Awakening Compassion at Work

Suffering brought into the workplace or created by it is not just a private matter: it's an unrecognized, costly drain on organizational potential. Scholars and consultants Worline and Dutton reveal that not only does unaddressed suffering have a dramatic impact on productivity and profitability but that it robs workplaces of humanity, dignity, and motivation. Marshalling evidence from two decades of field research, they demonstrate that compassion confers measurable competitive advantages in areas like innovation, collaboration, service quality, adaptability, and talent attraction and retention. They outline steps leaders, managers, and coworkers can take to alleviate suffering in the workplace, showing how a capacity for compassion can be built into the structures and practices of an organization. Ultimately, they argue that creating compassionate organizations is smart business.