Curiosity is often treated as a ‘soft’ skill, when it’s actually a precursor to commercial growth and strategic decision-making. Discover how these two organisations are leveraging curiosity to discover blind spots and unlock long-term gains.

Underestimating curiosity as a ‘soft’ skill doesn’t just limit learning – it leaves untapped revenue, innovation and productivity on the table.

Research from global software company SAP, which surveyed business leaders across Australia and New Zealand, found that businesses with curious cultures had teams who were significantly more engaged (84 per cent versus 49 per cent), reported lower levels of burnout (29 per cent versus 44 per cent), and felt more confident using data to inform decisions. 

For HR leaders looking to shift a board or executive team’s mindset – who may consider curiosity as a ‘fluffy soft skill’ –  it’s worth framing up the broader business benefit of investment in curiosity, which is that it’s a driver of profitability.

“The question you need to ask is, ‘Are we leaving money on the table by not encouraging people to challenge how things are done?’” says Dr Diane Hamilton, author of Curiosity Unleashed and creator of the Curiosity Code Index.

She conducted a US-based survey with 51 C-suite executives and found such initiatives could deliver cost savings in the hundreds of thousands – even millions – of dollars.

“Eighty per cent of surveyed executives reported annual savings exceeding $100,000 due to curiosity-driven initiatives, with 17 per cent realising savings over $1,000,000,” says Dr Hamilton, also former MBA Program Chair at the Forbes School of Business and Technology, and faculty member at Duke Corporate Education. 

Below, we speak with HR leaders from Merck Group and OzHarvest, who have both seen benefits from operationalising curiosity in their organisations.

Opening up dialogue

Curiosity is critical in an era of deepening social polarisation. It functions as a stabilising force, encouraging openness, empathy and dialogue across divides. The ability to pause, probe and reframe is especially valuable in high-stakes environments where social and political pressures can make people retreat into fast-thinking, binary logic or outdated assumptions. 

Consider, for example, the finding from Edelman’s 2023 Trust Barometer that only 19 per cent of people were willing to work alongside someone who held a different view to them.

Creating space for difference is something Australian food rescue organisation OzHarvest is deliberately cultivating. 

It utilises an intentional framework to create the conditions for its people to demonstrate curiosity and embrace diversity of thought, by using a diagnostic tool called the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument® (HBDI®.

“It’s about how your brain prefers to think,” says Gauri Bhalla, People Experience lead at OzHarvest. “We chose it because it’s visual and easy to understand. Some other diagnostic tools can have too many words and details, but we can’t be fluffy or academic. Our people are frontline drivers, chefs, office workers and volunteers. We need to reach everybody in an accessible way.”

Selected employees answer 120 questions to gain insight into their thinking patterns, which tells them if they have red, yellow, green or blue thinking preferences.

“I have a yellow-preference brain, so my preference for thinking is creativity, innovation, curiosity – my brain goes there naturally. Whereas someone with a blue- preference brain is much more analytical and views things in a more evidential way.

“Two colleagues – one who has a blue preference and another who has a green preference – can share that common language. They might say, ‘I’m a blue brain, so I’m going to bring a strong preference for data to this project.’ Whereas a green person might say, ‘I will need a clear and detailed plan to move forward comfortably.’”

This isn’t about putting labels on people, but rather encouraging employees – and giving them the tools – to be curious about the unique perspectives others offer.

“When we’ve got conflict in-house – which is common in any organisation – we slow things down by bringing in those diagnostics and saying, ‘Let me show you why this person might be thinking about this differently than you are. And, by the way, that’s a strength.’ It’s a tool you can use to take the heat out of a situation.”

This tool can also offer direction for someone looking to expand their thinking.

“I often say to my colleagues, ‘The missing piece of my thinking is that blue, analytical perspective. What am I missing here?’ Ask this rather than just ‘What do you think?’ which doesn’t leave as much space for that person. ‘What am I missing’ says, ‘I’m imperfect. I won’t have all the answers. What do you see that I don’t see?’”

Bhalla suggests using AI as a tool to identify blind spots, providing visibility into how someone with a different thinking style might approach an issue.

“You could feed the model into an AI platform and ask it, ‘How would a blue thinker approach this?’ or have it mimic certain people who think differently to you, such as asking, ‘How would Richard Branson approach this?’ or ‘What questions might my CFO ask about this?’ AI tools can be great for opening your thinking.”

Creating the conditions for long-term success

Another company that has operationalised its approach to curiosity is Merck, a science and technology company headquartered in Germany and founded in 1668.

“We’re a very old company with a long history. Our ability to be successful for 357 years is in our ability to be curious, agile and take risks,” says Damian Renaut, Head of HR Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia at Merck Group.

“We’re not a company that thinks in years. We think in decades. If you’re a company looking for this kind of longevity, that is directly linked to having curious people. Curiosity is an exercise in creating the right conditions to be a high-performing team.”

