Empathy Fosters a Workplace culture of Inclusiveness & Belonging

Before you criticize, judge, or condemn that staff or issue out the PIP document, please, first consider any of these possibilities:

1. Could this person be a victim of their past experiences which has shaped their present behaviour?
2. Could they be experiencing job burnout due to an enormous workload and ambiguous performance delivery expectations from their employer?
3. Are they having personal challenges that may be affecting their performance on the job?
4. Can these behaviours be managed or unlearned?
5. Is your workplace building a culture of trust to foster for an employee experience of openness and belonging which is required for them to thrive?
6. Have you provided adequate work tools for them to be efficient on their job?
7. Are the goals of the organisation communicated in clear terms and language?
8. Have they been provided with clear metrics of measurement for their job role?
9. Who is the Line manager? Are they trained to be coaches and leaders for effective delivery of a collaborative management style?
10. Is there a culture of continuous feedback in your performance management framework?

 Any or all these reasons could be why a person is underperforming or disengaged from their job. Issuing a Performance Improvement Plan before communicating with the individual to understand their challenges may further worsen their case and demoralise them.

 Presently, almost every individual is experiencing one challenge or the other, therefore, a considerable level of empathy is required from co-workers and management to help employees thrive at their job and maintain a good level of mental health.

Structure is good in the workplace and professionalism, the icing on the cake. However, occurrences in recent times have shown HR leaders the need to be flexible and proactive in aligning workplace practices with the disruptions that keeps rearing its head on a constant basis.

 

By creating a workplace culture of inclusiveness and belonging, would foster employee trust and ultimately, they would exhibit positive discretionary behaviours for better performance outcomes.

 When employees feel they can trust their employers and organisation’s leaders, they are able to communicate on issues affecting their inability to perform optimally at the job. This is where collaboration comes into play in an organisation. Both parties dissect issues and eventually arrive at possible ways to manage them for collective positive outcomes. 

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