The role of employer empathy in employee engagement

When employers exhibit empathy, workers are more engaged – and that can ultimately boost the organization’s performance, according to Businessolver’s 2018 State of Workplace Empathy study.

And it’s not just about the employer helping the world become a better place — it’s also about the day-to-day things for workers, such as allowing flexible work hours or communicating to employees in more personal ways.

Businessolver surveyed 1,850 workers, HR professionals and CEOs in organizations with 100-plus employees, and found that virtually all (96 percent) of workers consider it important for their employers to demonstrate empathy — a 4 percent increase since 2017. However, virtually all (92 percent) workers also believe empathy remains undervalued, a 7 percentage point rise since last year.

Related: The key to engaging and retaining employees

“When empathy isn’t valued by corporate or management culture, it’s not just individual employee interactions that suffer,” writes Rae Shanahan, Businessolver’s chief strategy officer. “The ramifications bleed into the very fiber of business impact and, much to the surprise of those in the corner offices, can create a dissatisfied workplace, a potentially disastrous earnings statement and PR nightmare.”

Leaders responding to the survey seem to get this. A majority (87 percent) of CEOs believe a company’s financial performance is tied to empathy in the workplace, as do 79 percent of HR professionals. Workers notice when the top brass feel it: 81 percent of employees would be willing to work longer hours for an empathetic employer.

“These trends prove there is a clear connection between empathy and strong business performance,” Shanahan writes. “Empathy has the ability to drive collaboration and innovation at organizations while reducing the costs associated with turnover.” CEOs, HR professionals and workers agree on a few behaviors — namely, recognizing employee professional milestones and respecting the need for time off to deal with personal issues — as behaviors that exhibit empathy.

Moreover, certain forms of workplace communication are perceived as more empathic over others, according to the survey. Nine out of 10 employees, HR professionals and CEOs view face-to-face conversations and team meetings as the most empathetic forms of communication, and in-person interactions, phone conversations were rated as highly empathetic.

“Video conferencing apps and virtual meetings, while better than email or text message, were rated as empathetic forms of communication by CEOs and HR professionals more than employees, suggesting the need for more personal and personalized communication from leaders,” Shanahan writes.

Fostering increased diversity and inclusion across the workforce and within the C-Suite is also vitally important and increases workers’ perception of employer empathy, according to the survey.

Most respondents say they are willing to learn more ways to be emphatic. A majority (80 percent) of employees would be eager to participate in a variety of empathy skills training initiatives, including internal or external workshops, online courses and one-on-one coaching. An even higher percentage of CEOs (90 percent) expressed the same level of interest.

“Interest in empathy training dovetails with an expressed need from a large segment of employees, as over half say that they struggle to demonstrate empathy at work on a daily basis,” Shanahan writes. “Empathy is like a muscle: It has to be trained and exercised to become stronger — and employees and leaders agree that training might be the key way to make their workplaces more empathetic.”