The recent New York Times Article created a topic of conversation for “water coolers” across North America and elsewhere and was a hotly debated on major networks and online forums. An article titled “The Power Of Compassion To Drive Your Bottom Line” written by Rob Ashghar for forbes.com espouses the virtues of how several organizations treated their external customers. it goes without saying, that a company that does not have compassion in its corporate DNA towards its internal customers/employees cannot expect its workforce to be a happy one.

Three of the most of the most poignant paragraphs in the article reads, in part;

“Dignity isn’t the only example of an enterprise that has benefited from a human touch. UCLA’s health system has long had a sterling reputation for cutting-edge research and technical knowledge. But it had a middling reputation for the human touch. Hospital CEO David Feinberg concluded that the most state-of-the-art medical instruments would be rejected if they were too cold, and accordingly made human touch the utmost priority at all levels of the organization. Within a few years, UCLA’s hospitals moved from the 38th percentile to the 99th percentile in responses to the question, “Would you refer us to a friend?”

Marvin O’Quinn, chief operating officer for Dignity, says that the compassion model isn’t just a nebulous attitude, but a concrete tool for making decisions at an enterprise that employs nearly 11,000 physicians and 56,000 employees at some 300 care centers and hospitals spread across 21 states.

He points to Dignity’s choice to keep the doors open at four hospitals in bankrupt municipalities, lest many thousands of people in those communities lose the ability to receive care. Those hospitals are not profitable in and of themselves, but they are still seen as core to the mission and character of the overall organization.”

While there are some companies who continue to treat their employees as a number, rather than a human being, there are many others that treat their employees with a great deal of dignity and pay them a respectable salary including overtime when applicable. Is that a lot to ask for?

Bottom-line; a company that does not have a compassionate bone in its corporate DNA, towards its internal customers/employees, should not expect its workforce to be a happy or long tenured one.

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