs as an adult, because the brain has made an association very early on based on the painful experience, that “dogs” equal “pain”, and that men tal association has created a fear of dogs by default. The downside of the brain’s need to be efficient, it that this creates biases within humans, and these biases impact
how we work with others and how we see our world.
By default, if left unaware on how the brain functions, humans will continue living with and allowing these biases to pilot our lives, which usually lead to unideal outcomes, especially when living amongst society. Some examples of biases that have impacted us include Implicit Bias (Asamoah, 2019), where we unconsciously hold a set of deeply ingrained beliefs about a social group, and Negativity Bias (Ito, Larsen, Smith, & Cacioppo, 1998), where we tend to remember more of our negative experiences than positive ones.
Negativity bias can also be seen in the brain’s other pri mary aim, which is to keep us safe, where it has devel oped more networks to manage threats than it has to manage rewards (Gordon, Palmer, Liu, Rekshan, & DeVarney, 2013). To ensure that we are safe, the brain
is on a continuous mode of pattern recognition so it can effectively and quickly detect threats, and because it thrives on accurate predictions, the brain hates ambi-
guity (Ruyle, 2016).
Uncertainty registers in the brain as an error, as something that must be fixed so one can feel
that comfort again – and that is why organizations understand the importance of proper change management initiatives when introducing a new change in the workplace.
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