As National Random Acts of Kindness Day approaches, the role of kindness at work finds itself unexpectedly in the limelight. While kindness isn’t a value traditionally associated with commerce, it is in fact a common denominator across many successful businesses peopled with a happy, healthy, productive workforce. How so?
According to the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, carrying out acts of kindness has positive health benefits, including reducing blood pressure, pain, the sense of isolation, anxiety and stress. Happiness and well-being are considerably enhanced as a result.
The benefits of kindness in a work environment go well beyond the sphere of health and well-being. Kind, compassionate employees build teams and cultures where people want to work. Productivity, creativity, engagement, job satisfaction and work-related motivation all benefit from the positive vibes. Kindness is therefore both an important tool for staff retention and attraction, and a key driver for business growth.
In addition, kindness promotes happiness. Even the smallest of gestures – celebrating birthdays or taking ten minutes to find out how new recruits are settling in – make employees feel valued and boost their happiness. Similarly, just lending a supportive ear to your recently bereaved or divorced colleagues can make a massive difference to them.
Even the quality of employees’ relationships (with colleagues and customers) are enhanced by kind words and actions. Moreover, thanks to the well-documented ripple effect of kindness, the benefits of this often neglected value just keep multiplying. When we are kind to someone, they are more likely to be kinder towards others and so the effects keep growing. In other words, kindness is good news for the happiness of organisations’ entire ecosystems. Wow!
And that, dear reader, is the power of kindness at work. Everyone’s a winner. Enjoy the results, and kindly be sure to share your ideas on the subject with us. We’d love to hear from you!
