Corporations Compassion Culture. Keesa C. Schreane
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empathy in a corporation (which many people equate to compassion on a broad level). They believe measuring it “takes the heart out of it.” Rather, they say, compassion should simply be a key value at the corporate level, not treated as a quantifiable metric.22
The point of agreement is when employees feel engaged at their company, the company sees a quantifiable difference in employee performance. For example, according to a Gallup Survey:
Engaged employees and teams experience 17% greater productivity.
Engaged employees experience a 20% increase in sales.23
Feeling appreciated opens the door to feeling comfortable and becoming more creative at work. Employees who feel valued will share more ideas and, as a result, offer more value. In the end, this cultivates innovation, which improves both the culture and the corporation's bottom line.
Making Tough Decisions Compassionately
But what happens when business pressures increase and, in the heat of the moment, a company's needs outweigh employee well-being and creativity? For example, there may be business expansion opportunities calling for employees to work for a period of time in a hazardous environment, with no health protection. Or a market downturn may occur when management foresees the need for employees to work longer hours to get a product to the market, but the company won't have the income to pay them right away.
Look at it this way: when business is booming, the economy is solid, and customers are buying in large numbers, it's easy to put employees first. Managers may even seek to share power, giving employees a say on how the organization's culture is governed. However, when revenue is on the line, the economy is tanking, and customers are unable or unwilling to buy products, typical corporate culture reverts to a hard-line approach. Managers are inflexible to the needs of employees and exclude them from decision-making.
In tough times, corporate culture can get even tougher on employees. What happens when an action that might inconvenience employees could nonetheless improve the company's long-term growth? Even for the most fair-minded business leader, profits will likely weigh more than compassionate treatment of employees in those examples. The scary thing is, in our super-competitive market environment, these scenarios have become more commonplace. C-suite leaders are making decisions about the health, well-being, and personal economies of thousands of people. These leaders see before them a limited number of alternatives to business problems. Each alternative has “casualties.” Consequences for those casualties can be debilitating.
Even in these situations, leaders should be tethered to their guiding principles dictating the type of leaders they are and the type of culture they uphold. Compassionate leaders are creative, engage a variety of stakeholders for feedback, and use their intelligence and imagination to deliver the best results. They see people as their most valuable resource. Their guiding principles include cultivating people.
The root of the problem is that business leaders resort to thinking of employees as expendable, instead of viewing them as the lifeblood of the business and should be treated with compassion and dignity, even in arduous circumstances when there are no “good” options to choose from. Commoditizing people in the workforce, and not adhering to a people-first business mentality, has steadily eroded corporate culture. Today, corporate culture is slowly shifting toward more of a people orientation. But, to return to our ship-turning analogy: this change won't happen overnight. There are still plenty of corporate leaders who instinctively view shareholders as the primary (if not sole) concern in decision-making.
There is always room for grace here. Making poor decisions does not equate to intentionally desiring to harm employees. In fact, it's possible the majority of leaders feel they have no choice when making decisions that negatively affect employees. They may not have the resources and information needed to expand their view of business solutions in challenging environments.
The Old Days: Carnegie and the Homestead Strike
Andrew Carnegie is a great example of philanthropy and the ideal of leading with compassion and integrity. Leadership is complex, with many variables. Looking critically at key decisions Carnegie made that affected employees provides a teachable moment as well. Giving grace to leaders and moments where they falter is important. Learning lessons from poor decisions to prevent repeating them is critical in turning toward a new corporate culture built on compassion, equality, and inclusion.
Carnegie is arguably the most celebrated philanthropist of his ilk from the 20th century, and for good reason. His philanthropic contributions remain unmatched. He gave away over $350 million during his lifetime—by one estimate, that would be about $65 billion today.
I first became familiar with Andrew Carnegie through Napoleon Hill's book Think and Grow Rich and Dennis Kimbro's Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice. Millions of readers like me saw Carnegie as a generous teacher sharing universal keys to success and giving new generations an understanding of how faith, determination, and belief in one's self outweighs obstacles. He did well financially, he made many investors wealthy, and he accomplished even more after his lifetime by directing his wealth to be used for good globally.
In his 1889 article, “The Gospel of Wealth,” Carnegie discussed the chasm between wealthy and working classes and how inequality can quickly become the norm in large corporations:
We assemble thousands of operatives in the factory, in the mine, and in the counting-house, of whom the employer can know little or nothing, and to whom the employer is little better than a myth. All intercourse between them is at an end. Rigid castes are formed, and, as usual, mutual ignorance breeds mutual distrust. Each caste is without sympathy for the other, and ready to credit anything disparaging in regard to it. Under the law of competition, the employer of thousands is forced into the strictest economies, among which the rates paid to labor figure prominently, and often there is friction between the employer and the employed, between capital and labor, between rich and poor. Human society loses homogeneity.24
Carnegie's historical writings on the relationships between owners and workers provide an important lens to view labor relations of the present day. That said, his theoretical ideas contrast starkly with the company's actions during a critical business negotiation just a few years later.
As Carnegie Steel Company ascended, Carnegie chose Henry Clay Frick as his business partner. Frick was known as a man who got things done and saw the benefits of authoritarian-style management. Carnegie largely favored unions and believed in partnering with workers to avoid breaking strikes and bloodshed, although he felt in some cases they interfered with efficiency and were “elitist” in their membership. Despite their differences in style, neither could have expected the deadly outcome at Homestead Steel Works in Homestead, Pennsylvania, in 1892.25
In this era, factory work was grueling and poorly paid, spaces were crowded, and tasks were repetitive. Working 12-hour shifts in physically dangerous environments was very common. From faulty equipment to the lack of alertness after the end of long shifts, the loss of a finger or even a life was a real concern. Workers organized to demand a wage that was fair for the extended hours and heightened risk of breadwinners whose families depended on them to put food on the table.
At the time of the Homestead Strike, Carnegie had traveled back to his native Scotland, leaving his company chairman, Frick, in charge. In his written correspondence, Carnegie assured Frick he had his confidence in resolving the situation.
But during negotiations for pay increases, Frick's proposal of a 22% wage decrease escalated into a full-blown strike. Frick brought in a group known as Pinkerton Detectives, a private, armed security force, to disrupt the strike. The armed Pinkertons faced off with striking