The Cure for the Ailing Workplace

Research shows the benefit of compassionate communication within the workplace

WASHINGTON, DC — Compassionate communication within an office can help prevent workplace burnout, and promote healthier work environments. Sarah Tracy, Ph.D., Director of the Project for Wellness-Work Life at Arizona State University, has some tips for how managers can use compassionate communication to enhance the workplace.

To create a better working environment, managers should encourage positive, compassionate communication between employees. There are three components involved when communicating compassion: recognizing, relating and responding.

Recognizing refers to the process of noticing and understanding details about another person, in order to act appropriately towards them. This includes observing nonverbal cues, listening to what the others have to say, and opening oneself up to feedback. Managers need to ensure that employees are regularly interacting with each other, and are aware of nonverbal clues about possible suffering.

Relating occurs when people identify, feel for, and connect with another person. Relating is fostered when employees are encouraged and rewarded to find connections with each other. This can also decrease the “us versus them” attitude they may have with peers and clients.

Responding is when employees engage in communication or behaviors that focus on another person’s suffering or distress. This can be as simple as acknowledging the presence of someone waiting in line, or as direct as providing praise as a show of support. The act of responding has the potential to greatly improve unsavory workplace situations.

“Workplace stress, bullying, and burnout are important issues that occur in many different forms throughout the workplace. They can lead to dissatisfaction and high rates of turnover among employees,” says Tracy. “Positive communication including energy, vitality, affection, and compassion can help improve employee relations at work.”

Positive interactions have been shown to help decrease stress. Teaching compassion-related skills like recognizing, relating and responding, can help create healthy and successful work environments.



About the author:
Sarah J. Tracy is an Associate Professor and Director of the Project for Wellness and Work-Life in the High Downs School of Communication at Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz. Tracy was invited to write an essay for Communication Currents, a publication of the National Communication Association.

To read Tracy’s essay, click here.

About the National Communication Association

The National Communication Association advances communication as the discipline that studies all forms, modes, media and consequences of communication through humanistic, social scientific and aesthetic inquiry.

The NCA serves the scholars, teachers, and practitioners who are its members by enabling and supporting their professional interests in research and teaching. Dedicated to fostering and promoting free and ethical communication, the NCA promotes the widespread appreciation of the importance of communication in public and private life, the application of competent communication to improve the quality of human life and relationships, and the use of knowledge about communication to solve human problems.

NCA is the largest national organization to promote communication scholarship and education. A non-profit organization, NCA has over 8,000 educators, practitioners, and students who work and reside in every state and more than 20 countries.