Livelihood
Pay is not a perk. Reliable income, transparent rules and predictable hours shape whether people can plan their lives.
AN INDEPENDENT CIVIC-DESIGN EXPERIMENT · 2026
A workplace is a human habitat.
What would change if we designed organisations for dignity, capability and reliable livelihoods—without pretending resources are infinite?
No employee scores. No diagnosis. No miracle formula. Just choices and consequences.
01 / THE CITY
Every decision has neighbours.
Explore a fictional city of work. Select a district to understand which needs can conflict—and reinforce one another.
02 / THE ALLOCATION LAB
Good intentions meet a finite budget.
Allocate 100 fictional resource units across six priorities. These are illustrative allocations, not measured outcomes or a validated model. Every unit spent in one place is unavailable elsewhere.
03 / THE MANY-SIDED ROOM
One policy. Five lived realities.
Choose a perspective, then a response to a sudden demand spike. The story changes with your choice; none is a universal solution.
FICTIONAL COMPOSITE · NOT A TESTIMONIAL
04 / CONCEPT ATLAS
Words worth defining before deploying.
Browse ideas from organisational behaviour and human-capital practice. Each entry includes a misuse to avoid.
05 / EVIDENCE DESK
What do we know, and what are we arguing?
Evidence labels matter. These links lead to primary institutions and original research; the site does not imply each paper settles a policy debate.
Psychological safety and team learning
Edmondson's research connects shared beliefs about interpersonal risk with team learning behaviour in the studied teams. It does not establish that a single workshop creates safety.
Read original study ↗Motivation and self-determination
Self-determination theory distinguishes autonomy, competence and relatedness as important psychological needs. Translation into a particular workplace policy requires contextual judgement.
Read original review ↗Informal employment is not one occupation
India's workforce includes diverse arrangements, enterprises and forms of informality. A family retail experience can illuminate questions but cannot stand in for representative evidence.
ILO research portal ↗India official statistics ↗Predictability can be a form of compensation
Stable scheduling may improve planning for caregivers and workers; rigid staffing or volatile demand can make implementation expensive. How costs should be shared is a normative and institutional question.
The 100-unit allocation
Its numbers are invented for learning. They show opportunity costs, not expected changes in wellbeing, productivity, retention or profit.
The five-person scenario
Perspectives are composites designed to make trade-offs visible, not reports of interviews or representative accounts.
When thoughtful ideas go wrong
Training without protected time
A firm offers courses after exhausting shifts. Participation stays low. Better design: paid learning hours, workload cover and employee choice—if cash flow permits.
Autonomy without decision rights
Teams are told to “own outcomes” but cannot change deadlines. Better design: clear authority, escalation paths and explicit constraints.
Equal rules, unequal access
Everyone gets the same flexible policy, but frontline staff cannot use it. Better design: role-specific flexibility and transparent fairness criteria.
06 / TAKE SOMETHING HOME
Write a humane workplace charter.
Use the design choices you made to produce a one-page, editable-in-browser charter. Export via your browser's print dialog as a PDF; nothing is sent to a server.
A charter will appear here.
Choose priorities and write a commitment to begin.