By Lily Kelly-Radford
Yes, kindness can improve how a business works and how you experience the workplace.
Like a digital app, kindness can be installed in your organization so it takes hold and spreads, person to person. It can start anywhere in your company when people adopt practices that are framed in empathy and respect for each other.
What kind of practices? They can be simple actions that you start, some of which you might already by doing. Here are eight suggestions to begin making kindness systemic:
- Be mindful when scheduling meetings and appointments. Respect personal boundaries and normal work hours, because employees with young children or senior care concerns have busy after-work routines. And nobody likes staying late or coming in early, if they don’t have to.
- Stop crying wolf about deadlines. If you make every deadline a rush, performance will suffer as resentment builds. Instead, plan more and manage the schedule so each task gets the time it really needs.
- Develop an e-mail and text discipline that doesn’t raise stress. If you’re sending a message after hours, make it pleasantly clear that you don’t expect immediate action. Better yet, save the message and set a reminder to send during business hours.
- Respect the home responsibilities of everyone, including single parents, multigenerational families and caregivers when planning assignments. If you work internationally, remember the West and East have different domestic structures and customs.
- Demonstrate your concern for health and wellbeing. Lunches, breaks, exercise, rest and family time should be off limits to work intrusions.
- Be a good host in the workplace for people new to the company or new to their jobs. Allowing people to sink or swim is harsh and hinders productivity.
- Chat first. Taking an interest in staff and colleagues before getting down to the topic at hand helps you humanize the work. And if you sense someone is struggling, ask how you can help.
- Establish on-boarding that assures all new people have the support, knowledge, introductions and resources for them to be successful.
Taking steps like these and others you devise will make you a catalyst for the energy that kindness brings. And then you’re on your way to a kinder workplace.
Do you have any kindness behaviors you’d like to share? Let me know!
PHOTO: Adobe Stock Photography