Merck Group’s curiosity initiatives extend well beyond surface-level platitudes. Through its Curiosity Reports (2016, 2018 and 2020), which measure and benchmark its employees’ curiosity levels, and its Activate Curiosity program – established by its internal Curiosity Council to identify and address barriers to curiosity – the organisation takes a deliberate approach to fostering this capability.

“We found that highly curious individuals possess four distinct characteristics, or curiosity dimensions,” says Renaut. They are:

• Joyous exploration: the pleasure found in discovering new information, engaging with novel experiences, and the subsequent satisfaction of learning.
• Deprivation sensitivity: the uncomfortable tension that remains until the gap between what people currently know and what they seek to understand is bridged.
• Distress tolerance: the willingness to face the uncertainty, confusion, anxiety and other discomforts that naturally arise when navigating unfamiliar or challenging situations.
• Openness to ideas: an appreciation for the diverse perspectives and approaches contributed by others.

“It’s about understanding people who will be a good fit, and it helps us identify high-performers with the greatest potential to innovate,” says Renaut.

As part of Activate Curiosity, Merck designed a video-based tutorial program unpacking its four dimensions of curiosity, which offer step-by-step guidance on how to embed them into work practices.

Each tutorial consists of a video introduction, background and application examples in a business context for team leaders. Employees stop after each of the steps to complete exercises that apply the principles to their day-to-day work. 

“For example, if we are trying to build an employee’s capacity for distress tolerance, we will focus on cognitive reappraisal – helping employees reinterpret a situation and take another perspective, to either reduce the severity of the negative response or replace the negative attitude with a more positive one.” 

Curiosity is rewarded at Merck and is considered a core component of its performance management processes.

“We evaluate performance not just on what someone delivers, but also how they deliver it. We evaluate employees on six different behaviours, one of them being ‘be curious and innovate boldly’.”

“Eighty per cent of surveyed executives reported annual savings exceeding $100,000 due to curiosity-driven initiatives, with 17 per cent realising savings over $1,000,000.”  –  Dr Diane Hamilton.

Equal weight is given to the outcome and the process. For example, an employee might be assessed not only on delivering a new reporting process for their team, but also on how they approached the task – for instance, by exploring an AI-powered solution or partnering with another business unit to incorporate broader perspectives into the report.

“The attitudes, behaviour and energy someone puts into delivering something differently is valued. What makes a difference between normal performance and our high performance? Ninety per cent of the time it’s based on the ‘how’.”

To extend curiosity into other corners of the organisation, Merck hosts My Growth Assignments to stretch employees’ skillsets and bring other perspectives into different departments.

“We ask people to apply for assignments in other departments and dedicate 10 to 15 per cent of their time to it. They remain in their current job, but contribute [to another unit] with their external eyes. For example, I could apply to support the internal regulatory affairs team.”

Building the business case

Selling the idea of investing in curiosity and different thinking styles was a challenge for Bhalla.

OzHarvest’s Chief Financial Officer, perhaps unsurprisingly, is a blue thinker. When trying to make the business case for curiosity, Bhalla had to frame it in ‘blue’ terms.

“The CFO might not care about increased engagement rates like we do in HR. What we were eventually able to do was show that investment in the HBDI tool delivered better performance metrics.”

However, this clear link to bottom-line benefits isn’t always an easy line to draw.

“Initially, I wasn’t able to make that link. I didn’t know how because it was new, so we couldn’t necessarily say X will lead to Y in a sharp way.”

What she did instead was design a pilot experience with the HBDI that the CFO could participate in, alongside the rest of the executive team.

“When he saw his peers doing it, and the value the executive team got from it, it was an easy sell.”

Bhalla was also able to link the initiative with a challenge the executives were facing.

“They had a blind spot around a lack of action coming off the back of their meetings, which is a real green brain strength. The management team had a lot of yellow, red and blue thinkers. 

“This exercise helped them uncover this blindspot, and meetings immediately became more productive. We added a standing agenda item for 10 minutes of discussion about next steps. It sounds simple, but this was hugely impactful. That increase in productivity alone was enough to get the CFO over the line.

“If you can’t demonstrate value with clear data just yet, think about your next best alternative. For us, it was creating an experience for the CFO to see it for himself.”

Sparking the future

Through deliberate coaching and a clear business case, HR can help shift curiosity from a token corporate value to a powerful, strategic lever for growth and risk mitigation.

“People think it sounds like a cute soft-skill word, and it’s not,” says Dr Hamilton. “It’s the spark to everything you’re trying to fix. If you don’t look at it that way, and see it as just another training session to give, you risk being left behind. 

“This is the kind of stuff that makes or breaks companies. The companies that get it are going to be the ones still standing in 10, 15, 20 years’ time.” 

A longer version of this article first appeared in the August/September 2025 edition of HRM Magazine, exclusive to AHRI members.