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The world often isn’t a kind place. The workplace should be.
Generally, people want to work at a nice place. But being a nice place to work has critical business attributes.
“Within our jobs, more than ever, people are feeling like they don’t know their place,” says Tessa West, Professor of Psychology at New York University, author of Jerks at Work and Job Therapy, and expert in interpersonal communication. “It’s almost like we all feel like we’re back in the first year of high school: uncomfortable in our own skin and insecure in ways that we aren’t used to. And because of this, we’re often looking to our colleagues and bosses and mentors to help provide some sense of security, to help ground us. Kindness is about providing that.”
Why Kindness is More Than a Nice-to-Have
Here’s the good business news: Workplaces that promote and support kindness excel, according to a compilation of studies by researchers Nicki Macklin, Thomas H. Lee and Amy C. Edmondson published in the Harvard Business Review.
Specifically, those workplaces show:
- stronger relationships
- greater collaboration
- higher engagement, and
- longer employee retention.
While those are quantifiable data points (that vary from one successful business to the next), kindness is seen and felt through employees who are willing to help each other, unafraid to share ideas, willing to speak up, and happy to promote where they are.
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