The Why & How of promoting kindness in business.
If you read our blog about our CEO Jack Parsons, you’ll know that he is known by some as the ‘Kindness CEO’. He believes, and therefore so do we, that kindness is one of the most important qualities for a business owner to possess. In fact, we believe that kindness is an important quality for everyone in the workplace.
We would like to explore why we believe introducing more kindness into businesses will benefit not just the young people that work there, but all employees. We will also share some ways that a business can make sure they are pushing kindness at all times.
Why businesses should be kind!
Positive Atmosphere
When someone treats you with kindness, it makes you feel good, now imagine that feeling passed around a whole office. If you promote the idea of acts of kindness in the day to day life of your company, those acts will work to bring up the overall mood of your workplace. And when your workforce is happy, they will have an optimistic outlook in their work, likely making it higher in quality.
Obviously, you can’t force people to be in a good mood all the time, sometimes people have bad days. Kindness is, however, one of the best ways to make sure happiness is more likely.
Trust & Respect
It’s long been considered important for people running businesses to appear as towers of strength, the perfect people. While it is important to have strength in many aspects of business, a lot can be said for showing moments of vulnerability.
Our brains are designed to want to connect with people we identify with, and it’s difficult to connect with a superhuman. By performing acts of kindness and of levity, an employer brings themselves to the level of their employees, they are humanized. This humanization allows the employees to feel at ease with them and feel a level of understanding. It’s easier to trust and respect someone when you identify with them.
Productivity
Though it may seem that taking time out of the day to pursue kind acts may decrease productivity and focus in the workplace, the reverse is actually true.
By promoting kindness, and therefore boosting positivity and trust in the company, employees are likely to feel more motivated. They will want to produce good work for a company that treats them well and they believe has a strong future. As we’ve spoken about in a previous blog, performing kind acts can help you to become more alert and invested, so getting everyone involved in altruistic acts will increase your company’s productivity in the long run.
Culture
A company that is happy together stays together. Nowadays, having a good company culture is more important than ever. If employees are unhappy with the way a company is run or the environment they work in, there are more and more outlets for them to share this opinion. Having a negative outward opinion of your business can cause fewer people to want to work for or with your business.
By keeping kindness at the backbone of how your company is run and bringing with it the aforementioned, positivity, trust and productivity, your employees will be able to share a good experience of work culture. This will help attract new employees, partnerships and deals.
How to make a business kinder!
Just like in everyday life, there are lots of little things you and everyone at your workplace can do to be kind at work. For an idea of some of the small random acts of kindness, you can do day to day, check out our random acts blog, or have a look at this cheat sheet we created for little things to do in an office.
But what about the big things? Statement acts that can be brought into a business to spread and promote a kinder atmosphere. Here are some of our ideas.
First name basis
Though, it may seem unprofessional to some, getting on a first-name basis with all of your staff can help to increase the relatability that brings about trust and respect from employees. Having everyone referred to by their first name levels the playing field, it gives the impression that you are all equals, even friends. Friendship, even the idea of friendship, can be a small step in creating an atmosphere of kindness.
Accessible support
We’ve spoken about it before, and we’ll talk about it again, having facilities/ resources in place to allow people to get support when they are struggling is very important. Not only does it allow people to address issues and not suffer in silence, but it promotes an atmosphere of openness and honesty in the workplace. Small acts of kindness, like friendly conversation and compliments, can blossom in an environment where everyone feels free to openly talk about how they feel.
Face to face time
It’s hard to feel compassion or trust for someone who you never see. That’s why it's important for employees to get face to face time with bosses and managers, this can simply mean them coming into the workplace, or meetings to discuss progress and achievements. Showing you care enough about a workforce to come and see them personally, and listen to what they have to say, is another form of support that spreads the culture of kindness.
Chores
Now making people do chores may seem more of a bossy act than a kind one, but introducing the idea less firmly can help promote acts of kindness organically. Instead of saying people have to do specific jobs at specific times and punishing them for not carrying them out, you could simply reward or recognize people who do the most chores around the office. This will incentivise people to want to carry out simple kind tasks which can have a ripple effect on the entire workforce.
Appreciation
Kindness means a lot to people because it makes them feel like they matter, that someone cares enough to do something nice for them. This is a feeling you should want your employees to feel when they work for you. To make people feel like they matter where they work its important to recognize their achievements. This could take the simplest form of a friendly thank you whenever a task is completed. You could also take time in meetings or emails to call out all the things the team has achieved over the last few weeks or months.
The benefits of spreading kindness at the workplace vastly outweigh the negatives. Promoting and keeping up a kind environment at work is also not that difficult a task. Just remember to treat everyone with respect and with love, in all aspects of life!
