Autonomy and Wellbeing at Work: Lessons from Living Systems

We are living in a work era marked by burnout, turnover, and absenteeism. Faced with this scenario, it becomes urgent to understand what sustains people’s vitality at work through a systemic and regenerative lens. In this article, we explore an innovative perspective: the theory of Dynamic Energy Budget (DEB) applied to people, teams, and organizations as living systems.

Understanding Work Through the Lens of Energy: People as Living Systems

The Dynamic Energy Budget theory, developed by Kooijman (2010), describes how living organisms manage energy to survive, grow, and reproduce. Applied to the organizational context, this theory helps us understand that:

• People don’t just work — they exchange energy with their environment.

• Wellbeing depends on maintaining a dynamic balance between what we give and what we receive.

• Sustained imbalance leads to burnout, disengagement, and collapse.

At Fabrika, we understand work as a bioenergetic process. People need to nourish their basic needs to sustain autonomy, creativity, and meaning.

What Sustains Vitality at Work?

From the logic of living systems, a human being in balance:

• Assimilates energy through rest, nutrition, and the fulfillment of basic psychological needs.

• Maintains internal structure by managing stress and taking care of physical, emotional, and relational health.

• Projects into the future through creativity, collaboration, and contribution to a shared purpose.

Organizations must allow these processes to happen without draining people’s energy balance. When workplace cultures prioritize results without protecting vital energy, phenomena like burnout or emotional disconnection emerge.

Relational Autonomy: A Need, Not a Luxury

Autonomy is not just about individual freedom. In human systems, it is an emergent function that arises from:

• Internal resources (physical and emotional energy)

• Relational resources (support, bonds, recognition)

• Organizational resources (structure, rules, culture)

Inspired by Edgar Morin and Fritjof Capra, at Fabrika we work with organizations to understand that there is no autonomy without nourishment, connection, space for rest, and room for decision-making.

Our expanded theory of basic psychological needs includes:

• Safety

• Autonomy

• Competence

• Recognition

• Relationship

• Meaning

Each need is an energy channel. When blocked, the human system shifts into compensation mode and begins to deplete its internal reserves.

Signs of Imbalance: The Body Speaks on Behalf of the Organization

Many common problems in organizations are not individual issues, but symptoms of an unbalanced system:

• Burnout: when there’s no energy left for creation or contribution.

• Chronic stress: constant alertness in the face of unsustainable demands.

• Turnover and disengagement: adaptive responses to contexts that fail to nourish.

• Absenteeism: a self-protection mechanism before imminent collapse.

These phenomena should be read as intelligent signals from the system, not as personal failures.

The Fabrika Method: Activating Living Cultures

At Fabrika, we work from the logic of complex adaptive systems, with concrete tools to cultivate healthy organizations. Key elements of our approach include:

1. Listening to symptoms as systemic signals
   Stress or absenteeism are not individual flaws — they are messages that show what isn’t working structurally.

2. Changing cultural norms that prevent regeneration
   Implicit rules like “always be available” or “never show vulnerability” erode the system. We need to make them visible and transform them.

3. Promoting distributed autonomy
   Teams with purpose and decision-making power regenerate their energy, collaborate better, and sustain change.

4. Respecting the system’s rhythms
   Alternating effort, rest, integration, and creativity strengthens organizational resilience.

5. Caring for people’s internal reserves
   Recognition, connection, and rest — without these, no autonomy can be sustained.

6. Reducing unnecessary energy consumption
   Avoiding purposeless meetings, unspoken contradictions, and micromanagement improves the team’s vital energy flow.

7. Increasing nourishing flow
   Emotionally safe and cognitively stimulating environments feed vitality and learning.

8. Respecting the human regenerative threshold
   A culture that ignores vital boundaries exhausts its people and compromises its future.

Conclusion: Cultivating Life at Work

The Dynamic Energy Budget theory and Fabrika’s approach allow us to see work with more human and vibrant eyes. A healthy organization is not the one that demands the most — it is the one that best cares for what sustains it: the energy, autonomy, and meaning of the people who inhabit it.

In an increasingly complex work world, this perspective brings us back to what matters most: work is also life — and life needs balance.

References
(We recommend linking to the publishers or digital versions when publishing the article online)

• Ayerza, J. M., Escorihuela, J. L., & Mancisidor, J. (2023). El Método Fabrika. Empresa Activa.

• Capra, F., & Luisi, P. L. (2014). The Systems View of Life. Cambridge University Press.

• Kooijman, S. A. L. M. (2010). Dynamic Energy Budget Theory. Cambridge University Press.

• Morin, E. (1999). Method II: The Life of Life. Cátedra.

• Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-Determination Theory. American Psychologist.

• Damasio, A. R. (1999). The Feeling of What Happens. Harcourt.

• Siegel, D. J. (2012). The Developing Mind. Guilford Press.

• Kauffman, S. (1995). At Home in the Universe. Oxford University Press.