Is empathy incompatible with business? With capitalism?
Kopitsky Injury Law firm thinks that empathy is in fact intrinsic to their business. They have recently incorporated the empathy symbol into their logo, because empathy for their clients is just that fundamental to their law practice.
So let’s consider: would all businesses be better served by incorporating empathy into their core values and practices? Or is empathy antithetical to making money for shareholders and the company itself? Or is it irrelevant?
When you think about it, a vast majority of businesses, and certainly a vast majority of the jobs people do, require some level of empathy. For sure, any jobs or entities in the service business need empathy for the clients they serve. Teachers, social workers, doctors and nurses, firefighters and police officers, lawyers, government workers and politicians, librarians, artists and actors, salespeople… everyone in these and many other professions are better at their jobs if they have empathy. We all know what it feels like to encounter a doctor who is only interested in your disease, not in you and what you are experiencing. We tend to look for a new doctor. I still remember the name of a teacher I had in junior high who really seemed to dislike all the students he taught. On the flip side, teachers who really care about their individual students, get to know them and encourage them and help them, are remembered fondly for a lifetime. When one encounters a service worker who is not interested in your problems, whether it is not having enough to eat and trying to get SNAP benefits, or needing help with heating in the winter, or getting a real ID at the DMV, the classic bureaucrat who just tells you to bring back other forms and dismisses you with a curt “Next”, it is so disheartening. That person is in the wrong job. Fortunately, most people in the service industries seem to like making connections with the clients they serve. It makes the job more pleasurable for them and for you. Even in what might be considered entry-level jobs–checking customers out at Target, or taking your order at the coffee shop, making that human connection with customers, if only briefly, seems to make the job more pleasant, as well as nicer for the customer too. And happy customers come back. In other words, empathy, whether on a small or larger scale, is good for business.
Derek Chauvin may be the ultimate example of how bad it can be when the professional lacks empathy. George Floyd died, and he went to prison, because he had zero empathy.
Can empathy be faked to make a sale? Sure. But I would bet that the most successful salespeople are those who genuinely listen to the person who has come into the furniture store to get a specific kind of recliner for their elderly parent, or into the car showroom looking for the right kind of car at a price they can afford to reliably transport their family.
Of course there are some businesses that require one to put aside one’s empathetic feelings to do the job. If you are brought into a company specifically to restructure it, to make it more “efficient”, to downsize it and get rid of dead weight (human beings), you must put aside any feelings of empathy for the people you are firing. A side question, worth pondering, is does this kind of job take a toll on the emotional well-being of those who do it? Is needing to function in a ruthless manner ultimately dehumanizing for both sides of the encounter? Can you compartmentalize your job requirement to not care about other people, separating it from your relationships with those you do care about, your family and friends? Or do all human encounters become tainted by the work you do? Sociopaths, being unable to genuinely feel empathy for others, probably are very good at jobs that require cold dehumanization of other people.
The question of whether empathy is antithetical to capitalism is a bigger and more complex issue. The robber barons of the late 1800s certainly felt that making money off the back of their workers, who were forced to work long days for low wages in dangerous conditions, and without compensation if they were injured on the job, was the correct thing to do. Today, companies whose boards decide to funnel more money to their already highly overpaid executives, and to their stockholders, at the expense of their employees and the people who use their business, clearly lack any empathy for humanity. We could get into a lengthy discussion about some health insurance companies, about other mega corporations, about AI companies and Tesla and many others. But we’ll have to leave that for another time, and for those who understand the complex world of big business and high finance.
Fortunately, by far most human beings feel empathy for others. It is an innate human trait. Empathy is definitely one of the reasons humans have thrived as social beings. So, is empathy good for business? Absolutely!
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