Facilitating a culture of empathy
Empathy can be seen at a very early age in babies but is rarer in the workplace, where only 41% of us think that someone is looking out for us.
Is it possible to develop organizational empathy? Yes… as long as everything really starts with you: showing empathy with your team will help your closest associates be empathetic themselves. But that’s not enough per se.
- Try out your decisions via a persona, as in marketing, or typical employees. How can you make it easier for young parents – or colleagues facing difficult commutes – to go back to the office? What are the problems for them? And how can you help solve these difficulties?
- The human resources department should not be solely responsible for employee experience; hand it to managers so they are faced with HR issues in their day-to-day operations.
- Put your finger on the processes, especially recruitment and performance management, that may be lacking in empathy. Describe the behaviors expected in these tricky situations when you have to tell someone they aren’t being promoted or hired.
- If you’re not sure what the best decision is, think about the human cost of an outcome that would lack empathy.
In an age when we’re confronted with the coldness of artificial intelligence (and the fear it provokes), empathy is needed more than ever!
To go further
“Warm Hearts, Cold Reality : How to Build Team Empathy”
by Melissa Swift (MITSloan Management Review, February 27, 2024).
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