An empathy problem in agency land
Gary Nissim, Indago Digital’s managing director, on cultivating empathy in the workplace as a business imperative.
I read something last year that stopped me in my tracks. It was the results of a study into empathy in the creative, media and marketing industry called, ‘Different Shoes: the empathy project’ done by Mentally Healthy. It found that 86% of individuals believe that empathy is important in their organisation, but only 38% believe their employer values empathy.
As a business leader, I can say that I 100% value my people, but if empathy is important to so many individuals and so few of them believe their workplaces deliver it, it strikes me that we all have to do more than assume.
I can’t deny that there have been times that employees have told me they’re feeling the pressure of demands on them to make room for rush jobs, fielding calls out-of-hours calls or being spoken down to. Fortunately, it hasn’t been a common problem, but it’s certainly not unheard of.
