Compassion at Workplace
Compassion at the workplace is a topic very close to my heart. In today’s time, more than ever before, I see a clear dichotomy in the corporate world. On one hand there is an increasing focus on diversity, empowerment, and CSR, which are making a positive difference to the workplace and the society in general. There is a greater attempt by corporates to bring together a diverse workforce, and remove biases that may exist about gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, etc. Equally, on the CSR side, there is a much deeper connect with and contributions being made to social and environmental causes, partly driven by law and partly by self-governance. This is further supplemented with stronger and more flexible work policies, an increasing number of Google-esque offices, and a growing recognition of the quality of workforce being the strategic differentiator for companies.
On the other hand, work stress levels are at an all-time high. There is extensive documentation around this. For instance, as per the US’ National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in the US, 40% workers surveyed reported their job was very or extremely stressful, and 75% employees believe that workers have more on-the-job stress than a generation ago. While the response percentages may slightly vary by country, the phenomenon is global. One can rightly argue that there are many factors that drive work stress, ranging from reduced financial safety nets and rising complexity of jobs, to nuclear families. While these certainly need to be discussed, for today I want to focus on the often overlooked and underplayed topic of need for more compassion at the workplace.
It would be an unfair generalization to say that compassion is altogether missing at the workplace. However, it is true that in today’s fast-changing workplace and the technology revolution that engulfs us, there are increased stress levels both in both the professional and personal lives of most employees. Patience levels are fast dwindling, competitiveness is higher than ever before and each of us are consumed by our own lives. This has had an inverse impact on the quantum of compassion being consciously exercised, while the need has increased manifold. As an experiment, I would urge you to think back to a fortnight or even a month to see if you can recount any experiences at work where you felt you expected or would have appreciated a different kind of response/action, or where you feel you should been more thoughtful in your action (or lack of it).
Compassion is important not just because it is the humane thing to do, or because all work is nothing but a complex play of human interactions, but also because it makes great business sense. In the words of the prolific sales guru Zig Ziglar, “People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care… about them.” It is well-recognized that compassion at work leads to lower stress levels and deeper interpersonal relationships that are essential for a cohesive team, and lower employee turnover and absenteeism. All these together are powerful drivers that ensure better ROI for the business. Despite this, the study of compassion at work is relatively recent and less permeating, with most of the literature in this area dating to early 2000s.
Compassion is often misunderstood to be sympathy or even empathy. It is critical to understand the difference between these terms, as understanding compassion is the first step in bringing it to the workplace. Sympathy is a feeling of pity for someone else's misfortune, while empathy is the ability to put yourself in another’s position, and appreciate why they feel the way they do (this last aspect is missing in sympathy). Compassion further builds on empathy. Succinctly put, compassion is empathy followed by action intended to ease the suffering/improve the situation.
So what does compassion at work look like? Simply put, it is about ensuring that we are conscious and thoughtful in our dealings with others at work, and recognizing their existence at a human level and not just as entities that we owe work to or who owe work to us. This then translates to well-intended action (vs. a reaction) by putting ourselves in their shoes, wherever we sense something amiss – a difficult situation, etc. At the fundamental level, it starts with caring about and trusting people, and pivoting if required.
It is critical to bust the myth that compassion at work leads to lower quality/performance standards within the firm, or that it means accepting excuses from people when they are tasked with difficult goals. It is quite feasible to have stiff targets, ambitious goals and high performance standards while being compassionate as an organization. In fact, in a compassion-driven organization, tough feedback can be given and assimilated with more ease, as there is more trust. It is because compassion also focuses on ‘how you say things’ and ‘offers practical help/action’ vs. just stating a tough, and often judgmental, message. In fact, in a compassion-led organization, the chances of achieving challenging goals are far higher as the team feels supported, there is greater trust and belief in the management, and there is tangible help on offer to ensure the teams succeed.
This example illustrates the above.
Mrs. Y has to submit a report by 12pm on Feb 1, as it needs to be reviewed by her manager, Mr X, before submission to the client the next day. She is typically punctual and does quality work. Not having received the report till 1pm, Mr X checks with her on the report status, only to find out that it’s still 20% incomplete. There are two ways in which the manager could deal with this.
In a compassion-void scenario, this could be a terse conversation of why this was not done and then leaving the employee to wrap it up – irrespective of what her constraints may have been. Best case –the employee may well be able to get it to completion. But it’s also possible the employee may panic or compromise on the quality of the output. If she had genuine challenges, personal or work-related, that were impeding her from meeting her goal of on-time delivery these would seldom get discussed. Often, it is an evaluation vs. an attempt to understand and appreciate the root cause, and then solve. This in turn could lead into two things. One, the goal breach continues as there wasn’t an attempt to understand the reason behind it. Two, the employee, feels apathetic because she is looked at as a resource and not a person and looks for a change of job.
In a compassion-filled scenario, the manager, Mr X, would try to look for non-verbal clues while finding out about the delay. He would then have a constructive conversation aimed at problem solving and park debriefing to a later point in time. The problem solving could take any of the following shapes (in discussion with the employee) – pushing out the deadline by a day or a few hours (if feasible), suggesting sending the report piecemeal to the final stakeholders, rolling up his/her sleeves to pick up a part or getting other team members to help out Mrs. X. This will assure a higher likelihood of timely completion, and stronger employee morale. Once the report is complete, it is followed by a detailed debrief to understand the nature of the personal and/or work-related challenges. In case personal challenges, the manager can consider offering increased flexibility or a solution that helps ease the situation (where possible). In case of work-related challenges, the manager can facilitate a solution to ensure the issues do not reoccur.
Further, in a compassion-driven set-up, it’s not just the manager but coworkers who can also step in and offer to help.
Now that we understand how compassion can be a game changer when it comes to the workplace, let’s understand how companies can build a compassion-led organization.
1. Catch the Right Fish – Having the right recruits that align with the organization’s core value (including compassion) is critical and easier than hiring people with a very different orientation and trying to change their alignment. This can be hard at times, especially where there is pressure to deliver and timelines are imminent.
2. Compassion starts at the top – The style of the leader is the single-most important factor in driving a compassion-led or void organization. The actions of the leaders have a way of permeating through to their direct reports, and then their reports, and so on in a chain reaction of sorts. If the leader only cares about the results and not the people, it shows through in how everyone else treats their colleagues and team members. Contrarily, if the leader takes the time to understand and appreciate people as we as results, it creates a different culture.
3. Recognize and Reward Compassion Stories – As much as we value results, it is important to create war stories and narratives of teams and individuals that achieved results while being compassionate. What is rewarded and recognized gets repeated in organizations. Examples of this could be rewarding people that step up, outside of their defined roles, to help their colleagues achieve their goals. Focusing on team results than individual brilliance can be another way of fostering this.
4. Build Open and Frequent Communication – This is two-pronged. First, building a culture where people (colleagues, subordinates, clients, vendors) are open and confident about asking questions, as well as receptive to contrary perspectives. Second, it is about ensuring the organization takes the requisite steps in ensuring frequent and transparent communication to break any silos and make people feel that they are a part of the larger organization.
5. Be Willing to Take the Longer Route to Success – Compassion, like culture, takes effort to nurture and pays rich dividends over a period of time. However, to ensure that it flows through the firm, tough decisions that sacrifice short-term gains may be needed. As an example, it could mean weeding out even high-performing team members that consistently continue to go against the organizational ethos of compassion, or even walking away from selec
