We’ve all heard buzz words; we’ve all lived through various trends and initiatives. In the workplace, measurement of productivity, performance, absenteeism, presenteeism, engagement, job satisfaction, customer satisfaction, ROI and more are reviewed regularly. We’ve come to accept that EQ (Emotional Intelligence) and IQ (Intellectual Intelligence) factor in to results in business and life.
What about compassion? What about compassion in the workplace? What research has been done to measure compassion in the workplace? Could there be a measurable impact to a company’s bottom line for company’s who cultivate corporate culture in support of compassion in the workplace?
How is compassion defined? Merriam Webster defines compassion as: sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it. How might this fit into a workplace environment?
As a leader of people for years in the workplace, recognizing that people are the primary factor in business has served as a humble reminder that compassion goes a long way to deliver customer care and satisfaction.
Knowledge@Wharton published a Leadership Article 2 April, 2014 reviewing studies conducted by Sigal Barsade and Olivia O’Neill that are groundbreaking in this area and worthy of consideration by companies across all industries who serve employees, clients and vendors.
To demonstrate the value of compassionate love in the workplace, Barsade and co-author Olivia “Mandy” O’Neill, assistant professor of management at George Mason University, performed a 16-month longitudinal study at a long-term health care facility involving 185 employees, 108 patients and 42 of those patients’ family members. Barsade and O’Neill set out to measure the effect of compassionate love on emotional and behavioral outcomes of employees, as well as on health outcomes of patients and the satisfaction of those patients’ family members.
To conduct their research, Barsade and O’Neill constructed a scale designed to measure tenderness, compassion, affection and caring. But rather than simply asking the participants if they felt or expressed those emotions themselves, the researchers asked to what degree people saw their colleagues expressing them. This study was among the few to focus on emotional culture rather than cognitive culture, Barsade notes. “What we’re talking about is shared emotions. Our field tends to focus on shared cognitions of people at work, yet an understanding of shared emotions of people at work can also have important outcomes for organizations.”
One of the most significant findings in the study was that a culture of compassionate love reduces employees’ withdrawal from work. Barsade and O’Neill measured employee withdrawal by surveying workers about their levels of emotional exhaustion and by studying their rates of absenteeism. They found that units with higher levels of compassionate love had lower levels of absenteeism and employee burnout. The researchers also discovered that a culture of compassionate love led to higher levels of employee engagement with their work via greater teamwork and employee satisfaction.
There is one key question raised by Barsade’s and O’Neill’s research: Does compassionate love matter in workplaces that don’t revolve around providing love and compassion to clients? To answer that question, they performed a second study involving 3,201 employees in seven different industries. Using the same scale they employed in the long-term care facility, the researchers found that a culture of compassionate love positively correlated with job satisfaction, commitment to the company and accountability for performance.
The relationships they found in the long-term care setting held steady. “What we found is that compassionate love does matter across a broad range of industries, including those as diverse as real estate, finance and public utilities,” O’Neill says. “But the interesting thing is that even though the overall baseline of compassionate love can differ across industries, there was as much of a difference within industries as between industries. Overall, we found that — regardless of the industry baseline — to the extent that there’s a greater culture of compassionate love, that culture is associated with greater satisfaction, commitment and accountability.”
Already, though, the research seems to be pointing to a strong message for managers in all industries, Barsade says: tenderness, compassion, affection and caring matter at work. “Management can do something about this,” she says. “They should be thinking about the emotional culture. It starts with how they are treating their own employees when they see them. Are they showing these kinds of emotions? And it informs what kind of policies they put into place. This is something that can definitely be very purposeful — not just something that rises organically.”
The Living Planner supports proactive resources as evidence of workplace compassion. Are your employees ready for anything life hands them? Compassion at home and work serves people in measurable and profound ways.
Contact us to learn more about how we work with individuals, business owners and employees to provide proactive precautionary measures people can take at home, work and in life via Email or online @ The Living Planner