A practical guide to more empathetic management

McGeachy Consulting, LLC

Have you noticed that people are a bit more ... edgy in the workplace these days? From your direct report being moved to tears by well-meaning constructive feedback or that one person everyone tip toes around because they never know what might set them off, the world of work has definitely changed.

Organizational Development leaders have been talking about empathy and connection as qualities of inspiring leaders for some time but now, in this post-COVID era, when people are returning to the office, working hybrid, feeling overwhelmed, possibly even burnt out, pulled in many directions, empathy and connection seem vital to positive relationships at work.

But does it really make a difference? And how do you make it happen?

Short answer: yes, and practice.

The Center for Creative Leadership has found that “Empathy in the Workplace is positively related to job performance.” That's relevant to everyone, managers and individual contributors. Also they noted that managers experience two boosts to their performance by practicing empathy. First, they were viewed as a better supervisor to their direct reports. And, "Managers who practiced empathetic leadership toward direct reports were viewed as better performers by their bosses."

How to be empathetic in the workplace:

A lot of it comes down to how you interact in conversation with the people around you. Something as simple as using empathetic statements can really make a difference. For instance, when someone...

• shares bad news with you

• expresses a complaint (even if it's about you!)

• discloses their feelings or fears

...consider saying something like,

• I’m so sorry, I don't even know what to say right now, but I'm glad you shared this with me

• It makes sense that you feel ___________.

• It sounds like you've done everything you could

• I'm sorry you're experiencing this right now

• I understand how you feel

Empathy vs. sympathy

It’s also important to note that we’re talking about empathetic here, not sympathetic.

Empathy is digging into your painful past, pulling up your own feelings similar to what the person just shared with you, and responding. I know I'm in empathy with someone when I physically feel it in my chest. When someone shares that their family dog has passed, my body immediately pulls up those aching feelings, and I goes straight to empathy. “I'm so sorry to hear that. I don't even know what to say, but I'm glad you told me.” And then I usually say something like, “Let the ugly tears flow”, because I know from my own experience that it's healthier to let them out than hold them in. 

By noteworthy contrast, a sympathetic response would be something like; “At least it was only your dog and not a family member” (Ouch!”, or worse, “That will save you a bunch of money on dog food and vet appointments (double ouch)”. You know you have defaulted to using sympathy when the words at least are included in your response. 

Here are a couple of real-life examples to help you really integrate the difference:

Empathy in the Workplace, McGeachy Consulting, LLC

If you take away one thing from this blog, put a sticky note on your desk, reminding you not to use the words "at least" if you intend to be empathetic. And, watch yourself when you try and one-up someone’s situation when a dose of empathy would be beneficial instead.

I'm practicing using empathy to build better connections with people, I hope you will too. Our workplaces, and the world, need it.  

And, of course, if you’d like help in developing your managerial skills for this new world of work, I’m here to help. See how we can work together here.

Early last year, a client came to me with difficulty retaining talent, a high turnover rate, and overall a feeling of employee disengagement. They were not using tools to measure or collect data about engagement. Based on both intuition, turnover numbers, and an HR Audit (including interviews with employees) we had enough touchpoints to develop a strong understanding that the workforce was disengaged. Anytime a workforce is disengaged business leaders should be worried about employee retention and its opposite, employee turnover.

The cost of turnover

It might be important to note that turnover has enormous ripple effects on a business. It takes time to recruit new team members, train new hires, and get them to their most productive state. A business that has high turnover is almost never fully effective because they have too many team members who are not working at complete capacity. The toll turnover takes on existing staff can be suffocating in terms of the workload. 

You can quickly understand this if you imagine a restaurant; consider the plight of a micro restaurant that has a server, cook, and a dishwasher. What if their turnover rate is 33% and their dishwasher has quit. That leaves the cook and server to manage the entire restaurant until a new dishwasher can be hired and properly onboarded to full productivity. The cook and server might be able to manage this for a short time period however, it will take a toll, cause them to work more during their shift, not be as focused on their customers and they might even drop the ball more often. This results in long wait times, orders that are inaccurate, unhappy customers, and exhausted, overworked employees. This example translates to other businesses too but the chaos may not be as obvious to leaders or clients.

