Gunther Verheyen: What It Means to Humanize the Workplace
People are not resources.
Gunther Verheyen opens with a striking figure: 85% of the global workforce is unengaged or actively disengaged. In knowledge work, traditional external rewards like money fall short of fixing that — the motivation that actually matters comes from somewhere else entirely.
True motivation, Gunther explains, comes from intrinsic factors: autonomy, competence, relatedness, certainty, and fairness. Scrum humanizes the workplace by rejecting the idea that people are mechanical “resources,” instead offering boundaries — like the Sprint Goal — that allow for genuine self-organization and distributed leadership around a shared purpose.
What You'll Learn
- Why 85% of the global workforce is unengaged or actively disengaged — and what money can’t fix
- The five intrinsic factors — autonomy, competence, relatedness, certainty, and fairness — that truly motivate people
- How boundaries like the Sprint Goal enable self-organization instead of treating people as “resources”
Written by Ayush Bisht · Reviewed for accuracy by Sanjay Saini
Key Takeaways
About the Speaker
Gunther Verheyen is an independent Scrum Caretaker who has practiced Scrum since 2003 and previously partnered with Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber as Director of the Professional Scrum series at Scrum.org. He is the founder of Ullizee-Inc and the author of best-selling books including “Scrum – A Pocket Guide,” and describes his work as a journey to humanize the workplace with Scrum. Gunther Verheyen spoke at Scrum Day India 2020 on “What It Means to Humanize the Workplace.”
Presentation Deck
Follow along with the slides used in the session: