Leaders are the organisations front line responders to workplace suffering.

A key component of compassionate leadership is that the leader encourages and nurture compassion and caring across teams and the wider organisation. Compassionate leaders take positive action to build a supportive, inclusive, fair and respectful workplace for everyone and they encourage others to help them achieve this. They focus on relationships and have a goal to create a workplace climate of compassion, where people are seen, included, listened to, and heard. They recognise how the workplace can be a cause of suffering for people and they strive to build and sustain a culture which alleviates, mitigates and prevents that suffering.

Leaders have said to me on occasion that whilst they recognise the benefits of compassion, that they are concerned about developing a more relational leadership approach and that prioritising relationships rather than performance in the traditional sense feels like a big step, fearing they might lost control in some way. It is also clear to me that the term ‘workplace suffering’ can be an uncomfortable and emotive one for some of us. However, it is a lived reality for many people. According to the Health & Safety Executive, in 2019/20, 1.6 million workers in the UK were suffering from work related ill-health. Those are big numbers and leaders are our workplace front line responders to it.

It is understandable however that some leaders will have concerns about the situations they may find themselves in when they take the step to respond to workplace suffering with vulnerability and empathy. They might find themselves in some tough conversations, with people expressing their suffering and their organisational truths. That could be tough to hear and so some leaders might just prefer to not ‘rock the boat’ and just to leave things as they are in the hope that things might just get better in time, or at least not get any worse.

That is a risky approach.

My response to that is that maintaining the status quo is an avoidance strategy if the status quo is a poor employee experience. A poor employee experience will impact negatively on the long-term wellbeing of employees and their levels of engagement, performance and productivity. Creativity and innovation will suffer, and there will be an increased risk to the reputation of the organisation, along with all the corresponding risks to recruitment, retention, and the overall bottom line.

A poor employee experience will end up impacting negatively on the organisation’s ability to deliver.

The opportunity costs also need to be considered. What are the potential benefits to the organisation that are missed out on if the people work of leadership is not the priority, if the employee experience is not given the attention and support it needs?

Leading with enhanced compassion does not need to be on the too difficult pile, even if inspiring, building and sustaining a more human, more relational workplace and culture may be challenging at times. The rewards, however, will be significant, and the reality is that it starts with leadership.