The national average for turnover in 2019 according to Salary.com was 19.3% across all industries. That means that 80.7% of the workforce remains in place over the period of time that is measured; a month, a quarter, a year. The opposite of turnover is retention, ideally, a business would have a retention rate of 80.7% or better (some turnover is healthy). If it’s lower than 80.7% it can cause issues with productivity and overall well-being of the workforce. Also, understand that turnover can vary by industry and it might be helpful to understand the turnover rate in your particular industry. 

Why is it important to measure turnover and retention?

If your small business is experiencing heavy workloads, unsatisfied employees, perhaps a lack of engagement, a good place to start is to examine your turnover and retention rates. Conversely, if things are going really well at your business it might be that your workforce is fully productive and your retention rate is excellent. A positive retention rate is an attractive number to share with potential new hires, investors, and business collaborators. This will give you the data to help understand the dynamics of your workforce as opposed to going off of intuition or a hunch. A good best practice for small businesses is to track this quarterly and annually. 

Taking action to overcome problems with your small business employee turnover

Last year my client implemented an employee engagement tool that measured both eNPS (employee net promoter score) and employee engagement. Having new knowledge of live data (it was a weekly tool) helped this business understand their areas of opportunity and slowly, over the next 12 months, they were able to deliberately make decisions, implement new tools, policies, and a mindset of employee value and development, that has changed their workforce. Employee retention is up by 34.3%, employee engagement has consistently shown improvement and is currently up by 10%, and the eNPS has improved by 46 points all in a 12 month period.  

“Employee retention improved by 34.3%, employee engagement improved by 10%, and the eNPS improved by 46 points. Employee engagement tools are a great resource to help impact employee retention for small businesses.”

The eNPS score has been the last target we have tried to impact and largely this is just getting started. However, by changing many of the other behaviors and tools it has had an impact on eNPS.

These improvements are not by accident or good fortune. Using tools to understand your workforce can help provide information and data so that you know exactly where to invest. In this situation, a combination of an HR Audit, utilizing an employee engagement tool*, and effective leadership had a profound change on the retention rate and overall employee engagement.

If retention and workforce uncertainty keep you up at night, let’s fix that. Contact Amy.

* Examples include; TinyPulse, Officevibe, 15Five, CultureAmp to give you a few examples. McGeachy Consulting has no affiliation with any of these companies.

Amy McGeachy, PHR, SHRM-CP

HR Consultant to small and medium sized businesses in Oregon and Washington.

Amy McGeachy is an HR Consultant and the Founder of The Exceptional Workplace, a newsletter to help small business leaders stay focus on proactive HR and People Practices. Never miss an issue - join HERE.

According to the research conducted by Gary Chapman and Paul White the authors of The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace, people feel appreciated in 5 different categories: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Acts of Service, Tangible Gifts and Physical Touch (that last one is not appropriate for the workplace!). Given our workplace climate, we will focus on the first four. As you think about your workplace, showing your appreciation in a variety of forms will be the best way to reach your diverse team.

Employee Appreciation Day Formula --->

food + gift, act of service, or event + handwritten note of appreciation = employees who feel appreciated

Food:

• Lattes

• Specialty donuts

• Locally sourced bagels

• Healthy, delicious, catered lunch

Gift, Act of Service, or Event:

• Schedule a chair massage therapist to come to your office

• Car wash (or car wash gift card)

• Magazine subscription (how about Fast Company, Entrepreneur, Inc.?)

• A special book

• Bottle of wine

• Use chalk on the sidewalk outside your office to draw your appreciation: 'Our team ROCKS!' If your team is large, have a few of your leaders meet you early in the morning to help cover the sidewalk with appreciation of everyone on your team. You could even use alliteration to match the first letter of their first name with an adjective such as: Can-do Carly or Sales Slugger Sam.

Handwritten Note of Appreciation:

Write handwritten notes of appreciation for each person on your team.

Finally, it’s not about how significant your appreciation day events or gifts are, it’s how much love goes into the act of appreciating your team members. Something simple with buckets-full of appreciation can be magnificent.

