A Need For Revolution Of Empathy In The Workplace
In recent times we have read enough stories about why there is a reduction of loyalty and engagement in our workplaces.
After with families, our workplaces should be where we spend much of our time, and a place where we should find peace but unfortunately, people are not as happy at work and the recent COVID-19 pandemic revealed this.
From the stats available, there are troubling conditions of poor engagement in our workplaces
A recent Ernst & Young (EY) LLP, US Consulting study released in 2023 showed employees overwhelmingly expect empathy in the workplace, but many say it is lacking.
Workers feel that the companies they work for are only talking the talk, but not necessarily walking the walk, when it comes to empathy and support in the workplace. In fact, almost half of employees feel that their company’s efforts to be empathetic toward employees are dishonest. Two in five employees say that their company doesn’t follow through when it makes promises.
In the Empathy in Business Survey, tracking how empathy affects leaders, employees and innovation in the workplace, findings showed workers feel that mutual empathy between company leaders and employees leads to increased efficiency, creativity, job satisfaction, idea sharing, innovation and even company revenue.
Often business failure is rooted in loss of human emotions in organisations, and this research spotlights just how critical empathy is in leadership.
The majority of employees feel that empathetic leadership creates loyalty among employees toward their leaders – revealing that empathy could be the secret sauce to retaining and finding employees in the face of “The Great Resignation.”
There are many upsides to empathetic leadership in the workplace, including:
Inspiring positive change within the workplace
- Mutual respect between employees and leaders
- Increased productivity among employees
- Reduced employee turnover
Often, the unhappiness seen in organisations is due to bad bosses, bad policies and bad culture. It’s always said that people leave bad bosses and not just bad companies.
It is confusing when you juxtapose what we observe in companies with what we seek as humans. In life, we all seek kindness, empathy and understanding. but unfortunately, this tends to disappear when we get to the workplace. You hear of people cursing under their breath on Monday mornings and rejoicing on Friday evenings. When we were children we showered plenty of kindness but as we grew up we lost all of those. Now it’s only in children’s books we read doting stories ending with ‘happily ever after' expressions but as we got into the world of business it became cool to be haughty and treat people with disrespect.
Is it not troubling that we all appreciate acts of kindness but we are not daring enough to show it towards others?
I had an experience some time ago while attending a weeklong and important workshop. My friend had informed me that his mum was sick. All the same, we went for the program but he was getting calls from home which made him not concentrate and pay attention during the sessions.
His heart was on the homefront and he was halfheartedly following the activities at the business retreat. He was afraid to approach the
directors because of how important the meetings were and the importance of his presentations for the team.
After some discussions with him, I advised him to approach the directors and when he did, he was allowed to take his leave to go see his mum. The old woman was battling cancer and she was in the terminal stages. She’d had transfusions four times already and the blood level was still low. By the time my friend got to the hospital, she had been placed on oxygen. After 24 hours, I got a call from Emeka, I froze when I saw his number but quietly asked how his mum was doing. He choked as he tried to speak but with a stammer, he replied, "She’s, she’s" -quickly I figured something was wrong. When he found his voice he slowly told me he had lost his mum. Though, he later confided he was happy to have seen his mother before she died.
He came back to work happy and this endeared him more to the company. He wrote a letter of gratitude to his boss and looked poised to give even more than was expected of him to the job just to repay the kind gesture.
If he wasn’t allowed to take the leave what do you think would have happened? Well, that remains a puzzle but did you get the message?
If you treat people with kindness and empathy it leads to ripple effects of goodness. People are intrinsically good and managers need to take more risks with their people.
Don't tell me you don't need it because you work alone. Even as a solopreneur, you have an audience you're serving and they want to be treated well too.
The idea is that we are losing our humanity, especially in the business sphere and as the years go by the world seems to be becoming less and less kind. We can all start with small daily random acts of kindness, and paint a bigger picture together.
It takes only one kind of action to begin this revolution and it begins with each one of us anywhere we find ourselves. All we need is to dare to be kinder and more empathetic.
With this, the world -not only our workplaces will become a better place.
See you next time.
Emmanuel
