Nicky McCrudden explores why compassion at work so often stops at good intentions and how L&D can help turn concern into action. Her research identifies skills gaps, workplace beliefs and social pressures as key barriers, pointing to practical, scenario-based ways to build confidence, strengthen connection and create more compassionate workplaces.
Compassion deficits in the workplace, where colleagues’ suffering goes unnoticed or unaddressed and anti-compassionate behaviours, are driving costly outcomes that organisations know all too well. Productivity losses from poor mental health are costing the UK over £50 billion per year, and the CIPD tells us that over 9 million UK workers are exposed to bullying and harassment (53% never report it).
So, perhaps it’s unsurprising that up to 50% of UK employees are disengaged, increasing wage bills by up to 4%. These issues persist despite a range of existing interventions, as people who need support bypass services like Employee Support Programmes and turn to colleagues instead.
Many believe compassion can deliver significant business, as well as individual, benefits
Once the exclusive purview of healthcare organisations and charities, kindness and compassion are now positioned as a contemporary solution to these issues. After all, a common thread is missed human connection; the early signs of struggles and disinterest go unacknowledged, victims of bullying are unsupported, and bullies themselves may be inarticulately expressing suffering.
Compassion has physiological and psychological well-being benefits for the giver, the recipient, and those witnessing compassion. Many believe compassion can deliver significant business, as well as individual, benefits. But how can L&D support its development?
What are we trying to create?
As a profession, firstly we need to be clear what, exactly, we’re trying to foster. Compassion is an emotional response to another’s suffering (or potential suffering) and a desire to alleviate or mitigate it, which many argue we’re biologically hard-wired to experience.
However, the workplace benefits of compassion depend upon people not just feeling, but acting on that emotion. Without compassionate actions and interactions, the benefits are unrealised. Worse still, there could be detrimental outcomes for those left with empathic pain or feelings of guilt for not helping. Feeling compassion is a starting point. Acting on it is the critical next step.
Organisational strategies, such as leadership frameworks and celebrating compassionate acts, help to set the stage for compassionate cultures. But the real leverage rests in building compassion skills within individuals. Without the competencies and confidence to act, strategies don’t get translated into practice. The good news is that training can increase compassion.
Enter L&D
We already know that conversations that transcend our usual, transactional workplace exchanges typically require skills development. That’s why training in feedback and coaching remains at the forefront of our work. But compassion has been overlooked as a ‘specialist conversation’.
Thankfully, training has been quietly weaving the building blocks of compassion, like listening and empathy, into training for decades. Though these are often reserved for ‘management training’ and they are rarely connected to compassionate conversations. Even in the NHS, compassion training focuses on patient interactions, not co-worker conversations.
But it’s not just about re-branding our skills training to give people the confidence to step in when colleagues are struggling. Michie’s COM-B framework reminds us to explore the barriers to behaviours, too. Yet, quality research investigating what gets in the way of workplace compassionate relating is sparse. Without an understanding of the most common barriers, our ability to effectively support staff and organisations is limited.
Given how little appears to be known about these barriers in workplaces, I set out to explore what is actually stopping people from stepping in to offer a compassionate ‘shoulder’. I asked over 300 UK workers about the barriers to compassionate relating between co-workers.
What gets in the way?
The results revealed 25 barriers, clustered into four significant challenges:
- Beliefs about the organisation and/or team structure
- Personal competency gaps in the potential compassion giver
- Beliefs about others (including the suffering colleague and how others around them might react)
- An enduring non-compassionate personal quality in the individual
Importantly, personal competency gaps in the person offering compassion were the most frequently cited individual blocker to engaging with suffering co-workers (covering nine themes, and a total of 37.5% of all citations). Skills such as an inability to listen or empathise, fears about rejection, or not knowing what to say or do, and generally feeling awkward or embarrassed were commonly referenced.
Beliefs about others (9 themes and 27% of citations) and beliefs about the organisation or team (4 themes and 26% of citations) were nearly tied. Beliefs about others included whether colleagues were worthy of help, personal-professional boundaries, and believing that compassion was someone else’s responsibility or being concerned about how others would perceive them for being compassionate. Whereas, perceptions of the team and organisation focused on workload and time pressures, cultural norms, and constraints of the working environment, such as hybrid and remote working.
A belief that some traits make people less capable of compassion (9.5% of citations across 3 themes) ranked lowest, suggesting it’s a less prevalent barrier than ‘fixable’ factors.
Sample quotes:
Worried about saying the wrong thing or upsetting a colleague further by asking the wrong questionToo busy at work to give enough time to be compassionateThere are dedicated company resources available (HR etc.) so it’s not my problemIt isn’t professionally appropriate to comment or interveneWhen a colleague is not compassionate to others, they shouldn’t expect compassion nowIt may be seen as taking sidesA colleague is just a colleague, you don’t have the same emotional connection as with a proper friendBusiness can be ruthless so they don’t want to show compassionUniversal barriers
The study included respondents from the NHS to the military, but the challenges they identified were remarkably consistent, both in nature and frequency of reporting. Suggesting that the organisational setting may not significantly influence the things that stop people expressing compassion for colleagues.
Although the barriers weren’t statistically significantly different between genders, there was a slight tendency for women to feel too personally depleted to show compassion, and men were slightly more likely to be concerned about the repercussions and reactions of others, as this quote shows:
[Given] the recent increase in sexual harassment cases, is it acceptable to hug a female colleague that is upset, or would that be frowned upon or taken in the wrong context.Informing practice
The good news is that strategic L&D interventions could address the majority of people’s concerns. Inspired by the three most significant challenges, I offer a series of non-prescriptive ideas:
One potential remedy for the ‘negative view of others’ challenge might lie in leveraging existing team building to strengthen the in-group bonds that make compassionate expressions more likely. Many organisations already invest in team building for other reasons, but this evidence suggests it could be an effective lever, albeit indirectly, in creating compassionate cultures from the ground up.
Demonstrating that it is not only possible to foster compassion virtually, but online working might aid compassion, and equipping staff with the skills to care for others without it becoming personally intrusive, can help negate perceived barriers of remote and hybrid working and personal workload.
Throughout my research journey, and from my own lived-experienced I’ve seen highly effective compassionate interactions that lasted just a few moments. Incorporating ‘rapid compassion’ and micro-intervention techniques can show that support can require just minutes, not meetings and embedding actionable cues for compassion in existing processes could also help to address organisational and team structure barriers.
Finally, given the prevalence of people citing skills barriers as a reason for not acting with compassion, perhaps it’s time we started to build real-world, scenario-based training into our existing programmes. Use compassion-based case studies to help people apply emotional intelligence skills specifically to support colleagues in distress, not just in performance conversations.
Creating a compassionate workplace
Compassionate relating between individuals at all levels holds value for many organisations. Building compassionate cultures means more than policies and procedures. It demands that ‘real people’ feel equipped and confident to ‘step in’ when colleagues are struggling.
Understanding the reasons why people don’t act on felt compassion reveals that skills gaps and other significant barriers are things that can be effectively addressed by L&D interventions.
Nicky McCrudden is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Chichester Business School and host of Heart & Graft – The Podcast
This research was funded by the University of Sussex, Psychology Department with the support of Dr Gillian Sandstrom and Dr Smadar Cohen-Chen (University of Sussex)