Note: This post was originally shared in 2017. With a few covid modifications and creativity it can be used for this years planning. Enjoy!

The absolute joy and relief of having your HR practices planned, tidied up, and rolled out to your workplace is indescribable. Really. Clients who operate without an HR Plan, without an employee handbook or workplace policies, and without a culture manifesto report relief once these things are in place. 

For many small and medium businesses, the only way to ensure that you remain committed to your HR capabilities and people practices is to have an HR Plan. There is no right time in the lifecycle of your company to bolster your HR Capabilities. If you feel like you're too late to this game don't fret. Now is the time, the HR Plan will give you a fresh start at developing your HR practices and investing in the people-side of your business. This plan can be as simple, or complex, as you want to make it. For your ease, we have created a sample for you to use as a baseline.
 

Where to start?

Start with the most significant, most impactful items for your workplace. What drives your culture? Start there. What programs have you committed to and what new people practices do you want to implement? Then look at compliance and fit those items into your HR Plan as well (HR Audit, employee handbook development or update, non-harassment or non-discrimination training, etc.).
 

Besides what’s in the model, are their other items that small businesses often fit into their HR Plan? Yes, I’m glad you asked!
 

Here is a list of a variety of items you might consider:

• All employee retreat

• All employee meeting

• Leadership team meeting or retreat

• Quarterly reviews

• Off-site employee team builder

• Create a culture manifesto

• Employee engagement survey (annual or pulse survey)

• Monthly manager brown bag lunch (with or without a learning topic)

• Plan for special events (Employee Appreciation Day, Take Your Child to Work Day, Bosses Day)

• HR audit

• Employee handbook creation/review

• Revisit HR policies that impact the workplace culture. For example the ability to recruit top talent (vacation policy, workplace flexibility policy).

When you're ready to benefit from developing your small business HR Plan click here and we will send you a sample HR Planning Calendar.

Most small businesses have to select what’s most important to their workplace from the list above. Pick what’s right for yours, review it with your leadership team, and commit to the plan.

Gain the peace of mind for your small business with a plan to maximize your HR Capabilities and people practices.

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Life can be hectic, let’s not be plagued by the preparation for Employee Appreciation Day, which will be here in a few short weeks, March 2nd, 2018. Let’s brainstorm some options to help you show big appreciation to your team.

And, if you’re hesitating STOP.

This is about creating culture, helping employees develop a love for your company, giving your team members a reason to tell others about their delightful workplace (hello, instagramable workplace). This is not about you giving more. It’s about you caring about your team.

EMPLOYEE APPRECIATION DAY IDEAS --->

It's not how much we give, but how much love we put into giving.

Mother Teresa

SERVICE:

The idea of taking care of those people who are in service to you is such a lovely act of kindness. This, aside from all other acts, can go a long, LONG way. Why not flip things upside down for a bit and serve your team members?

How about a waffle bar with the CEO as the main server? Another spin on this is a nacho bar or a car wash.

SURPRISE + DELIGHT:

Some employees will be overjoyed with a little bit of surprise on this day of appreciation. Take for example a conference room that is filled with balloons, each with a sharpie-written note of appreciation for individual team members, “Charlotte your customer service skills are exquisite. We are lucky to have you!” What fun it is to find your balloon and read your note. Order lunch in and give them a coupon for an hour (or more) of flexibility in their workday in the coming month and you’re all set.

Have a whiteboard in your office? Cover the whiteboard in notes of appreciation for your team. Big, bright words telling them how grateful you are that they are part of your team. The bigger, the more of an impression it will make. Add a dessert buffet to the conference table and a small gift. Well done.

PRACTICAL:

Looking to add to your office perks to attract and retain talent? This is a great day to reveal the additions to your team.

• Extra holidays - World at Work says that the average business observes 9 paid holidays per year

• Enriched PTO Plan - Average PTO plans start at 16 days per year for new employees

• Add a 401k if you don’t already have one

• Implement a flexible workplace policy

Offer this along with donuts and coffee in the morning and a handwritten note from the team leader and you have a solid employee appreciation day.

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