A recent study highlights the crucial role of compassion in navigating workplace challenges. It demonstrates that individuals with higher levels of compassion exhibit increased emotional resilience, enhanced job performance, and a reduced inclination to seek alternative employment when they perceive their employer has failed to meet expectations.

According to Tom Zagenczyk, a professor of management at North Carolina state University’s Poole College of Management and coauthor of the study, “People often equate compassion with weakness or softness, but this work underscores the ways in which compassion actually makes people resilient-and how that can affect their behavior in the workplace.”

The research delves into the concept of psychological contract breach (PCB), which arises when employees believe their employer has broken a promise, such as failing to deliver an anticipated raise or altering the company’s mission in unforeseen ways.

Sara Krivacek,assistant professor of management at James Madison University and the paper’s first author,notes,”There is already substantial research on what organizations and managers can do to maintain employee performance and reduce turnover when employees feel the employer hasn’t met agreed-upon obligations.”

Krivacek adds, “But there has been much less work done that focuses on the employees themselves.”

The study explored how compassion influences an individual’s ability to cope with PCB in the workplace, examining both self-compassion (the degree to which individuals are kind and caring toward themselves) and other-compassion (the degree to which individuals are kind and caring toward others).

Researchers gathered data during the pandemic, a period when reduced interaction with peers made it easier to assess the impact of individual traits on coping with PCB, according to zagenczyk.

Zagenczyk explains, “Typically, relationships with coworkers and supervisors help employees cope with PCBs on the job. As people were working remotely, we were better able to determine the role that an individual’s personal characteristics play.”

the study involved three surveys of English-speaking white-collar workers in the Netherlands,conducted at monthly intervals.The first survey, completed by 439 workers, gauged the extent to which participants had experienced PCBs in the preceding month.The second survey, completed by 382 of the original participants, measured “violation feelings” (negative emotions toward the employer) and levels of self-compassion and other-compassion. The final survey, completed by 330 workers, addressed intentions to leave, job performance, and emotional exhaustion.

Krivacek states, “First off, the study tells us that violation feelings stemming from PCBs-anger, betrayal, etc.-are what drive negative outcomes like emotional exhaustion.”

She continues, “Though, the study also tells us that compassion also plays a critically important role in the extent to which people experience these negative outcomes-though the two types of compassion play vrey different roles.”

“For example, we found that the higher an individual’s levels of self-compassion, the less emotionally exhausted they were-even when they were experiencing violation feelings after a PCB,” Krivacek says.

Krivacek suggests, “This suggests that self-compassion better equips individuals to deal with these negative emotions, which is important.”

Zagenczyk notes, “By the same token, employees with higher levels of other-compassion were less likely to consider leaving the job and reported higher levels of workplace performance.”

“This suggests that concerns about workplace colleagues make people less likely to slack off or quit, even when they feel their employer has acted badly,” Zagenczyk says.

Krivacek suggests that organizations can foster compassion through training programs,noting,”Specifically,self- and other-compassion are not just inherent traits; prior interventional work has shown that employees can develop and increase their own self- and other-compassion through training.”

Krivacek concludes, “Therefore, while organizations cannot realistically eliminate the degree to which employees experience PCB (that would be a broken promise in itself!), they can consider incorporating workshops and training programs that focus on fostering these practices.”

The researchers also suggest that companies might prioritize hiring candidates who demonstrate higher levels of compassion, assuming other qualifications are equal.

The complete study is published in the Journal of Business ethics.

“People often equate compassion with weakness or softness, but this work underscores the ways in which compassion actually makes people resilient.”