Employee Survival Guide® - Corporate Empathy or Just Plain Old Apathetic Employment Practices

Episode Date: May 31, 2022

In this episode of the Employee Survival Guide®, Mark discusses the recent trend by employers to provide empathy training to managers.  Mark argues that this is just an attempt by companies to keep employees from jumping ship to the next employer during this employee run economy.  He further argues that what employees really want is to trust their employers and stop fearing if they will be placed on a performance improvement plan or fired without a reason. Mark argues to eliminate the employment at will rule and replace it with a "just-cause" termination rule for all employees.  This new rule would create more security and the type of trust where corporate empathy can really strive.This episode was written and produced by Mark Carey and edited by Matt Zako.Listen to the Employee Survival Guide podcast latest episode here  https://capclaw.com/employee-survival-guide-podcast/If you enjoyed this episode of the Employee Survival Guide please like us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.  We would really appreciate if you could leave a review of this podcast on your favorite podcast player such as Apple Podcasts.For more information, please contact Carey & Associates, P.C. at 475-242-8317, www.capclaw.com.The content of this website is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice nor create an attorney-client relationship.  Carey & Associates, P.C. makes no warranty, express or implied, regarding the accuracy of the information contained on this website or to any website to which it is linked to.If you enjoyed this episode of the Employee Survival Guide please like us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. We would really appreciate if you could leave a review of this podcast on your favorite podcast player such as Apple Podcasts. Leaving a review will inform other listeners you found the content on this podcast is important in the area of employment law in the United States. For more information, please contact our employment attorneys at Carey & Associates, P.C. at 203-255-4150, www.capclaw.com.

Hey, it's Mark here, and welcome to the next edition of the Employee Survival Guide, where I tell you what your employer does not want to know about, and a lot more. Today, we're going to be talking about a topic that's rather important, and I've been following it for some time. It's called the Corporate Empathy or Just Plain Old Apathetic Employment Practices. Corporate adoption of empathy skills training for managers and executives is not new. High-priced consultants have been pushing this agenda for a while. To quote a Time Magazine article,

Outside the office, developing empathy means trying to understand and share the feelings or experiences of someone else. Empathy is different from sympathy, which is more one-directional. You feel sad for what someone else is going through, but you have little understanding of what it feels like. Because empathy is predicated on experience, it's difficult, if not impossible, to cultivate. At best, it's expanded sympathy. At worst, it's trying to force connections between wildly different lived experiences. End quote. On May 10, 2022, the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled, Why is your boss asking about your feelings? Inside the Empathy Management Trend. Okay, this was a nice piece of writing, post-pandemic, emphasizing a new corporate face to replace the old. What piqued my interest was the glaring, obvious alter ego of corporate empathy from the pre-pandemic world.

That time before time, if you can remember, I was apoplectic, bordering on insanity. glaring obvious alter ego of corporate empathy from the pre-pandemic world. That time before time, if you can remember, I was apoplectic, bordering on insanity. Why? Employee reaction to empathy training can be summed up in a tidy quote that appeared in the Time Magazine article. The article was titled, Companies are embracing empathy to keep employees happy. It's not that easy. Here's the quote. Still, I've heard from workers who think it's all nonsense.

The latest in a long string of corporate attempts to distract from toxic or exploitive company culture. Yet another scenario in which employers employ workers to be honest and vulnerable about their needs. Then implicitly or explicitly punish them for it. I could not agree more, because I know too much about all the corporate garbage being thrown out the human resources back door nearest the dumpster. If you actually believe the latest surge in corporate empathy training is effective and will produce lasting change, you are insane. will produce lasting change, you are insane. I've been monitoring the employment workplace for more than 25 years, and the reality most, if not all, employees experience is a meditation in absolutism, autocracy, via the Human Resources Department.

I continue to warn employees that the Human Resources Department is not your friend. It is not there to help you. Stretching further out from there, your manager is just an extension of management in the human resources department, neither of which can be trusted, let alone permitted to engage in empathy with you about whatever issue you're dealing with. The real reason companies are pushing this empathy thing again is because they need employees to stay within their rank and file instead of jumping ship to the next employer. According to the 2021 State of the Workplace Empathy Study, yes, there's a study for this, as reported in the Time article, only one in four

employees believe their employers engaged in sufficient empathy with employees. That's pretty crappy if you think. When can we begin to trust our employers and believe the face of real, transparent corporate empathy at work? When companies remove the baffles, eliminate the at-will rule, and let the real employment relationship begin. Face it, employees do not trust employers based on decades of maltreatment and fear-mongering by employers, in particular human resource departments and the corporate executive team that dictate to those departments. Employees nationwide work under a state of low to moderate level of fear that their next day could be their last day. This is true for an employee at McDonald's. It's true for an employee at Bridgewater Associates and Goldman Sachs.

Why? Because the at-will employment relationship is just that. It's at-will. Employers need you one day, and the very next day they put you on a performance improvement plan for no apparent reason, and then they fire you. When employers like Starbucks and Amazon realize that employees do not want unionization, but really want a higher level of trust. Trust that the employer has your back just like your family does. An employment relationship based on a termination for a just cause can provide that level of trust between employees and management. A just cause employment provides predictability.

Specifically, employees can avoid certain pre-identified behaviors that can lead to terminations such as sexual harassment or theft. When employees promote a just cause employment, they create an identifiable trust where only true empathy can coexist. No trust, no empathy, just that simple. Employees across the country are now in a unique position to forever alter the employment landscape. Unionization is not the answer. I've never found any unions to be trustworthy, only paternalistic, and biased in favor of their collective bargaining counterparts, the employers. We have never seen a client who was part of a union, represented by the union's legal team, when they really needed them. of a union represented by the union's legal team when they really needed them. What employees need to do is speak up about implementation of a just cost termination policy and the elimination of the implement at will rule.

This is not a progressive agenda. This is an American agenda. Everyone needs to work, but we should not have to fear our employers. The time for change is now. If you'd like more information about this topic, please contact Caring Associates on the web. Have a great week.